table every day. Yes, yes, Caterina will know
on which side her bread is buttered; she will
say 'Yes!' fast enough, and 'Thank you, sir!'
into the bargain."

Muttering thus to himself the old man continued
his way to the Lung'arno, as the street
is called which runs along the river bank, forming
a magnificent terrace from one end of the
city to the other. It is more magnificent now
than it was at the date of this narrative. For
after having remained much as it was in the
seventeenth century till within these two years,
it has recently been embellished and widened by
new river-walls and parapets and other ameliorations
after the fashion of the nineteenth century.
But such improvements can rarely be attained
in the mediæval cities of Italy, save at the cost
of destroying some interesting memorial of the
past. And here on the Lung'arno, just where
Signer Canacci emerged on it from the narrow
streets behind it, the very smart cut-stone front
of a specially hideous new Bank and Chamber of
Commerce now occupies the spot on which stood,
a few months ago, one of the most singular and
picturesque structures in Florence. It was a
huge dyeing establishment, which had remained
unchanged, amid so many changes around it,
since the days when the dyed woollens of Florence
were celebrated in every part of Europe,
and formed one of the principal sources of the
vast wealth of the old republic. That industry,
like every other, had languished and declined
under the grand-dukes; but it was still carried
on in this spot, as indeed it was till the dyers
were, much against their will, turned out the
other day by the genius of modern improvement.

It cannot be said that the old dyeing-house
was beautiful, that it bore the slightest resemblance
to any order of architecture ever heard
of, or that to the eye of any city-surveyor, architect,
or sanitary reformer, it was even decent.
But it was very strange, very unlike anything
else in the nineteenth-century world, and withal
singularly picturesque. From vaults below the
level of the street four or five huge cavernous
mouths opened on the public way, from which
dense bodies of vapour were always issuing forth,
while bare-armed and strangely-tinted figures
might be dimly described around steaming vats
in the chiaroscuro of the den within. Piles and
acres of newly-dyed goods were heaped around
these doorways, or hung out to dry on the opposite
parapet-wall, in innocent ignorance of the
most rudimentary ideas of street police or the
rights of his majesty the Public; but to the
great delight of any disciple of Prout in want
of a bit of colour. The walls of the building
over these vaults reached only to the height of
one story. But above that, raised on timbers at
the height of about two stories more, and thus
covering a vast space of open terrace, was such
a roof as never entered into the mind of a modern
builder to conceive. There must have been
timber enough in it to have furnished forth a dozen
"Prospect- rows," or "Belleview- buildings."
The huge beams—each a tree from thepine forests
of the Apennines—crossed each other in every
possible direction and at every imaginable angle.
And high in air was the enormous beetle-browed
roof, with its mellow-coloured red tiling, projecting
far on all sides beyond the basement of
the structure. Then must be imagined all the
wondrous play of light and shadow as the rays
of an Italian sun darted in and lost themselves
among that quaint forest of timbers; and further,
the effect of the long pendant draperies of newly
and brightly-dyed stuffs hung up here and there
among the recesses of the labyrinth of beams;
and then it will be understood that the old roof
of the dyers was a bit of Florence dear to an
artist's heart.

And there it stood unchanged for more than
two centuries after Signor Giustino Canacci's
visit. Now it is gone, and a prim, more-or-less-
Palladian Bank stands in its place.

As Signor Canacci passed along the front of
the building, he saw the man he was in search
of, sitting listlessly on a little bench at the
entrance to one of the vaults which have been
described. Each of these was tenanted by a
different member of the trade, although the
terrace above and the roof were in common to
all of them. Time had been when Pasquale*
Bassi was a flourishing and well-to-do citizen;
but "the times" had well-nigh ruined him, as
they had many others. His wife and a son
had died recently of the plague. One daughter,
Caterina, remained to him. If the pestilence
spared him, it seemed that the task of maintaining
her and himself in decent respectability
would become every day a more difficult one.
And if it struck him down, she would be left
wholly unprotected and unprovided on the world
—and on such a world!

Under these circumstances, it was not strange
that the poor dyer, instead of hurrying home to
his dinner at noon, sat sadly thinking at the
door of his nearly empty and idle workshop.

"Good day, friend Pasquale," said Giustino,
as he came up to him; " how goes the world
with you this morning?"

"Ah! Messer Giustino! Your servant!  Will
you walk into my poor place?"

"No, my friend; let us have a little talk here.
Fresh air and the sky for ceiling, is better than
many a chamber in these days."

"That's true, signore, God knows!" returned
the dyer, making room for his visitor on the
little bench.

"And how goes business? Nothing to brag
of, eh?'' said the old man, sitting down.

"Nothing can be worse, Messer Giustino;
and yet I suppose it will be worse, for we are
not starved to death yet!"

"Nay! there is surely less danger of that
than usual. There is such a good chance of
escaping it by dying of the plague. But it is, I
admit, a comfortable thing in these times to
depend on no man and no business for one's bed
and board."

* The maiden family name of Caterina is not
mentioned by the chroniclers. That in the text,
therefore, is fictitious. The other names are historical.