George Eliot

Romola George Eliot

The Loggia de' Cerchi stood in the heart of old Florence, within a labyrinth of narrostreets behind the Badia, now rarely threaded by the stranger, unless in a dubious searchfor a certain severely simple doorplace, bearing this inscription: Qui Nacque Il Divino Poeta. To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with the shout and clash of fierce battlebetween rival families; but in the fifteenth century, they were only noisy with thunhistorical quarrels and broad jests of woolcarders in the cloth-producing quarters San Martino and Garbo. Under this loggia, in the early morning of the 9th of April 1492, two men had their eyefixed on each other: one was stooping slightly, and looking downward with the scrutinof curiosity; the other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gazeof a suddenly-awakened dreamer. The standing figure was the first to speak. He was a grey-haired, broad-shouldere