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Title: The God of Love

Author: Justin Huntly McCarthy

Release Date: February 23, 2008 [EBook #24672]

Language: English

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 THE
 GOD OF LOVE

 BY

 JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY

 AUTHOR OF

 "THE GORGEOUS BORGIA" "SERAPHICA"
 "IF I WERE KING" ETC.

 "The God of Love--ah, _Benedicite_,
 How mighty and how great a lord is he!"
     --CHAUCER.

 NEW YORK AND LONDON
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
 MCMIX




 Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

 _All rights reserved_

 Published October, 1909.




 TO

 JUSTIN McCARTHY




 CONTENTS


 CHAP.                                                 PAGE

     I. THE MAY-DAY QUEEN                                1
    II. A CHILD AND A CHILD                             28
   III. VITTORIA                                        46
    IV. THE WORDS OF THE IMAGE                          54
     V. ONE WAY WITH A QUARREL                          66
    VI. LOVER AND LASS                                  80
   VII. CONCERNING POETRY                               92
  VIII. MONNA VITTORIA SENDS ME A MESSAGE              108
    IX. MADONNA VITTORIA SOUNDS A WARNING              120
     X. THE DEVILS OF AREZZO                           131
    XI. MESSER FOLCO'S FESTIVAL                        138
   XII. DANTE READS RHYMES                             144
   III. GO-BETWEENS                                    164
   XIV. MESSER SIMONE SPOILS SPORT                     176
    XV. A SPY IN THE NIGHT                             190
   XVI. THE TALK OF LOVERS                             204
  XVII. A STRANGE BETROTHAL                            215
 XVIII. A WORD FOR MESSER SIMONE                       225
   XIX. THE RIDE IN THE NIGHT                          243
    XX. THE FIGHT WITH THOSE OF AREZZO                 256
   XXI. MALEOTTI BEARS FALSE WITNESS                   266
  XXII. THE RETURN OF THE REDS                         279
 XXIII. THE PEACE OF THE CITY                          286
  XXIV. BREAKING THE PEACE                             297
   XXV. MEETING AND PARTING                            309
  XXVI. THE ENEMY AT THE GATE                          322
 XXVII. THE SOLITARY CITY                              335
        NOTE                                           343




THE GOD OF LOVE




I

THE MAY-DAY QUEEN


This is the book of Lappo Lappi, called by his friends the careless, the
happy-go-lucky, the devil-may-take-it, the God-knows-what. Called by his
enemies drinker, swinker, tumbler, tinker, swiver. Called by many women
that liked him pretty fellow, witty fellow, light fellow, bright fellow,
bad fellow, mad fellow, and the like. Called by some women who once
loved him Lapinello, Lappinaccio, little Lappo. Called now in God as a
good religious should be, Lappentarius, from a sweet saint myself
discovered--or invented; need we quibble?--in an ancient manuscript. And
it is my merry purpose now, in a time when I, that am no longer merry,
look back upon days and hours and weeks and months and years that were
very merry indeed, propose to set down something of my own jolly doings
and lovings, and incidentally to tell some things about a friend of
mine that was never so merry as I was, though a thousand times wiser;
and never so blithe as I was, though a thousand times the better man.
For it seems to me now, in this cool grim grayness of my present way,
with the cloisters for my kingdom and the nimbused frescoes on the walls
for my old-time ballads and romances, as if my life that was so sunburnt
and wine-sweetened and woman-kissed, my life that seemed to me as
bright, every second of it, as bright ducats rushing in a pleasant
plenteous stream from one hand to another, was after all intended to be
no more than a kind of ironic commentary on, and petty contrast to, the
life of my friend.

He and I lived our youth out in the greatest and fairest of all cities
that the world has ever seen, greater a thousand times than Troy or
Nineveh, or Babylon or Rome, and when I say this you will know, of
course, that I speak of the city of Florence, and we lived and loved at
the same time, lived and loved in so strangely different a fashion that
it seems to me that if the two lives were set side by side after the
fashion of Messer Plutarch of old days, they would form as diverting a
pair of opposites as any student of humanity could desire for his
entertainment.

I shall begin, with the favor and permission of Heaven, where I think
the business may rightly be said to begin. The time was a May morning,
the morning of May-day, warm and bright with sunlight, one of those
mornings which makes a clod seem like a poet and a poet seem like a god.
The place was the Piazza Santa Felicita, with the Arno flowing pretty
full and freely now between its borders of mud. I can see it all as I
write, as I saw it yesterday, that yesterday so many years ago when
Lappo Lappi was young and Lappentarius never dreamed of.

There is no lovelier day of all the years of days for Florence than
May-day. On that day everybody is or seems to be happy; on that day the
streets of the city are as musical as the courses of the spheres. Youths
and maidens, garlanded and gayly raimented, go about fifing and piping,
and trolling the chosen songs of spring. I think if a stranger should
chance to visit Florence for the first time on a May-day, with the
festival well toward, he might very well think that he had fallen back
by fortunate chance into the youth of the world, when there was nothing
better nor wiser to do than to dance and sing and make merry and make
love. I have heard Messer Brunetto Latini declare, with great eloquence,
that of all the cities man has ever upbuilded with his busy fingers, the
dear city of Cecrops, which Saint Augustine called the dear City of
God--in a word, Athens, was surely the loveliest wherein to live. But
with all respect to Messer Brunetto, I would maintain that no city of
Heathendom or Christendom could be more beautiful than Florence at any
season of the year. What if it be now and then windy; now and then
chilly; now and then dusty? I have talked with a traveller that told me
he had found the winters mighty bitter in Greece. But I think that in
all the history of Florence there never was a May-day like that May-day.
It was gloriously green and gold, gloriously blue and white, gloriously
hot, and yet with a little cool, kissing breeze that made the flaming
hours delectable. And, as I remember so well, I sat on the parapet of
the bridge of the Holy Felicity.

Where the parapet of the embankment joined the beginning of the bridge
of the Santa Felicita there stood, in those days, a large, square,
ornamental fountain. May be it stands there now. I was banished from
Florence at the same time as my friend, and we left our Mother of the
Lilies to seek and find very dissimilar fortunes. This fountain had a
niche above it, in which niche he that built the fountain designed, no
doubt, to set some image of his own design. But he never carried out his
purpose, why or wherefore I neither knew nor cared, and in that niche
some Magnifico that was kindly minded to the people had set up a stone
image, a relic of the old beautiful pagan days, that had been unearthed
in some garden of his elsewhere. It was the figure of a very comely
youth that was clothed in a Grecian tunic, and because, when it was
first dug up, it showed some traces of color on the tunic and the naked
legs and arms and the face and the hair, therefore one of the artificers
of the said Magnifico took it upon himself to paint all as, so he said,
it had once been painted. And he made the limbs a flesh color, and gave
the face its pinks, and the lips their carnation, and the eyes their
blackness, very lively to see; and he adorned the hair very craftily
with gold-leaf, and he painted the shirt of the adorable boy a very
living crimson. It was a very beautiful piece of work with all these
embellishments, and though there were some that said it was an idol and
should not be tolerated, yet, for the most part, the Florentines liked
it well enough, and it saved the cost of a new statue for the vacant
space.

So it stood there this day that I think of and write of, a very brave
and radiant piece of color, too, for the eye to rest on that had wearied
of looking at the gray stone palace hard by, the palace of Messer Folco
Portinari, that showed so gray and grim in all weathers, save where the
brown rust on its great iron lamps and on the great rings in the wall
lent its dulness some hint of pigment. Over the wall that hid the garden
of the palace I saw and see crimson roses hang and scarlet pomegranate
blossoms. Opposite this gloomy house of the great man that was so well
liked of the Florentines, against the pillars of the arcade, there
stood, as I recall it, a bookseller's booth, where manuscripts were
offered for sale on a board. Here he that had the means and the
inclination could treat himself at a price to the wisdom of the ancient
world. I fear I was never one of those so minded. The wisdom of my own
world contented me to the full, and ever it seemed to me that it
mattered less what Messer Plato or Messer Cicero said on this matter and
on that matter than what Messer Lappo Lappi said and did in those
affairs that intimately concerned him.

Now, on this day, which I see again so clearly, I was seated, as I say,
on the parapet of the bridge, propped against the fountain. If I turned
my head to the left, I could please myself with a sight of the briskly
painted statue of the young Greek youth. If I turned my head to the
right, I could look on the river and the smiling country beyond. But, as
it happened, I turned my head neither to the left nor to the right, but
straight before me and a little below me. For I was singing a song to a
lute for an audience of pretty girls who looked up at me, some
admiringly and some mockingly, but all very approvingly. One of the
girls was named Jacintha, and one was named Barbara, and another, that
had hair of a reddish-yellow and pale, strange eyes, was called
Brigitta. There were also many others to whom, at this time, I cannot
give a name, though I seem to see their faces very clearly and hear the
sound of their voices, as well I might, for I was very good friends with
most of them then or thereafter. And this is the song that I was
singing:

     "Flower of the lily or flower of the rose,
     My heart is a leaf on each love-wind that blows.
     A face at the window, a form at the door,
     Can capture my fancy as never before.
     My fancy was captured, since-well, let us say
     Since last night, or the night before last, when I lay
     In the arms of--but, hush, I must needs be discreet;
     So farewell, with a kiss for your hands and your feet.
     I worship your fingers, I worship your toes,
     Flower of the lily or flower of the rose."

Then the girl Brigitta, she that had the red-gold hair and the eyes like
pale glass, thrust her face very near to me and said, laughing, "Messer
Lappo, Messer Lappo, who is your sweetheart?"

And I, who was ever ready with a brisk compliment to pretty maid or
pretty woman, or pretty matron, answered her as swiftly as you please,
"She shall be named by your name, dainty, if you will lend me a kiss of
the lips."

And, indeed, I wished she would give me my will, for at that time I had
a great desire for Brigitta; but she only pinched up her face to a grin,
and answered me, teasingly, "Nay, I cannot kiss you; I think you have a
Ghibelline mouth."

Now this seemed to me a foolish answer as well as a pert one, for,
besides that I was ever a Guelph and a Red, I think that politics have
no business to interfere with the pleasant commerce and suave affairs of
love, so I answered her reprovingly. "Kisses have no causes," said I; "I
will kiss Guelph-wise; I will kiss Ghibelline-wise; I will kiss Red; I
will kiss Yellow; it's all one to me, so long as the mouth be like
yours, as pink as a cleft pomegranate, and the teeth as white as its
seeds."

Now at this Jacintha, who had eyes the color of amethysts, and dark hair
with a purplish stain in it, wagged a finger at me reprovingly, saying,
"I fear you are a wanton wooer." And at this all the other girls laughed
like the jolly wantons they were.

But I pretended to take it all mighty seriously, and answered as
solemnly as any philosopher, "Never say it, never think it. I am the
golden rose of constancy; I have loved a lass for three days on end, and
never yawned once."

Now, while I was talking thus, and pulling my face to keep it from
laughing, the girl that was named Barbara had come up very close to me,
and I was minded to slip my arm about her waist and draw her closer with
a view to the kissing of lips. But she had only neighbored me to mock
me, for she cried aloud, "Mirror of chivalry, I will give you a Guelph
cuff on your Ghibelline cheek." And as she spoke, being a girl of
spirit, she kept her word very roundly, and fetched me a box on the ear
with her brown hand that made my wits sing.

Now this was more than my philosophy could stomach, so I made a grab at
her, but she dipped from my outstretched fingers and slipped into the
midst of the crowd of other girls, and straightway I dropped from my
parapet and ran after her, vowing the merriest, pleasantest skelping.
However, she was too swift for me, and too nimble, capering behind this
girl and that girl, and ever eluding me when I seemed to be on the point
of seizing the minx, till at last, what with laughing and running and
calling, my breath failed me, and I stood in the midst of the pretty
jades, panting.

"Nay, I am fairly winded," I protested. "If some sweet she do not give
me a kiss, I shall die of despair."

Then Brigitta, who was nearest to me, came nearer with a kind look in
her strange eyes. "Nay then," she said, "for your song's sake, and to
save your life." So she said and so she did, for she kissed me full on
the mouth before all of them, and, indeed, this was the first time I had
kissed her, though I thank Heaven it was not the last.

And because there is nothing so contagious as kindness and so
stimulating as a good example, the other girls were now ripe and ready
to do as she did, and Jacintha cried, "I will be generous, too!" and set
her red lips where Brigitta's kiss had rested, and then one kissed me
and another, and at the end of it all, Barbara herself, that had been so
ready with her fingers, surrendered and kissed me too. And it was while
she was kissing me, and I was making rather a long business of it,
seeing how she was the last to be kissed, and how she had provoked me,
that there came unobserved into our group another youth whose coming I
had not noticed, being so busy on pleasant business.

But I heard a very sweet and tunable voice speak, and the voice asked,
"When the air is so brisk with kisses, is there never a kiss for me?"
And I looked up from the lips of Barbara and saw that my very dear
friend, Messer Guido Cavalcanti, was newly of our company.

It is many a long year since my dear friend Messer Guido dei Cavalcanti
died of that disastrous exile to which, by the cynical irony of fate, my
other dear friend, Messer Dante dei Alighieri, was foredestined to doom
him. That sadness has nothing to do with this sadness, and I here give
it the go-by. But at nights when I lie awake in my cell--a thing which,
I thank my stars happens but rarely--or in the silence of some more than
usually quiet dawn, I seem to see him again as I saw him that morning,
so blithe, so bright, so delightful. Never was so fine a gentleman. It
is to be regretted, perhaps, that his was not a spirit that believes. I
that am a sinner have no qualms and uncertainties, but credit what I am
told to credit, and no more said. After all, why say more? But Messer
Guido was of a restless, discontented, fretting spirit, that chafed at
command and convention, and would yield nothing of doubt for the sake of
an easy life. Well, he was the handsomest man I have ever known, and he
never seemed fairer than on that May morning--Lord, Lord, how many
centuries ago it seems!--when he came upon me in the sunlit Place of the
Holy Felicity, and thereafter, for the first time, made the acquaintance
of Messer Dante.

When the girls heard that complaint of Messer Guido's, they gathered
about him noisily, crying, "Surely, Messer Guido, surely!" and pushing
their impudent faces close to his, and catching him with their hands,
for indeed Messer Guido was a very comely personage, and one that was
always well-eyed by women.

But it seems that for all his asking he had little mind for the amorous
traffic, for he laughingly disengaged himself from the girls, and I said
to him, pretending to be jealous, "If you taste of their bounty, I shall
tell Monna Giovanna"--for so was named the lady he loved--"and then you
will weep red tears."

Messer Guido pointed to me with a mock air of indignation. "See what it
is," he said, "to take a traitor to one's heart." He ran his laughing
eyes over the little knot of us, and went on, "Sweet ladies, and you,
sour gentleman, I have news for you."

But I protested, drolling him, for it was always our custom when we met
to toss jests and mockery to and fro, as children toss a ball. "Do not
heed him," I said, "Guido's news is always eight days old."

Then the girls laughed at him, for I think in their hearts they were
vexed because he had not taken their kisses--at least, most of them; for
I have it in mind that Brigitta was content with my kissing and none
other. But Guido was not to be downed by their laughter.

"This is not an hour old," he said. "You should all be at the Signory.
The fair ladies of Florence have chosen Monna Beatrice, of the
Portinari, for the queen of their May festival, and will bear her about
the city presently in triumph."

Now this was no piece of news for me, but I was where I was for a
reason, which was to meet Messer Dante. It was news to the girls,
though, for Brigitta cried, "Monna Beatrice, she who has been away from
Florence these nine years?" and Jacintha questioned, "Monna Beatrice! Is
she daughter of Folco Portinari that builds hospitals?" and Barbara
sighed, "Monna Beatrice, whom some call the loveliest girl in the city?"

And Guido gave to their several questions a single answer: "Even she.
For her beauty's sake and in compliment to Messer Folco, because he
builds hospitals."

Now, though I had little interest in this news of Guido's, I was so glad
of his coming that I was as ready to be rid of the girls by this time as
I had been eager before to keep them about me. So I waved my hand at
them as housewives wave their hands to scare the chickens, and I called
to them: "So! Away with you girls to join the merry-making. I will kiss
you all another day."

Then the girls began to mock at me again, and Jacintha hailed me as
prince of poets, and Brigitta, half laughing and half earnest, called me
prince of lovers, and Barbara shot out her pink tongue at me, saying,
"Prince of liars!"

Straightway I made as if I would catch them and slap them, and they all
ran away laughing, and Messer Guido and I were left alone, at the corner
of the bridge of the Holy Felicity, with the image of the God of Love
hard by.

"Good-bye, lilies of life!" I called after the flying fugitives, kissing
my hand at them; and then I turned to my friend. "This lady Beatrice," I
questioned, "is she very fair?" For though I had heard not a little of
her return to our city from Fiesole, I had not yet seen her, and I am
always curious--I mean I was then always curious--about fair women.

"Angel fair," Guido answered, briskly. "Our Florence is ever a nest of
loveliness, but no one of her women is fairer than Folco's daughter."

"May be she seems fairer, being strange," I hinted, quizzically. "Are we
not Athenian in our love of new things?"

Guido answered me very gravely. "I think we should have held her as
precious if she had never left us."

Now, I had never given the affairs of the Portinari many thoughts, and
though I had heard how Messer Folco had brought his daughter home of
late from Fiesole, I knew nothing more than so much, wherefore I
questioned, less because I cared, than because Messer Guido seemed to
care, "Why did she leave us?"

Guido seated himself by my side on the parapet, swinging his slim legs,
and told the tale he wanted to tell.

"It is nine years ago. She was one of those fairy children--I remember
her very well--too divine, too bright, it might seem, to hold in the
four walls of any mortal mansion. That as it may, the physicians found
her a delicate piece of flesh, and so banished her out of our hot
Florence into the green coolness of the hills."

I do not think that I cared very much about what Messer Guido was
telling me, but because I loved him I feigned to care.

"And has she lived there ever since?" I asked, with such show of
interest as I could muster.

And he answered me, very lively. "There she has lived ever since. But
now Messer Folco, being reassured of her health, brings her to Florence,
where her beauty will break hearts, I promise."

I think he sighed a little, and I know that I laughed as I spoke. "Well,
I that have broken my heart a hundred times will break it again for her,
if she pleases."

Messer Guido grinned at me a little maliciously. "Better not let Messer
Simone dei Bardi hear you," he said, and his words suddenly brought
before me the image of a very notable figure in the Florence of my
youth, a very forward man in the squabbles of the Yellows and the Reds.

It would, I think, be very hard to make any stranger acquainted with the
state of our city at this time, for it was more split and fissured with
feuds and dissensions than a dried melon rind. It had pleased Heaven in
its wisdom to decide that it was not enough for us to be distraught with
the great flagrant brawls between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,
between those that stood for Roman Emperor and those that stood for
Roman Pope. No, we must needs be divided again into yet further
factions and call ourselves Reds and Yellows, and cut one another's
throats in the name of these two colors with more heat and zeal in the
cutting than had ever stirred the blood of the partisans of the two
great camps.

This Red and Yellow business began simply enough and grimly enough in a
quarrel between two girls, distant kinswomen, of the House of the Casa
Bella. One of these girls maintained, at some merry-making, that she was
comelier than the other, which that other very stoutly denied, and from
the bandying of words they came to the bandying of blows, and because it
is never a pretty sight to see two women at clapper-claws together,
those about bestirred themselves to sunder the sweet amazons, and in the
process of pulling them apart more blows were given and exchanged
between those that sought at first to be peacemakers, and there were
many hot words and threats of vengeance.

From this petty beginning, like your monumental oak from your pigmy
acorn, there grew up a great feud between the families of the two girls,
and like a poison the plague of the quarrel spread to Florence, and in a
twinkling men were divided against each other in a deathly hatred that
in their hearts knew little of the original quarrel, and cared nothing
at all for it. But as all parties must needs have a nickname, whether
chosen or conferred, the first of these parties was called Yellow,
because the girl that began the quarrel had yellow eyes; and the other
party in mockery called itself Red, because the girl that was, as it
were, the patron saint of their side of the squabble had red hair. These
Reds and Yellows fought as fiercely in Florence as ever the Blues and
the Greens in Constantinople of old time. And in our city the Donati
sided with the Reds, and the Cerchi with the Yellows, and all that loved
either of these great houses chose their color and conducted themselves
accordingly. But you must not suppose that the heads of the great houses
of the Donati and the Cerchi publicly avowed themselves as the leaders
of these whimsical factions, however much they might, for their own
purposes, foster and encourage their existence. At the time of which I
write Messer Guido Cavalcanti was ostensibly the chief man among the
Reds, and the chief man among the Yellows was Messer Simone dei Bardi.

Here, in consequence of this business of Reds and Yellows, was a
thickening of the imbroglio of Florentine life. For now it was not
enough to be told whether a man was Guelph or Ghibelline in order to
know how to deal with him. It was not merely prudent but even imperative
to inquire further, for a rooted Guelph might be Red or Yellow in this
other scuffle, and so might a rooted Ghibelline. Thus our poor City of
the Lilies was become a very Temple of Discord, and at any moment a
chance encounter in the street, a light word let fly--nay, even no more
than a slight glance--might be the signal for drawn swords and runnels
of blood among the cobbles. Truly, therefore, it is not to be denied
that for such poor gentlemen as, like myself, desired their ease,
together with much singing and kissing and sipping, Florence was by no
means an Arcadia. And yet there was no one of us that would willingly
have lived elsewhere, for all the quarrelling and all the feuds.

Now I do not say it because I was a Red myself, but I do think that the
Reds were of a better temper than the Yellows. Very certainly no one was
less eager to fan the flames of these quarrellings and feuds than the
man that was by my side, Messer Guido Cavalcanti. And no less certainly
of those that were hottest for quarrellings and keenest to keep old
feuds alive, and to enforce distinctions of faction, and make much of
party cries, there was no one hotter and keener than Messer Simone dei
Bardi, whose name had just come to Messer Guido's lips.

Messer Simone came of a house that was of excellent good repute in our
city. Bankers his folk were, very busy and prosperous, and bankers they
had been for many a long day before Messer Simone was begotten. Messer
Simone was not the greatest heir, but I think in his way he was the
most notable, though his way was not quite the way of the family, no
less steady-going than honorable, from which he came. For, indeed, it
was his chief delight to lavish the money which his forebears had
amassed, and there was no one in all Florence more prompt than he to
fling hoarded florins out of the window. By rights he should have been a
free-companion, and received on the highroad at the heads of a levy of
lesser devils, for of a truth he was too turbulent and quarrelsome for
Florence, which is saying much. The men of my spring days, as I have
written, were ranged in many ways of opposition, Guelph against
Ghibelline, Red against Yellow, Donati against Cerchi, and Messer Simone
should have been content to be Guelph and Yellow and Cerchi, but at
times he carried himself as if he were ranged against every one, or
perhaps I should rather say that he carried himself as if his single
will was above all the wranglers of others, and that it was given to him
to do as he pleased, heedless of the feelings of any faction. Had he had
but the wit to balance his arrogance, Messer Simone might have been a
great man in Florence. As it proved, he was only a great plague.

Now I laughed at Guido's words, for it seemed strange to me to think of
Messer Simone dei Bardi as a wooer of countrified damsels. "What has
that Bull-face to do with it?" I asked, and whistled mockingly after the
asking.

Guido still looked grave. "Why, I think his fist gapes, finger and
thumb, to seize Monna Beatrice," he said, and he said no more, but
looked as if he could say much.

Here was an oracle anxious to be interrogated, so I questioned him
further. I knew by report that the girl was fair, but I could not think
of her in any fashion as a maid for Messer Simone, and I conveyed my
doubts to Guido. "Is the girl to be snared so?" I asked.

