It was a dramatic moment.  Florence, with the Arno flowing through her midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even more lovely than we see her now.  The whole circuit of her walls remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi’s dome and Giotto’s tower and Arnolfo’s Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction to her streets and squares.  Her churches were splendid with frescoes in their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but a few brief years had passed.  Her palaces, that are as strong as castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, refined, and haughty.  This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted Celts, and particolored Swiss.  On the other hand these barbarians awoke in a terrestrial paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty.  Which of us who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri?  Their impulse no doubt was to pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow.  But in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found loveliness of which they had not dreamed before.

Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility.  He had entered and laid hands on hospitable Florence like a foe.  What would he now do with her—­reform the republic—­legislate—­impose a levy on the citizens, and lead them forth to battle?  No.  He asked for a huge sum of money, and began to bargain.  The Florentine secretaries refused his terms.  He insisted.  Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes.  Charles cried:  ’I shall sound my trumpets.’  Capponi answered:  ‘We will ring our bells.’  Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that the French king could not face.  Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare.  Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt:  Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon! The secretaries beat down his terms.  All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with 120,000 florins.  A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted Florence.