life was going to be something quite new, and that Tito would be with her often. All who remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some new experience came, that every thing else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony. So the bit of coral was hung beside the tiny bag with the scrap of scrawled parchment in it, and Tessa felt braver. "And now you will give me a kiss," said Tito, economizing time by speaking while he swept in the contents of the wallet and hung it at his waist again, "and look happy, like a good girl, and then-" But Tessa had obediently put forward her lips in a moment, and kissed his cheek as he hung down his head. "Oh, you pretty pigeon !" cried Tito, laughing, pressing her round cheeks with his hands and crushing her features together so as to give them a general impartial kiss. Then he started up and walked away, not looking round till he was ten yards from her, when he just turned and gave a parting beck. Tessa was looking after him, but he could see that she was making no signs of distress. It was enough for Tito if she did not cry while he was present. The softness of his nature required that all sorrow should be hidden away from him. "I wonder when Romola will kiss my cheek in that way?" thought Tito, as he walked along. It seemed a tiresome distance now, and he almost wished he had not been so soft-hearted, or so tempted to linger in the shade. No other excuse was needed to Bardo and Romola than saying simply than he had been unexpectedly hindered; he felt confident their proud delicacy would inquire no farther. He lost no time in getting to Ognissanti, and hastily taking some food there, he crossed the Arno by the Ponte alla Carraja, and made his way as directly as possible toward the Via de' Bardi. But it was the hour when all the world who meant to be in particularly good time to see the Corso were returning from the Borghi, or villages just outside the gates, where they had dined and reposed themselves; and the thoroughfares leading to the bridges were of course the issues toward which the stream of sight-seers tended. Just as Tito reached the Ponte Vecchio and the entrance of the Via de' Bardi, he was suddenly urged back toward the angle of the intersecting streets. A company on horse back, coming from the Via Guicciardini, and turning up the Via de' Bardi, had compelled the foot-passengers to recede hurriedly. Tito had been walking, as his manner was, with the thumb of his right hand resting in his belt; and as he was thus forced to pause, and was looking carelessly at the passing cavaliers, he felt a very thin cold hand laid on his. He started round, and saw the Dominican friar whose upturned face had so struck him in the morning. Seen closer, the face looked more evidently worn by sickness and not by age; and again it brought some strong but indefinite reminiscences to Tito. "Pardon me, but-from your face and your ring" said the friar, in a faint voice, "is not your name Tito Melema?" "Yes," said Tito, also speaking faintly, doubly jarred by the cold touch and the mystery. He was not apprehensive or timid through his imagination, but through his sensations and perceptions he could easily be made to shrink and turn pale like a maiden. "Then I shall fulfill my commission." The friar put his hand under his scapulary, and drawing out a small linen bag which hung round his neck, took from it a bit of parchment, doubled and stuck firmly together with some black adhesive substance, and placed it in Tito's hand. On the outside was written in Italian, in a small but distinct character "Tito Melema, aged twenty-three, with a dark, beautiful face, long dark curls, the brightest smile, and a large onyx ring on his right forefinger." Tito did not look at the friar, but tremblingly broke open the bit of parchment. Inside, the words were: "I am sold for a slave: I think they are going to take me to Antioch. The gems alone will serve to ransom me." Tito looked round at the friar, but could only ask a question with his eyes. "I had it at Corinth," the friar said, speaking with difficulty, like one whose small strength had been sorely taxed-"I had it from a man who was dying." "He is dead, then?" said Tito, with a bounding of the heart. "Not the writer. The man who gave it me was a pilgrim, like myself, to whom the writer had intrusted it, because he was journeying to Italy." "You know the contents ?" "I know them not, but I conjecture them. Your friend is in slavery-you will go and release him. But I can not say more at present." The friar, whose voice had become feebler and feebler, sank down on the stone bench against the wall from which he had risen to touch Tito's hand. "I am at San Marco; my name is Fra Luca." CHAPTER XI. TITO'S DILEMMA. WHEN Fra Luca had ceased to speak, Tito still stood by him in irresolution, and it was not till, the pressure of the passengers being removed, the friar rose and walked slowly into the church of Santa Felicità, that Tito also went on his way along the Via de' Bardi. "If this monk is a Florentine," he said to himself if he is going to remain at Florence, every thing must be disclosed." He felt that a new crisis had come, but he was not, for all that, too agitated to pay his visit to Bardo, and apologize for his previous non-appearance. Tito's talent for concealment was being fast developed into something less neutral. It was still possible-perhaps