Guido looked cryptic. "That is for father Folco to settle," he said.
"And father Folco is a man that loves his fellow-men, but would have his
children obey him even to the death, like a Roman father of old."

I began to take the matter hotly, thinking it over and looking at it
this way and that way. "Well, if I were a woman," I protested, "which I
thank Heaven I am not," I interpolated, fervently, "I would drown in
Arno sooner than be bride to Simone of the Bardi."

Guido shrugged his shoulders. He was a man that believed anything of
women. "Yet I think Vittoria loves him," he said, softly, more as if to
himself than to me.

But, bless you, I caught him up nimbly, seeing the weakness of his
argument. "Vittoria, the courtesan! She loves any man, every man."

Guido looked at me very thoughtfully. Then he said, slowly: "I will
tell you a tale I heard yesterday. Some while ago our bull-headed
Simone, being with Vittoria at supper at her house, and as drunk as is
his custom at the tail of the day, dozed on a sofa while the company
began to talk of fair women."

I was horrified at the ill-manners of the hog, though it all seemed of a
piece with his habitual hoggishness. "One should never be too drunk," I
averred, "to talk on that illuminating theme."

Now Guido was fretted at my interruption, and he showed it with a frown
and a silencing gesture of his hand. "Peace, Lappo, peace!" he cried;
"this is my story. Some praised this lady, some praised that, all, as
was due to their guesthood, giving the palm to Vittoria, till some one
said there lived a lady at Fiesole that was lovelier than a dream."

"Who was this nonesuch?" I asked, all agog over any word of loveliness.

Guido chastened my impatience with a grave glance. "I come to that," he
continued. "She was named Beatrice, daughter of Folco Portinari, and he
that praised her averred that whoso might wed her would be the happiest
of mortals."

Now, though the air was warm, I shivered at his words, as if it had
suddenly turned cold, for, indeed, I was never a marrying man, and my
pleasantest memories of women are not memories of any wife of mine.
"Marriage--and happiness?" I said, questioning and grinning. "I am not
of his mind."

Guido looked at me with a good-humored smile, as one that was prepared
to bear with my interruptions. "Nor he of yours," he answered. "Now, as
they talked thus, our Simone stirred in his stupor, and swore that if
this were true he would marry the maiden. Vittoria laughed, and her
laughter so teased the ruffian that he swore a great oath he would take
any wager he would wed this exquisite maiden."

"Who took him?" I asked. The tale promised to be interesting, and
spurred my curiosity.

Guido went on with his narrative. "No man. Simone's luck is proverbial
as his enmity deadly. But Vittoria grinned at him, swearing no such maid
would marry him, and at last so goaded him that he defied her to a
wager. Then she dared him to this--staking her great emerald, in a ring
that the French prince gave her, on the terms that if he failed to gain
the daughter of Folco Portinari he was in all honor and solemnity to
marry her, Vittoria."

I remember as well as if it were yesterday my amazement when I heard
this story, and am inclined now to uplift my hands as I then uplifted
them in wonder, and am inclined to say again, as I said then, "Gods,
what a wager!"

Guido seemed amused at my astonishment, for he laughed a little while
softly to himself, and then went on with his tale-telling. "Simone's red
gills winced, like a dying fish, but he was too drunk to qualify. He
swore a foul oath, 'I will marry this lily,' says he, 'within a year,
and if I do not, why I will wed you, you--' And he called Vittoria by
such lewd names as your wit can picture. But she, turning no hair,
called for pen and parchment, and had it fairly engrossed and Simone's
sprawling signature duly witnessed before even the company departed. So
it stands--Simone must win the maid or wed the light o' love."

Then I said, "I take it he will win the maid."

Guido nodded his head gravely. He did not like Simone any better than I
did, but he had a way of accepting facts more readily. "Simone mostly
wins his wish. See how far he has gone already. He has so worked it that
her father has brought his lovely daughter from the hills to the city.
Old Folco favors him, and small wonder, Messer Simone being the power he
is in Florence. As for this triumph of Folco's daughter through our
streets, I take it to be rather Simone's displaying of his prize, that
all men may envy him his marvel."

For my part, I protested very honestly and from the core of my heart.
"If I were old Portinari, I would rather rot in exile than have Simone
dei Bardi for my son-in-law."

Guido tapped me on the shoulder. "That is," he said, "because you have
the heart of an amorist that would let none be lover save himself."

I laughed in his face, and gave him the lie courteously. "No, because I
have the heart of a poet, and the full-favored brute vexes my gorge."

Guido still seemed to mock me. "As you will," he said. "Shall we go to
the Signory and stare at the pageant?"

I shook my head. I was sorry to deny Messer Guido in anything or to
deprive myself of the comfort of his company. But I had come to that
place to keep a tryst. "I cannot," I said. "I wait here for young Dante
of the Alighieri."

Now Messer Dante and I had been friends for some years past, friends not
indeed because we were both Florentines, but perhaps I should say in
spite of the fact that we were both Florentines. For in those days, as
in the days before them, and in the days that since have come to pass,
while every Florentine loved Florence with all the passion of an old
Roman for the city of Romulus, Florentine very often loved Florentine as
day loves night, eld youth, health sickness, poverty riches, or any
other pair of opposites you please. But I was never much of a
politician, I thank my stars, and though a good enough Guelph to pass
muster in a crowd, and a good enough Red to cry "Haro!" upon the Yellows
if need were, I bothered my head very little about such brawls so long
as there were songs to sing, vintages to sip, and pretty girls to kiss.

In Messer Dante I found one of my own age, or, perhaps, a little less
that was in those days scarcely more pricked by the itch political than
I myself was, and for a while he and I had been jolly companions in the
merry pleasant ways of youth. But of late days this Dante, that was ever
a wayward fellow, had suddenly turned away from sports and joys, and
devoted himself with an unwholesome fervor to study, and seemed, as it
were, lost to me in the Humanities. Which is why I had made a tryst with
him that day to upbraid him and bring him to a better sense, and so I
could not go with Messer Guido as he was good enough to wish.

Guido looked at me with a sudden interest. "You are much his friend, are
you not?" he questioned.

Now I had for long been mightily taken with Messer Dante, and, indeed,
for a while I seemed to see the world as he saw it, and to speak as he
would have spoken. I am of that mood now, after all these years--at
least, in a measure. But just then I was in a reaction and vexed, and I
voiced my vexation swiftly. "Why, I thought so once. But I wash my hands
of him. We were as one in the playthings of youth. Now he dances no more
to my piping. He will not laugh when my wit tickles him. He is no
longer for drinking or kissing, for dicing or fighting. He has a cold
fit of wisdom come upon him, and rests ever with Messer Brunetto, the
high dry-as-dust, reading of Virgilius, Tullius, and other ancients, as
if learning were better than living. I have made a tryst with him here
to upbraid him; but I doubt he will keep it."

"I know little of him," Guido said, thoughtfully. "I should like to know
more, to know much."

Now, it was a great compliment to any youth in our city that Messer
Guido should desire his acquaintance, yet I feared in this case he had
made a rash choice.

"Lord," I said, "he is hard to know. Yet, laugh if you will, but I think
there are great things in him."

Messer Guido did not laugh. Rather he looked grave. "Pray God there be,"
he said. "For indeed the age lacks greatness."

"So every man has said in every age," I protested. "But our Dante
baffles me. He changes his moods as a chameleon changes his coat, and
feeds each mood so full. Yesteryear he was mad for the open air, and the
games, and the joy of life. To-day he is mewed in the cloisters of
knowledge. He is damned in his Latin. I will wait no more for him."

So I spoke in my impatience, and made as if to go; but Guido caught me
by the sleeve and restrained me, saying, "Why, here, as I think, he
comes, by way of the bridge."

Now, even as he spoke, I looked where he looked, and whom should I see
coming toward us on the shady side of the bridge than this very lad we
were talking of, and with him Messer Brunetto, the great scholar. So I
went on with a new anger in my voice, "It is he, indeed, in Messer
Brunetto's escort," and then I plucked Guido by the arm and pulled him
round about, so that we were out of ken of the coming pair. "Let us
stand off one side till he be alone."

So I urged and so I persuaded, and Messer Guido and I, that were curious
to have speech with Dante, but had no desire to have speech with the
elder, slipped apart and hid ourselves in the shadow of the pillars of
the Arcade that faced the Portinari palace.




II

A CHILD AND A CHILD


Guido and I had scarcely taken cover when Messer Brunetto came into view
on the lip of the bridge. He was talking as he walked, but he walked and
talked alone, for unperceived by him Dante had lagged behind and stood
with his elbows rested on the parapet looking down at Arno below him.
Messer Brunetto was discoursing very learnedly about Messer Virgilius,
and how he did, in a measure, form and model himself upon Messer
Homerus, when he suddenly became aware that he was wasting his periods
upon empty air--for of us where we lurked he knew nothing. Turning
round, he saw where Dante stood pensive, and called to him sharply,
asking him why he dawdled.

Dante, thus addressed, raised his head from the cup of his palms and his
elbows from the parapet, and, with a pleasant smile on his face, came
down to where Messer Brunetto had halted. I have never known a man's
face that could be blither than Dante's when he smiled, and in those
days, when he and I were young together, before that happened which was
so soon to happen, I had seen him smile many a time, though for the most
part his countenance had a great air of gravity. Now he and Messer
Brunetto stood in talk, and from where I lay hid I could catch most of
the words these two spoke, and my wit was nimble enough to piece out the
rest at my convenience; and you must take it with a good will that what
I set down was spoken or might be spoken by my friend. And the first I
heard him say was this, in a grave voice, "Forgive me for lingering,
Master; I was listening to the Song of the River."

And Messer Brunetto echoed, in surprise: "The Song of the River! What in
the name of all the ancients is the Song of the River?"

Messer Dante seemed to muse for a while, and then I heard him answer his
master in that strong voice of his, that even then was deep and full,
and always brought to my mind the sound of a bell.

"The Song of the River, the Song of Life. I cannot sing you the Song of
the River. If I could tell you its meaning, I should be a greater poet
than Virgilius."

Messer Brunetto held up his hands in a horror that was only part
pretended. "Do not blaspheme!" he cried. Dante smiled for a moment at
his whimsical vehemence, and then went on with his own thoughts, talking
as one that mused aloud.

"It must be glorious to be a great poet, to weave one's dreams into
wonderful words that live in men's hearts forever. Master, I would
rather be a great poet than be the Emperor of Rome."

Then the elder looked at the younger with a smile and shook his head at
his ambition. "It is given to few to be great poets; there have been
fewer great poets than emperors since the world began."

But my friend was not to be so put off. I knew him ever to be persistent
when once his mind was made up, and it may be that he knew well enough
that such warnings had been addressed idly to all the great poets in
their youth. He answered Messer Brunetto slowly.

"My mother, who died young--I cannot remember her--dreamed a strange
dream of me. She dreamed that I stood a shepherd beneath a laurel-tree,
and strove to gather the leaves thereof, and failed in my strivings and
fell, and rose again, and lo! no longer a man, but a peacock, a glory of
gold and purple."

The youth paused for a moment as if he lingered lovingly over the
bequeathed vision, then he questioned Messer Brunetto. "What could this
dream mean, Master?"

Messer Brunetto looked sour. "Who shall say? Who shall guess?" he
answered, fretfully. "Your peacock is a vain bird with a harsh voice."

Dante seemed to pay no heed to the impatience or the disdain of his
master. He went on talking as if he were talking to himself, or to some
congenial companion such as I would be.

"Sometimes I dream of that laurel-tree, and then I wake with joy in my
heart and verses humming in my brain. They vanish when I try to set them
down, but they sweeten the leave of the day."

I think Messer Brunetto did not like the turn which his pupil's thoughts
had taken. "Dreams are but dreams," he answered, impatiently. "Wisdom,
philosophy, these are the true treasures. There is no harm in a Latin
ode after the manner of Messer Ovidius, but for the most part poets or
those that call themselves such are foolish fellows enough, and keep
very bad company. Ply your book, my son, and avoid them."

"Messer Guido Cavalcanti is a poet," Dante objected, firmly, yet gently,
for he was speaking to his elder, and to a very great and famous man,
and he always carried himself with a becoming reverence to those that
should be revered.

The scholar smiled a little acidly. "He is of a noble house, and he may
divert himself with such trifles and no harm done."

Then I saw Dante raise his head, and his eyes flashed and his cheeks
flushed. "I, too, am of a noble house," he asserted, proudly; and indeed
this was true, for he could claim descent from people of very pretty
genealogy. "I, too, am of a noble house," he insisted. "I derive from
the Alighieri of Ferrara, the Frangipani of Rome. Heaven my witness,
that matters little, but to be a great poet would matter much."

Messer Brunetto patted my Dante very kindly on the shoulder, and looked
at him with the look that old men wear when they are advising young men.

"I have better hopes for you," he declared, "for I swear you have in you
the makings of a pretty scholar."

He smiled as he spoke, paternally, as one that feels he has spoken the
last word that has any need to be spoken on any matter of dispute.

But Dante seemed to be little impressed by his advice, and he showed his
own thoughts in his words, for when he spoke it was rather as if he were
speaking to himself than to his companion. "Am I a fool to feel these
stirrings of the spirit? God knows. But my dreams are full of stars and
angels, and the sound of sweet words like many winds and many waters.
And then I wake in an exultation and the words die on my lips."

Messer Brunette lifted his hands in protest. "Thank Heaven they do die.
It must needs be so. Purge yourself of such folly. Poetry died with the
ancients. Virtue, my young friend, not verses. Will you dine with me? We
will eat beans and defy Pythagoras."

Dante shook his head.

"I thank you," he answered, slowly, and I supposed it grieved him a
little to deny so wise a man, "but I may not. I keep a tryst here."

Messer Brunetto instantly assumed an air of alarm, and he allowed his
voice to tremble as he said, "With no woman, I hope."

Dante looked at him squarely. "With no woman, I swear. I have no more to
do with women. What woman is as fair as philosophy, as winsome as
wisdom?"

Messer Brunetto beamed on him with an admiring smile.

"Right, my son, right!" he cried, delighted. "Better Seneca for you than
sensuality; Virgilius than venery. When you are as ripe as I, you may
trifle awhile if you like with lightness." Here I, listening, sniggered,
for it was blown about the city that Messer Brunetto had his passions or
fancies or vagaries, call them what you will, and humored them out of
school hours. "For the present," he went on, "read deep and lie chaste,
and so farewell."

He patted Dante again paternally on the shoulder and wished him
good-day, and went off down the street, muttering to himself, as I make
very little doubt, his wonder that any could be found so foolish as to
wish to string rhymes together when they might be studying the divine
philosophies of the ancients. As for Messer Dante, he stood for a while
where his master had left him, as one that was deep in thought, and we,
though we had a mind to spring out and accost him, yet refrained, for I
knew of old that when my friend was deep in his reflections he was
sometimes inclined to be vexed with those that disturbed him. So we
still lingered and peeped, and presently Dante sighed and went over to
where the bookstall stood and began turning over some of the parchments
that lay on the board. As he did so the bookseller popped his head out
at him from the booth, as a tortoise from his shell, and I never beheld
tortoise yet so crisp and withered as this human. Messer Cecco Bartolo
was his name. And Dante addressed him. "Gaffer Bookman, Gaffer Bookman,
have you any new wares?"

The bookseller dived into the darkness of his shop again and came out in
a twinkling with an armful of papers, which he flung down on the board
before Dante. "There," he said. "There lie some manuscripts that came in
a chest I bought last week. Is there one of them to your taste?"

We watched Dante examining the manuscripts eagerly, and putting the most
part of them impatiently aside. One seemed to attract his attention, for
he gave it a second and more careful glance, and then addressed the
bookseller. "This seems to be a knightly tale," he said, extending the
volume. "What do you ask for it?"

The bookseller took the manuscript from him, glanced at it, and then
handed it back to him. "Take it or leave it, three florins is its
price."

We heard Dante sigh a little, and we saw Dante smile a little, and he
answered the bookseller, humorously: "My purse is as lean as Pharaoh's
kine, but the story opens bravely, and a good tale is better than
shekels or bezants. What do you buy with your money that is worth what
you sell for it?"

The bookseller shrugged his stooped shoulders. "Food and drink and the
poor rags that Adam's transgression enforces on us."

Dante laughed at his conceit. "You are a merry peddler," he said, and
took out of his pouch a few coins, from which he counted scrupulously
the sum that the bookseller had asked, and gave it to him. Then he moved
slowly away from the stall, reading in his new purchase until he came to
the fountain that had the painted statue over it. There he sat himself
down on a stone bench in the angle of the wall and buried himself in his
book.

And by now we were resolved to address him, but again we were diverted
from our purpose, for there came by a little company of merrymakers,
youths and maidens, that were making sport as is fit for such juvenals
in that season of felicity which is named May-day. Some had pipes and
some had lutes and some had tambourines, and all were singing as loud as
they could and making as much noise as they might, and when they came
into the open space hard by the fountain they paused for a while in
their progress, and broke into as lively a morris-dance as ever I had
seen skipped. How they twisted and turned and tripped; how bravely they
made music; how lustily they sang. I recall them now, those bright
little human butterflies. I can see the pretty faces and slim figures of
the girls, the blithe carriage of the lads. The musical tumult that they
make seems to be ringing in my ears as I write, and my narrow room
widens to its harmony.

But would you believe it, no sound of all that singing and dancing
served to rouse Messer Dante for one moment from his book. Though the
air was full of shrill voices and sweet notes and the clapping of hands
and the flapping fall of dancing feet, he remained motionless, and never
once lifted up his eyes to look at the merry crowd. As for the dancers,
I do not think that they saw him, certainly they paid him no heed. Why
should such merry fellows as they take note of a book-worm while there
were songs to sing and tunes to turn and dances to dance? And by-and-by,
when they had made an end of their measure, they fell into procession
again and went away as quickly as they had come, leaving me mightily
delighted with their entertainment. As they trooped off over the bridge,
Guido and I made up our minds that now we would have speech with Dante;
so we came out from where we had lain hid and walked softly across the
space that divided us from him, and stood by his side and called his
name loudly into his ears. Then, after a while, but not at all at first
calling, Dante slowly lifted his eyes from his book and looked at us,
and the look on his face was the look of a man that is newly wakened
from a pleasurable dream. Then he smiled salutation on me, for, indeed,
I believe he always liked me, and recognizing Messer Guido, he rose and
saluted him courteously.

"Now, Heaven bless you, brother," I cried, "that you seem to sleep in
the midst of all these rumors."

Dante gazed at me with untroubled curiosity. "What rumors?" he asked,
indifferently.

"Why," replied Guido, staring at him, "here was the daintiest dancing."

Now by this I remembered that of us three present two were not known one
to the other, and I hastened to amend the matter.

"Nay," said I, "here is another that can tell you better than I. Here is
Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti that has kicked heels with me on this
ground for the wish to make your acquaintance."

Now, Messer Guido, that had stood quietly by, made speed to speak to
Dante. "It is very true," he declared. "I have heard your praises." And
as he spoke the face of Dante flushed with pleasure, for it was no small
honor to be sought in friendship by Messer Guido. So he answered him
very gladly, yet with a certain calmness that was his character in all
things.

"Messer Guido," he said, "I am honored to the top of my longing, though,
indeed, I have no greater claim to your favor than this: that I know by
root of heart every rhyme that you have written and given."

At this Messer Guido laughed joyously. "Heaven, friend," he cried, "what
better recommendation could a man have to one that writes verses?"

"Is there one in Florence," Dante asked, "that could not say as much?"
Then, as if to break away from bandying of compliments, he asked: "But
what were the rumors you spoke of?"

"Why," replied Guido, looking at him in some wonder, "here was the
daintiest festal ever devised: delicate youths and exquisite maidens
footing it to pipe and cymbal as blithely as if they would never grow
old."

Dante shook his head a little. "I did not mark them."

As for me, I marvelled, and I cried, "A beatific disposition that can
sleep in such a din."

But Dante reproved me with that gravity he always showed when there was
any matter of truth to be considered. "I did not sleep," he asserted. "I
read."

"What, in Heaven's name," asked Guido, "did you read, that could shut
your ears to such a din?"

Dante lifted up toward him the manuscript he had newly bought. "The
love-tale of Knight Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. The fellow that wrote
it discourses nothing but marvels."

Now I was curious, for I love all strange tales, and I questioned him:
"What marvels?"

Dante answered me smiling, and his face was always very sweet when he
smiled. "Why, the rogue will have it that when such a cavalier as
Lancelot tumbles into love he becomes a very ecstatic, and sees the
world as it never is, was, or shall be. The sun is no more than his
lady's looking-glass, and the moon and stars her candles to light her to
bed. You are a lover, Messer Guido. Do you think thus of your lady?"

Messer Guido answered emphatically, for he was indeed deep in love with
a lady well worth the loving. "Very surely and so will you when the
fever wrings you."

Dante turned to me, still with that same luminous smile on his face.
"And you, Lappo?"

Now, it was then and ever my creed that it is a man's best business to
be in love as much and as often as he can, and I answered him according
to my fancy. "I should scorn myself if I did not overtop every conceited
fancy that lover has ever sighed or sung for his lady."

Dante still smiled, but there was now a little scorn in his smile that
nettled me. "It is strange," he said. And then made a feint of returning
to his book, saying, "Well, I will read in my book again if you are no
wiser."

But Guido laid his hand upon the pages and protested. "Plague on your
reading, brother; you read too much. You are young to be so studious of
pothooks and hangers. The Book of Life is a brave book for a youth to
read in."

And here I put in my word. "And the two best chapters, by your leave,
are those that treat of Squire Bacchus and Dame Venus."

"You are a pretty ribald," Dante said to me, mockingly. "Leave me to my
ease. Let our star wheel where it pleases; I cannot guide the chariot of
the sun. Let me bask in its bounty, warm my hands at it, eat the fruit
it ripens, and drink the wine it kindles. I am content. Florence is the
fairest city in the world. I shall be happy to grow old in Florence,
studiously, peacefully, pleasantly, dreaming my dreams."

Guido protested against his placidity. "What a slugabed spirit! Rings
there no alarum in your blood?"

Dante said nothing, but looked at me, and I supported Guido's theme.
"There are ladies in Florence as lovely as the city's lilies. I would
rather lie in white arms than dream dreams."

Dante shook his head, and he fluttered the pages of his book as he
answered us slowly: "Restless, feverish Titans, forever challenging the
great gods of Love and War. Give me the dappled shade of a green garden,
the sable shadows quivering on a ground of gold, a book of verse by me
to play with when I would be busy, and a swarm of sweet rhythms like
colored butterflies floating about my drowsy senses. What to me are wars
and rumors of wars in that delicious ease? What to me are the white
breasts of the fair Florentines?"

Guido and I looked at each other in wonder, and then Guido asked again,
"Tell me, comrade, have you ever been in love?"

Now, when Guido asked him that question, I expected to hear from Dante a
mocking answer, but instead, to my surprise, he sat quite still for a
little while, almost like a man in a trance, with his hands clasped
about his knees, and it seemed to me as if he were seeing, as indeed he
was seeing, things that we who were with him did not see and could not
see. After a while he spoke in a soft voice, and for the most part his
words came sharp and clear, like the words of a man that speaks in a
dream.

"Once, when I was still a child, I saw a child's face, a girl's face; it
lives in my memory as the face of an angel. It was a sunny morning, a
May morning, such a morning as this, one of those days that always make
one think of roses. I had a rose in my hand, and I was smelling at
it--and then I saw the child. She was younger than I--and I was very
young."

Now, although I am a liberal lover of women, I have, I thank Heaven,
such a nature that any talk of love pleases me and interests me, and I
can listen to any lover with content. But this talk of children only
tickled me, and I turned to my comrade Guido, that was known to be a
very devoted swain to his lady, and that served her in song and honor
with all fidelity, and pointed Dante out to him now, as if laughing at
the radiant gaze on his face. "Look at the early lover, Guido," I said,
and laughed; but Messer Guido would not humor me by laughing too, and he
told me later that he never found a love-tale a thing to laugh at.

