CHAPTER VII.
Or San Michele and the Palazzo Vecchio The little Bigallo--The Misericordia--Or San Michele--Andrea Orcagna--The Tabernacle--Old Glass--A company of stone saints--Donatello's S.George--Dante conferences--The Guilds of Florence--The Palazzo Vecchio--Two Towers--Bandinelli's group--The Marzocco--The Piazza della Signoria--Orcagna's Loggia--Cellini and Cosimo--The Perseus--Verrocchio's dolphin--The Great Council Hall--Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo's cartoons--Bandinelli's malice--The Palazzo Vecchio as a home--Two cells and the bell of independence.
Let us now proceed along the Via Calzaioli (which means street of the stocking-makers), running away from the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria.

The fascinatingly pretty building at the corner, opposite Pisano's Baptistery doors, is the Bigallo, in the loggia of which foundling children used to be displayed in the hope that passers-by might pity them sufficiently to make them presents or even adopt them; but this custom continues no longer.

The Bigallo was designed, it is thought, by Orcagna, and it is worth the minutest study.
The Company of the Bigallo, which is no longer an active force, was one of the benevolent societies of old Florence.

But the greatest of these societies, still busy and merciful, is the Misericordia, whose head-quarters are just across the Via Calzaioli, in the piazza, facing the campanile, a company of Florentines pledged at a moment's notice, no matter on what they may be engaged, to assist in any charitable work of necessity.

For the most part they carry ambulances to the scenes of accident and perform the last offices for the dead in the poorer districts.