it might be inevitable-for him to accept frankly the altered conditions, and avow Baldassarre's existence-but hardly without casting an unpleasant light backward on his original reticence as studied equivocation, in order to avoid the fulfillment of a secretly recognized claim, to say nothing of his quiet settlement of himself and investment of his florins, when, it would be clear, his benefactor's fate had not been certified. It was, at least, provisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and, for the present, he would suspend decisive thought; there was all the night for meditation, and no one would know the precise moment at which he had received the letter. going to ascertain from Fra Luca precisely how much he conjectured of the truth, and on what grounds he conjectured it; and, further, how long he was to remain at San Marco. And on that fuller knowledge he hoped to mould a statement which would in any case save him from the necessity of quitting Florence. Tito had never had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before: the occasion was come now-the occasion which circumstance never fails to beget on tacit falsity; and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convinced himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassarre. He had once said that on a fair assurance of his father's existence and whereabouts he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, why was he bound to go? What, looked at closely, was the end of all life, but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity? Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito's mind, and were lively germs there; that was the proper order of things-the order of Nature, which treats all maturity as a mere nidus for youth. Baldassarre had done his work, had had his draught of life: Tito said it was his turn now. And the prospect was so vague:-"I think they are going to take me to Antioch:" here was a vista! After a long voyage, to spend months, perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guarantee that it would not prove vain: and to leave behind at starting a life of distinction and love: and to find, if he found any thing, the old exacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainly the gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldassarre's: in the narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined in ordinary affairs; but in that larger and more radically natural view by which the world belongs to youth and strength, they were rather So he entered the room on the second story, his who could extract the most pleasure out of where Romola and her father sat among the them. That, he was conscious, was not the parchment and the marble, aloof from the life sentiment which the complicated play of human of the streets on holidays as well as on common feelings had engendered in society. The men days, with a face just a little less bright than around him would expect that he should immeusual, from regret at appearing so late; a regret diately apply those florins to his benefactor's which wanted no testimony, since he had given rescue. But what was the sentiment of society? up the sight of the Corso in order to express it; a mere tangle of anomalous traditions and and then set himself to throw extra animation opinions, that no wise man would take as a into the evening, though all the while his con- guide, except so far as his own comfort was consciousness was at work like a machine with cerned. Not that he cared for the florins, save complex action, leaving deposits quite distinct perhaps for Romola's sake: he would give up from the line of talk; and by the time he de- the florins readily enough. It was the joy that scended the stone stairs and issued from the was due to him and was close to his lips, which grim door in the starlight, his mind had really he felt he was not bound to thrust away from reached a new stage in its formation of a pur- him and travel on, thirsting. Any maxims pose. that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet were only the lining of human selfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake. He would And when, the next day, after he was free from his professorial work, he turned up the Via del Cocomero, toward the convent of San Marco, his purpose was fully shaped. He was rather that Baldassarre should not suffer: he liked no one to suffer: but could any philosophy prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than for his own? To do so, he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he did not love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it made no valid claim his father's life would have been dreary without him: are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures they give themselves? me to his mind. Besides, if he should come back, my explanation will serve as well then as now. But I wish I knew what it was that his face recalled to me." CHAPTER XII. THE PRIZE IS NEARLY GRASPED. Having once begun to explain away Baldas- TITO walked along with a light step, for the sarre's claim, Tito's thought showed itself as immediate fear had vanished; the usual joyactive as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way ousness of his disposition reassumed its predomthrough all the tissues of sentiment. His mind inance, and he was going to see Romola. Yet was destitute of that dread