signoria, to deliberate on and direct public affairs.

[Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.]

103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi,
seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and
entirely ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,--
capacity of two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,--
order, namely; and obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of
this Florentine multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains,
but knew where to find them.

104. Hubert of Lucca--How came they, think you, to choose _him _out of
a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no
Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to
govern Florence?

I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca;
Villani says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."

They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the
flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of
October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags
also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give
you this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be
very useful to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot
translate it:--

105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.