It was the teacher, however, who interested him, and this was more of a mystery. She was about thirty, short but upright, holding her head high, like a small, crowded flower that tries to get its share of the sun. As he watched, she hopped up a couple of the shallow steps to command the girls’ attention. She wore a dress of blue cotton with fine white spots and carried a huge straw bag over her arm and a guidebook in her hand. With the girls there, it was hard to tell what she looked like; the fact of their presence gave her an air of maturity she might not have had on her own.

What was curious, though, was a radiance, something singular she carried about her as ostensibly as her handbag, something quite unconnected with her looks. She had an unusual voice, too, pure, measured, distinct, and the quality of this seemed detached from what was said.

“The Piazza della Santissima Annunziata,” she was telling them. “We’ll be going into the church in a moment. Right now we are standing in front of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a home for foundlings since the fifteenth century.” It was odd the way the words rang out, clear and fully formed but with that guidebook flatness. He could tell her Italian was terrible from the way she pronounced the names.

The girls’ attention wandered from her. So, for the moment, did Michele’s. He looked around the square as she pointed out the delicacy of the arcades, the Della Robbia decorations, the place where the curtains of art parted, letting in a shaft of countryside; but he was only thinking, What an idea, using a place like this for a parking lot. He groaned over the cars, forgetting how glad he had been to find a wedge of space here for his own Seicento.

“I want you to notice particularly,” the teacher said, and Michele came to himself with a start, as if he had been in class, “the statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand I, at this end of the square.”

Michele had been looking at this statue, where it rose above the crouching cars, and thinking that it was an inferior piece of work to have been so prominently placed and that even the greatest sculptors had moments of mediocrity. Trust a foreigner to single out this for special attention, leading up to it as if it were the most significant thing in the square, simply assuming that, since it stood in the loveliest piazza in Florence and was old, it must automatically have artistic importance. But no.

“This statue is the subject of a poem by Robert Browning. Yes, Cecilia, I know it’s hot. It’s just as hot for me as it is for you. We’ll go into the church directly. The poem—the poem is called ‘The Statue and the Bust.’ Does anyone know it?”