Dante seemed neither to heed nor to be vexed at my mirth. "Laugh if you
like," he said, good-humoredly, "but I learned what love might mean
then, as I peeped over the red breast of the rose at the little maiden.
She was younger than I was; she had hair like woven sunlight, and her
wide eyes seemed to me bright with a better blue than heaven's. Oh, if I
had all the words in the world at my order, I could not truly tell you
all I thought then of that little child."

Guido said very gravely, "A boy may have great thoughts." And he said no
more, but looked steadfastly upon the rapt countenance of Dante.

Now by this time I was all afire with curiosity, for this strange talk
stirred me to wonder, and I entreated Messer Dante very zealously to
tell me who this child was. Dante went on as if he had not heard my
question, telling his tale in a measured voice. "She looked at me and
she looked at my red rose, and I felt suddenly as if that rose were the
most precious gift in the world, a gift for a god, and that I should
give it to her. I held out my hand to her with the rose in it, and she
took the flower, and her fingers touched my fingers as she took it. They
still thrill with the memory."

As I have but just recorded, to my shame, I took all this story of our
friend's in a spirit of mockery. "O father Socrates," I cried, "listen
to the philosopher!" And then, because I was still burning with desire
for more knowledge in this strange business, I repeated my question.
"Who was she?"

And this time Dante heeded me and answered me. "I do not know. I never
saw her again."

Guido's amazement at this answer found speech. "You never saw her
again?" he questioned. "A girl in Florence?"

And indeed it was a strange thing for our city, where one sees every one
every day.

But Dante nodded. "It is strange, but so it is. I never saw her again.
That is nine years ago now."

Guido's eyes were filled with a tender pity. Never before saw I true
lover so moved by a profession of true love. "Are you sure you ever
really saw her?" he questioned, somewhat sadly. "Are you sure that you
did not dream this wonder?"

Dante showed no anger at this doubt, though indeed at other times he was
quick enough to take offence if he found just cause. But I guessed then
what I know since, that he found this matter at once so simple and so
sacred that nothing any man could say concerning it could in any way vex
him. So he answered very mildly, "Sometimes I almost doubt, but the
scent of a red rose on a May morning always brings her back to me."

Now I grieve to record it, but the silly spirit of mockery within me had
so far infected my wits that I cried out in pretended astonishment, "O
marvellous fancy that can so ennoble a neighbor's brat!" The which was
very false and foolish of me, for I know well enough now, and knew very
well then, that love, while it lasts, can ennoble any child, maid, or
matron. Lord, the numbers of girls I have likened to Diana that were no
such matter, and the plump maids I have appraised as Venus, though,
indeed, they would have shown something clumsy if one had caught them
rising from the sea! But, as I say, Dante never heeded my jeers, and sat
there very quiet and silent, very much as if he had forgotten our
existence, and was thinking only of that gracious child he spoke of. And
I, my laughter being somewhat abashed by his gravity, and the edge of my
jest being blunted by his indifference, as well as by the reproof on
Guido's face, stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether to abide with
him or leave him, when there came, to break my embarrassment, the
presence of a mighty fair lady.




III

VITTORIA


The lady that now came toward us over the little bridge was one whose
acquaintance I could claim, and whose beauty I admired very greatly.
Madonna Vittoria Crescimbeni was a very fair lady that was generous of
her favors to those that were wealthy, and even to those that were not,
if they happened to take her fancy, as indeed I am pleased to recall.
She lived on the other side of Arno, in a gracious dwelling that had
been built for her by a great lord that had given her everything, except
his name, while he lived, and had died and left her a fortune. For all
that, she was a light child; she carried herself with much show of
discretion, and was only to be come at warily, as it were, and with
circumspection; and because of her abundance she was at no man's beck
and call, and could choose and refuse as it liked her. She was made
something full of figure, with a face like an ancient statue, which was
the less to be wondered at because her mother was a Greek; but her hair,
of which she had a mighty quantity, was of that tawny red tincture that
is familiar to those that woo Venetian women. As for her mouth, it was
like flame, and her eyes were flames too, though of another hue, having
a greenish light in them that could delight or frighten as she pleased.
She went her ways in great state, having two small knavish blackamoor
pages in gold tissue at her heels, and a little ways off she was
followed by a brace of well-armed serving-rascals.

For my own part, I was mightily pleased to see her, for though she was,
in the native ways of affairs, somewhat out of my star, still, as I
said, she was to show later that she had an eye for a pretty fellow and
owned a spirit above mere dross. I say no more. She seemed content
enough to see me, but still more content to see Messer Guido. This was
an experience in the ways of ladies with which those that walked with
Messer Guido were familiar. Every woman that saw him admired him highly.
So Vittoria smiled a little on me and a great deal on Messer Guido; and
as for Dante, she glanced at him slightly and gave him little heed, for
his habit was modest and his looks were not of a kind at once to tickle
the fancy of such as she. Yet Dante looked at her curiously, though
without ostentation, as one whose way it is instinctively to observe all
men and all women with an exceeding keenness and clearness of vision.

Messer Guido greeted Madonna Vittoria very courteously, as was ever his
way with women. Were they fair or plain-favored, chaste or gay, he was
ever their very gentle servant. And by this time Vittoria, being very
close to us, paused and gave us the greeting of the day; and her pages
came to a halt behind her, and her men-at-arms stood at ease a little
space away.

The beautiful lady looked at us with a kind of wonder and a kind of
mockery in her dark eyes. And when she spoke to us her voice was
marvellously soft with a rich softness that made me, being then of a
very sensual disposition, think instantly of old wine and ripe fruit,
and darkened alcoves, and the wayward complaining of lutes. Indeed,
wherever Monna Vittoria went she seemed to carry with her an atmosphere
of subtle seclusion, of a cloistered lusciousness, of dim, green,
guarded gardens, where the sighs of love's novices are stifled by the
drip of stealthy fountains and the babble of fantastic birds. I suppose
it was no more than my fancy, or a trick of my memory confusing later
things with earlier, that makes me now, as I write, seem to recall what
seemed like a smile on the face of the pagan effigy of Love as Madonna
Vittoria swam into her company, as if the Greekish image recognized in
the woman a creature of the early days when cunning fingers fashioned
him. For, indeed, Vittoria was not modern in the sense that we
Florentines are modern. She derived from a world long dead and buried.
Heavens, how Messer Alcibiades would have admired her!

"Good-morrow, gentle gentles," she began, in that caressing voice, "why
are you absent from the sacrifice?"

Guido looked for the instant perplexed by the woman's words, and he
moved a little nearer to her. As for Dante, he seemed to have forgotten
us all, even to have forgotten his book, and though he had risen when
Monna Vittoria approached, he had by this time sunk onto the stone seat
again, and seemed drowned in a brown study.

"What sacrifice, lady?" Guido asked of Vittoria; and whenever Guido
spoke to a woman, he spoke as if all the pleasures and destinies of the
world depended upon that one woman's interest and caprice.

Madonna Vittoria smiled, self-satisfied, as all women smiled when Guido
so addressed them. "Why, the sacrifice of the pearl to the pig," she
answered; and she still smiled as she spoke, but there was a kind of
anger in her eyes. "The sacrifice of a clean child to a coarse churl,
the sacrifice of Folco Portinari's little Beatrice to my big Simone,
that I do not choose to lose."

Here I broke in, laughing, for I took the drift of her meaning, and was
wishful to prove myself alert. "Most allegorical lady," I protested, "I
take you very clearly when you explain your own fable." And I rubbed my
hands, instantly pleased with myself and my nimbleness.

But Messer Guido still looked thoughtful. "If the ladies of Florence,"
he said, slowly, "make Madonna Beatrice their May-queen, that dainty
deed does not deliver her to Simone of the Bardi."

Madonna Vittoria turned upon him with a sharpness seldom seen on a
woman's face when it bent toward Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti. Her
smooth forehead wrinkled with an unfamiliar frown; her full lips seemed
to tighten and narrow to a red thread; her eyes were as a cat's eyes are
when the cat is very, very angry.

"Who goes by her side," she asked, sourly, "as she goes through the
city?" And she answered her own question with a name. "Simone dei
Bardi." She went on: "Who is her father's faithful friend? Simone dei
Bardi." She glanced from one to the other of us--Messer Guido and I, I
mean, for Dante took no heed of her and she seemed to take no heed of
him. "I will tell you," she said, fiercely, "the trap is baited for the
prey, and, as things go, it seems as if I were like to lose my emerald,
that I can spare ill, as well as a husband, that I could spare very
readily were it not that I had a mind to marry him."

Now at this there was a pause, and in a little while I turned to Dante,
thinking that it was high time he took a share in our parley.

"Is not," I said, "Monna Vittoria much to be pitied?"

Being thus questioned, Dante seemed to shake himself free from his
lethargy, or his disdain, or whatever you may call it, and he answered
very indifferently, as one that speaks of another that is not present,
"I do not know the cause of her sorrow."

Monna Vittoria turned to him now very directly and faced him, and there
was a kind of challenge in her carriage.

"Messer Dante," she said, "if you know nothing of me, I know something
of you, for Messer Brunetto, your philosopher, is one of my very good
friends. I had this trinket of him a week ago." And as she spoke she
fingered an enamelled and jewelled pendant against her neck that must
have cost the scholar a merry penny. "Well, Messer Dante, you who are
young and of high spirit, would you have a queen of beauty married to a
king of beasts?"

Dante shrugged his shoulders a little, feigning no interest in the
handsome creature that addressed him. "The alliance sounds unnatural,"
he answered, carelessly, and looked as if he would be glad that the
matter should end.

But Vittoria would not have it so. "Well, now," she said, "when all
Florence is luting and fluting for the queen of beauty, the king of
beasts walks warden by her side."

Still Dante showed no interest. "Who is this queen of beauty?" he asked,
listlessly. And when Guido made answer that she was Folco Portinari's
daughter Beatrice, he only shook his head a little and declared that he
did not know her.

"She is new to Florence," I explained.

And Vittoria went on. "I will give her this credit, that she is a comely
piece. Let us go and see the girl in her triumph." She addressed herself
directly to Guido, but she had an after-glance for me as well.

Guido turned toward his new-made friend. "Will you come with us, Messer
Dante?" he asked.

But Dante denied him. "Not I, by your leave," he replied. "I find folly
enough here in my book without tramping the highways to face it in its
pageant."

Now I felt a little vexed at his churlishness, for Madonna Vittoria was
a lovely lady, and very pleasant company, and one worth obliging. So I
spoke to the others, saying, "Well, well, let us not starve because
Dante has no appetite." And therewith I caught a hand of Guido and a
hand of Vittoria, and made to lead them from the place. And they both
responded well enough to my summons.

But Monna Vittoria checked me a little and paused, and spoke again to
Dante. "Farewell, Messer Dante," she said, sweetly. "Will you come visit
me one of these days?"

But Dante, who had poked that hooked nose of his now in his book again,
shook his head and made her no very civil answer. "Madonna," he said, "I
have little money and less lust. God be with you."

So, lapped in that mood, we left him, and went our ways toward the
Signory, and our Dante was soon out of sight, and, if truth be told, out
of mind.




IV

THE WORDS OF THE IMAGE


Now I proceed to tell under all caution what happened to our Dante,
sitting there alone in the shady angle of that sunny place, after we had
left him to go to the Signory. For, indeed, I did not see it, although I
heard it from his lips, that had the gift, even then, to make the
strangest things seem as real as, say, the door of a house. The tale was
so told, in such twists of thought and turns of phrase, that it might,
if you chose, be taken as an allegory or the vision of a dream; but, for
my own part, I prefer to believe that it came about just as I shall set
it down, for the world is merrier for a spice of the marvellous in its
composition, and, for myself, I could believe anything of that same
painted image.

It seems, then, that when Dante was left alone he turned to his book
again, and set himself very resolutely to reading of the loves of
Lancelot and Guinevere, in the hope, most like, to still that stirring
of the spirit occasioned by our talk. And when the fall of our footsteps
and the babble of our voices could be heard no more, he confessed that
at first he felt grateful for the silence and the peace. But of a sudden
it appeared to him that the silence was greater than there was any need
or reason for it to be, that it seemed to him as if all Florence held
its breath in the suspense of a great hush which lapped the world in its
embrace--such a hush as might perchance occur before the coming of Doom.
Then, after an interval that seemed too age-long to be endured, out of
the very core of the silence Dante heard a voice calling to him that he
had never heard before, and that spoke to him with such a sweet
imperiousness that he was as physically and spiritually bound to obey
and attend as ever Moses was on the holy hill. And the commanding voice
cried to him, "Dante, behold a deity stronger than thou, who comes to
govern thee."

Then it seemed to Dante that at the sound of that voice his
consciousness returned to him, and, looking up from his book, he called
aloud, "Who speaks to me?" And as he spoke he saw, or thought he
saw--but I give it to you as he gave it to me--to his amazement, how the
painted image of the beautiful youth that stood above the fountain
seemed slowly to quicken into being, and how all the gaudy colors and
gilding of the figure seemed to soften to the exquisite and tender hues
of a life that was more marvellous than life. The hair of the youth was
radiantly sunny, his cheeks flamed and paled with a divine white and
red, his perfect limbs and perfect body seemed moulded with such
exquisite rounded flesh as the immortal gods assumed long ago when they
deigned to descend from Olympus or appear in Cytherea, and speak to men
and love them. And the pagan boy that stood above the plashing fountain
lifted a hand toward Dante and parted his lips and spoke, and this was
what he said: "The God Love speaks to you, Dante, and to none but you.
Lift up your heart, for soon your happiness shall be made manifest unto
you."

At this Dante, though, as he told me thereafter, he felt no fear, was
full of a great astonishment, and he strove to speak and could not for
an instant, and at last he cried out, "Must I believe you?" For it
seemed to him as if the image uttered the very voice of truth, but that
he, listening, rebelled against it.

Then the beautiful, breathing boy, that had been the beautiful, silent
image, stretched out a hand to him in command, and said, "You that
denied me must now believe me, for henceforth I shall govern your soul."

At these words Dante crossed himself, for all this seemed strange work
for commonplace Florence in full day, and he tried to repeat a prayer,
but wonderfully could remember none, and only his ears buzzed with the
words of all the love-songs he had ever heard, and he entreated, "Leave
me in peace." And as he spoke he stretched out his hands in supplication
to the quickened image.

Now it is to be said that it seemed to Dante as if a kind of pale flame
appeared to blaze all about the living image, and to spread from him in
fine and delicate rays till it seemed to play on Dante's body and burn
through the armor of the flesh and lurk about his naked heart. And the
agony of that burning was beyond words, yet there was a kind of joy in
it that was beyond thought.

And the God that was Love cried out again: "You pray in vain for peace
who shall ever be peaceless from this time forth. For the unavoidable
hour is at hand when you shall know my power. Farewell awhile." As the
figure spoke those last words it seemed slowly to stiffen into stone
again, and the beautiful, vital coloring faded away, and the pale,
leaping flames vanished, and Dante found himself sitting and staring at
the painted image above the lisping water that he had looked at unmoved
a thousand times, as he passed it going to and fro on his way through
the city.

Dante rubbed his forehead and wondered. "I have been dreaming," he
murmured, "and the love-tale in the book colored my thoughts."

Now, though all this vision, or whatever you may please to call it,
seemed brief enough, it took longer than the telling, for Messer Dante
told me that the next thing he knew was that he heard my voice calling
to him. Wherefore, the most will probably say that Messer Dante had
fallen asleep in the heat of the day and dreamed a dream, but I do not
think so. Now, Guido and I and Monna Vittoria had gone on our ways to
the Signory, thinking to witness the crowning of the lady Beatrice of
the Portinari, but we had not travelled very far when we heard the noise
of many people mixed with the sound of music, and we knew that the
procession was coming our way and that the ceremony at the Signory was
over and done with. Then it seemed a shame to me that my friend should
lose all the pleasure, and I said I would go back for him, and Messer
Guido came with me because Monna Vittoria had found other friends and
stayed in speech with them. And when Guido and I came back to the place
where we had left Dante, I found him, as I say, seated upon the stone
seat. His closed book lay by his side, and he was staring straight
before him, as a man that is newly awakened from a trance. But I, taking
little notice of his state at the moment, ran toward him and clapped him
on the shoulder, calling to him: "They are moving this way!" I cried.
"Come and see!"

But Dante did not seem to hear me, and sat gazing at that painted image
that was such an old friend of mine and his, as if he had never seen it
before. But presently, partly by persuasion, and partly by pushing and
urging, we got him to turn from the statue and accompany us a little
ways till we came to a stand in the neighborhood of the Palace of the
Portinari, toward which the procession of the May-day was making its
way.

The open space of the Piazza of the Santa Felicita was now pretty well
filled with the curious and the seekers for amusement, and all the air
was full of sweet noises, and all the smiling faces shone in the warm
sunlight. And Guido and I, piloting our Dante, pushed our way to the
inner circle of the loiterers, and paused there, waiting for the coming
of the merrymakers. And even as we paused the folk that we expected came
upon us. They were a gallant company of youths and maidens, dressed all
in their best and brightest, and there were excellent musicians with
them that made the most noble of cheerful music, and the comely girls
scattered flowers on the cobbles, and the comely youths laughed and
shouted, and in the midst of the throng a dozen of the strongest lads
were tugging at a chariot that carried a gilded throne, and on that
throne was seated Madonna Beatrice of the Portinari. She was dressed in
a robe of crimson silk, and she carried red roses in her hand, and I
think that all who looked upon her held her as the loveliest maid in all
Florence. I know that, for my part, I frankly admitted to myself that
none of the girls that I was in love with at that time could hold a
candle to her. Yet I knew for my sins that I could never be in love
with Madonna Beatrice of the Portinari. Standing by her side was a big,
thick-set, fierce-looking man, with a shag of black hair and a black
beard like a spade, whom I knew well enough and whom all there knew well
enough to be Messer Simone dei Bardi, the man of whom Guido and I had
talked that morning. There was a great crowd behind the chariot, Reds
and many Yellows, seemingly at peace that day, friends of Guido, and
followers of Simone, and revellers of many kinds and townsfolk of many
classes. I could see that Monna Vittoria was in the thick of the crowd
that followed the Car of Triumph, and presently she made her way beneath
the shelter of the arcade, and stood there hard by one of the pillars,
watching the lady Beatrice on her throne and Simone dei Bardi keeping so
close beside her. And Simone, as I believe, had no knowledge of
Vittoria's presence.

Now, when that brave company came into the place where we stood, Dante,
that had stood by our sides listlessly enough, turned away from us as
suddenly and sharply as if he had received an order. So he turned, and,
turning, he saw in full view the face of the lady Beatrice as she sat on
her car of triumph; and, at the sight of her, he gave a great cry, and
then stood silent and stiff as if spellbound.

Guido, delighted by the girl's beauty, cried to him, not looking at him,
"Is she not fair?"

But I saw what strange case our Dante was in, and pulled at Guide's
sleeve and jerked his attention to my friend, saying, "Our Dante stands
at gaze as if he were sun-dazzled."

Guido turned to Messer Dante and saw the rapture in his face, and,
seeing, questioned him. "Is she not fair?" he asked, and his glance
travelled again to where the May-queen sat.

And Dante answered him, speaking very slowly, as a man might speak in
some sweet sleep when he dreamed a dear dream, "She is the loveliest
woman in the world." He paused for a moment, and then added, in a lower
tone, "She is the child I worshipped."

Now, I could plainly read amazement and doubt on Messer Guido's face
when he heard Dante speak thus strangely, and he caught at his arm and
shook it a little gently, as one would do that wishes to wake a sleeping
man. "You are dreaming, for sure," he said.

But Dante only answered him very quietly, still keeping his rapturous
face fixed on the girl as she and her company came nearer. "She is the
lady of my dreams."

Now I, that was glancing in much bewilderment from Dante, where he stood
at gaze so radiant, to the fair girl on her gilded car, saw, or thought
I saw, all of a sudden, a look in the girl's eyes that betokened more
knowledge of Dante than merely the knowledge that a man stood in the
roadway and stared at her beauty. So I whispered to Guido in his ear,
"See, she seems to note him, and, as I think, with recognition."

Now, even as I said this, the little company that carried the Queen of
Beauty came to a halt some yards from the gate of the gray palace, and
Messer Simone dei Bardi, quitting the side of her chariot, advanced
toward the Palace of the Portinari to give the formal summons that the
Queen of May demanded admittance, all of which was part and parcel of
the ceremonial of the pretty sport. At the same instant Dante, quitting
Guido's side, advanced a little nearer to the girl, who did not descend
from her chair, but sat still in her chariot as if waiting for his
coming, and the little crowd of juvenals about her fluttered aside
before his resolute advance, and I thought even then how strong his
young face looked, and how purposeful, for all his youth, that grim nose
of his and the steady eyes above it, in contrast with the pink-and-white
prettiness of the many slim lads that were the Queen of Beauty's
satellites.

And Dante raised his voice and called to the girl as a friend calls to a
friend: "Give me a rose for my rose, madonna! Give me a rose for my
rose!"

Now the girl, as she sat, had in her lap a great quantity of roses
exceedingly red and large, and she took up one of these in answer to the
call and cast it through the air to Dante, who caught it as it fell,
and, catching it, lifted it to his lips with his eyes fixed on the girl.
Then, whether because of his action or the eagerness of his gaze above
the crimson petals I know not, but Madonna Beatrice flushed a little,
and she gathered the rest of her roses into her arms and rose from her
chair, and descended from her chariot and mounted the steps of the great
house, whose doors had now opened to Simone's summons. Messer Folco of
the Portinari stood smiling on his threshold, but Messer Simone, by his
side, was not smiling, for he had seen that pretty business of the given
rose, and I could note that its prettiness pleased him little. I think
he would have stepped down then and there and eased his spleen, but
Messer Folco, as his way was ever, wished to improve the occasion by
making a speech.

"Friends and neighbors," he began, in his ample, affable voice,
"Florentines all, in my daughter's name, and for my own sake, I thank
you." Thereat there came a little cheer from the crowd, and then Folco
turned toward his daughter, plainly very proud of her, but still
flagrantly paternal and pompous.

"Come, child," he said, solemnly. "Come, you have been queen for a day,
but your reign is over, and you are no more now than honest goodman
Folco's daughter. Get you within." Then Madonna Beatrice she paused for
a moment with two of her girl friends by her side and looked down upon
her company very graciously and sweetly, and wished them farewell. Then
the door of the palace opened and swallowed her up with her two
companions, and when she had gone it seemed to us watching as if the
sunshine had gone with her, though the street was still flooded with its
light.

Then Messer Folco spoke again to the multitude, saying that there would
be simple cheer and sport provided in his gardens that lay in the
meadow-land on the other side of Arno for such as chose to go so far, at
which his hearers cheered again, and made all speed to take him at his
word and hurry away over the bridge. Thereafter Messer Folco turned to
Messer Simone, as if inviting him to enter.

But Messer Simone shook his head. "Later, Messer Folco," I heard him
say, "later; I have some busy hours before me." Then Messer Folco,
acquiescing, entered his great house, and its great doors closed behind
him, and those that were conveying the car wheeled it about and pulled
it away, returning on the road by which they had come, and by this time
most of the revellers had departed over bridge.

Guido and I, that were not tempted to travel so far as Messer Folco's
river gardens, turning to our companion, noted that Dante was standing
entranced with his eyes fixed upon his rose, and I heard him murmur to
himself, "O wonderful world, that can boast of so wonderful a woman!"

Now, when I say that all of Madonna Beatrice's escort had gone from
there, I mean that the gay youths and maidens had departed, but Messer
Simone dei Bardi had remained behind, leaning against the wall of the
house with his arms folded and an evil smile on his face.

