the contrary, as has always been observed to be
the case under similar circumstances, recklessness
of living, excesses and irregularities of all
kinds, became very manifestly more general and
unbridled than ever. The testimony of history
to the effect produced on masses of men by
any circumstances enhancing in an extraordinary
degree the usual uncertainty of life
and forcing it on their attention, is unvarying.
Permanent danger to life, whether from
pestilence, war, or other causes, has, very observably,
ever made the reflection "to-morrow
we die," lead to the conclusion, "let us eat and
drink," rather than to any line of conduct more
rationally in accordance with the presumed
theories of the minds thus acted on.

The morals, accordingly, of all classes were
never at a lower ebb in Florence than at the
period which has been spoken of. The plague
had raged in the cities of Tuscany in 1630,
but in the following year had almost disappeared.
In 1633 it broke out again with
greater virulence than ever, and brought famine
— or at least a near approach to famine — with
it in its train. As usual, the "visitation"
had fallen most terribly on the poorer classes
of the people, thus affording a very edifying
proof of what might otherwise not have been
imagined:— that the national sins which had
occasioned it, must have been in the main the
sins of the commonalty. But at the second
outbreak, several personages of high position
fell victims to it, and great was the consternation
produced by so alarming an innovation.
The. panic became universal, and the prevalent
dissoluteness of living coextensive.

It was near noon on a bright day of autumn
in this terrible year, 1633, that old Giustino
Canacci and his son Bartolommeo came out of
a house in the Via dei Pilastri, near the church of
Sant' Ambrogio, still noted as the scene of some
of the events about to be narrated in the following
pages. The old man was in his seventieth
year; the young one about twenty-five.

"There they go!" said the senior, after glancing
up and down the street; "another house shut
up, and the mark on the door since last night.
Ah! it's neighbour Faldi this time! Well! well!
we are here to-day, and gone to-morrow."

"Not you!" said his son, savagely. "No
such luck! You don't look like going to-morrow,
nor the day after neither."

"You'll look like it, reprobate that you are,
long before you are my age," returned the sire.
"A pretty life you are leading, drunk half the
day and all the night, and the deaths in the
quarter increasing every day!"

"Yes! a proper sort of time in Florence it is,
isn't it, for an old scarecrow like you to be
thinking of marrying, of all things in the world!
With nothing but plague and famine all round
one, you must needs want a wife—you! who
ought to be in your grave, plague or no plague,
before now. Ugh! It's disgusting! You look
like a bridegroom, don't you?"

"More like one, I think, than you, my son,
at all events," said the old man, scanning with
a look of unconcealed aversion the debauched,
discreditable-looking figure and bloated evil
countenance of the young man. "But now,"
he added, "since the pestilence won't take
either of us, and it is a pity but what it should
clear the house of one of us, do you go about
your business, which is to gamble with some
rake-hell or other at the Garden* there, till you
are too drunk to hold your cards, and let me
go about mine."
* A tavern so called, existing at that time in the
Via dei Pilastri.

"Mine is an honester business than what
you are going after, any way, you old wretch!
May the murrain take you as you pass through
the streets!" said Bartolommeo Canacci, as he
turned and slouched away towards the tavern,
while his father commenced his walk in the opposite
direction.

It was perfectly true, that old Giustino
Canacci was bent on the preposterous step of
taking to himself a second wife, now, while
young and old were dying around him, and it
might be supposed that marrying and giving in
marriage would have found but small place in
men's minds. It was true, also, that in one
point of view at all events, he looked more fitted
to become a bridegroom than his reprobate son.
He was a hale and well-preserved man, who
carried his seventy years as well as so heavy a
load could be borne, while his son Bartolommeo
was already old at twenty-five. Beyond this,
it would have been difficult to say which of the
pair was the less desirable and more unpromising
regarded in the character of a suitor.
The countenance of each was villanously bad,
each in its own way. There was the same low
brow and absence of forehead in both. But in the
old man the narrow-pinched temples, and the
backward slope of the frontal bone, indicated
poverty and meanness of intellect, while the
equally low but somewhat protruding and
broader forehead of his son imparted a character
of ferocity and brutality to the physiognomy.
The small and twinkling grey eyes of the senior,
set in the centre of a converging spider's net
of wrinklings, spoke plainly of low cunning,
watchfulness, and suspicion. The dull bloodshot
orbs of the junior, under their penthouse
of black shaggy brow, gave warning that the
haggard lacklustre deadness, which resulted
from habitual excess, might at small provocation
be changed to active malignity and cruelty.
The style of dress of both father and son was as
little prepossessing as might be. The old man
looked mouldy, threadbare, and faded. The
young one tawdry, slovenly, and wine-stained.
Shabbiness and dirt were common to both.

Nevertheless, true it was that old Giustino
Canacci was going a wooing; going, moreover,
in no diffident mood; but with a very tolerable
assurance that his suit would be a successful
one. For it was, in a word, the old story. The
old man had seen an article which he fancied
suited him—miserable old fool—and had
determined on buying it. Not that Signer Canacci
was a wealthy man, far from it; but he was