The Argosy — page 208: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Sapphire Cross. 193 In that noble square—once seen, never to be forgotten—on week days is concentrated nearly all of animation that Pistoja can show. What remains of bustle must be sought for in the inexpressibly dirty little market-place hard by, where the sculptured lon of the city stands rampant above the slanting canvas roofs of the booths, and watches, with a kind of grim, paternal humour, a scene which, except in the matter of costume, has been renewed unaltered very likely as long as his watch has endured. In the Piazza Grande there are more booths, but instead of lemons and oranges, and poor live-plucked fowls, they exhibit parti-coloured handkerchiefs of excruciating designs, rolls of home- spun linen and yards of blue and crimson or scarlet cloth. Between the booths stand bursting sacks of grain in the autumn time, but probably on the day of Signor Renzo’s visit there were only sacks or baskets of early peas and beans from Naples. ‘There was no crowd, for it would take a popular revolt to fill that piazza, but there were lively groups of gossiping and chaffering men and women, among whom the pigeons strutted unconcernedly in the intervals of their visits to shady roosts beneath the arches of the tower, or sunny ones on the roofs of the dilapidated-looking houses. Suddenly Signor Renzo perceived Nunziata, who had appeared and was distributing nods and smiles to her numerous acquaintances. She wants to buy a handkerchief, but the bargaining does not proceed very briskly, and the attention of the fat old woman who sells the articles in question being presently claimed by a more promising customer, Nunziata trotted off to have a little gossip with the cripple and the two black-browed girls sitting at their straw plaiting on the steps of the baptistry. When Signor Renzo drew near she recognised him instantly, and greeted him with the cordiality and sans facon ofan old friend. She was not at all superior, either, to the distinction conferred upon her by the mere fact of being seen conversing on familiar terms with a stranger. She grew more vivacious than ever as the girls rose from the steps, and half a dozen adult and infant beggars gathered round, to listen to what she was telling. Isoletta? she said, in answer to the young man’s apparently sympathetic inquiry for the carpenter’s dying child: Isoletta? poor angel, the saints had fetched her. Yes, indeed, she had died in the night. _Just woke up and coughed a little, and then came a rush of blood, and before you could say an Ave Maria, she was gone. Poor Tito? Ay, poor Tito, truly; he was like a man out of his mind. Violent? Oh, no! not violent, but stupid-like and silent. Would not eat or speak, and did not seem to understand what was said to him. She (Nunziata) might say she had done everything: washed and dressed the poor angel, and laid her out. - She looked lovely. Would the Signore like to see her? ‘The funeral would not be for an hour or two yet. Tito had said there were to be torches, and a VOL. XXXII. O CONNICLOOKS.E®