Messer Simone's own followers, seeing him, lingered, waiting upon his
pleasure, and though most of the May-day merrymakers had disappeared,
there were not a few idlers and passers-by.

There were a certain number of Messer Guido's friends there, too, that
had joined him in the procession, and that now lingered in the hope to
bear him with them to some merriment more to their liking than Messer
Folco's transpontine hospitality. So that the open place was far from
empty for all its bigness.




V

ONE WAY WITH A QUARREL


Now when the door had shut upon Beatrice, Messer Simone shook himself
from the wall and advanced with a steady, heavy stride to where Dante
stood lost in contemplation of his rose, and I thought he looked like
some ugly giant out of a fairy-tale, and his sullen eyes were full of
mischief. He came hard by Messer Dante, and spoke to him roughly. "I do
not care to see you and that flower in fellowship."

Now both Guido and I feared that this might breed a quarrel, so we
lingered, and Messer Simone's people drew together, watching their lord,
and some that were passing paused to note what was toward. But Messer
Dante lifted his head very quietly, and looked calmly into Simone's
angry face and spoke him seemingly fair. "The world is wide, friend," he
said, very smoothly; "you have but to turn the corner, and I and my
flower will no longer vex your vision."

But Simone was not to be so put off. "I have a mind to wear that rose
myself," he said, savagely, and he came a little nearer to Dante as he
spoke, and his followers dogged his advance, ready to obey his orders.

He looked so big and so strong and so brutal by the side of our friend
that I was ill at ease, for I knew well what a truculent ruffian this
Simone was.

But Dante seemed to be no more troubled than he would have been by the
buzzing of a wasp. "Then you had better change your mind speedily," he
answered, in an even voice, "lest being crossed in a peevish whim sour
your blood."

Now, the being spoken to so sweetly, and yet with words that had so
little of sweetness in them and no fear at all, teased Messer Simone's
black blood till it bubbled like boiling pitch, and his voice had got a
kind of silly scream in it, as he cried: "Why, you damnable reader of
books, you pitiful clerk, do you think I will bandy words with you? Give
me that rose instantly, or I will cut out your heart and eat it!"

Dante was still unruffled, and answered him very suavely, "If you cut
out my heart you would still find the rose in it and the name of earth's
loveliest lady."

Now at this Messer Simone's face showed as red as an old roof-tile, and
his voice was hoarse with anger as he called, furiously, "Give me the
flower!"

For a breathing while Dante made him no answer, while he gathered the
rose carefully together in the cup of his hand and then slipped it into
his bosom. Then he spoke to Simone with a grave impatience. "You are a
boisterous braggart, and you scream like the east wind. I am very weary
of you."

Simone slapped his big hand to the hilt of his sword. "Patter an Ave
quickly," he growled, "ere I slay you with the sight of a drawn sword."

It was such a menace as might have fretted many a man that was brave
enough, for Simone was out of the common tall and strong, but it fretted
our Dante no whit, and he only smiled derisively at the giant.

By this time the brawl--for such it was proving to be--had begun to
attract public notice, and those that walked halted to watch the
altercation between the big man and the slim youth. I caught a glimpse
of Monna Vittoria beneath the arcade, and saw amusement on her face and
wonder, and some scorn of Simone and much admiration of Dante. But I had
no time to concern myself with Vittoria, for now Messer Simone's fingers
were gripping at the hilt of his weapon, but he did no more than grip
the hilt of it. Indeed, I do not think that he would have drawn on an
unarmed man, and very likely he meant no more than to frighten the
scholar. If this were Messer Simone's purpose, it was frankly baffled by
the fact that Dante did not seem to be frightened at all, but just stood
his ground and watched his adversary with a light of quiet amusement in
his eyes that was very exasperating to Simone. The whole quarrel had
kindled and thriven so quickly that Messer Guido, who was standing apart
and talking with certain of his friends, had as yet no knowledge of it,
but now I moved to him and plucked him by the sleeve and told him what
was toward. In truth, I felt no small alarm for my friend, for I knew
him to have no more than that passable facility with the sword which is
essential to gentility. Then Messer Guido turned and came with me, and
his friends followed him, and our numbers added to the circle that was
forming about the disputants. So now, while Messer Simone was still
angrily handling his sword-hilt, and while the smile still lingered on
Dante's lips, Messer Guido stepped nimbly between the two, being eager
to keep the peace for the sake of his new-made friend that seemed so
slight a thing by the side of Simone.

"How now!" Guido cried, aloud. "I hear shrill words that seem to squeak
of weapons. What is your quarrel, gentles?"

If every man there present knew who Messer Simone of the Bardi was and
what he stood for in Florence, so also every man there present knew who
Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti was and what he stood for, and there were
few that would have denied him the right to speak his mind or to
question the cause of the quarrel. So Messer Guido stood between Dante
and Simone, looking from one to the other of the pair and waiting for
his answer.

Dante answered in a kind of ironic simplicity, and he seemed to me as I
looked upon him like a man exalted out of all reason by some great joy.
"It is but a gardener's wrangle--how best to guard roses from slugs."

Simone began to frown upon the brawl that himself had caused, and he
looked toward Messer Guido, whom he knew, with a forced show of
friendliness, and spoke with a gruff assumption of good-humor. "Messer
Guido, will you tell this blockhead who I am?"

Now, Guido was as good a swordsman as the best man in Florence, and far
better than the most that handled steel, and he thought and spoke in the
wish to protect his new-made friend, whom he took to have no such skill
as his own.

"Gently, gently," he said to Simone, and his tone was by no means
gentle. "My friend's name is my name, and I take terms from no man. You
will answer me now." And as he spoke he placed his hand upon his hilt,
and made ready to draw.

Now at this Simone frowned again, for he had no personal quarrel with
Messer Guido Cavalcanti, yet from the very bullness of his nature he
would take a dare from no man. So he showed his teeth and eased his
blade to make ready.

But Dante moved swiftly forward and pulled Messer Guido from between him
and Messer Simone, doing this with a courtesy due to one of Messer
Guido's standing, yet with a very plain decision. "Messer Guido," he
said, "I entreat you to refrain. I guess your purpose, but I will not
have it so. This is my quarrel, and, believe me, I can handle it."

Guido plucked him a little apart, and whispered him hurriedly. "This is
Simone of the Bardi, a very notable soldier," he said.

I heard Dante answer him very calmly. "Were he a very notable devil, I
would stand to him enough."

By this time Messer Simone was in such a black rage at being thwarted
that he cared not what might come of it, and he called out to Dante, in
a bellowing voice, "Come, sir, come! Will you fight or yield?"

Messer Dante's carriage showed very plainly that he would not yield; of
a contrary, he moved composedly a little nearer to Simone, still smiling
and stretching out his hands as he went, as if to show that he held no
weapon. "Surely I will not yield," he said; and then questioned, "But
how shall I fight, being swordless?"

Simone grinned hideously at him. "You should have remembered that," he
said, "before you chose to play hufty-dufty." Then he scowled and
pointed to the armed men about them. "Some one will lend you a sword if
you have the courage to hold it," he said, scornfully.

Once again Messer Guido intervened, eagerly, passionately. "For God's
sake, forbear," he entreated Dante, and thrusting himself against the
other. "Messer Simone," he said, "you cannot deny me if I take up this
quarrel."

My Dante laid an arresting hand upon Messer Guido's arm. "Gently, Messer
Guido," he said, "you are too good, and if I were a woman I could not
choose a nobler champion. But being no better than a man, I must even
champion myself to the best of my wit." He paused, and his eyes followed
the course of Simone's gaze and then came back to Simone. "You are a
soldier," he said; "it is your business to kill. You prize the life of
other men lightly; 'tis but a puff of your heavy breath and out goes his
candle. I am no such butcher, and though I am not unskilled in arms, we
should be ill-matched, you and I." And as he spoke he laughed softly, as
at some jest known only to himself.

Now Messer Guido, that was growing very angry, as I could see from the
way in which the color quitted his cheeks, thrust himself in front of
Dante, and he spoke to Simone boldly. "He says rightly," he cried. "A
stripling against your bulk. It were murder."

Simone always addressed Messer Guido with as much courtesy as he could
compass, for the sake of his great house and his great friends, and his
standing with the Reds, that was as high as his own with the Yellows.
"Then he should not steal roses," he answered, quietly enough. But
immediately thereafter, as if the mention of roses had stirred him to
fury, his wrath foamed over again, and, turning to Dante, he shouted,
"Give me the rose, you cowardly clerk, or I will pinch out your life
between finger and thumb!" He held out his huge hand as he spoke, and to
those who looked at it, or to me, at least, among the multitude, it
seemed easy enough for him to carry out his threat, for Messer Dante
looked so slight and spare in the front of such a ruffian.

But Messer Dante was in no ways discomposed, and he still kept smiling
while he shook his head, and he answered very quietly: "Idle giant, you
will do no such thing. For if you prize my life very little, you prize
your own life very well. Now, while I think nothing of your life, I also
think nothing of my own, and would rather end it here in this instant
than surrender this flower. Why, I would see a hundred fellows like you
dead and damned to save a single petal of it from the pollution of such
filthy fingers." He paused for a moment and paid Messer Simone the
tribute of a mocking inclination of the head. Then he spoke very clearly
and sweetly. "I hope I make myself clear to your thick head."

Simone's red face grew redder. "By Paul's jaws, I will wring your
squeaking neck!" he said, savagely, and made a move nearer to Dante.

But here Guido's paling face grew paler, and again he thrust himself
between Dante and Simone, and his sword flashed into the air. "By Paul's
jaws, you will not!" he cried; and then looking about him, he shouted,
"A Cavalcanti! a Cavalcanti!"

At that cry all those that inclined to Messer Guido, and there were many
in the place, bared their swords likewise and rallied about him in an
eager press of angry men.

When Simone saw that the swords were out, he drew his own sword and
raised it aloft and cried his cry, "A Bardi! a Bardi!"

Then the people of his following bared their weapons and gathered to his
side, and such of the spectators as took no part in the quarrel drew a
little apart, for fear they might come to harm in the brawl, but still
went not very far, so eager is the curiosity of all Florentines to see
sights. So the folk stood, two little armies of fighting men facing each
other, as Greek and Trojan faced each other long ago, and ready for
fighting, as Greek and Trojan fought, and as men always will fight with
men, for the sake of a woman. And I, with my sword drawn, being never
so intent upon battle that I have not an eye to all things about me,
could see, looking aloft, that a curtain was drawn from a window in the
great house of the Portinari, and that a woman stood by the window, and
I made sure that the woman's name was Beatrice.

But this Dante saw not and knew not, for he stood between the two
opposing forces very composedly, with the same quiet smile upon his
face, and he held up his hands toward either party as a man might do
that wished to sunder and pacify quarrelling children. "Gently, friends,
gently," he said; "there is a pleasant way to end this dilemma." Then he
turned to me, and I never saw his face serener. "Friend Lappo," he said,
"will you lend me your dice-bones a minute?"

It was characteristic of his readiness in the pinch of emergency that he
knew where to apply for what he needed, for I was at that time a most
inveterate gamester, and loved to stake my all, which for the most part
was truly little enough, upon the toss of a die; and for my greater ease
in this exercise, I ever carried the bones with me in a little inner
pocket at my breast. Now, then, for Dante's pleasure, though indeed I
did not know what he would be at, I lugged them out of their
concealment, and dropped the three, one after the other, into his open
palm, which he held to me extended there as steady as the palm of a
stone image.

Dante laughed a little softly to himself as he looked at my dice where
they lay, and indeed it was curious to see him and them in such close
companionship, for Dante had no taste for those gamblers' games that I
delighted in. Then he turned and showed the dice to Simone, who stared
at him in amazed rage, and he spoke very pleasantly and evenly as he
dandled the tools of chance. "Messer Simone," he said, "here be three
cubes of bone that shall settle our quarrel better than shearing steel.
We will throw on this ground here, you and I in turn, and he that has
the ill-fortune to make the lowest cast shall, on his honor, very
presently kill himself."

At this drolling challenge most of the spectators began to laugh, and
the laughter ran through the ranks of Cavalcanti's adherents, and even
found some echo, albeit soon stifled, among Bardi's men.

But Simone saw no laughter in the matter. "You are a fool!" he fumed. It
was plain that he felt himself to be at a disadvantage before the
gravity of Dante's disdainful courage, and that he was better with blows
than with words. "You are a fool!" he repeated.

But Dante denied him. "I am wise." Then he moved his head a little this
way and that, as if to show that he was addressing all his audience,
and, indeed, there was not a man in all that assemblage that did not
listen to him intently, Simone's own following not excepted. "Fellow
Florentines," he said, "here is a straight challenge. It equals the big
man with the little; it fills me to the giant's girth and inches. It
saves him from shame if he wins, for it were little to his credit to
kill a civilian. It denies me if I win the vainglory of overcoming a
Titan. Is not this an honest dare?"

As he finished speaking he looked about him, and saw sympathy and
approval on the faces of most. As for me, I was so taken with his
ingenuity and his insolence in thus braving the big fellow that I cried
aloud, "Well dared; well done." And Guido called out sharply, addressing
the Bardi, "Do you take him, Messer Simone? I will be surety for his
pledge."

As Messer Guido dei Cavalcanti ended there went up a great shout of
applause from the spectators, who were tickled with the thought of
witnessing so new a way of ending a quarrel. While they were clapping
their hands and laughing, a cunning, sharp-faced fellow named Maleotti,
that was one of Bardi's men, came close to his master, and spoke to him
in none so low a whisper that I could not hear his words. "Consider,
signor," he said; "this were a mad wager to accept, for the State cannot
spare you, and who can say how scraps of bone may fall? Yet, if you
refuse and force a quarrel, the Cavalcanti outnumber us." As he spoke he
indicated with quick glances of his evil eyes that there were indeed
many more in the place that seemed to side with Guido than friends to
the Bardi.

While Messer Simone, seeing this, sucked his lips like one puzzled,
Dante again addressed him in the same bantering manner. "Come," he
cried, "'tis but a toss of three ivories and the world is lighter by one
of us, and purgatory the more populous. You shall toss first or last, as
you please." As he spoke he shook the dice invitingly on his extended
palm, and laughed as he did so.

Simone answered him with a great frown and a great voice. "You should
have been a mountebank and cried cures on a booth, for your wit is as
nimble as an apothecary's flea. But if you have any man's blood in you,
you will make such friends with master sword that hereafter we may talk
to better purpose. Come, friends." So, with a scowling face, Messer
Simone jammed his sword back again into its scabbard, and he and his
fellows went away roughly, and the crowd parted very respectfully before
them.

At the wish of Messer Guido, his friends and sympathizers went their
ways; and as for the crowd of unconcerned spectators, they,
understanding that there was nothing more to stare at, went their ways
too, and in a little while the place that had been so full and busy was
empty and idle, and Guido and I were left alone with Dante.

As we stood there in silence, Madonna Vittoria came forward from her
shelter under the arcade and advanced to Dante, and addressed him. "Give
me leave," she said, "to tell you that you are a man whose love any
woman might be proud to wear. Beware of Simone dei Bardi. I know
something of him. He is neither clever enough to forget nor generous
enough to forgive. Remember, if you care to remember, that I am always
your friend."

Dante saluted her. "I thank you," he said, in a dull, tired voice.

Then Madonna Vittoria went her way over the bridge with her people after
her, and when she was gone I made bold to go up to where Dante stood
thoughtful, and clapped him on the back in very hearty commendation of
his courage and daring. "You have bubbled Simone well," I said,
joyously.

But, to my surprise, Dante turned to me with a face that was not at all
joyous. "I think he had the best of me in the end," he said, sadly. And
as he spoke he hung his head for all the world like a schoolboy that had
been reproved before his class.

Messer Guido, that was as tender to melancholy as a gentlewoman, caught
him by the hand. "Are you teased by that fellow's taunt?" he asked.

Dante sighed, as he answered: "To the quick of my heart. Will you leave
me, friends, to my thoughts?"




VI

LOVER AND LASS


I sighed in my turn to see him so perverse who had been so triumphant.
"He is as humorous as a chameleon," I protested. Then Guido and I took
Dante by the arms to lead him away, I applauding him for his cunning,
and Guido gently reproving him for his foolhardiness in getting into a
quarrel with such a man of might as Messer Simone--had got him and us
some few yards from the scene of the scuffle when Dante suddenly came to
a halt and would budge no farther. When we asked him what ailed him, he
told us that he had left his book behind him, the book that he had been
so deep in a little while ago; and for all we could say to him, he would
not be prevailed upon, but must needs return for his precious love-tale.
So he quitted us and returned on his steps, and Guido and I looked at
each other in some amusement, thinking what a strange fellow our Dante
was, that could play scholar and lover and soldier in so many breaths,
and could show so much care for some pages of written parchment. Then
Guido would have me go with him, but I was of a mind to see what Dante
would do next, and was fain to watch him. Guido disapproved of this, and
he would not share in it, saying that it was not for us to dog the heels
of a friend.

Guido went his way without me, for it seemed to me less scrupulous and
seeking only to be amused that one who had done so much in a short time
might well be counted upon to do more. I hid in the arcade, and I saw
how Dante went straight to the seat where he had left his book, and
found it still lying there, and took it up and thrust it into his bosom.
And when he had done this he turned and went like one that walked in a
dream--and I spying on him from my hiding-place--till he came to the
front of the Palace of the Portinari, and there he paused and gazed
wistfully at the gray walls. And I, concealing myself behind a
convenient pillar of the colonnade, observed him unseen, and presently
saw how the small door in the great door of the gray palace opened, and
how Madonna Beatrice came out of it, followed by two girls, her
companions. They both were pretty girls, I remember, that would have
suited my taste very pleasantly. All three maidens stood on top of the
steps looking at Dante where he stood, and Dante remained in his place
and looked up at them silently and eagerly.

Madonna Beatrice seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then, quitting
her companions, descended the steps and advanced toward Dante, who,
seeing her purpose, advanced in his turn toward her, and they met in the
middle of the now deserted square. I was very honestly--or dishonestly,
which you may please--anxious to hear what these two might say to each
other, so I lingered in my lurking-place, and there I lay at watch and
strove to listen. And because the time was very peaceful, and I very
quiet and the air very still and their young voices very clear, I could
hear much and guess more, and piecing out the certain with the probable,
record in my memory this delicate dialogue.

Madonna Beatrice spoke first, for Dante said nothing, and only gazed at
her as the devout gaze at the picture of a saint, and there was some
note of reproof in her voice as she spoke. "Messer," she said, "they
tell me that you have fought for a rose."

Then Dante shook his head, and he smiled as he answered, blithely,
"Madonna, I fought for my flag, for my honor, for the glory of the
sempiternal rose."

Beatrice looked at him with a little wonder on her sweet face. "Was it
very wise to risk a man's life for a trifle?" she asked.

Dante was silent for a short time, then he said: "There are trifles that
outweigh the world in a true balance. I would die a death for every
petal of that rose."

Beatrice began to laugh very daintily, and spread out her pretty palms.
"This Florence is a very nest of nightingales," she said, softly; and
then she added, quaintly, "You talk like a poet."

I heard Dante sigh heavily as he answered her fancy. "I would I were a
poet, for then my worship would have words which now shines dumbly in my
eyes."

Beatrice gave him a little mocking salutation. "You are very gallant,"
she said. "Farewell." There was a hint of reproof in her voice, and she
made as if to go.

But Dante stopped her. "Stay, lady, stay," he protested. "I speak with a
simple heart. I have been your servant ever since you took a rose from
my hands. I am your servant forever, now that you have given me a rose.
We are old friends, sweet lady, though we wear young faces, and friends
may speak their minds to friends."

Then Beatrice asked him, "Who are you who risked your life for my rose?"

Dante answered her: "I am named Dante Alighieri. Yesterday I was nobody.
To-day I would not change places with the Emperor, since I declare
myself your servant."

Beatrice smiled a smile of sweet content, and I could see that she was
both amused and pleased. "I am glad we are old friends," she said, "for
so it was not unmaidenly of me to speak to you, but indeed I was
grieved to think I had put you in peril. I did not think what I did when
I threw you that flower. I only felt that we were children again, you
and I. Forgive me."

"It was a happy peril," Dante declared, gladly.

Again Beatrice said him farewell and turned to go, and again Dante
stayed her, and when she had paused he looked as if he knew not what to
say; but at last he questioned, "When may we meet again?"

Beatrice answered him gravely. "Florence is not so wide a world that you
should fear to lose sight of a friend."

Once more she made as if she would join her companion maidens, but as
she did so Dante looked all about him with an air of great surprise, and
I heard him say: "How dark the air grows. I fear an eclipse."

Beatrice, pausing in her path, cried to him, marvelling, "Why, the sun
is at its brightest."

Dante shook his head. "I do not find it so when you are leaving me."

Then I think that Beatrice looked half alarmed and half diverted at the
way of Dante's speech, and I heard her say, "Is not the spring of our
friendship something too raw for such ripeness of compliment?"

Dante persisted. "I would speak simpler and straighter if I dared."

Then Beatrice shook her head and tried to wear an air of severity, but
failed because she could not help smiling. "The arrows of your wit must
not take me for their target," she said, and made a pretence to frown.

Then Dante, at a loss what to say, made the best plea he could when he
pleaded, "Pity me."

At that cry the growing gravity on the girl's face softened to her
familiar gentleness, for she was touched, as all women who are worthy of
womanhood must be touched by that divine appeal. "Are you in need of
pity?" she said, softly.

And Dante answered, instantly, "Neck-deep in need."

Then he sighed and Beatrice sighed, and she said, very kindly, "In that
case, I pity you," and made again to leave him, and again the appeal in
his eyes stayed her.

"Can you do no more than pity me?" he asked.

Beatrice was smiling now, for all she strove to be serious. "Why, you
are for a greedy garner; you want flower, fruit, and all, in a breath."

I could see Messer Dante's face suddenly stiffen into solemnity; I could
hear Messer Dante's voice, for all its youthful freshness, take upon it
the gravity of age. "For nine years, day in and day out, I have thought
of you," he sighed. "Have you ever thought of me?"

He looked steadfastly at the girl as he spoke, and if there was much of
entreaty in his question there was something of command also, as if he
chose to compel her to tell him the very truth. And the girl answered,
indeed, as if she were compelled to speak and could not deny him, and
her cheeks were as pink as the earliest roses as she answered him:
"Sometimes."

Again Dante spoke and questioned her, and again in his carriage and in
his voice there was that same note of command. "With what thoughts?"

But I could plainly see that if our Dante would seek to give orders to
the girl with an authority that was beyond his years, the girl could
meet his assumption of domination with a composure that was partly grave
and partly humorous and wholly adorable.

She nodded very pleasantly at him as she answered, "Kind thoughts for
the gentle child who gave his rose to a little girl."

I knew very well, as I leaned and listened, that the mind of Dante
leaped back on that instant to the day he had told us of so little a
while before, the day nine years ago when, as the sweet lady said, he
gave his rose to a little girl. I knew, too, that the chance meeting
with Madonna Beatrice on this fair morning must in some mighty fashion
alter the life of my friend. The fantastic love which he, a child of
nine, felt or professed to feel for the little girl of a like age was
now, through this accident, setting his soul and body on fire and
forcing him to say wild words, as a little while back it had forced him
to do wild deeds, out of the very exhilaration of madness. And Dante
spoke as all lovers speak when they wish to touch the hearts of their
ladies, only making me who was listening not a little jealous, seeing
that he spoke better than most that I knew of.

"Madonna," he said, "Madonna, the lover-poets of our city are very
prodigal of protestations--what will they not do for their lady? They
offer her the sun, moon, and stars for her playthings--and in the end
she is fortunate if she gets so much as a farthing rushlight to burn at
her shrine."

