Connecticut western news., 1921-03-10

yOutN -"~ned Michelangelo buonaror |, ttr anu --any others. All these make the setting for the lives of a woman and man and the progress of their souls, the one upward and the other downward, as wonderfully drawn as ever human lives were portrayed by pen of man or woman.
 Florence saw Tito Melema ever making his way upward from the day when he found himself adrtft after | shipwreck, and was carried to. !. the market, by the omnipresent Bratu merchant and huckster, and introduced to breakfast and a kiss from pretty little Tessa, and passed under the deft hand of the wonder-working barber philosopher Nello. That shrewd crafts man with edged tools-razor or tongue introduced him to the bright and powerful folk who freQuented his shop
 as If 1t were a club, and brought him 1 to the notice of the blind scholar Bar
 do, who needed just such a clever
 young student as Tito for a halper.
 From that his path was easy to the l confidence of the great; Latin secre- tary to the state, embassies to Rome.
 everything was his, even to the envy ] of Niccolo Machiavelli. The world saw
 only the. dazzling success; there were
 a few who marked "the change that
 came from the final departure of moral
 youthfulness," who saw. the perhdies and assertions of the deItrous and fac
 He Greek, the baseness that smiles
 and triumphs; who knew how he had
 left to slavery the adoptive, father who had rescued him and made him what
 he was, how he proved false to the memory of Romola's father. who set
 him on his way to triumph in Flor
 ence, how he betrayed his great pat
 rous, how he deceived poor Tessa.
 that 'sweet, pouting, innocent, round
 thing" how he threw away the great
 treasure of Romola's love. and how
 his only bitter thought was that a
 timely, we'll devised falsehood might
 have saved him from every fatal con
 sequence.
 over against the figure of the man
 she married stands Romola, 'fair as
 the Florentine lily before 1t got quar-
 relsome and turned red" as the rhap-
 sodic Nello described her. Her con
 tempt of all injustice and meannesa.
 the noble serenity with which she ac-
 cepted, though, not without inward
 struggle, all that life and duty brought lher, the willing service she rendered her father, her husband, the poor, the sufferers in the plague, Tito's aban-
 doned father, even Tessa, her rival to
 the title of wife, the mother of Ttto'h children, the majestic self-possession
 which at the slightest touch on the
 flores of affection or pity, could be-
 come passionate with tenderness-an
 this justified her godfather, Bernardo del Nero in his exhortation to her fa- ther, Remember, Bardo, thou hast a : rare gem of thy own; take care no man gets 1t who is not likely to pay
 a worthy price. That pretty Greek ' has a 1.-the sickness about him that seems marvellously fitted for slipping .. :. easily into any nest he fixes his eyes ]. upon."
 But he that smiles and triumphs does not always triumph to the end. , He is sometimes found out. So it was , with Tito. He had made the last
 preparation for departure to a larger field of action. Pursued in the night 2 by a crowd of angry men, he barely had time to leap from a bridge into s the Arno. A long swim in the dark ness-in the tumult of his blood he could only feel vaguely that he was
 safe and might land. But wheref The current was having it's way with him ; he hardly knew where he was; ex- haustion was b.inging on the dreamy
 state that precedes unconsciousness.
 But now there were eyes that dis i cerned him-aged, strong for the dis tance. Baldassare-his father|look-
 Ing up blankly from the search to z which his poverty had led him, had seen a white object coming along the
 stream-could that be any fortunate
 chance for him7 He looked and looked l. till the object gathered form; then he leaned forward with a start as he sat among the rank green stems, and his eyes seemed to be filled with g new light-yet he only watched--motion- less Something was being brought to $ him.
 The next instant a mans body was
 cast VlOlenLly on tue RFhbS IW0 yuun from him, and he started forward like 8 panther, clutching the velvet tunic ], as he fell forward on the body and flashed look in the mans face. Dead-was he dead7 The eyes were g figid. But no, it could not be-tustice U had brought him. Men looked dead sometimes. and yet the life came back l. to them. Baldassare did not feel fee r' ble in that moment. He knew just l. what he could do. He got his large
 fingers within the neck of the tunic f and held them there, kneeling on one F. knee beside the body and watching r the face. In his eyes there was only l, i6erceness.
 It Rigid-rigid still. Those eyes with S the half-faIlen lids were locked against m IA k khnN Aas "a