himself to the citizen, but as the latter made no observation on the circumstance, and began to praise the picture, he remained silent himself. Ultimately, the citizen took him home to his house and paid him the six florins, which the master had bargained for, wherewith Biagio returned to the bottega (workshop), where he arrived just as Sandro and Jacopo had taken off the pasteboard head-dresses, and saw his angels as veritable angels again, and no longer citizens in their caps. Altogether astonished at what he beheld, the disciple turned to his master and said, “Master mine, I know not whether I am dreaming, or whether the thing be really so, but when I came in just now, these angels had red caps on their heads, and now they have none! What may this mean?” Thou art out of thy wits, Blaise,” quoth Sandro, “this money hath made thy brain turn round; if the thing were as thou hast said, dost thou think this citizen would have bought thy picture?” “That is true,” replied Biagio, “and he certainly said nothing about it, but for all that it seems a very strange matter.” At last, all the other scholars getting round him, said so much that they made him believe the whole an imagination of his own.
A weaver of cloth once came to live close to Sandro, and
this man erected full eight looms, which, when all were at
work, not only caused an intolerable din with the trampling
of the weavers and the clang of the shuttles, insomuch that
poor Sandro was deafened with it, but likewise produced
such a trembling and shaking throughout the house, which
was none too solidly built, that the painter, what with one
and the other, could no more continue his work, nor even
remain in the house.
He had frequently requested his
neighbour to put an end to this disturbance, but the latter
had replied, that he both could and would do what he pleased
in his own house. Being angered by this, Sandro had an
enormous mass of stone of great weight, and more than
would fill a waggon, placed in exact equilibrium on the wall
of his own dwelling, which was higher than that of his
neighbour, and not a very strong one: this stone threatened
to fall at the slightest shake given to the wall, when it must
have crushed the roof, floors, frames, and workmen, of the
weaver to atoms. The man, terrified at the danger, hastened to Sandro, from whom he received back his own reply