Beatrice was listening to him with the bright smile upon her face which
for me was the best part of a beauty that, if I had been in Dante's
place, I should have found a thought too seraphic and unearthly for my
fancy.

"My heart," she assured him, "would never be touched by such sounding
phrases."

Now Dante's face glowed with the fire that was in him, and his words
seemed to glow as he spoke like gold coins dropping new-moulded from the
mint. "I am no god to give you a god's gifts," he protested. "But of
what a plain man may proffer from the heart of his heart and the soul of
his soul, say, is there any gift I can give you in sign of my service?"

The bright smile on the face of Beatrice changed to a gracious air of
thoughtfulness, and I think I should have been glad had I been wooing a
woman in such fashion to have seen such a look on the face of my fair.
"Messer Dante," she said, "you have some right to be familiar with me,
for you risked your life for my rose. So I will answer your frankness
frankly. Men have tried to please me and failed, for I think I am not
easy to please greatly."

Dante stretched out both his hands to her. "Let me try to please you!"
he cried.

The girl answered him, speaking very slowly, as if she were carefully
turning her thoughts into words and weighing her words while she uttered
them. "That is in your own hands. I do not cry for the sun and stars and
the shining impossibilities. But I am a woman, and if a man did brave
deeds (and by brave deeds I do not mean risking two souls for the sake
of a rose) or good deeds (and by good deeds I do not mean the rhyming of
pretty rhymes in my honor), and did them for love of me, why, I have so
much of my grandmother Eve in me that I believe I should be pleased."

I saw Dante draw himself up as a soldier might in the ranks when he saw
his general riding by and thought that the rider's eye was upon him.
"With God's help," he vowed, "you shall hear better things of me."

There was a look of such fine kindness on Beatrice's face while he spoke
thus as made even me, that am a man of common clay, and like love as I
like wine and victuals, thrill in my hiding-place. "I hope as much," she
said, softly--"almost believe as much. But I linger too long, and my
comrades wonder. Farewell."

She gave him an enchanting salutation, and Dante bowed his head.
"Farewell, most fair lady," he murmured.

Then Beatrice moved away from him, and ascended the steps where the two
girls stood and waited for her, and she laid her white finger on the
ring of brass that governed the lock of the little door, and the little
door opened and she passed into the gray palace, she and her maids, and
to me too, as I am very sure to Dante, the world seemed in a twinkling
robbed of its sweetness. For though, as I have said, Madonna Beatrice
was never a woman for me to love, I could well believe that to the man
who loved her there could be no woman else on the whole wide earth,
which, as I think, is an uncomfortable form of loving.

When she had gone Dante stood there very silent for a while, and it may
be that I, tired of watching him, drifted into a doze, and leaned there
for a while against my sheltering pillar with closed lids, as sometimes
happens to men that are weary of waiting. If this were so, it would
explain why I did not see what seems to have happened then--or perhaps
it was because I was of a temper and composition less fine than my
friend's that I was not permitted to see such sights. But it appears, as
I learned from his lips later, that as he stood there in all the ecstacy
of his sweet intercourse with the well-beloved, the painted image of the
God of Love that stood beside the bridge, above the fountain, came to
life again, and moved and came in front of Dante and looked upon him
very searchingly. The God of Love lifted the hand that carried his
fateful arrow and pointed with the dart toward the gray palace, and it
spoke to Dante in a voice of command, and said, "Behold thy heart." Then
Dante felt no fear such as he had felt at the first appearance of the
God of Love, but only an almost intolerable sense of joy at the glory
and the beauty and the divinity of true and noble love. And he said to
himself, as if he whispered a prayer, "O Blessed Beatrice," and
therewith the figure of the God of Love departed back to its familiar
place.

If I had, indeed, been dozing, my sleep lasted no longer than this, and
I was conscious again, and saw Dante, and I leaped from my hiding-place
and ran to where Dante stood alone in the square, with his hands against
his face. I called to him, as I came up, "Dante, are you drowned in a
wonder?" and at the sound of my voice Dante plucked the fingers from
his face and stared at me vacantly, as if he did not know me. This gaze
of ignorance lasted, it may be, for the better part of a minute.

Then Dante, seeming to recognize me, all of a sudden drew me toward him
and spoke as a man speaks that tells strange truths truly. "Friend," he
said, "you are well met, for you see me now as I am who will never see
me again as I was. I am become a man, for I love God's loveliest woman.
Enough of nobility in name; I mean to prove nobility in deed. Say to my
friends that Dante of the Alighieri, a Florentine, and a lover, devotes
himself for love's sake to the service of his city."

And when he had spoken he stood very still with his hands clasped before
him, and I, because it is my way to laugh at all things, laughed at him,
and cried out: "Holy Saint Plato, what a hot change of a cold heart!
Bring bell, book, and candle, for Jack Idle is dead and Adam Active is
his heir."

But Dante turned his face to me, and his eyes were shining very bright,
and he looked younger than his youth, and he spoke to me not as if he
were chiding my mirth, but as if he were telling me a piece of welcome
news, and he said, very gently, "Here beginneth the New Life."




VII

CONCERNING POETRY


Now you must know that after that whimsical encounter of wit between
Dante and Simone, which I have already narrated, Messer Dante seemed to
change his mood again, as he had changed his mood oft-time before.
Messer Brunetto Latini saw much less of his promising pupil, and a
certain old soldier that was great at sword-play much more, and there
was less in Dante's life of the ancient philosophies and more of the
modern chivalries. I presently found out that Messer Dante, having taken
much to heart that gibing defiance of Simone of the Bardi, had set
himself, with that stubborn resolution which characterized all his
purposes, to making himself a master of the sword. Of this, indeed, he
said nothing to me or other man, but Florence, for all that it is so
great and famous a city, is none so large that a man can easily hide his
business there from the eyes of those that have a mind to find out that
business. So I learned that Dante, who had been, as I told you before,
no more than a passable master of the weapon, now set himself to gain
supremacy over it. Day after day, through long hours, Dante labored at
his appointed task, bracing his sinews, strengthening his muscles,
steadying his eye, doing, in a word, all that a spare and studious youth
must do who would turn himself into a strong and skilful soldier. And
because whatever Dante set head and heart and hand to he was like to
accomplish, I learned later what I guessed from the beginning--that his
patience had its reward.

By reason of his white-hot zeal and tireless determination, Dante gained
his desired end sooner than many a one whom nature had better moulded
for the purpose. And being of a generous eagerness to learn, he did not
content himself with mastering alone the more skilled usage of the
sword, but made his earnest study of the carriage and command of other
weapons, and he applied himself, besides, to the investigation of the
theory and practice of war as it is waged between great cities and great
states, and to the history of military affairs as they are set forth and
expounded in the lives of famous captains, such as Alexander, and Cæsar,
and their like. Had he been in expectation of sudden elevation to the
headship of the Republic, he could not have toiled more furiously, nor
more wisely devoured a week's lesson in a day, a month's lesson in a
week, a year's lesson in a month, with all the splendid madness of
desireful youth.

But the marvel of it all was that he did not suffer these studies,
arduous as they were, to eat up his time and his mind, but he kept store
of both to spare for yet another kind of enterprise no less exacting and
momentous, albeit to my mind infinitely more interesting. I will freely
admit that I was never other than an indifferent soldier. I did my part
when the time came, as I am glad to remember, not without sufficient
courage if wholly without distinction, but there was ever more pleasure
for me in the balancing of a rhyme than in the handling of a pike, and I
would liefer have been Catullus than Cæsar any day of the week. So the
work that Dante did in his little leisure from application to arms is
the work that wonders me and delights me, and that fills my memory, as I
think of it, with exquisite melodies.

It was about this time that sundry poets of the city, of whom let us say
that Messer Guido Cavalcanti was the greatest and your poor servant the
least, began to receive certain gifts of verses very clearly writ on
fair skins of parchment, which gave them a great pleasure and threw them
into a great amazement. For it was very plain that the writer of these
verses was one in whose ear the god Apollo whispered, was one that knew,
as it seemed, better than the best of us, how to wed the warmest
thoughts of the heart to the most exquisite music of flowing words.
These verses, that were for the most part sonnets and longer songs,
were all dedicated to the service of love and the praise of a nameless
lady, and they were all written in that common speech which such as I
talked to the men and women about me, so that there was no man nor woman
in the streets but could understand their meaning if once they heard
them spoken--a fact which I understand gave great grief to Messer
Brunetto Latini when some of these honey-sweet verses of the unknown
were laid before him.

To Messer Brunetto's eyes and to Messer Brunetto's ears and to Messer
Brunetto's understanding there was but one language in the world that
was fit for the utterances and the delectation of scholars, and that
language, of course, was the language which he wrote so well--the Latin
of old-time Rome. If a man must take the love-sickness, so Messer
Brunetto argued, and must needs express the perfidious folly in words,
what better vehicle could he have for his salacious fancy than the forms
and modes and moods which contented the amorous Ovidius, and the
sprightly Tibullus, and the hot-headed, hot-hearted Catullus, and the
tuneful Petronius, and so on, to much the same purpose, through a string
of ancient amorists? But we that were younger than Messer Brunetto, and
simpler, and certainly more ignorant, we found a great pleasure in these
verses that were so easy to understand as to their language, if their
meaning was sometimes a thought mystical and cryptic.

The fame of these verses spread widely, because no man of us that
received a copy kept the donation to himself, but made haste to place
abroad the message that had been sent to him. So that in a little while
all Florence that had any care for the Graces was murmuring these
verses, and wondering who it was that wrote them, and why it was that he
wrote. It seems to me strange now, looking back on all these matters
through the lapse of years, and through a mist of sad and happy
memories, that I was not wise enough to guess at once who the man must
be that made these miraculous stanzas. I can only plead in my own excuse
that I did not live a generation later than my day, and that I had no
means of divining that a work-a-day friend possessed immortal qualities.
Everybody now in this late evening knows who that poet was, and loves
him. I knew and loved him then, when I had no thought that he was a
poet. Even if it had been given me to make a wild guess at the
authorship of these poems, and my guess had chanced all unwitting to be
right, as would have been thereafter proved, I should have dismissed it
from my fancy. For I conceived that my friend was so busy upon that new
red-hot business of his of fitting himself to be a soldier and use arms,
and answer the taunt of Simone dei Bardi, that he could have no time,
even if he had the desire, of which, as far as I was aware till then,
he had shown no sign, to try his skill on the strings of the muses. You
may be pleased here to remind me of the discourse between Messer
Brunetto Latini and Dante, which I strove to overhear on that May
morning in the Piazza Santa Felicita, to which I will make bold to
answer that I did not truly overhear much at the time, and that the
substance of what I set down was garnered later, both from Dante and
from Messer Brunetto. But even if I had caught sound of those poetical
aspirations of Dante's, I doubt if they would have stuck in my memory.

I suppose it was not for such an idle fellow as I, to whom to do nothing
was ever better than to do--I speak, of course, of any measure of
painful labor, and not of such pleasing pastime as eating or drinking or
loving--to guess how much a great brain and a great heart and a great
purpose could crowd into the narrow compass of a little life. In the
mean time, as I say, these songs and sonnets were blown abroad all over
Florence, and men whispered them to maids, and the men wondered who
wrote the rhymes and the maids wondered for whom they were written.

They would come to us, these rhymes, curiously enough. One or other of
us would find some evening, on his return to his lodging, a scroll of
parchment lying on his table, and on this scroll of parchment some new
verses, and in the corner of the parchment the words in the Latin
tongue, "Take up, read, bear on." And he of us that found himself so
favored, having eagerly taken up and no less eagerly read, would hurry
to the nearest of his comrades and read the new gift to him, delighted,
who would busy himself at once to make a fair copy before speeding the
verses to another. So their fame spread, and so the copies multiplied,
till there was never a musical youth in Florence that did not know the
better part of them by heart; and still, for all this publicity, there
was no man could say who wrote the rhymes, nor who was the lady they
honored. I think and believe, indeed, there were many in Florence who
would gladly have declared themselves the author, but dared not for fear
of detection, and who contented themselves by slight hints and
suggestions and innuendoes, which earned them, for a time, a brief
measure of interest, soon to be dissipated by the manifest certainty of
their incapacity.

And the first of all these sonnets was that which is now as familiar as
honey on the lips of every lover of suave songs--I mean that sonnet
which begins with the words:

     "To every prisoned soul and gentle heart--"

To this sonnet it pleased many of our poets of the city to write their
replies, though they knew not then to whom they were replying, and
Messer Guido Cavalcanti wrote his famous sonnet, the one that begins:

     "Unto my thinking thou beheldst all worth--"

Now I, being fired by the same spirit of rhyming that was abroad, but
being of a different temper from the most of my fellows, took it upon me
to pretend a resentment of all this beautiful talk of Love and My Lady.
So I wrote a sonnet, and here it is, urging the advantages of a
plurality in love-affairs:

     "Give me a jolly girl, or two, or three--
     The more the merrier for my weathercock whim;
     And one shall be like Juno, large of limb
     And large of heart; and Venus one shall be,
     Golden, with eyes like the capricious sea;
     And my third sweetheart, Dian, shall be slim
     With a boy's slimness, flanks and bosom trim,
     The green, sharp apple of the ancient tree.
     With such a trinity to please each mood
     I should not find a summer day too long,
     With blood of purple grapes to fire my blood,
     And for my soul some thicket-haunting song
     Of Pan and naughty nymphs, and all the throng
     Of light o' loves and wantons since the Flood."

I showed this sonnet to Messer Guido, who laughed a little, and said
that I might be the laureate of the tavern and the brothel, but that
this new and nameless singer was a man of another metal, whom I could
never understand. Whereat I laughed, too; but being none the less a
little piqued, as I think, I made it a point thereafter, whenever Guido
had one of these new poems come to him, to answer it with some poem of
my own, cast in a similar form to that chosen by the unknown. But my
verses were always written in praise of the simple and straightforward
pleasures of sensible men, to whom all this talk about the God of Love
and about some single exalted lady seems strangely away from the mark of
wise living. For assuredly if it be a pleasant thing to love one woman,
it is twenty times as pleasant to love twenty. But I will not give you
all of these poems, nor perhaps any more, for you can read them for
yourselves, if you wish to, in my writings.

Now in a little while this same unknown poet was pleased to put abroad a
certain ballad of his that was ostensibly given over to the praise of
certain lovely ladies of our city. Florence was always a very paradise
of fair women. An inflammable fellow like myself could not walk the
length of a single street without running the risk of half a dozen
heartaches, and never was traveller that came and went but was loud in
his laudations of the loveliness of Florence feminine. A poet,
therefore, could scarcely have a more alluring theme or a livelier or
more likable, and the fact that the mysterious singer had taken such a
subject for his inspiration was rightly regarded as another instance of
his exceeding good sense. It was a very beautiful ballad, fully worthy
of its honorable subject, and it paid many compliments of an exquisite
felicity to many ladies that were indicated plainly enough by some play
upon a name or some praise of an attribute. But it was, or might have
been, plain enough to all that read it that this poem was written for no
other purpose than to bring in by a side wind, as it were, the praise of
a lady that was left nameless, but that he who wrote declared to be the
loveliest lady in that noble city of lovely ladies. This ballad seemed
to be unfinished, for in its last stanza the writer promised to utter
yet more words on this so favorable theme. Now when I had heard of this
poem and before I had read it--for Guido, to whom the first copy was
given, loved it so much and lingered so long upon its lines that he kept
it an unconscionable time from his fellows--I bethought me that I, too,
would write me a set of verses on the brave and fair ladies of Florence,
and that in doing so I could bring in the name of the girl of my heart.

It was easy enough for me to write a passable ring of rhymes that should
introduce with all due form and honor the names of those ladies that all
in that time agreed to be most eminent for their beauty and gentleness
in the beautiful and gentle city. And so I got a good way upon my work
with very little trouble indeed, for, as I have said, rhymes always came
easy to me and I loved to juggle with colored words. My difficulty came
with the moment when I had to decide upon the introduction of my own
heart's desire.

Now about this time of the year when I began my ballad, I was myself
very plenteously and merrily in love with a certain lady whose name I
will here set down as Ippolita, for that was what I called her, seeing
in her a kind of amazonian carriage, though that was not the name she
was known by among the men and the women, her neighbors. She had dark
eyes whose brightness seemed to widen and deepen as you kissed her
lips--and, indeed, the child loved to be kissed exceedingly, for all her
quaint air of woman-warrior--and she had dark hair that when you, being
permitted to play her lover, uncoiled it, rolled down like a great mane
to her haunches, and her face, both by its paleness and by the
perfection of its featuring, seemed to vie with those images of Greece
by which the wise set such store. To judge by the serenity of her
expression, the suavity of her glances, you would have sworn by all the
saints that here if ever was an angel, one that would carry the calm of
Diana into every action of life, and challenge passion with a chastity
that was never to be gainsaid. But he that ever held her in his arms
found that the so-seeming ice was fire, under those snows lava bubbled,
and she that might have passed for a priestess of Astarte quivered with
frenzy under the dominion of Eros. To speak only for myself, I found her
a very phoenix of sweethearts.

She was married to a tedious old Mumpsiman that kept himself and her in
little ease by plying the trade of a horse-leech, which trade, for the
girl's felicity, held him much abroad, and gave her occasion, seldom by
her neglected, to prove to her intimate of the hour that there can be
fire without smoke. Now I, being somewhat top-heavy at this season with
the wine of so fair a lady's favors, thought that I might, with no small
advantage to myself and no small satisfaction to my mistress, set me to
doing her honor with some such tuneful words as the unknown singer was
blowing with such sweet breath about Florence in praise of his lady. For
it is cheaper to please a woman with a sonnet than with a jewel, and as
my Ippolita was not avaricious, I was blithe to oblige her in golden
numbers in lieu of golden pieces.

Wherefore I set my wits to work one morning after an evening of delight,
and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the
rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had
but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile
crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather
than my legal fourteen lines to make use of the half of them. I tell you
I was in the very ecstasy of composition that lasted me for the better
part of a fortnight. But by the time that I had come to this point the
pretty Ippolita, whose name I had intended to place there, was no longer
the moment's idol of my soul, and between the two dainty girls that had
succeeded her I sat for a long while embarrassed, like the schoolman's
ass between the two bundles of hay, not knowing, as it were, at which to
bite.

At last I bethought me that the best way out of my trouble was to set
down the names of all the sweet women whom I loved or had loved, and to
let those others and more famous, of whom I knew nothing save by sight
or renown, stand to one side. So it came to pass that this poem of mine
proved, at the last, more like an amorous calendar of my own life than a
hymn in praise of the famous beauties of Florence. For with famous
beauties I have never at any time had much to do. It has always been my
desire to find my beauties for myself, and I have ever found that there
is a greater reward in the discovery of some pretty maid and assuring
her that she is lovelier than Helen of Troy or Semiramis or Cleopatra,
than in the paying of one's addresses to some publicly acclaimed
loveliness.

By the time my tale of verses was complete, it was as different as it
might be from that which it set itself, I will not say to rival, but to
parody, for it contained few names of great ladies that were upon the
lips of every Florentine, but sang the praises of unknown witches and
minxes that were at the time of writing, or had been, very dear to me.
If my song was not so fine a piece of work as that of Messer Dante,
though Messer Dante was at that time only in the earlier flights of his
efforts, and his pinions were, as yet, unfamiliar to the poet's ether,
it was perhaps as true a picture, after its fashion, of a lover's heart.
After all, it must be remembered that there are many kinds of lovers'
hearts, and that those who can understand the "New Life" of Messer
Dante's are very few, and fewer still those that can live that life. But
I here protest very solemnly that it was with no thought of scoff or
mockery that I made my ballad, but just for the sake of saying, in my
way, the things I thought about the pretty women that pleased me and
teased me, and made life so gay and fragrant and variegated in those
far-away, dearly remembered, and no doubt much-to-be-deplored days.

It was the dreaming of this ballad of mine that led me to think of Monna
Vittoria, whom you will remember if you bear in mind the beginning of
this, my history, the lady that Messer Simone of the Bardi was
whimsically pledged to wed if he failed to win a certain wager that I
trust you have not forgotten. And thinking of Monna Vittoria led, in due
time, to a meeting with Monna Vittoria that was not without
consequences.

It is not incurious, when you come to reflect upon it, how potent the
influence of such a woman as Vittoria may be upon the lives of those
that would seem never destined by Heaven to come in her way. My Dante
was never in those days a wooer of such ladies. As to certain things
that are said of him later, in the hours of his despair, when the world
seemed no better than an empty shell, I shall have somewhat to say,
perhaps, by-and-by, for there is a matter that has led to not a little
misunderstanding of the character of my friend. As for Madonna Beatrice,
she that was such a flower in a guarded garden, why, you would have said
it was little less than incredible that the clear course of her simple
life could be crossed by the summer lightning of Madonna Vittoria's
brilliant, fitful existence. Yet, nevertheless, from first to last,
Madonna Vittoria was of the utmost moment in the lives of this golden
lass and lad, and this much must be admitted in all honesty: that she
never did, or at least never sought to do, other than good to either of
them. I should not like to say that she would have troubled at all about
them or their welfare if it had not served her turn to do so. But
whatever the reasons for her deeds, let us be grateful that their
results were not malefic to those whose interests concern us most. If
Messer Simone had never made his brutal boast, Madonna Vittoria would
never have made her wild wager. But having made it, she was eager to win
it at all costs, and it was her determination that Simone of the Bardi
should never wed with Beatrice of the Portinari, that led, logically
enough if you do but consider it aright, to the many strange events
which it is my business to narrate.




VIII

MONNA VITTORIA SENDS ME A MESSAGE


Monna Vittoria dwelt in the pleasantest part of the country outside the
city, in a quarter where there were many gardens and much thickness of
trees and greenness of grass and coloring of bright flowers--all
pleasing things, that made an agreeable background to her beauty when
she went abroad in her litter. For, indeed, she was a comely creature,
and one that painters would pause to look at and to praise, as well as
others that eyed her more carnally minded. Now I myself had but a slight
acquaintance, albeit a pleasant one, with Vittoria. This was partly
because my purse was but leanly provided, and partly because I had ever
in mind with regard to such creatures the wise saying of the Athenian
concerning the girl Lais, that it was not worth while to spend a fortune
to gain a regret. Moreover, I was too much occupied with my own very
agreeable love-affairs, that were blended with poetry and dreams and
such like sweetnesses, as well as with reality, to make me feel any wish
for more extravagant alliances. But I had it in my mind now that it
might be a good thing for me, in the interests of my poem in praise of
fair Florentines, to pay this lady a visit, and I hoped, being a poet,
though I trust not over puffed up with my own pride of importance, and
knowing that she was always fain to be regarded as a patroness of the
arts, that I might, without much difficulty, gain access to her.

So I spent a careless morning on a hillside beyond the city in the
excellent company of a flask of wine and a handful of bread and cheese,
and there I sprawled upon my back among the daisies and munched and
sipped, and listened to the bees, and looked upon the brown roofs of
beautiful Florence, and was very well content. And when I had stayed my
stomach and flung the crumbs to the birds, and had emptied the better
part of my flagon, I stretched myself under a tree like a man in a doze.
I was not dozing, however, for the flowers and the verdure about me, and
the birds that piped overhead, and the booming bees, and the strong
sunlight on the grass, and the glimpses of blue sky through the
branches, were all busying themselves for me in weaving the web of the
poem I wanted to carry home with me.

