“They are a fair sight,” said Tito; “and San Giovanni will surely be as well satisfied with that produce of Italian looms as Minerva with her peplos, especially as he contents himself with so little drapery. But my eyes are less delighted with those whirling towers, which would soon make me fall from the window in sympathetic vertigo.”
The “towers” of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri . But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri , some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, carved, and painted, as real sacred tapers often are, with successive circles of figures—warriors on horseback, foot-soldiers with lance and shield, dancing maidens, animals, trees and fruits, and in fine, says the old chronicler, “all things that could delight the eye and the heart;” the hollowness having the further advantage that men could stand inside these hyperbolic tapers and whirl them continually, so as to produce a phantasmagoric effect, which, considering the towers were numerous, must have been calculated to produce dizziness on a truly magnificent scale.
“ Pestilenza! ” said Piero di Cosimo, moving from the window, “those whirling circles one above the other are worse than the jangling of all the bells. Let me know when the last taper has passed.”
“Nay, you will surely like to be called when the contadini come carrying their torches,” said Nello; “you would not miss the country-folk of the Mugello and the Casentino, of whom your favourite Leonardo would make a hundred grotesque sketches.”
“No,” said Piero, resolutely, “I will see nothing till the car of the Zecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with and without cowls, to last me for my life.”