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 his head off and tumbled it at his feet, I left it where it fell. But I suppose the first thing the next owner will do is to put it back on again. He may even be like a countryman of ours who bought a villa at Cartomondo, and had a white iron petticoat made for each of his garden gods.' He poked at the fallen head with a rather tender boot tip as if he had a secret love for the old reprobate.

'I'll show you the library, your mother's room, everything.'

A high, narrow room lined with books and book-scented—this was his library. 'It is the Canti a Ballo that have especially interested me,' he said. 'X have tried to collect Lorenzo de Medici's own compositions in this line. Strange to think how this bank president, corrupt ward boss, and art patron used to garland himself with flowers and march through the streets of his city accompanied with a few light, light ladies and drunken gallants, bellowing these songs. And they are beautiful things, some of them.'

He took up a theorbo from a crimson damask stool and idly began to thrum upon it. Then, pushing back his damp black curls, he sang a part of Lorenzo's 'Bacchus and Ariadne':

The fierce, high beauty of the music shook Lanice. The theorbo and Roger and the old Magnifico, dead these four hundred years in his musty vault, all spoke