"But full moon is 90, my sympathetic
number!" cried old Vanni.

"What a head he has! What a philosopher's
head!" said the ex-clerk, shaking his own in
admiring wonder.

And so they passed under the shadow of the
quaint old buildings on the Ponte Vecchio.

The Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge at Florence,
is one of the most remarkable specimens remaining
in Europe of the mediæval fashion of turning
bridges into streets, by loading them with rows
of houses on either side. Space within a walled
and fortified enclosure was of course scarce and
valuable; and the growing difficulty of lodging
an increasing community within the unelastic
circuit of its stone girdle, led citizens to this
and other non-sanitary expedients, which, according
to Dame Nature's usual just and inexorable
mode of dealing with us, levied inevitable
retribution on mankind for the crime of so
mismanaging their lives on this fair earth as to
make stone walls round their dwellings necessary
to them. In a simply artistic point of view,
something may be found to be said on either
side—in favour of the old building-laden bridge,
as well as of the modern unembarrassed structure.
If Waterloo Bridge be a beautiful and
magnificent work of art, ancient London Bridge,
as its appearance has been preserved for us by
old pictures and engravings, was rich in
picturesque beauty of its kind. And on the banks of
the Arno, although the Ponte Santa Trinita,
situated a few hundred yards lower down the
stream, is a masterpiece of elegance, lightness,
and scientific construction, it is its ancient neighbour,
with its quaint superstructure of queer
little shops, that attracts the eyes and occupies
the sketch-books of both resident and pilgrim
artists.

The Florentine working jewellers, who produce
the combinations of pearls, garnets, and
turquoises, which are peculiar to Florence, and who
invent cunning Etruscan settings for pietra dura
and cameo ornaments, still stick to the Ponte
Vecchio. Their shops are of very diminutive
dimensions. Behind most of them a tiny little
back-shop is contrived, generally for the purpose
of a workshop, by dint of projecting the buildings
over the sides of the bridge, and supporting them
by timbers, resting in a sloping position on its
solid masonry. Notwithstanding what would
seem a somewhat insecure foundation, these
buildings are of two, and in some cases of three
stories. They are built with complete contempt
for all uniformity and regularity; and being
adorned, here with an ancient stone-cut coat of
arms or an inscription, there with a fragment of
fresco or a tabernacle to the Virgin, with its
pendent lamp in front of it, the general effect is
picturesque in no ordinary degree.

Laudadio Vanni and his three companions
turned up the bridge from the Lungarno, and
stopped before the narrow door of one of the little
houses on the left hand as you cross from the
north to the south side of the river. Massive
iron-bound shutters, not made to stand
perpendicularly against the front of the house, but
projecting from it in a slope, so as to cover and
protect the cases of jewellery made to jut out
from the little window fronts, in order to gain a
little space at the cost of stealing it from the
public way, were in front of every tenement on
the bridge, and now that they were all closed on
this high day and holiday, had the appearance of
huge sloping-roofed chests deposited on the
pavement in front of each little house. Every
narrow door, barely large enough for one person
to pass through it at a time, was secured by two or
more huge locks. The Florentine locksmith still
looks mainly to massiveness and size as the
elements of security, and dreams not as yet of
the cunning devices by which an ounce of steel in
the hands of a Bramah or a Chubb is made to
render better service than half a dozen pounds'
weight of less-skilled workmanship.

The old jeweller deliberately drew from his
pocket a sufficiently greasy-looking leathern bag,
or key case, which with its contents may have
weighed some six or eight pounds. Unwinding
the thong which was bound around it, he took
out first one huge key, which he applied to a
lock at the middle height of the door, and gave
it three complete turns. Then another such
lock was opened at the top of the door. And
lastly, an immense padlock, which secured an
iron stanchion across the whole width of it, at the
bottom, was removed; and then at length the
narrow door thus jealously secured was opened.
There was little enough at present in old
Laudadio's shop to necessitate all these
precautions, but such had not always been the case.

Laura struck a light as soon as all four had
entered the miniature dwelling, and proceeded,
while her father carefully put up his keys again,
to light two of those slender tall brass lamps, with
their implements—snuffers, scissors for cutting
the wick, and pin for trimming it, hanging around
it by three brass chains—and their oil reservoirs
and burners, made still in the shape of those
found in old Etruscan tombs—lamps which are
seen in every Tuscan house, and have in the eyes
of strangers such a curiously classical appearance.

Placing one of these on the narrow little
workbench before the window on one side of the door,
which was her father's now rarely occupied
place of work, and in front of which stood his
old worn arm-chair, she passed with the other
through a door still narrower than that which
communicated with the street, into the second
room, if a space of some six feet square could be
called such. Here, in front of a tiny window
overhanging the river, was Laura's own little work
establishment, with its appurtenances of
multitudinous small tools, spirit-lamp, blow-pipe, &c.
Three or four casts of bronzes and basso relievi
were hung round the little cabin. One or two
old books, in a sadly dilapidated condition,
containing engravings of celebrated gems and cut
stones, lay upon a hanging table (or shelf rather,
it was so narrow) against one of the side-walls.