to have two ideas on any subject under the sun,
and, still more strangely, though he always testified
the utmost admiration for his friend
Laudadio's profound cabalistic science, yet some
species of instinct with regard to the side on
which his own bread was buttered, prevented
him from ever risking a farthing in the lottery
himself, and also led him so to manage his
benefactions to Laura, as that they should always
reach her hands just when needed to meet some
special pressure, and should never find their way
into those of his profoundly mathematical friend.

Under these circumstances, it would seem
that pretty Laura Vanni must have been among
the many victims who have cause to hate the
paternal institution of the lottery as the one
cause of all their sorrow in life. How numerous
must be the victims ruined by the fatal passion
in those on whom they depend! Yet no such
feeling is common among the people, even among
those who are themselves free from the lust of
gambling. And Laura herself had no such feeling
on the subject. It was not only that her
affection for her father was in no wise diminished
by his conduct, but she did not seem to feel
either hatred or anger against the thing itself.

While the old shop on the bridge was
becoming stripped, and things were getting worse
and worse with Laura and her poor old
incorrigible father, worthy Carlo Bardi was slowly
making his way up fortune's hill. By rigid
economy and hard work as a journeyman jeweller,
he had contrived to save a sum which at last
placed him in a position to make a proposal he
had been long meditating. This was nothing
less than that Laudadio should give up the shop
and business to him, that he and Laura should
forthwith be married, and that he should charge
himself with finding the old man a home and
maintenance during the remainder of his days.
The business had, in fact, become worth nothing,
and the shop was as nearly as possible bare.
Nevertheless, Carlo hoped to be able to stock it
with his little capital, and by his own industry
and skill, and his wife's talent and taste, to
recover in some degree its old credit. It was a
bold scheme, for poor Carlo's means were of
the smallest. When matters were canvassed
between him and Laura, he steadily set his face
against all notions of partnership with the old
jeweller. Laura feared that her father's pride
would rebel against this proposal of complete
abdication. But Carlo was of opinion that the
lottery had swept all that away, together with so
much else.

At all events, it was settled between them, as
they walked back from the Cascine on the Ascension-
day evening, that the attempt should be
made. Carlo went over his calculations yet once
again, and, as usual, a certain sum of a hundred
dollars figured in the little budget, which Laura
was to receive on her marriage from her
godfather. These hundred dollars had been laid
aside years and years ago by the little cavaliere,
long before he had quitted his place in the
government office, and had they been placed at
interest, might have been two hundred by this
time. But nothing, to Carlo's great disgust,
could ever induce Niccolo Sestini to take any
step of the kind. There were the identical
dollars, all fresh from the mint, and those dollars
he should put into Laura's hand when she was
to be married. Over and over again had he
resisted temptation to permit the little hoard to be
diminished. And he was equally immovable in
refusing to touch it for the purpose of increasing
it. "How could he know," he observed, when
it was shown him that the hundred might ere
this have become two hundred—"how could he
know that Laura would have remained single so
long?" So the hundred dollars were but a
hundred; but they were sure. And they were
counted on by the young couple as a very important
fund for meeting the immediate expenses of
starting, and thus leaving Carlo's little capital
free for the all-important work of stocking the
old shop.

It may be surmised that Laura and Carlo saw
little of the surpassing beauty of their sunset
walk by the bank of the Arno from the Cascine
to the city gate, and thence by the long line of
the Lungarno to the Ponte Vecchio. It was
then arranged between them that Carlo should
call on her father on the following morning, and
make his proposal. Old Laudadio, who, as in
the morning, walked in front with the cavaliere,
was equally blind to all around him, unless it
were that he occasionally recorded to himself the
numbers suggested, according to his science, by
the objects that met his eyes. A little boy
patiently dangling a bit of string at the end of a
stick in the river, produced the remark that
fishing with a hook was 41. Two men, with
bare brown legs and arms, in a boat, which they
were loading with sand scooped up from the
shallows of the river, and which looked as if one
more shovelful added to the heap which had
already brought their gunwale to the level of the
water must surely sink their boat, led to the
observation that sand denoted number 20.

Old Niccolo alone seemed, as he gently puffed
his cigar, strolling onwards with his hands behind
his back, to be enjoying the lovely view of his
dear Florence to the utmost. For among these
Southern organisations, be it observed, it does
not follow that because a man is seventy years of
age, an ex-clerk in a public office, fat and
paunchy, and an old fool into the bargain, he is
therefore insensible to beauty of any kind. A
Parisian, in a similar position and circumstances,
would see no beauty save of a far more factitious
kind. It is not so with a Tuscan.

"Ah! come è bella! come è bella!" he
exclaimed, as the moon rose over the black pine-
forests of Vallombrosa, and tipped the pinnacles
of the Palazzo Vecchio's tall slender tower with
her light.

"Moon," said Laudadio, "is number 6."

"She must be full to-night, I think," remarked
Sestini.