The great fountain which plays beside the Palazzo, where of old the houses of the Uberti stood, is rich and grandiose perhaps, but in some unaccountable way adds much to the beauty of the Piazza.  How gay and full of life it is even yet, that splendid and bitter place, that in its beauty and various, everlasting life seems to stand as the symbol of this city, so scornful even in the midst of the overwhelming foreigner who has turned her into a museum, a vast cemetery of art.  Only here you may catch something of the old life that is not altogether passed away.  Still, in spite of your eyes, you must believe there are Florentines somewhere in the city, that they are still as in Dante’s day proud and wise and easily angry, scornful too, a little turbulent, not readily curbed, but full of ambition—­great nobles, great merchants, great bankers.  Does such an one never come to weep over dead Florence in this the centre of her fame, the last refuge of her greatness, in the night, perhaps, when none may see his tears, when all is hushed that none may mark his sorrow?

[Illustration:  WAX MODEL FOR THE PERSEUS IN THE BARGELLO

Benvenuto Cellini

Alinari]

It was past midnight when once more I came out of the narrow ways, almost empty at that hour, when every footfall resounds between the old houses, into the old Piazza to learn this secret.  Far away in the sky the moon swung like a censer, filling the place with a fragile and lovely light.  Standing there in the Piazza, quite deserted now save for some cloaked figure who hurried away up the Calzaioli, and two Carabinieri who stood for a moment at the Uffizi corner and then turned under the arches, I seemed to understand something of the spirit that built that marvellous fortress, that thrust that fierce tower into the sky;—­yes, surely at this hour some long dead Florentine must venture here to console the living, who, for sure, must be gay so sadly and with so much regret.

In the Loggia de’ Lanzi the moonlight fell among the statues, and in that fairy light I seemed to see in those ghostly still figures of marble and bronze some strange fantastic parable, the inscrutable prophecy of the scornful past.  Gian Bologna’s Sabine woman, was she not Florence struggling in the grip of the modern vandal; Cellini’s Perseus with Medusa’s head, has it not in truth turned the city to stone?

The silence was broken; something had awakened in the Piazza:  perhaps a bird fluttered from the battlements of the Palazzo, perhaps it was the city that turned in her sleep.  No, there it was again.  It was a human voice close beside me:  it seemed to be weeping.

I looked around:  all was quiet.  I saw nothing, only there at the corner a little light flickered before a shrine; and yes, something was moving there, someone who was weeping.  Softly, softly over the stones I made my way to that little shrine of Madonna at the street corner, and I found, ah! no proud and scornful noble mourning over dead Florence, but an old woman, ragged and alone, prostrate under some unimaginable sorrow, some unappeasable regret.