of the Tuscan populace, or of the largeness of the
place it holds in their daily life. It has even
modified their language. Expressions, allusions,
metaphors drawn from it, have become part of
their household speech. The walls and
pavements throughout the city are always scrawled
over with numbers, generally in combinations of
three or five. It is a constant subject of conversation;
and if a working man has occasion
to put his hand into his miscellaneously
filled pocket, the chances are, that you may
see him pull out, among other matters, one
of the abominable little strips of coarse grey-blue
paper which constitute the tickets in the lottery.
Hawkers, crying their special numbers, may
constantly be heard in the street. A ticket may be
bought for a sum somewhat less than a penny;
and the mendicant risks his alms in preference
to buying himself a bit of bread. Many and
many of the poorest classes play every week;
and there is always an especial run on the
government pawnbroking establishment a few
hours previous to the closing of the sale of
tickets.

      Hell's darksome gate stands night and day agape,

says the Latin poet.

A confirmed lottery-player is to a Tuscan family
almost as fatal a cause of misery and ruin as a
confirmed gin-drinker is to an English hearth.
And the reader will be prepared to find that the
home to which we left Laudadio Vanni and his
daughter Laura returning, after their day's
holiday at the Cascine, was not a prosperous
one. Yet, had it not been for the curse that
was on the old man, there were reasons why it
ought to have been both. Laudadio Vanni had
once been celebrated in the little world of
Florence for his talent in his art. Ideas which
have once become a portion of the popular mind
in any country are endowed with a wonderful
vitality. The goldsmith's art in the palmy days
of Florence—from the old time when Giotto
drew the perfect circle without compass as he
sat at his work-bench, to the later generation
when Cellini delighted Europe with the elegance
of his fancy and the daintiness of his handiwork—
was one of the fine arts. The statue of that
unrivalled art-workman stands among the great
ones, poets, painters, sculptors, statesmen, and
captains, whom Florence still delights to honour;
and his works are among the undying possessions
which still bring the lovers and students of art
as pilgrims to its shrine in Florence, from every
part of the civilised world. And to the Florentine
mind the cunning and tasteful worker in
gold and its combinations is still an artist.

And Laudadio Vanni was held to have caught
more of the ancient spirit and traditions of
Florentine art than any of his contemporaries. If
a restoration was needed of some treasured relic
of former magnificence, no eye was so sure as
Vanni's to comprehend the feeling of the original
design, and no hand so capable of equalling the
original workmanship. If a stranger needed a
fitting setting for some gem of mediæval art, the
acquisition of which was the main triumph of
his tour, Vanni was the man to whom he was
recommended. His was the shop on the Ponte
Vecchio which travellers in search of some
memorial of their stay at Florence especially
sought out. And all this ought to have "led on
to fortune." More especially as the old widower's
only daughter from an early age began to prove
herself a very valuable assistant to him.

Laura Vanni was indeed a born artist. Had
the circumstances of her position put it within
her reach, she would have undoubtedly excelled
in some one of the higher branches of art
creation. She had striven hard, and had effected
much, towards retarding her father's downhill
path on the road to ruin. Her talent had
made itself known; her designs were sought;
and the old shop on the Ponte Vecchio had a
new attraction added to it. But the evil spirit
she had to fight against was too strong for her;
and gradually things went from bad to worse.
A precarious hand-to-mouth struggle with
difficulties drove them to substitute mere manufacture
for the slower process of artistic elaboration.
Visitors who sought the shop in the
expectation of finding some charming chef-d'Å“uvre
of grace and fancy, found only the ordinary
bunches of turquoises and garnets and pearls,
which made the staple of every shop on the
bridge. The display even of these soon began
to be scantier and shabbier than those of their
neighbours and rivals. It was not only that
the old man neglected his business, and did
nothing, being wholly absorbed in cabalistic
calculations, and endless searches for fortunate
numbers from every object in life and in nature.
Had this been the worst, Laura, by her own
industry and talent, and with the true-hearted help
of her faithful friend and patient lover, Carlo
Bardi, might have managed to keep the old man
and herself without any assistance from him.
Carlo would willingly have installed himself as
the old jeweller's assistant and workman, and
have served his seven or twice seven years for
his love, had such a scheme promised any good
issue. It had often been talked over between
them, and as often abandoned as hopeless. For
old Laudadio was in the habit of pilfering from
his own shop to supply the means of gratifying
his passion. Any chance suggestion of a
combination of numbers to his diseased brain was
sure to be followed by the abstraction of a brooch
or a bracelet; and a dream was a sentence of
sacrifice under cost price of the most valuable
article in the shop.

It will be seen that poor Laura's task was an
up-hill one, and her position sufficiently hard.
Without the frequent and always ungrudgingly
bestowed assistance of her godfather, the cavaliere
ex-clerk, old Sestini, it would have been impossible
for her to have got on from one year's end
to another. But it was curious enough, that
though old Niccolo was held by all who knew
him to be a fool, though he seemed, in truth, not