As I shot the bright verses this way and that way, and caught with a
childish pleasure at the shining rhymes as a child will catch at some
glittering toy, I had perforce to smile as I reflected on what a
different business mine was to that of the unknown singer of those
days. For those poems of his that he had sent to Guido and to others
were exceeding beautiful, and full of a very noble and golden
exaltation. I think if the angels in heaven were ever to make love to
one another they would choose for their purpose some such perfection of
speech as Dante--for I knew the singer to be Dante a little later--found
for his sonnets and canzone. For myself, I frankly admit, being an
honest man, that I could not write such sonnets even if I had my Dante's
command of speech, to which Heaven forbid that I should ever pretend.
Those rhymes of his, for all their loveliness--and when I say that they
were lovely enough to be worthy of the lady to whom they were addressed,
I give them the highest praise and the praise that Dante would most have
cared to accept--were too ethereal for my work-a-day humors. I liked
better to write verses to the laughing, facile lasses with whom my way
of life was cast--jolly girls who would kiss to-day and sigh to-morrow,
and forget all about you the third day if needs were, and whom it was as
easy for their lover to forget, so far as any sense of pain lay in the
recollection of their graces. And I would even rather have the jolly job
I was engaged on at that moment of some ripe, rich-colored verses for
Vittoria, for I could, in writing them, be as human as I pleased and
frankly of the earth earthly, and I needed to approach my quarry with
no tributes pilfered from the armory of heaven. I could praise her
beauty with the tongue of men, and leave the tongue of angels out of the
question; and if my muse were pleased here and there to take a wanton
flutter, I knew I could give decorum the go-by with a light heart.

So I wallowed at my ease in the grasses and tossed verses as a juggler
tosses his balls, and watched them glitter and wink as they rose and
fell, and at last I shaped to my own satisfaction what I believed to be
an exceedingly pleasant set of verses that needed no more than to be
engrossed on a fair piece of sheepskin and tied with a bright ribbon and
sent to the exquisite frailty. And all these things I did in due course,
after the proper period of polishing and amending and straightening out,
until, as I think, there never was a set of rhymes more carefully
fathered and mothered into the world. And here is the sonnet:

     "There is a lady living in this place
     That wears the radiant name of Victory;
     And we that love would bid her wingless be,
     Like the Athenian image, lest her grace,
     Lifting a siren's-tinted pinions, trace
     Its glittering course across the Tyrrhene sea
     To some more favored Cyprian sanctuary,
     Leaving us lonely, longing for her face.
     O daughter of the gods, though lovelier lands,
     If such there be, entreat you, do not hear
     Their whispering voices, heed their beckoning hands;
     Have only eye for Florence, only ear
     For Florentine adorers, while their cheer
     Between your fingers spills its golden sands."

Now this sonnet may be divided into four parts. In the first part, I
make my statement that there is a lady dwelling in Florence whose name
is Vittoria. In the second part, I allow my fancy to play lightly with
the suggestions this name arouses in me, and I make allusion very
felicitously to the famous statue of the Wingless Victory, which the
Athenians honored in Athens so very specially in that, being wingless,
it could not fly away from the city. In the third part, I express my
alarm lest her loveliness should spread its vans in flight and leave us
lonely. In the fourth, I entreat her to pay no heed to the solicitations
of others, but to remain always loyal to her Florentine lovers so long
as they can give her gifts. The second part begins here: "And we that
love." The third begins, "Lest her grace." The fourth part begins, "O
daughter of the gods."

That simile of the Wingless Victory tickled me so mightily that I was in
a very good conceit with myself, and if I read over my precious sonnet
once, I suppose I read it over a score of times; and even now, at this
distance of days, I am inclined to pat myself upon the back and to call
myself ear-pleasing names for the sake of my handiwork. Of course I am
ready to admit quite frankly that most, if not all, of Dante's sonnets
are better, taking them all round, than my modest enterprises. But there
is room, as I hope, for many kinds of music-makers in the fields about
Parnassus. I know Messer Guido spoke very pleasantly of my sonnets, and
so I make no doubt would Dante have, but somehow or other I never showed
them to him.

Now, when I had scrolled my rhymes precisely, I had them dispatched to
Monna Vittoria by a sure hand, and, as is my way, having done what I had
to do, thought no more about the matter for the time being. It was ever
a habit of mine not merely to let the dead day bury its dead, but to let
the dead hour, and, if possible, the dead minute and dead second bury
their dead, and to think no more upon any matter than is essential. I
think the sum of all wise living is to be merry as often as one can, and
sad as seldom as one can, and never to fret over what is unavoidable, or
to be pensive over what is past, but to be wise for the time. So I
remember that days not a few drifted by after I had sent my rhymes and
my request to Monna Vittoria, and I was very busy just then paying my
court to three of the prettiest girls I had ever known, and I almost
forgot my poem and Monna Vittoria altogether.

But I recall a grayish morning along Arno and a meeting with Messer
Guido, and his taking me on one side and standing under an archway while
he read me a sonnet that the unknown poet had composed in illustration
of his passion for his nameless lady, and had sent to Messer Guido. It
was a very beautiful sonnet, as I remember, and I recall very keenly
wishing for an instant that I could write such words and, above all,
that I could think such thoughts. I think I have already set it down
that love has always been a very practical business with me. If one girl
is not at hand, another will serve, and the moon-flower, sunflower
manner of worship was never my way. But if one must love like that,
making love rather a candle on God's altar than a torch in Venus her
temple, there is no man ever since the world began, nor will, I think,
ever be till the world shall end, to do so better than Messer Dante.
When I had done reading the sonnet, and had parted from friend Guido, I
found myself in the mood that this then unknown poet's verses always
swung me into, of wonder and trouble, as of one who, having drunk
over-much of a heady and insidious wine, finds himself thinking
unfamiliar thoughts and seeing familiar things unfamiliarly. While I was
thus mazed and arguing with myself as to whether I were right and this
poet wrong or this poet right and I wrong in our view of love and women.
I was accosted in the plain highway by a dapper little brat of a page
that wore a very flamboyant livery, and that carried a letter in his
hand. And the page questioned me with a grin and asked me if I were
Messer Lappo Lappi, and I, being so bewildered with the burden of my
warring thoughts, was half of a mind to answer that I was no such man,
but luckily recalled myself and walked the sober earth again soberly. I
assured him that I was none other than poor Lappo Lappi, and I pinched a
silver coin from my pocket and gave it to him, and he handed me the
missive and grinned again, and whistled and slipped away from me along
the street, a diminished imp of twinkling gilt. And I opened the letter
then and there, and read in it that Monna Vittoria very gracefully gave
me her duty, and in all humility thanked me for my verses--Lord, as if
that ample baggage could ever be humble!--and would be flattered beyond
praise if my dignity would honor her with my presence on such a day at
such an hour. And I was very well pleased with this missive, and was
very careful to obey its commands.

The house where Monna Vittoria dwelt was a marvel of beauty, like its
mistress--a fair frame for a fair portrait. It seemed to have laid all
the kingdoms of earth under tribute, for, indeed, the lady's friends
were mainly men of wealth, cardinals and princes and great captains,
that were ever ready to give her the best they had to give for the
honor of her acquaintance. Her rooms were rich with statues of marble
and statues of bronze, and figures in ivory and figures in silver, and
with gold vessels, and cabinets of ebony and other costly woods; and
pictures by Byzantine painters hung upon her walls, and her rooms were
rich with all manner of costly stuffs and furs. He that was favored to
have audience with Monna Vittoria went to her as through a dream of
loveliness, marvelling at the many splendid things that surrounded her:
at the fountain in her court-yard, where the goldfish gambolled, and
where a Triton that came from an old Roman villa spouted; at her
corridors, lined with delicately tinted majolica that seemed cool and
clean as ice in those summer heats; at her antechambers, that glowed
with color and swooned with sweet odors; and, finally, at her own
apartments, where she that was lady of all this beauty seemed so much
more beautiful than it all.

Madonna Vittoria would have looked queenly in a cottage; in the midst of
her gorgeous surroundings she showed more than imperial, and she knew
the value of such trappings and made the most of them to dazzle her
admirers, for her admirers, as I have said, were all great lords that
were used to handsome dwellings and sumptuous appointments and costly
adornings, but there was never one of them that seemed to dwell so
splendidly as Monna Vittoria.

Now I, that came to her with nothing save such credit as I might hope to
have for the sake of my verses, could look at all this magnificence with
an indifferent eye. Yet I will confess that as I moved through so much
sumptuousness, and breathed such strangely scented air, I was stirred
all of a sudden with strange and base envy of those great personages for
whom this brave show was spread, and found myself wishing unwittingly
that I were some great prince of the Church or adventurous
free-companion who might not, indeed, command--for there were none who
could do that--but hope for the lady's kindness. Although I assured
myself lustily that a poet was as good as a prince, in my heart, and in
the presence of all this luxury, I knew very dismally that it was not
so, and that Monna Vittoria would never be persuaded to think so. As I
have already said, I had no great yearning for these magnificent
mercenaries of the hosts of Love, for these bejewelled amazons that
seemed made merely to prove to man that he is no better than an
unutterable ass. My pulses never thrilled tumultuously after her kind,
and in the free air of the fields I would not have changed one of my
pretty sweethearts against Monna Vittoria. But somehow in that fantastic
palace of hers, with its enchanted atmosphere and its opulent
surroundings, my cool reason of the meadows and the open air seemed at a
loss, and I found myself ready, as it were, to surrender to Circe like
any hog pig of them all.

If this were the time and the place, I should like to try to find out,
by the light of a dry logic, and with the aid of a cold process of
analysis, why these Timandras and Phrynes have so much power over men.
Perhaps, as I am speaking of Monna Vittoria, I should add the Aspasias
to my short catalogue of she-gallants, for Vittoria was a woman well
accomplished in the arts, well-lettered, speaking several tongues with
ease, well-read, too, and one that could talk to her lovers, when they
had the time or the inclination for talking, of the ancient authors of
Rome, and of Greece, too, for that matter--did I not say her mother was
a Greek?--and could say you or sing you the stanzas of mellifluous
poets, most ravishingly to the ear. She knew all the verses of Guido
Guinicelli by root of heart, and to hear her repeat that poem of his
beginning,

     "Love ever dwells within the gentle heart,"

what time she touched a lute to soft notes of complaining and praise and
patience and desire, was to make, for the moment, even the most obdurate
understand her charm. But if I at all seem to disfavor her, it may be
because she was too costly a toy for such as I, save, indeed, when she
condescended to do a grace, for kindness' sake, to one whose revenues
were of small estate. It is plain that such ladies have their
fascination, and in a measure I admit it, but, day in and day out, I
prefer my jolly dollimops. This has ever been my opinion and always will
be, and I think those are the likelier to go happy that think like me.




IX

MADONNA VITTORIA SOUNDS A WARNING


Madonna Vittoria received me so very graciously that for a while I began
to think no little good of myself, and to reconsider my latest opinion
as to the value of poets and poetry in the eyes of such ladies. But this
mood of self-esteem was not fated to be of long duration. After some
gracious words of praise for my verses, which made me pleased to find
her so wise in judgment, she came very swiftly to the purpose for which
she had summoned me, and that purpose was not at all to share in the
delight of my society.

"Are you not a friend," she said, very gravely, "of young Dante of the
Alighieri?"

I made answer that for my own poor part I counted myself his very dear
and devoted friend, and that I had reason to believe that he held me in
some affection. I was not a little surprised at this sudden introduction
of Messer Dante into our conversation, and began to wonder if by any
chance Monna Vittoria had taken a fancy to him. Such women have such
whims at times. However, I was not long left in doubt as to her meaning.


"If you are a true friend to him," she said, "you would do well to
counsel him to go warily and to have a care of Messer Simone of the
Bardi, for I am very sure that he means to do him a mischief when time
shall serve."

Now I had seen nothing of Dante since that day of the little bicker with
Simone, long weeks earlier, but as I had heard by chance that he was
busy with the practice of sword-craft, I took it for granted that he was
thus keeping his promise to a certain lady, and was by no means
distressed at his absence. As for Messer Simone, he went his ways in
Florence as truculently as ever, and I hoped he would be willing to let
bygones be bygones.

"Does he still bear such a grudge for a single rose-blossom?" I asked.
And it seemed to me that it was scarcely in reason to be so pettily
revengeful toward a youth that had carried himself so valiantly and so
cunningly in the countenance of a great danger.

Monna Vittoria answered me very swiftly and decidedly. "Messer Simone
has a little mind in his big body, and little minds cling to trifles.
But it is not the matter of the rose alone that chokes him, but chiefly
the matter of the poems."

I stared at Monna Vittoria with round eyes of wonder. "What poems?" I
asked; for, indeed, I did not understand her drift.

She frowned a little in impatience at my slowness. "Why, surely," she
said, "those poems that Messer Dante has written in praise of Beatrice
of the Portinari, and in declaration of his service to her. Have you not
seen them? Have you not heard of them? Do you not, who are his friend,
know that they were written by young Dante?"

Now, indeed, I knew nothing of the kind, and I could not, in reviewing
the matter, blame myself very greatly for my lack of knowledge. Who
could guess that a scholarly youth who was now very suddenly and wholly,
as I had heard, addicted to martial exercises, should, in a twinkling
and without the least warning, prove the peer of the practised poets of
Florence? Nor was there in the poems that I had seen any plain hint
given that the lady they praised was Madonna Beatrice.

"Are you very sure?" I asked. And yet even as I asked I felt that it
must be so, and that I ought, by rights, to have known it before, for
all that it was so very surprising. For when a man is in love and has
anything of the poet in him, that poet is like to leap into life fully
armed with equipment of songs and sonnets, as Minerva, on a memorable
occasion, made her all-armored ascent from the riven brows of Jove.

The lady was very scornful of my thick-headedness, and was at no pains
to conceal her scorn, for all that I had written her so honorable a copy
of verses.

"Am I sure? How could I be other than sure? Why, on that day when
Madonna Beatrice flung your Dante the rose from her nosegay, I knew by
the look in the lad's face that he no less than worshipped her. Was I
not standing in the press? Did I not see all, even to the humiliation of
Simone? It needed no very keen vision to divine the beginning of many
things, love and hate and grave adventures. So when a new and nameless
poet filled the air of Florence with his sweetness it did not take me
long to spell the letters of his name."

I felt, as I listened, very sure that it ought not to have taken me long
either, and the thought made me penitent, and I was about to attempt
apologies for my folly when Madonna Vittoria cut me short with new
words.

"It mattered little," she went on, "for me to guess the secret of the
new poet's mystery, but it mattered much that Simone should guess it.
Yet he did guess it. For my Simone, that should be and shall be mine,
though he knows nothing and cares nothing for poetry, guessed with the
crude instinct of brutish jealousy the authorship that has puzzled
Florence."

I felt and looked disturbed at these tidings, and I besought Monna
Vittoria to give me the aid of her counsel in this business, as to what
were best to do and what not to do. And Madonna Vittoria very earnestly
warned me not to make light of Messer Simone's anger, nor to doubt that
my Dante was in danger.

"It were very well," she said, after a few moments of silent
thoughtfulness, "if Messer Dante could be persuaded to pay some kind of
public addresses to some other lady, so as to divert the suspicions of
Messer Simone. Let him show me some attention; let him haunt my house
awhile. Messer Simone will not be jealous of me, now that he is in this
marry mood of his."

I have sometimes wondered since if Madonna Vittoria, in her willingness
to help Dante, was not also more than a little willing to please herself
with the society of one that could write such incomparable love-verses.
Whatever the reason for it might be, I found her idea ingenious and
commended it heartily, but Madonna Vittoria, that seemed indifferent to
my approval, interrupted the full flood of my eloquence with a lifted
hand and lifted eyebrows.

"I know your Dante too well," she said, "though I know him but little,
to think that he will be persuaded to any course in order to avoid the
anger of Messer Simone."

I knew that this was true as soon as Madonna Vittoria had said it, and I
admired the insight of women by which they are so skilled to distinguish
one man from another, even when they have seen very little of the man
that happens to interest them. I may honestly confess that if the case
had been my case, I would cheerfully have availed myself of Monna
Vittoria's suggestion and seemed to woo her--though, indeed, I could
have done it very readily with no seeming in the matter--that I might
avoid the inimical suspicions of Messer Simone or his like. Not, you
must understand, that in the heart of my heart I was so sore afraid of
Messer Simone or of another man as to descend to any baseness to avoid
his rage, but just that there was in me the mischievous spirit of
intrigue which ever takes delight in disguisings and concealments and
mysteries of all kinds. But I knew when Madonna Vittoria had said it,
and might have known before Madonna Vittoria had said it, if I had
reflected for an instant, that my Dante was not of this inclination and
must walk his straight path steadfastly. Wherefore, I felt at a loss and
looked it, staring at Monna Vittoria.

"Messer Dante," she went on, "must do this thing that I would have him
do, not for any care or safety of his own, but for the sake and for the
safety and the ease and peace of mind of Madonna Beatrice. If it gets to
be blown about the city that the lad Dante of the Alighieri is madly in
love with her, and can find no other occupation for his leisure than the
writing in her praise of amorous canzonets, not only will Messer Simone,
her suitor, be fretted, but also Messer Folco, her father, be vexed,
neither of which things can in any way conduce to her happiness. Let
Messer Dante, therefore, for his love's sake, be persuaded to wear the
show of affection for some other lady, and as there is already nothing
in the wording of his verses to betray the name of the lady he serves,
let him by his public carriage and demeanor make it seem as if his heart
and brain were bestowed on some other, such another even as myself."

Here, for an instant, Madonna Vittoria paused to take breath, and I
nodded approval, and would have spoken, but she was too quick for me.

"Get him to do this," she said, earnestly. "Let him be made very sure
that I thoroughly know that he does not care and never could care two
fig-pips for me, and tell him, if you like, that I could never waste a
smile or sigh on the effort to make his sour face look sweet. Besides, I
am not urging this to serve him, but to help myself, for I do not wish
Messer Simone to marry Madonna Beatrice, the which thing is the more
likely to happen if Messer Folco has any hint of sweethearting between
his magnificence's daughter and an insignificant boy."

What Madonna Vittoria said was splendid sense, and I applauded it
lustily, and made her my vows that it should be my business to seek out
my Dante and bring him to her thinking. And then we passed from that
matter to talk of love-poems, and from love-poems to lovers, and from
lovers to the art of love. I would not for all the world seem
indiscreet, so I will say no more than that it was a very pleasant
afternoon which I passed in that fair lady's society, the memory of
which I treasure very preciously in the jewel-casket of my tenderest
recollections.

But when the time came for me to bid her farewell she renewed again and
very insistently her warning that Simone of the Bardi meant mischief to
Dante of the Alighieri, and her counsel that young Dante should be
persuaded, for his dear lady's sake, to fob off suspicion by feigning an
affection which indeed had no place in his bosom. To this, as before, I
agreed very heartily, and so took my leave of a very winsome and
delicious creature, and went my ways wishing with all my heart that it
might be my privilege to woo such a lady daily, either for my own safety
or the safety of another. Which shows that the fates are very
fantastical in their favors, for this exquisite occasion of felicity was
offered, not to me who would have appreciated it at its right value, but
to Messer Dante, who would not value it at the worth of a single
pomegranate seed.

But, however that may be, I did as the lady bade me, and I sought out
Messer Dante and found him, and gave him the sum of Madonna Vittoria's
discourse, urging him to do as she counselled. In doing this I spoke not
at all of the danger there might be to my friend from the rage of
Messer Simone, but solely of the need for every true and humble lover to
keep his love and service secret enough to avoid either care or offence
to his lady. To all of which wisdom Messer Dante agreed very readily,
being, indeed, over-willing to reproach himself for heedlessness in the
matter of his verses, though, indeed, he named no name in them and kept
himself as close and invisible as a cuckoo. And I promised and vowed to
tell no man nor no woman the secret of the authorship of the verses that
Florence was beginning to love so well.

I kept my word as to this promise, and the time was not yet before other
than Monna Vittoria and myself and Messer Simone knew the secret. Dante
kept his word to me and followed Madonna Vittoria's advice, and showed
himself attentive in her company time and again, and was seen on
occasion going to or coming from her house. Which conduct on his part,
for all that it was intended for the best, did not, as so often happens
with the devices of human cunning, have the best result. For of course,
in a city like Florence, where gossip is blown abroad like thistle-seed,
it came soon enough to the ears of Madonna Beatrice that young Messer
Dante of the Alighieri was believed by many to be a lover of Madonna
Vittoria. Now, Madonna Beatrice knew nothing of Dante's wonder-verses in
her honor, nor of Dante's way of life since the day of their meeting in
Santa Felicita, for Dante was resolved not to bring himself again to her
notice until he considered himself in some degree more worthy to do so.
Therefore, Madonna Beatrice was little pleased by the talk that coupled
the name of Vittoria with his name to whom she had given the rose. So it
chanced that one day when she with her companions met Dante in the
street, she refused him her salutation, whereat my poor Dante was
plunged in a very purgatory of woe.

Of course, he had no knowledge of how he had offended his sweet lady,
for it was no great wonder if a youth of his age were to be friends with
Madonna Vittoria, as many of the youths of the city were friends.
Besides, his own consciousness that his friendship with the woman was no
more than friendship--and indeed would have been no more for him, in
those ecstatic hours, had she been the goddess Venus herself--caused him
to look at the matter very indifferently, regarding it as no more than a
convenient cloak to screen from the prying curiosity of the world his
high passion for Madonna Beatrice. But I, that was more in the way of
girl-gossips than Dante, got in time to know the truth of the reason why
the lady Beatrice had refused her salutation to my friend, and I began
to see that Madonna Vittoria's counsel might well prove more mischievous
than serviceable in the end.

However, I had no more to do than to communicate to Dante the reason
that I had discovered for his dear idol's lack of greeting, and at the
news of it he was cast into a great gloom and remained disconsolate for
a long while. And I urged him that he should let Madonna Beatrice know
what he had done and why, but he would not hear of this, saying that he
would never seek to win either her favor or her pity so, by trading on
any service he might seem to do her. He added that he hoped in God's
good time to set himself right with her again, when he was more worthy
to approach her. All of which was very beautiful and devoted and noble,
but not at all sensible, according to my way of doing or my way of
thinking.

Anyway, Messer Dante would go to visit Madonna Vittoria no more, and she
wondered at his absence and sent for me and questioned me, and I told
her the truth, how following her advice had brought Dante into disgrace
with his lady. Then Vittoria seemed indeed grieved, and she commended
Dante for keeping away from her, and vowed that he should be set right
some way or other in the eyes of his lady. Indeed, it was a pleasure and
a marvel that Madonna Vittoria could show such zeal and heat for so
simple a love-business as this of the boy of the Alighieri and the girl
of the Portinari.




X

THE DEVILS OF AREZZO


Now, the next page in the book of my memory that is concerned with the
fortunes of my friend has to do with the feast that Messer Folco
Portinari gave to the magnificoes and dignitaries, the notables and
worthies, the graces and the radiancies of Florence--a feast that,
memorable in itself, was yet more memorable from all that came of it by
what we in our wisdom or our ignorance call chance. It was a very
proper, noble, and glorious festival, and I am almost as keen to attend
it again in my memory as I was keen to be present at it in the days when
Time and I were boys together. Yet for all my impatience I think it good
before I treat of it and of its happenings to set down in brief certain
conditions that then prevailed in Florence--conditions which had their
influence in making Messer Folco's festival memorable to so many lives.

You must know that at this time the all-wise and all-powerful Republic
of Florence was not a little harassed in its peace and its comfort, if
not in its wisdom and its power, by the unneighborly and unmannerly
conduct of the people of Arezzo. These intolerant and intolerable folk
were not only so purblind and thick-witted as not to realize the
immeasurable supremacy of the city of Florence for learning,
statesmanship, and bravery over all the other cities of Italy put
together, but had carried the bad taste of their opinions into the still
worse taste of offensive action. For a long time past Arezzo had pitted
itself in covert snares and small enterprises against the integrity and
well-being of the Republic. Were Florence in any political difficulty or
commercial crisis, then surely were the busy fingers--ah, and even the
busy thumbs and the whole busy hands--of the people in Arezzo sure to be
thrust into the pie with the ignoble object of plucking out for their
own advantage such plums as they could secure. Florentine convoys were
never safe from attack on the highroads that neighbored the Aretine
dominion, and if any brawl broke out between Florence and one of her
neighbors, a brawl never provoked by Florence, too magnanimous for such
petty dealings, but always inaugurated by the cupidity or the treachery
of her enemies, the Aretines were sure to be found taking part in it,
either openly or secretly, to the disadvantage and detriment of the
noble city.