which has been erro- Romola's life seemed an image of that loving, neously decried as if it were nothing higher pitying devotedness, that patient endurance of than a man's animal care for his own skin: that irksome tasks from which he had shrunk and awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by excused himself. But he was not out of love religious pagans, and, though it took a more with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: positive form under Christianity, is still felt by he was in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at all charm and loveliness; he had still a healthy any thing which is called wrong-doing. Such appetite for ordinary human joys, and the poisterror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual on could only work by degrees. He had sold cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: himself to evil, but at present life seemed so it is the initial recognition of a moral law re-nearly the same to him that he was not constraining desire, and checks the hard bold scru- scious of the bond. He meant all things to go tiny of imperfect thought into obligations which on as they had done before, both within and can never be proved to have any sanctity in the without him: he meant to win golden opinions absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old by meritorious exertion, by ingenious learning, Eumenides, in Æschylus, "that fear should sit by amiable compliance: he was not going to do as the guardian of the soul, forcing it into wis- any thing that would throw him out of harmony dom-good that men should carry a threatening with the beings he cared for. And he cared sushadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; premely for Romola; he wished to have her for else, how shall they learn to revere the right?" his majestic, beautiful, and loving wife. There That guardianship may become needless; but might be a wealthier alliance within the ultionly when all outward law has become needless mate reach of successful accomplishments like -only when duty and love have united in one his, but there was no woman in all Florence stream and made a common force. like Romola. When she was near him, and looked at him with her sincere hazel eyes, he was subdued by a delicious influence as strong and inevitable as those musical vibrations which take possession of us with a rhythmic empire that no sooner ceases than we desire it to begin again. As Tito entered the outer cloister of San Marco and inquired for Fra Luca there was no shadowy presentiment in his mind; he felt himself too cultured and skeptical for that: he had been nurtured in contempt for the tales of priests whose impudent lives were a proverb; and in erudite familiarity with disputes concerning the chief good, which had after all, he considered, left it a matter of taste. Yet fear was a strong element in Tito's nature-the fear of what he believed or saw was likely to rob him of pleasure; and he had a definite fear that Fra Luca might be the means of driving him from Flor ence. "Fra Luca? ah, he is gone to Fiesole-to the Dominican monastery there. He was taken on a litter in the cool of the morning. The poor brother is very ill. Could you leave a message for him?" This answer was given by a fra converso, or lay brother, whose accent told plainly that he was a raw contadino, and whose dull glance implied no curiosity. "Thanks; my business can wait." Tito turned away with a sense of relief. "This friar is not likely to live," he said to himself. "I saw he was worn to a shadow. And at Fiesole there will be nothing to recall As he trod the stone stairs, when he was stil! outside the door, with no one but Maso near him, the influence seemed to have begun its work by the mere nearness of anticipation. "Welcome, Tito mio," said the old man's voice, before Tito had spoken. There was a new vigor in the voice, a new cheerfulness in the blind face, since that first interview more than two months ago. "You have brought fresh manuscript, doubtless; but since we were talking last night I have had new ideas: we must take a wider scope-we must go back upon our footsteps." Tito, paying his homage to Romola as he advanced, went, as his custom was, straight to Bardo's chair, and put his hand in the palm that was held to receive it, placing himself on the cross-legged leather seat with scrolled ends, close to Bardo's elbow. "Yes," he said, in his gentle way; "I have brought the new manuscript, but that can wait your pleasure. I have young limbs, you know, and can walk back up the hill without any diffi- | to mortals. It is too often the 'palma sine pulculty." He did not look at Romola as he said this, but he knew quite well that her eyes were fixed on him with delight. "That is well said, my son." Bardo had already addressed Tito in this way once or twice of late. "And I perceive with gladness that you do not shrink from labor, without which, the poet has wisely said, life has given nothing vere,' the prize of glory without the dust of the race, that young ambition covets. But what says the Greek? In the morning of life, work; in the mid-day, give counsel; in the evening, pray.' It is true, I might be thought to have reached that helpless evening; but not so, while I have counsel within me which is yet unspoken. For my mind, as I have often said, was shut up as by a dam; the plenteous waters lay dark and ROMOLA. Tito