“Your solemnity will allow some quarter to playful fancy, I hope,” said Cei, with a shrug, “else what becomes of the ancients, whose example you scholars are bound to revere, Messer Pietro? Life was never anything but a perpetual seesaw between gravity and jest.”
“Keep your jest then till your end of the pole is uppermost,” said Cennini, still angry, “and that is not when the great bond of our Republic is expressing itself in ancient symbols, without which the vulgar would be conscious of nothing beyond their own petty wants of back and stomach, and never rise to the sense of community in religion and law. There has been no great people without processions, and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything but contempt, is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by.”
No one said anything after this indignant burst of Cennini’s till he himself spoke again.
“Hark! the trumpets of the Signoria: now comes the last stage of the show, Melema. That is our Gonfaloniere in the middle, in the starred mantle, with the sword carried before him. Twenty years ago we used to see our foreign Podesta, who was our judge in civil causes, walking on his right-hand; but our Republic has been over-doctored by clever Medici . That is the Proposto of the Priori on the left; then come the other seven Priori; then all the other magistracies and officials of our Republic. You see your patron the Segretario?”
“There is Messer Bernardo del Nero also,” said Tito; “his visage is a fine and venerable one, though it has worn rather a petrifying look towards me.”
“Ah,” said Nello, “he is the dragon that guards the remnant of old Bardo’s gold, which, I fancy, is chiefly that virgin gold that falls about the fair Romola’s head and shoulders; eh, my Apollino?” he added, patting Tito’s head.