Now, this state of things had endured long enough in the minds of most
good citizens, and it was felt that the patience of Florence had been
over-abused and her good nature too shamelessly counted upon, and that
it was time to teach these devils of Arezzo a lesson in civility and
fair fellowship. The time for giving this lesson seemed at this present
time the more auspicious because for the moment Florence had her hands
free from other external complications, and was perhaps less troubled
than was her wont by internal agitations. The jolly Guelphs had it their
own way more or less in the city; those that were Ghibelline in
principle or Ghibelline by sentiment were wise enough to keep their
opinions to themselves. Such exiled Ghibellines as had been permitted to
return kept very mum and snug. The Reds and the Yellows wore a show of
peace, and the city would have appeared to any stranger's eyes to be a
very marvel of union and agreement. Under these circumstances it was
thought by many, and indeed boldly asserted by many, that it would be a
good opportunity to take advantage of an idle, peaceful time and give
the people of Arezzo a trouncing. Wherefore, according to certain wise
heads, it became all good citizens to do the utmost that in them lay to
further so excellent a cause, the elders by appropriate contributions,
according to their means, to the coffers of the state, the younger by
volunteering eagerly for service in the ranks of a punitive army to be
raised against Arezzo.

Never was such a time of military enthusiasm among the young with whom
I frequented, nor did any youth of them all show to me more enthusiasm
for the cause of the city than Messer Dante. Ever since that day when he
had seen again the fair girl whom he had loved as a fair child he had
been, as indeed he had said he would be, a changed man, no longer
indifferent to the great concerns of state, no longer absorbed in
unproductive studies to the extinction of all sense of citizenship, but
a patriotic youth keenly alive to the duties that devolved upon a
true-hearted Florentine, and zealous in the practice of all those arts
that should make him more worthy to be called her son. If he had
surprised me by his quiet and his wiliness on the day of his quarrel
with Messer Simone dei Bardi, if he had amazed me by the writing of
those verses, the authorship of which Madonna Vittoria had been the
first to make known to me, he astonished me still more now by the proofs
of his application to military and political science. He would talk very
learnedly of the disposition of armies in the field, of the advantages
and disadvantages of the use of mercenary troops, and the best way to
defend and the best way to assault a well-walled citadel, so that you
would think, to listen to him, that he was some gray old generalissimo
steeped in experience, and not the smooth-cheeked fellow whom we knew,
as we thought, so well, and whom perhaps we knew so little. He showed
himself as eager for the affairs of state as for the affairs of war,
ever ready to weigh new problems of political administration, and to
argue as to the merits or defects of this or that form of government.

In a word, from being a reserved and scholarly lad that seemed to take
little or no interest in the busy world about him, he had suddenly
become an active, enthusiastic man to whom all living questions seemed
exceedingly alive. And with all this he kept on with his sword-practice
as if he had not other thought but arms, and kept on at his rhymings as
if he had no other thought but love and song. And since I kept the
knowledge that Monna Vittoria had given me to myself--yea, kept it even
from Messer Guido Cavalcanti--those in Florence that cared for verses
still marvelled at the music of the unknown, and wondered as to his
identity.

Now, as the natural result of the great ferment and headiness in the
city and in the hearts of all men in Florence, there was a mighty desire
to come to a proper understanding with these Aretines, the proper
understanding having, of course, for its object the placing of the neck
of Arezzo under the heel of Florence. But though, as I have said, the
bickerings between the two powers had been going on for a long while,
Florence did not as yet, in view of the complications that existed, and
the new complications that might arise from overt act, feel herself
strong enough to take the field in open war and to hazard all, it might
be, upon the chances of a single field.

Then it was that there came into the mind of Messer Simone dei Bardi,
instigated thereunto, as I verily believe, more for his own purpose than
from any pure patriotism, a scheme for sapping the strength of the
Aretines by some sudden and secret stroke. It was with this end in view
that he went up and down the city, talking with those that were young
and inflammable, and baiting his plans with many big words and sounding
phrases that were as stimulating to the ear as the clanging of the bells
on the war-wagon, so that those who heard them, flushed and troubled by
their music, were at little pains to inquire as to the wisdom that lay
behind them. When Messer Simone found that there were plenty of young
men in the city that were as headstrong and valorous as he could wish,
he began to mould his words into a closer meaning and to make plainer
what he would be at. This was, as it seemed, no other than the formation
of a kind of sacred army, such as he had professed to have read of in
the history of certain of the old Greek cities, that was to be entirely
devoted to the gain and welfare of the city, and to regard all other
purposes in life as of little or no value in comparison. He hinted,
then, at the levying of a legion of high-spirited and adventurous
gentlemen, whose object was to strike surely and suddenly at the
strength of Arezzo, being sworn beforehand never to endure defeat or to
know retreat when once they had taken their work in hand. To give their
object greater significance, he suggested that this legion should be
known as the Company of Death, thereby signifying that those who pledged
themselves thereto were only to return victorious or not at all.

You may be sure that a great many gallant youths caught eagerly at such
a chance of serving their city, all the more so, it may be, because it
offered them no direct reward in the case of success and assured them a
self-promised death in the event of failure. Now you shall see wherein
this scheme helped to serve the purpose of Messer Simone dei Bardi, for
it was his hope that Messer Dante should be tempted to enroll himself in
this same Company of Death, whereby there was every possibility of
Messer Simone being well rid of him.




XI

MESSER FOLCO'S FESTIVAL


I may say, indeed, to the very extreme of verity, that Messer Folco of
the Portinari was an excellent man. I will never say that he had not his
faults, for he had them, being mortal. He was, it may be, natived with
something of a domineering disposition. Feeling himself worthy to
command, he liked, perhaps as often as not, to assert that worthiness.
It is very certain that what Messer Guido said of him was true, and that
with regard to his own family he was indeed the Roman father, one whose
word must be law absolute and unquestionable for all his children. Yet
withal a just man whose judgments seldom erred in harshness. Although
not acrimonious, he was inclined to be choleric, and he was punctilious
to a degree that would never have suited my humor on all matters that
concerned what he regarded as the sober conduct of life. Enough of this.
Let us turn to the good man's patent virtues.

Though his steadfast adhesion to his own party had earned him many
enemies among those of the opposing faction, he was never so hot and
desperate a politician as the most of his compatriots. There was in him
something of the ancient humor and the ancient sweetness of them that
wrote and taught with Cicero, and though he thought as highly as any
Roman of them all of the honor and glory of the commonweal, he was so
much of a philosopher as to believe that honor and glory to be earned,
at least as much, by the welfare in mind and body of the citizens as by
the triumph of one party over another party. He was alive with all the
delicate and sensible charities, was forever scheming and planning to
lessen distress and lighten sorrows, and if he could have had his way
there would never have been a sick man or a poor man within the walls of
Florence. Toward this end, indeed, he employed the major portion of his
considerable wealth with more zeal, and yet at the same time with more
prudence, than any other benefactor in the city. Vacant spaces of land,
whose title-deeds lay to his credit, were now busy with men laying brick
upon brick for this building that was to be a little temple of learning,
and that building that was to be a hospital for the hurts and the
sufferings of troubled men, and this other that was in time to be a
church and sanctuary for the spirit as its fellow-edifices were
sanctuaries for the body and the mind.

Messer Folco also gave largely in charities, both public and private,
and yet, for all his sweetness of generosity he was so shrewd a man
that none ever came to him twice with a lying tale or tempted his
beneficence with false credentials. He would say, and, indeed, I have
heard him say it, though he spoke not to me indeed, for I was never one
of those that he would have chosen for intimate conversation--he would
say that charity, to be of any service in the world, should be as stern
and swerveless a judge as ever Minos was. Like all good Florentines, he
loved the liberal arts, and no little share of his money went in the
encouragement of painters and musicians, and the gravers of bronze and
the workers of marble, and those whose splendid pleasure it was to shape
buildings that should be worthy of the city.

As the top and crown of all these commendabilities, he had a very
liberal and hospitable spirit, loving to entertain, not indeed
ostentatiously, but still with so much of restrained magnificence as
became so wealthy and so honorable a man. It was in the service of this
spirit that Messer Folco, some good while after that lovers' meeting
which had been so strangely brought about, and which was to have so
strange an issue, made up his mind to give a great entertainment to all
his friends and lovers in the city. Because it might be said of him that
every man that knew him was his friend, and that many that knew him not
loved him for his good deeds and the clarity of his good name, it came
about that the most part of Florence that were of Messer Folco's station
were bidden to come and make merry at the Palace of the Portinari. Among
the number, to his great satisfaction, was your poor servant who tells
you this tale.

The Palace of the Portinari was a great and stately building, with great
and stately rooms inside it, stretching one out of another in what
seemed to be an endless succession of ordered richness, and behind the
great and stately house and within the great and stately walls that
girdled it lay such a garden as no other man in Florence owned, a garden
so well ordained after a plan so well conceived that though it was
spacious indeed, it seemed ten times more spacious than it really was
from the cunning and ingenuity with which its lawns and arbors, its
boscages and pergolas, its hedges and trees, its alleys and avenues were
adapted to lead the admiring wanderer on and on, and make him believe
that he should never come to the end of his tether.

This garden was, for the most part, dedicated to the service of Monna
Beatrice and her girl friends in the daytime. In the evening Messer
Folco would often walk there with grave and learned elders like himself,
and stir the sweet air with changing old-time philosophies, while Monna
Beatrice and her maidens sang or danced or luted or played ball. Messer
Folco was a man that cherished the domesticities, and had no desire to
see his home distorted into a house of call where all had a right to
take him by the hand, and he held that the family life flourished best,
like certain plants, in seclusion. But as there is a time for all
things, so Messer Folco found a time for opening his doors to his
friends and acquaintances, and giving them the freedom of his sweet
garden, and bidding them eat and drink and dance and make merry to the
top of their desires, always, of course, under the control of such
decorum as was due to the noble life.

It was to celebrate the laying of the foundation-stone of his hospital
that Messer Folco gave the entertainment of which I have just spoken and
whose eventful consequences I have yet to relate. It must, of course, be
clearly understood that I was not, and, indeed, could not be, always a
witness of the events recorded or a hearer of the words set down in my
narrative. But while it was my happy or sad fortune to witness many of
these events and to hear many of these words, it was also my privilege,
knowing, as I did, those that played their part in my tale, and those
that knew them well and loved them well, to gain so close a knowledge of
the deeds I did not witness and the words I did not hear as to make me
as creditable in the recording them as any historian of old time that
puts long speeches into the mouths of statesmen he never saw, and
repeats the harangues of embattled generals on fields where he never
fought. And so to come back to Messer Folco and his house and his garden
and his friends and the festival he gave them.




XII

DANTE READS RHYMES


The great hall of Messer Folco's house where now he received his guests,
and me among the number, was a mighty handsome piece of work, very brave
with gay color and rich hangings and the costly pelts of Asian beasts,
and very splendidly lit with an infinity of lamps of bronze that had
once illumined Cæsarian revels, and flambeaux that stood in sconces of
silver and sconces of brass very rarely wrought. At the farther end the
room gave through a colonnade on to the spacious garden which it was
Messer Folco's privilege to possess, a garden which, it was said, had
belonged in old time to a great noble of the stately Roman days. This
colonnade, be it noted, for all it looked so open and amiable, could be
shut off, if need were, by sliding doors, so as to make the room
defensible whenever the war-cries rattled in the streets and Guelph and
Ghibelline or Red and Yellow met in deadly grips together.

When I arrived, and I was among the earliest visitors, for I dearly
loved all manner of merry-making, and thought it foolish to stand upon
my dignity and seem indifferent to mirth, and so come late and lose
pleasure--when I arrived, I say, the musicians were tuning their lutes
in the gallery on high, and Messer Folco was standing before the doorway
greeting his guests. Those that had forestalled me were moving hither
and thither over the smooth floor, and staring, for lack of other
employment, at the splendid tapestries, and impatient enough for the
dancing and the feasting to begin. And then, because I wished to be
courteous as becomes the careful guest, I wrung by his hand Messer
Folco, who, as I think, had no notion, or at best the dimmest, of who I
was, and I said to him, "Blessed be Heaven, Messer Folco, 'tis good to
have such a man as you in Florence."

To which Messer Folco answered, returning with dignity my friendly
pressure, "'Tis good for any man to be in Florence; there is no place
like Florence from here to world's end."

And then, as I stood something agape and framing a further speech,
another guest pushed by me and clasped Messer Folco's hand and addressed
him, saying, "So you have started a-building your new hospital. Will you
never have done being generous?"

And because it always amuses me to watch give and take of talk between
human beings, I stood off one side, Messer Folco having done with me and
forgotten me, and listened to the traffic of voices and the bandying of
compliments, and heard Messer Folco respond, "One that is happy enough
to be a citizen of Florence should be grateful for the favor."

"Well," said the new-comer, whom I knew very well to be one that made
the most of his great monies by usury--"well," says he, "a man cannot
spend money better than by benefiting the disinherited."

To which Messer Folco, eying him with gravity, and having, as I make no
doubt, his own opinion, answered, "So I think."

Now, by this time the enthusiastic usurer had said his say and had his
audience, and was straightway pushed on one side. Then my usurer, not
knowing me, though indeed I knew him, or not liking the looks of me, as
indeed his looks were distasteful to me, for I think a man's money greed
is ever written in bitter ink upon the parchment of his face, passed
away into the crowd beyond. Thereafter there accosted Messer Folco a man
whose name I knew at the time but for the life of me I cannot recall it
now, and all that I can remember of him is that he was fat and affable
and a notorious giver and gleaner of gossip, as well as one that aped
acquaintance with the arts.

"Messer Folco, your servant," he began, in a voice that was as fat as
his abdomen. Then went on, in a splutter of rapture, "Why, what a
company! Here is all Florence, from base to apex." He paused for a
moment, and said behind his hand, in a loud whisper which came easily to
my ears, "Is the mysterious poet of your fellowship?" And he glanced
around knowingly, as if he hoped to divine the unknown among the
arriving guests.

Messer Folco looked at him gravely. "What poet, friend?" he asked; and I
truly think he questioned in all honesty of ignorance as to the man's
meaning, and my jolly gossip answered, all agog with his knowledge:

"Why, the poet we in Florence that have an ear for sweet sounds are all
talking of; the poet whose name no man knows, whose rhymes are on all
men's lips; the fellow that praises fair ladies as never fair ladies
were praised before since Orpheus carolled in Arcady."

Then I noted how Messer Folco, with the air of one that did indeed
recall some idle rumor, looked at him curiously, as one that is puzzled
how busy men can interest themselves in such trifles as love rhymes, and
he answered, quietly, "I have given little heed to this wonder; I have
been too busy with bricks and mortar. Here comes one who may lighten our
darkness."

Even as he spoke my ever beloved friend and the ever beloved friend of
all who were young with me and of all good Florentines, Messer Guido
Cavalcanti, came into the room.

Messer Folco wrung him heartily by the hand, for he loved him no less
than the rest of us. "Messer Guido, ever welcome," he cried, "never more
than now. Perhaps you can tell us--"

But before he had time to say what he had to say, Messer Guido
Cavalcanti interrupted him, not uncivilly, but as one that wished to
spare a good man the pains of saying what his hearer already understood
as clearly as words could utter it. "I wager I know what you would say,"
he declared. "Do I know the name of the unknown poet?"

Messer Folco nodded. "Well, do you?" he asked, and those that were
standing about him, and especially my good fat gossip merchant that
aired his learning, pricked their ears to hear what Messer Guido might
have to say on a matter that tickled them. I, with my wider knowledge,
that I had kept steadfastly to myself, stood by and chuckled.

For I had that inside my jerkin against my breast which, though indeed
it belonged to Messer Guido, Messer Guido had never yet seen, and I had
brought it with me to deliver to him. And it concerned the
subject-matter of the speech of Folco and his friends.

But Messer Guido could say little to please them. "Why," he declared, "I
know no more than all Florence knows by this time, that some one has
written songs which all men sing, sonnets which all women sigh over.
There is a ballad of his addressed to all ladies that are learned in
love which is something more than beautiful."

My jolly gossip nodded sagaciously. "Aye, but who made it?" he
questioned, sententiously, and looked as complacent as if he had said
something really wise.

Guido saluted him politely. "Ask some one wiser than I."

As for me, I grinned to think that I was that some one wiser, and that
Guido never suspected it.

Messer Folco touched my dear friend lightly on the shoulder. "It was not
your honor's self?" he asked, benignly, with his shrewd eyes smiling
upon the handsome face.

Messer Guido shook his head. "No, Messer Folco," he protested, "my
little wit flies my flag and wears my coat. If I could write such rhymes
as those I should never be mum about them, I promise you."

Then, with a gracious gesture, as of apology for having failed to
satisfy the curiosity of those that accosted him, he saluted Messer
Folco and moved toward the centre of the room. I was on his heels in an
instant, for I wished for a word with him before he was unfindable in
the thick and press of his friends, and I had somewhat to say to him
concerning the very matter on which he had been speaking. I caught him
by the arm, and he turned to greet me as he greeted all that knew him
and loved him, with a smile, and I whispered him, plucking a paper from
my breast.

"Guido, heart, hearken. Here is a new song sent to your house that seems
better than all the others. I called at your lodgings and saw a scroll
on your table, and knowing what it must be, I made bold to read it, and,
having read it, to bear it to you."

And Messer Guido answered me, eagerly: "I have not been home; I have
been all day with the cardinal. For love's sake, let me see." He took
the paper from me and read it over, and then he said to me, gravely:
"Why, this is better than the best we have had yet. This is the finish
of the ballad of fair Florentines. Here is the nightingale of Florence
singing his heart out for us, and we are at a loss for his name."

Then I, being delighted at my own initiation into this mystery of the
nameless singer, and fired by Guido's praises of him, turned to those
about me, and the room had filled a little by this time, and I cried
out, as indeed I had no business to do in a house where at best I was
little more than a stranger. And this is what I said: "Gentles all,
squires and dames, loving and loved, here is rose-scented news for you.
The unknown poet has sung again, and Messer Guido has the words in his
fingers."

Now there came a hush of talking in the room as I said these words, and
Messer Guido looked at me something reprovingly, because of my
forwardness, and all eyes were fixed upon the pair of us.

Then Messer Folco, moving close up to me, touched me on the shoulder and
said, with a quiet irony, "You are very good, sir, to be my major-domo."

Instantly I bowed to the ground in sober recognition of my error.
"Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I
wither. Unless your pity forgives me, I shall evaporate into air."

Then Messer Folco laughed good-humoredly, and, turning to Guido, said,
"Messer Guido, of your charity, let us hear."

But Guido, the ever obliging, was here unwilling to oblige. "Shall the
owl croak the notes of the nightingale?" he asked, extending his open
palms in a gesture of emphatic denial.

Now even at that moment, with Messer Guido politely declining, and
Messer Folco still in a mood between smiling and frowning on account of
my presumption, and I gaping open-mouthed, and the guests that were
gathered about us staring eagerly at the parchment which my dear friend
held in his hand, something curious occurred. There came a voice from
the press hard by me, a voice that I seemed to know very well and yet
that I could not on the instant name with the owner's name, and this
voice cried aloud, so that all present could hear the cry distinctly:
"Let Messer Dante read the rhymes!" Even as the voice spoke I saw the
reason for its spending of breath, for at that very moment Messer Dante
entered the hall, and was making his way toward Messer Folco with the
bearing of one that courteously salutes his host.

I looked about me sharply to right and to left, in the hope that I might
by chance catch sight of the guest that thus called upon my friend, but
I could see no one to whom I could with any surety credit the utterance.
I observed, indeed, a certain youth that was cloaked as to his body and
masked as to his face slipping out of the crowd about me who might have
been the speaker, but whom I could in nowise identify. It was so much
the mode with many of us that were young in Florence to come--and
sometimes to come unbidden--to such galas as this of Messer Folco's in
antic habits and to hide our features with vizards, that there was
nothing in this costume to single out the youth whom I believed to be
the utterer of that call for Dante. There were many other masked and
muffled figures within the walls of Messer Folco's house that night as
hard to tell apart as one cherry from another. But whoever the speaker
may have been, the speech had the desired effect. Coupled as it so
timely was with the appearance of Dante under Messer Folco's roof, it
caught the fancy of all that heard it, and each hearer echoed readily
enough the suggestion: "Let Messer Dante read the rhymes!" Thus it came
about that Messer Dante had scarcely gone many paces down the hall
toward his host when he became aware that he was the target of all eyes.

Though he was surprised at this unexpected attention on the part of so
large a concourse of persons, he was in no sense taken aback or
embarrassed, but came quietly to a halt and looked with a curious and
composed scrutiny at the crowd of men and women that were all regarding
him so intently. As he did so, some one cried again, "Let Messer Dante
read the rhymes!" And this time Dante heard the words, and he saw also
how Messer Guido stood in the throng hard by to Folco and held in his
hands a roll of parchment. For a moment Dante showed some signs of
discomposure. He changed his fresh color a little to an unfamiliar
paleness, and his eyes meeting mine, they flashed a question at me which
I could but answer by a determined shake of the head. For I saw that
Dante's had a misgiving that I had revealed his secret, which indeed I
had not. Then Dante looked at Guido as if to question him, but before he
could speak Messer Folco had paid him a grave salutation and began to
address him gravely.

"Messer Dante," he said, "you are very welcome to my house, and I greet
you cheerfully. Beyond this it is fit that I should explain to you why,
in this instant of your coming, your name is in so many mouths. We were
speaking here but now of the unknown poet whose verses have of late at
once enraptured and bewildered our city, and many of us were entreating
Messer Guido, who holds in his hand the latest verses of the nameless
singer, to read them aloud to us. And he declining from, as we think, an
over-delicate sense of modesty, it was suggested by him or by another, I
know not, on seeing you enter, that you should read to us the rhymes in
question."

Here Messer Folco bowed very courteously to Dante, but before Dante, who
seemed, as indeed he well might, somewhat at a loss what to say, could
utter a syllable in reply, Messer Guido had forestalled him.

"There could not be a better choice," he protested, "though it was none
of my proposing. Messer Dante has a sweet and clear voice, and if it
will but please him to meet our entreaties we shall be indeed his
debtors."

And as he spoke he thrust into Dante's hand the roll of parchment on
which the poem was written, and all that heard him applauded, and waited
for Dante to begin. Indeed, it was a common thing then, in places where
friend met friend, for one that had a voice to read somewhat aloud for
the delectation of the others, whether a pleasant tale in prose or a
poetic canzonet. But Dante, while he took the parchment from Guido's
fingers, looked about him quietly and spoke, and his voice and words
were very decided in denial.

"I do not know," he said, "why this privilege should be given to me, and
with your good leaves I will ask Messer Guido to find him a worthier
interpreter." With that he made as if he would put the parchment back
again into the hand of Messer Guido, and I could understand very well,
if no one else could, why he should be so unwilling to do this thing.
But you know how it is with a crowd: once any mob of men or women, or
men and women, gets an idea into its head, it is an adventure that would
trouble the devil to get it out again. Ever since the masked youth had
voiced his call for Messer Dante to read the poem, it had become the
assembly's hunger and thirst, will, desire, and determination that the
poem should be read by no other than Messer Dante, though I will dare
make wager that any single man or woman of them all, if individually
addressed, would as lief any other than Dante should take up the task. I
thought I caught a glimpse of my masked youth in another part of the
crowd prompting the demand. So Messer Guido, as herald of the general
wish, smilingly refused to take back the paper parchment, and Dante,
ever too wise to be stubborn for stubbornness' sake, surrendered, where
to persist in refusal would have seemed churlish to his host and to his
company.