stood by her without hastening to reach the books. They had never been in this room together before. motionless, but you, Tito mio, have opened award; "every book is just where it was when duct for them, and they rush forward with a my father ceased to see them." force that surprises myself. And now, what I want is, that we should go over our preliminary ground again, with a wider scheme of comment and illustration; otherwise I may lose opportunities which I now see retrospectively, and which may never occur again. You mark what I am saying, Tito?" He had just stooped to reach his manuscript, which had rolled down, and Bardo's jealous ear was alive to the slight movement. Tito might have been excused for shrugging his shoulders at the prospect before him, but he was not naturally impatient; moreover, he had been bred up in that laborious erudition, at once minute and copious, which was the chief intellectual task of the age; and with Romola near, he was floated along by waves of agreeable sensation that made every thing seem easy. "Assuredly;" he said, "you wish to enlarge your comments on certain passages we have cited." "I hope," she continued, turning her eyes full on Tito, with a look of grave confidence-"I hope he will not weary you; this work makes him so happy." "And me too, Romola-if you will only let me say, I love you-if you will only think me worth loving a little." His speech was the softest murmur, and the dark beautiful face, nearer to hers than it had ever been before, was looking at her with beseeching tenderness. "I do love you," murmured Romola; she looked at him with the same simple majesty as It seemed to them both ever, but her voice had never in her life before sunk to that murmur. that they were looking at each other a long while before her lips moved again; yet it was but a moment till she said, "I know now what it is to be happy." The faces just met, and the dark curls mingled for an instant with the rippling gold. Quick as lightning after that, Tito set his foot on a projecting ledge of the book-shelves and reached They were both down the needful volumes. contented to be silent and separate, for that first blissful experience of mutual consciousness was all the more exquisite for being unperturbed by immediate sensation. It had all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters, for even the eager and jealous Bardo had not become impatient. "You have the volumes, my Romola?" the 66 Not only so; I wish to introduce an occasional excursus, where we have noticed an author to whom I have given special study; for I may die too soon to achieve any separate work. And this is not a time for scholarly integrity and well-sifted learning to lie idle, when it is not only rash ignorance that we have to fear, but when there are men like Calderino, who, as Poliziano has well shown, have recourse to impudent falsities of citation to serve the ends of their vanity and secure a triumph to their own mistakes. Wherefore, Tito mio, I think it not well that we should let slip the occasion that lies under our hands. And now we will turn back to the point where we have cited the pas-old man said, as they came near him again. sage from Thucydides, and I wish you, by way of preliminary, to go with me through all my notes on the Latin translation made by Lorenzo Valla, for which the incomparable Pope Nicholas V.-with whose personal notice I was honored while I was yet young, and when he was Romola always had some task which gave her Tito took his stand still Thomas of Sarzana-paid him (I say not unduly) the sum of five hundred gold scudi. a share in this joint work. But inasmuch as Valla, though otherwise of at the leggio, where he both wrote and read, dubious fame, is held in high honor for his se- and she placed herself at a table just in front of vere scholarship, so that the epigrammatist has him, where she was ready to give into her fajocosely said of him that since he went among ther's hands any thing that he might happen to the shades, Pluto himself has not dared to speak want, or relieve him of a volume that he had done in the ancient languages, it is the more needful with. They had always been in that position that his name should not be as a stamp warrant- since the work began, yet on this day it seemed ing false wares; and therefore I would introduce new; it was so different now for them to be opan excursus on Thucydides, wherein my castiga-posite each other; so different for Tito to take a tions of Valla's text may find a fitting place. Romola mia, thou wilt reach the needful volumes-thou knowest them-on the fifth shelf of the cabinet." Tito rose at the same moment with Romola, saying, "I will reach them, if you will point them out," and followed her hastily into the adjoining small room, where the walls were also covered with ranges of books in perfect order. "And now you will get your pen ready; for, as Tito marks off the scholia we determine on extracting, it will be well for you to copy them without delay-numbering them carefully, mind, to correspond with the numbers he will put in the text he will write." book from her as she lifted it from her father's They had been two hours at their work, and were just desisting because of the fading light, when the door opened and there entered a fig"There they are," said Romola, pointing up-ure strangely incongruous with the current of VOL. XXV.-No. 149.-XX |