Nello held up the shaving-cloth with an air of invitation, and Maestro Tacco advanced and seated himself under a preoccupation with his heat and his self-importance, which made him quite deaf to the irony conveyed in Nello’s officiously polite speech.
“It is but fitting that a great medicus like you,” said Nello, adjusting the cloth, “should be shaved by the same razor that has shaved the illustrious Antonio Benevieni, the greatest master of the chirurgic art.”
“The chirurgic art!” interrupted the doctor, with an air of contemptuous disgust. “Is it your Florentine fashion to put the masters of the science of medicine on a level with men who do carpentry on broken limbs, and sew up wounds like tailors, and carve away excrescences as a butcher trims meat? Via! A manual art, such as any artificer might learn, and which has been practised by simple barbers like yourself—on a level with the noble science of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, which penetrates into the occult influences of the stars and plants and gems!—a science locked up from the vulgar!”
“No, in truth, Maestro,” said Nello, using his lather very deliberately, as if he wanted to prolong