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148 "you would not miss the men of the Mugello and the Casentino, of whom your favourite Lionardo would make a hundred grotesque sketches."

"No," said Piero, resolutely; "I will see nothing till the car of the Zecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with and without cowls, to last me for my life."

"Here it comes, then, Piero—the car of the Zecca," called out Nello, after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scale of size had been making their slow transit.

"Fediddio!" exclaimed Francesco Cei, "that is a well-tanned San Giovanni! some sturdy Romagnole begger-man, I'll warrant. Our Signoria plays the host to all the Jewish and Christian scum that every other city shuts its gates against, and lets them fatten on us like Saint Anthony's swine."

To make clear this exclamation of Cei's, it must be understood that the car of the Zecca, or Mint, was originally an immense wooden tower or cero adorned after the same fashion as the other tributary ceri, mounted on a splendid car, and drawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, whose mild heads looked out from rich trappings bearing the arms of the Zecca. But the latter half of the century was getting rather ashamed of the towers with their circular or spiral paintings, which had delighted the eyes and the hearts of the other half, so that they had become a contemptuous proverb, and any ill-painted figure looking, as will sometimes