dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence, returned instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the offer that had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and showed them such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the vote for its destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, O reader," says Villani, "the virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in substance, had yet such continence and loyalty for his state."
129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed, on the subject of Art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remember I first began this large digression when it became a question with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter, finding similar operations carried on in Florence. For a little while after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died,
