MARK TWAIN

into him when C saved himself by saying the display so
astonished him. He excused himself for a moment, went
and showed the carbuncle at the palace and denounced
the criminal, who was hanged with a gilded rope (he
having such a fancy for gold) between the columns. All
the booty was recovered.

October 17, 1878. Left for Florence. Good-bye Ditturo
Agostino.

It is wonderful how many celebrated men this little
town of Florence has produced. In niches in the arcades
of the Uffizzi they have life-sized statues of 24 of them—
20 of them being names familiar to every schoolboy in
the Christian world—Buonarroti, Benvenuto, Machiavelli,
Giotto, Dante, Petrarch, etc.

Swell turnout with 12 beautiful bay horses—never saw
anything like this outside the circus.

That most entertaining of books, Benvenuto's. It will
last as long as his beautiful Perseus.

October 23. In Santa Crocc today a well-dressed young
man followed us, begging for centimes.

An old frowsy woman watched where I laid my cigar,
then approached us with it as we came out and said she
rescued it from some boys and wanted five centimes for
her trouble. She followed us into the street and finally
cursed us and called down sudden deaths upon us.

Hall of Mars, Pitti Palace, No. 92, Titian portrait of
A Man—half length, dressed in black robe, a trifle of lace
at neck and wrists, short brown hair, thin, handsome,
manly features, full of character and firmness; blue eyes,
oval face, thin hair making fence around upper lip and

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