Baldassarre was given a chance to prove that he was not the servant, but the great scholar to whom Tito was indebted for his learning.

“The ring I possess,” said Rucellai, “is a fine sard that I myself purchased from Messer Tito.  It is engraved with a subject from Homer.  Will you turn to the passage in Homer from which that subject was taken?”

But sitting to look over the book, Baldassarre realised that the sufferings through which he had passed had unhinged his mind and his memory; the words he stared at had no meaning for him, and he lifted his hands to his head in despair.

The consequence of this fresh failure was that Baldassarre was cast into prison, and Tito was at liberty to pursue his political ambitions unhaunted by that dogging shadow that was to him as the shadow of death.  He managed his affairs so cleverly that whichever party came uppermost he was secure of favour and money.

But by-and-by the tide began to turn against him.  Baldassarre was at large again, and met Romola and told her not only of his own wrongs, but of Tessa.  She saw Tessa and her two children, and befriended them, and was so far from blaming that innocent little creature that she did not even disclose the truth to her; but she was importunate with Tito that he should make atonement to the man who had been a father to him.  Then came a day when Tito’s treacheries were discovered by the party he was supposed to serve, and he had to flee for his life through Florence.  Scattering jewels and gold to delay his pursuers, he leaped from the bridge into the river, and swam in the darkness, leaving the bellowing mob to think he was drowned.

But far down the stream there were certain eyes that saw him from the banks of the river, and when he landed and fell, faint and helpless, Baldassarre’s hands closed on his throat; and next evening a passer-by found the two dead bodies there.

* * * * *

Silas Marner

“Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe,” begun about November, 1860, and published early in 1861, is in many respects the most admirable of all George Eliot’s works.  It is not a long story, but it is a most carefully finished novel—­“a perfect gem, a pure work of art,” Mr. Oscar Browning describes it.  Mr. Blackwood, the publisher, found it rather sombre, and George Eliot replied to him, “I hope you will not find it at all a sad story as a whole, since it sets—­or is intended to set—­in a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human relations.  I have felt all through as if the story would have lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction, especially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas; except that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal play of humour.”  No novel of George Eliot’s has received more praise from men of letters than “Silas Marner.”

I.—­Why Silas Came to Raveloe