Florence, the most beautiful city in all the world,
the City of Flowers. There one may find the best of
everything, but above all, the most beautiful pictures
and the greatest of painters. For no one there can
bear to do only the second best, and a man must
attain to the very highest before the Florentines
will call him great. The walls of the churches and
monasteries are covered with pictures of saints and
angels, and their beauty no words can describe.'

`I too will go to Florence, said Pietro to himself,
and every day he longed more and more to see that
wonderful city.

It was no use to wait until he should have saved
enough money to take him there. He scarcely
earned enough to live on from day to day. So at
last, poor as he was, he started off early one morning
and said good-bye to his old master and the hard
work of the little shop in Perugia. On he went
down the same long white road which had seemed
so endless to him that day when, as a little child, he
first came to Perugia. Even now, when he was
a strong young man, the way seemed long and
weary across that great plain, and he was often foot-
sore and discouraged. Day after day he travelled
on, past the great lake which lay like a sapphire in
the bosom of the plain, past many towns and little
villages, until at last he came in sight of the City
of Flowers.