And here we are at the sign of ‘Apollo and the Razor.’ Apollo, you see, is bestowing the razor on the Triptolemus of our craft, the first reaper of beards, the sublime Anonimo , whose mysterious identity is indicated by a shadowy hand.”
“I see thou hast had custom already, Sandro,” continued Nello, addressing a solemn-looking dark-eyed youth, who made way for them on the threshold. “And now make all clear for this signor to sit down. And prepare the finest-scented lather, for he has a learned and a handsome chin.”
“You have a pleasant little adytum there, I see,” said the stranger, looking through a latticed screen which divided the shop from a room of about equal size, opening into a still smaller walled enclosure, where a few bays and laurels surrounded a stone Hermes. “I suppose your conclave of eruditi meets there?”
“There, and not less in my shop,” said Nello, leading the way into the inner room, in which were some benches, a table, with one book in manuscript and one printed in capitals lying open upon it, a lute, a few oil-sketches, and a model or two of hands and ancient masks.
“For my shop is a no less fitting haunt of the Muses, as you will acknowledge when you feel the sudden illumination of understanding and the serene vigour of inspiration that will come to you with a clear chin. Ah! you can make that lute discourse, I perceive. I, too, have some skill that way, though the serenata is useless when daylight discloses a visage like mine, looking no fresher than an apple that has stood the winter. But look at that sketch: it is a fancy of Piero di Cosimo’s, a strange freakish painter, who says he saw it by long looking at a mouldy wall.”
The sketch Nello pointed to represented three masks—one a drunken laughing Satyr, another a sorrowing Magdalen, and the third, which lay