visitor enlivened the quiet library. Elderly men came from that indefinite prompting to renew former intercourse which arises when an old acquaintance begins to be newly talked about; and young men whom Tito had asked leave to bring once, found it easy to go again when they overtook him on his way to the Via de’ Bardi, and, resting their hands on his shoulder, fell into easy chat with him.
For it was pleasant to look at Romola’s beauty; to see her, like old Firenzuola’s type of womanly majesty, “sitting with a certain grandeur, speaking with gravity, smiling with modesty, and casting around, as it were, an odour of queenliness”; and she seemed to unfold like a strong white lily under this genial breath of admiration and homage; it was all one to her with her new bright life in Tito’s love.
Tito had even been the means of strengthening the hope in Bardo’s mind that he might before his death receive the longed-for security concerning his library:
- that it should not be merged in another collection;
- that it should not be transferred to a body of monks, and be called by the name of a monastery;
- but that it should remain forever the Bardi Library, for the use of Florentines.
For the old habit of trusting in the Medici could not die out while their influence was still the strongest lever in the State; and Tito, once possessing the ear of the Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, might do more even than Messer Bernardo towards winning the desired interest, for he could demonstrate to a learned audience the peculiar value of Bardi’s collection.
Tito himself talked sanguinely of such a result, willing to cheer the old man, and conscious that Romola repaid those gentle words to her father with a sort of adoration that no direct tribute to herself could have won from her.