“ Ebbene ” said the man with the hose round his neck, who had lately migrated from another knot of talkers, “they are safest who cross themselves and jest at nobody. Do you know that the Magnifico sent for the Frate at the last, and couldn’t die without his blessing?”
“Was it so—in truth?” said several voices. “Yes, yes—God will have pardoned him.”
“He died like the best of Christians.”
“Never took his eyes from the holy crucifix.”
“And the Frate will have given him his blessing?”
“Well, I know no more,” said he of the hosen, “only Guccio there met a footman going back to Careggi, and he told him the Frate had been sent for yesternight, after the Magnifico had confessed and had the holy sacraments.”
“It’s likely enough the Frate will tell the people something about it in his sermon this morning; is it not true, Nanni?” said Goro. “What do you think?”
But Nanni had already turned his back on Goro, and the group was rapidly thinning; some being stirred by the impulse to go and hear “new things” from the Frate (“new things” were the nectar of Florentines); others by the sense that it was time to attend to their private business. In this general movement, Bratti got close to the barber, and said—
“Nello, you’ve a ready tongue of your own, and are used to worming secrets out of people when you’ve once got them well lathered. I picked up a stranger this morning as I was coming in from Rovezzano, and I can spell him out no better than I can the letters on that scarf I bought from the French cavalier. It isn’t my wits are at fault—I want no man to help me tell peas from paternosters—but when you come to foreign fashions, a fool may happen to know more than a wise man.”