"Since you honor me so far," he said, with the wistful smile of one who
feels that chance has penned him in a corner, "I must needs obey." And
with the word he began to unroll the parchment carefully. As he did so
something moved me to look round, and I saw that Madonna Beatrice had
entered the great hall and had come to a halt, observing that something
unusual was toward.

Madonna Beatrice stood arrested there among her maidens, pale and fair,
as an angel might stand, ranged about by radiant mortality. I never
could find then, and I never shall find, though I have tried often
enough, Lord knows, the exact word or exact sequence of words that
should fittingly convey the effect of her beauty, even upon those who
having seen it often seemed on each occasion to behold it for the first
time. Of her, as of every beauty that has graced the world since Helen
set fire to Troy, and Semiramis sent dead lovers adrift down the river
of Assyria, and Cleopatra charmed Cæsar and Antony and Heaven knows who
besides, it might be said that she had the familiar features of
womankind; but what it was that made those features so marvellous, ah!
there was the task for a greater poet than I to take upon his shoulders.
Even the great poet that loved her--and I keep his love-book on my shelf
to this hour, wedged in between a regiment of the Fathers--even Dante
has told us nothing that shall serve to make the ages yet to come
understand what the woman was like that a man could love with so
rapturous a madness of passion. Sometimes I have thought, in my gropings
after the phrase to express her, that the word "luminous" was, perhaps,
of all single words, the word that seemed to hold shut in its casket the
most of the meaning that I sought to convey. There seemed to be about
her, even to me that was never her lover, a radiancy, a nimbus, as it
were, of celestial light that gave to pulsing flesh and running blood
and circumambient skin a quality that was, as it were, flamelike,
ethereal, unreal.

Yet though the essence of her bodily being was, as I knew, so frail,
there was no show of frailness in her gracious presence. She was tall
for a woman, and her coloring was fresh and sane; her bust and limbs
were moulded with a wise and restrained generosity that became her
youth, and promised nobility of proportion for her maturity. She moved
with the smooth and lively carriage of a nymph down the woodland lawns,
with her head easily erect and her eyes steadily seeing the world. She
might almost have been the youngest of the Amazons or the latest of
those strange demi-deities that haunted the hills and woods and waters
until the death of the god Pan dealt them, too, their death-blow. Her
eyes had the clearness of a clear night in June; her lips were quick
with the brisk crimson of a pink quince. Oh, Saint Cupido, what vanity
is this, to essay to paint the unpaintable! Enough that she was young
and fair and shapely, and that if in her eyes there dwelt the
pensiveness of those whose very loveliness suggests a destined
melancholy, her lips were always smiling, and her greeting always
blithe, yet I seemed to see black care incarnate behind her, and I will
tell you why.

Among the girls that were gathered about her, plump, comely, jolly girls
that were, I will readily confess it, more in my way of wooing than
their radiant mistress, there stood the figure of a thin and withered
man in black, with very white hair and very smooth, gray cheeks and very
bright, wise eyes. Him I knew to be Messer Tommaso Severo, that had
served the Portinari as leech for longer years than many in Florence
could count. He it was that had ushered Messer Folco himself into this
troublesome world, that is, however, less troublesome at Florence than
elsewhere. He had done the like for Madonna Beatrice, and from the hour
of her birth he, whom many blamed for a pagan cynicism and philosophic
disdain of humanity, had watched over her life with the tenderness that
watches the growth of some fair and unfamiliar flower. He was, besides
being a master-physician, one that was thoroughly learned in the science
of the stars, and I have always heard that the horoscope he drew for my
lady Beatrice was the chief cause of his tireless devotion and care. To
her service he had dedicated the lees of his life and the ripeness of
his knowledge. It was he who had carried her away for so long a space of
years from the summer heats and winter colds of Florence to the green
temperance and tranquillity of the hills. It was he who at last, still
guided by that horoscope of which he alone knew the lesson, sanctioned
the maiden's return to the city, to live outside which, though even in
the loveliest places thereafter attainable, is to live in exile. I know
for sure that he said of his sweet charge that flesh and spirit were so
exquisitely poised in her perfect body that it needed but some breath of
fate to scatter them irrevocably apart, as a child's breath can scatter
the down of a dandelion to all the corners of a field. But though I
thought of this now, as I beheld the girl and the elder so close
together, I could not, for my life, believe it, seeing how buoyantly she
carried her beauty and the nobility of her color.

Messer Dante still had the two ends of the roll of parchment in his
fingers as Madonna Beatrice entered the hall, and in the very instant of
her appearance he was aware of her presence, and I that was watching all
things at once, like Argus in the antique fable, I saw how his hands
trembled and how his lips quivered with the knowledge of her approach.
But otherwise he showed no sign of the advance of divinity, and holding
the parchment well before his face, rolling and unrolling as the duty
needed, he began to read what was written on the skin.

The poem, as I already knew, made up the second part of a lengthy ballad
in praise of the ladies of Florence. It was cast in an allegorical
fashion, aiming to portray a pageant of fair women, each single verse
seeking to picture some one of the many lovely ladies that in those days
made Florence a very Venus Hill for the ravishment of the senses and the
stirring of the blood. I wish with all my heart that I could set the
whole of it down here, for it was most ingeniously fancied and handled,
and it was not over difficult for the admirers of any particular beauty
to pierce the dainty veil of symbolism with which the poet had pretended
to envelop her identity. Alas! my memory will not serve me to recall the
greater part of it, or, indeed, any but a little, though that little is
in truth the very kernel of the whole, and I have no copy of the ballad
by me to mend my memory. But, as I say, what I do remember is the
centre-jewel of its crown of song.

My Dante read the verses that were his own verses in a voice that was
very even, melodious, but so sustained and tamed as to make it seem
plain to all that listened that he was dealing with somewhat whose
matter he had never seen before. And as he read each stanza, with its
laudation of some lovely lady that was one of the living graces and
glories of our city, those that spelled the cryptic riddle of its
meaning clapped their hands for pleasure and turned their eyes to where
the lady thus bepraised stood and smiled at her, and she, delighted,
would bridle and fidget with her fan and seek to maintain herself as if
she did not care one whit for what in reality she prized very highly. So
the river of sweet words ran on, sweetly voiced, and flowing in its
appointed course with a golden felicity of thought and phrase.

Very soon the roll of parchment in Dante's right hand was larger by much
than the roll of parchment in Dante's left, and it was plain indeed to
all present that the reading and the poem were coming to an end. It was
also plain to all present that the utterance of the poet was growing
more agitated, and his manner more embarrassed and anxious, and it was
manifest to me, who watched him keenly, that he was trembling like a
cypress in a light wind. As he came to the last verse it seemed as if
some irresistible compulsion compelled him to turn his head in the
direction where Madonna Beatrice stood apart with her women and her
leech. As he did so the parchment fell from his suddenly parted fingers
and lay in two rolls at his feet. But, as if he were unaware of what had
happened, Dante went on with his recitation of the poem. I could see
very clearly that the madness of love was wholly upon him, the madness
that makes a man lose all heed of what he does and be conscious of
naught save the presence of the beloved. He stood there rigid, as one
possessed, with his face turned in the direction where the lady Beatrice
stood amid her women, and his hands, newly liberated from the control of
the parchment that lay at his feet, were clasped together in a tight
embrace. And when I turned my gaze from him to her whose beauty he so
passionately regarded, I was aware that she too was under the spell of
his words, and was conscious of the adoration in his eyes. Truly that
boy and that girl, as they stood there in the clean springtide of their
youth and comeliness, seemed to me to be a pair very properly and
lovingly made by Heaven one for the other. "Here," said I to myself, "if
there be any truth in Messer Plato's theory of affinities, here is a
living proof of the Grecian whimsy. And here," I said to myself, "if
folk must needs marry--a thing I never could understand--here, as I
think, is an instance in which a man and a woman might really be happy
together, making true mates, lovers, and friends, finding life sweet to
share, and finding nothing in their union that was not noble and pure."
So I thought while my Dante was betraying his secret by repeating his
lesson without his book.

These were the words that he spoke with his eyes fixed upon the lady
Beatrice, and they live in my memory as fresh as they seemed on the day
when I first read them in Messer Guido's lodging, and the evening when I
first heard them in Messer Folco's hall. Here is what they said:

     "Blessed they name the lady whom I love,
     Even as the angelic lips in Paradise
     At last shall bless her when she moves above
     The sun and all the stars. But while mine eyes
     Regard her ere she numbers the Nine Skies,
     Immortal in her mortal loveliness,
     Can I be scorned if to my soul of sighs
     Earth's blessing seems the greater, Heaven's the less?"

Even as he came to an end in the great quiet that reigned over the
place, I saw how Dante grew of a sudden strangely pale, and how his body
swayed as if his senses were about to drown themselves in a swoon, and I
truly think that he would have fainted away and fallen to the ground in
the transport of his passion if I had not sprung forward from amid the
throng where I stood and caught him in my arms.




XIII

GO-BETWEENS


To most of those that were present in Messer Folco's house that night it
was little less than impossible to misunderstand the meaning of those
latest rhymes that Messer Dante had read. Even if none had taken into
account the agitation that had come over my friend, and which at least
identified him in spirit with the substance of what he read, if it did
not patently proclaim him the author, at least it was staringly evident
that the stanza was a public tribute to the loveliness of Madonna
Beatrice. Did not her name of Beatrice imply blessedness, and was not
blessedness, terrestrial and celestial, the intimate theme of the
octave? Further, since I speak of the octave, were not those that had
nimble judgments and sprightly memories able to recall that Madonna
Beatrice's name was made up of eight letters, and then, following on
this pathway of knowledge, to discover that the first letter of each
line of the stanza corresponded in its order with the like letter in the
name of the daughter of Folco Portinari.

In the face of such an amazing revelation a kind of heavy silence
brooded awhile over the company, and lasted, indeed, as long as the
time, which was indeed but brief, that Dante lay in my arms in his
stupor. While some believed that in Dante they beheld--as in very truth
they did--the author of the poem, and in consequence the body of the
unknown poet that had haunted their imaginations, others merely
appreciated that the unknown poet, whoever he might be, had declared
himself very patently the adorer of Monna Beatrice, wherefore it was to
be inferred that all those other love-songs, which the golden youth of
Florence loved to murmur to the ears of their ladies, were so many roses
and lilies and violets laid on the same shrine.

Whoever misunderstood the true meaning of what had happened, I think
that Messer Folco understood well enough, and was mightily little
pleased in the understanding. Though Dante had, indeed, the right to
claim nobility of birth, neither his station in the city nor his worldly
means were such as to commend him to Messer Folco's eyes as a declared
lover of his daughter. Whatever annoyance Messer Folco may have felt at
the untoward occurrence, he was too accomplished a gentleman to allow
any sign of chagrin to appear in his voice or countenance or demeanor.
He did no more than thank Dante, who had by this time quite overmastered
his passing weakness, for his courtesy in reading such very pleasing
verses. Then, turning to the guests that stood about, somewhat
disconcerted and puzzled by what had taken place, he addressed them in
loud tones, telling them that a slight banquet was set forth in the
adjacent room, and begged them to enjoy it before the dancing should
begin.

At these pleasant tidings the most of Messer Folco's company were
greatly elated, and hastened to pair themselves off very merrily, and to
make their ways toward the banqueting-room, where, indeed, a very
delectable feast was spread, such an one as might have tickled the
palate and flattered the appetite of any of the high-livers and dainty
drinkers of old Rome. As our jolly Florentine lads and winsome
Florentine lasses ate and drank, they chattered of what they had just
heard, of what they had just seen, and were all agreed to a man Jack and
a woman Jill that Madonna Beatrice was a very flower of women, and that
if Messer Dante laid his heart at her feet it was no doubt a piece of
great presumption, but otherwise an act highly to be applauded. We were
very young in Florence in those days, and our hearts were always quick
to beat time to the drum-taps of love or any other high and generous
passion. If we have changed since, it is the fault of the changing years
and the loss of the Republic.

I make no doubt that there were some who grumbled and carped and
cavilled; said this and said that; grunted porcine over the pretty pass
things were coming to in the city when a nobody or a next-to-nobody like
young Dante of the Alighieri could presume to lift his impudent eyes to
a daughter of a man like Folco Portinari, one of the first citizens of
Florence, and a man that builded hospitals and basilicas at his own
expense. But the growls of these grumblers and carpers and snarlers did
not count in the general and genial applause that our youth gave to
mellifluous numbers and lovely love, and the thousand beautiful things
and thoughts that make this poor life of ours seem for a season Elysium.
So they feasted and prattled, and I turn to another theme.

If the meaning of what Messer Dante said and the meaning of what Messer
Dante did was plain and over-plain to Messer Folco, it was surely in the
very nature of things no less plain to his daughter. To her, at least,
there can have been no riddle to read in the young man's words, in the
young man's actions. Love, splendid and fierce and humble, reigned in
the glowing words that he read, ruled his failing voice, swayed his
reeling figure. She could not question the identity of the Blessed One
whose beauty made the singer sacrilegious in the white-heat of his
devotion. She could not misinterpret the significance of the abandoned
parchment lying discarded where it had fallen on the floor while the
reciter, with his sad eyes fixed upon her face, repeated so familiarly
the words which he was supposed never to have seen. For Beatrice, Dante
of the Alighieri was the author of the ballad in praise of fair
Florentines; for her he was the unknown poet whose fame had flamed
through Florence, and she was the lady that was praised with words of
such enchanting sweetness in his songs.

While the guests were going toward the banquet as brisk as bees to
blossoms, Dante caught me by the hand and drew me apart, and entreated
me to seek speech with Beatrice, and to entreat her to grant him an
interview in private that very night. He dared not, so he said, approach
her himself, in the first place because the doing so might prove too
noticeable after what had occurred, and, in the second place, because he
feared that she had some cause of complaint against him, seeing that she
had of late refused him her salutation. He bade me urge her very
strenuously to grant his prayer, for his soul's sake and his body's
sake, that he might live and not die.

Since I was ever willing to serve my friend, I agreed to do this thing,
and so left him to the care of Messer Guido, who came up on that instant
and addressed him in very loving terms, charging him with being indeed
the poet whose name they had sought so long. Dante not denying this, as
indeed denial would have been idle, even if Dante had been willing, as
indeed he never was, to utter such a falsehood, saying that he had not
done that which he had done, Messer Guido began to praise him in such
glowing words as would have made another man happy. But for Dante
happiness lay only in the kind thoughts of his lady, and the very shaft
of his ambition was only to please her. He listened very quietly while
Messer Guido praised him so highly, and I, for my part, set about
performing the task with which he had intrusted me.

I did not know at the time, though I learned it later, that my mission,
if not forestalled, had in very truth been rendered much easier by the
action of another. That masked youth I told you of, who would needs have
Dante read his own poem that none there knew for his, was no other a
person than Monna Vittoria. Vittoria had ever a freakish humor for
slipping into man's apparel, which some of her friends found diverting
and others not, as the mood took them. Madonna Vittoria took it into her
head that she would be present at Messer Folco's festival, and to do so
was easy enough for her when once she had clothed her shapely body in
the habit of a cavalier, and flung a colored cloak about her, and curled
her locks up under a cap, and clapped a vizard upon her face. She went
to Messer Folco's house for this reason most of all, that she meant to
speak with Madonna Beatrice, a thing not ordinarily very easy to come
at for such as she. Indeed, there was no risk for her of discovery,
doing what she did in the way she did, with a man's jacket on her back
and a man's hose upon her legs.

She came, as it seems, upon Beatrice in the early hours of the festival,
having bided her time till she should find Folco's daughter alone or
nearly so, and then and there addressed her earnestly with a request for
some private speech. In such a season of merry-making the request did
not come so strangely from a masked youth as to seem either insolent or
unfitting. But Beatrice knew at once that the voice was a woman's, and
so said, smilingly, as she drew a little apart with her challenger. Then
it appears that Vittoria unmasked and named herself, and that Beatrice
looked at her very steadily and gravely, and said no more than this: "I
have heard of you. You are very beautiful," the which words, as Vittoria
told me later, gave her a greater pleasure than any she had ever tasted
from the praises of men's lips.

Vittoria said, "If you have heard of me, perhaps you will think that I
should not be here and seeking speech with you."

To which Beatrice answered, very sweetly, that it was no part of the law
of her life to deny hearing to one that wished for speech with her, and
while she spoke she was still smiling kindly, and there was no anger in
her eyes and no scorn, but only a kind of sad wonder. Then Vittoria
said that she had made bold to do what she did for the sake of a friend
and for the sake of Beatrice herself. Thereat the manner of Beatrice,
albeit still courteous, grew colder, and she answered that she did not
know how the doings of any friend of Vittoria's could concern her, and
Vittoria knew that she guessed who the friend was.

Vittoria said, "The friend of whom I speak, the friend whom I would
serve with you, is not and never has been more than my friend."

At this Beatrice made a gesture as if to silence her and a movement as
if to leave her.

But Vittoria barred her way and delayed her entreatingly, saying, "Do
not scorn me because I am what I am."

Whom, thus entreated, Madonna Beatrice answered, very gently: "Indeed, I
do not scorn you for being what your are. I will not even say that I do
not understand you, for I have it in my heart that a woman must always
understand a woman, however different the way of the one may be from the
way of the other. And it might very well have happened, if our
upbringings had been other, that you were as I am and I as you."

Vittoria answered: "I think not so, for God has so made you that you
would never care for the things I care for, and God has so made me that
I should always care for them."

Beatrice replied: "Very well, then; let us leave the matter with God,
who made us, and say to me what you wish to say."

Then Vittoria told Beatrice of Dante, how he was devoted soul and body
to Beatrice, and how it was only in consequence of Vittoria's well-meant
but ill-proving advice that he at all sought her society. She told how
she had given that advice to save the youth from the hatred of Simone,
but had not told him this, telling him rather that by so doing he would
keep his love for Beatrice a secret from the world. Then the paleness of
Beatrice changed for a little to a soft red, and Vittoria saw that she
believed, and kissed her hand and left her. Thus it came about that my
labor was already lightened, though I knew it not when I set out to seek
for Beatrice on behalf of my friend.

The good chance that sometimes favors the ambassadors of Love served me
in good stead very presently by affording me occasion to approach
Madonna Beatrice and engage her in speech, for she was ever courteous in
her bearing toward her father's guests. After we had discoursed for a
brief while on trifles, I, finding that where we stood and talked I
might speak with little fear of being overheard, straightway disclosed
my mission to her, and delivered my errand, putting it, as I think, in
words no less apt than choice, and making a very proper plea for my
friend, presenting, indeed, his petition so well that, though I say it
who, perhaps, should not say it, I do not think that he could have done
it any better himself. I made bold to add that my friend went in fear
that he had in some way offended her, but that I was very sure he would
be able to excuse himself to her eyes if only she would afford him the
opportunity to do so.

Madonna Beatrice listened to me very quietly while I delivered myself of
my message and of such embroideries of my own as I saw fit to tag on to
its original simplicity, and though I thought I could discern that she
was affected not unkindly toward my friend, in spite of whatever fault
he might have committed, she did not in any way change color or display
any other of those signals by which ladies are accustomed to make
manifest their agitation when any whisper of love business is in the
air. When I had finished, she did no more at first than to ask me if,
indeed, Messer Dante was the unknown poet who had so delighted Florence.

To which question I made answer that the truth was indeed so, at which
assurance she seemed to me at first to smile, and then to look sad, and
then to smile again. But when I was beginning to utter some golden words
in the praise of my friend's verses, she very sweetly but very surely
cut my compliments short, and gave me the answer to my embassy.

"Tell Messer Dante," she said, "that he is so great a poet that it were
scarcely gracious for me to refuse him the favor he asks, though,
indeed, he must know as well as I know that it is no small favor. It is
not perhaps fitting, and it certainly is not easy, for a maiden to
accord a lonely meeting to a youth, even when that youth has some reason
to call himself the maiden's friend. But I shall retire before this
festival comes to an end, and I shall walk awhile on the loggia above in
the moonlight and the sweet air before going to my sleep. If he will
come to me there I will speak with him and hear him speak for a little
while. Tell him I do this for the sake of his verses."

Therewith she made me a suave salutation and turned to speak to another,
and I, finding myself thus amiably dismissed, and being very well
satisfied with the fruits of my enterprise, bowed very lowly before her,
and turned and went my ways, seeking my friend. Soon I found him with
many youths and elders about him, all as eager as Guido had been to
congratulate him on what he had done. But if Dante seemed pleased to
hear their praises, as it was only right he should seem pleased, he
showed still greater pleasure in beholding me and reading the message of
my smiling face.

He made some excuse for quitting his company and drawing apart with me,
and when he had heard what I had got to say, I think that he looked the
happiest man that I had ever seen. "Heaven bless my lady Beatrice for
her sovereign grace," he said, very softly and earnestly, and then he
wrung me very hard by the hand, and left me and went back to his
admirers, and thereafter, during the progress of the night's pleasures,
I saw him move and take his share with an unwonted brightness of
countenance and mirthfulness of bearing, and I was glad with all my
heart to see him so cheerful.

Indeed, that was a cheering time, and the man or woman would have been
hard to please who found nothing to delight or to amuse at Messer
Folco's festival. To speak for myself, I had never known better
diversion. There was a whole world of pretty women assembled within
Messer Folco's walls, and I may as well confess here, if I have not
confessed it already, that I take great delectation in the companionship
of pretty women. How many little hands, I wonder, did I press that
night, with the tenderest protestations? How many kisses, I wonder, did
I venture to steal, or, rather, pretend to steal? for I swear the dainty
rogues met me half way in the matter of the robbery. Well, well, it was
all very merry and pleasant, and we feasted very gayly, and we danced
very nimbly, and we wandered in the green glooms of the garden, and then
we feasted anew, and after that we set to work to dancing in good
earnest. Save for a few, we all danced and danced and danced again, as
if we could dance the world back into its young-time.




XIV

MESSER SIMONE SPOILS SPORT


The dance was at the very top of its progress; all the youths and
maidens were bright and smiling; the musicians scraped and plucked like
mad, and the strings quivered with happy melody. All about against the
wall the elders ranged at gaze, recalling wistfully or cheerfully,
according to their temperaments, the days when they, too, tripped
lightly to music and made love in a measure, and some old toes ached for
a caper. While the mirth was at its blithest there suddenly came an
interruption to the gayety, and in a twink, one knew not how, the dance
that had been so jovial and harmonious seemed suddenly resolved into its
individual elements, so many youths and men, and so many maids and
matrons staring at the thing that had thus suddenly marred their
pleasure. I, that had been placed by chance at a post in the dance the
most removed from the main door of the apartment, was not at first aware
of what had caused the commotion among the dancers; I was only aware of
the commotion and the pause in the dancing and the knowledge that the
faces of those near to me showed surprise or fear or wonder, according
to their instinct. Meanwhile the musicians in their gallery, knowing
nothing of any reason why they should stop, were still twitching their
strings busily, though no one marked them and no one danced to their
music. But I, being resolved to argue, as it were, from the effect to
the cause, pushed my way through the men and women that were huddled
together in my neighborhood, and then I came to an open space of the
floor, and face to face, at a distance, with the cause of the
disturbance.

This cause was Messer Simone dei Bardi, who was standing in the centre
of the room with Messer Folco Portinari and other grave elders about
him, and he was talking in a loud voice, as it were, to them in
particular, but also in general to the assembled company. Now, I had
never in all my life felt any kindly liking for Messer Simone, but I had
to confess to myself that he cut something of a flourishing figure just
then and just there. While all of us that were gathered under Messer
Folco's roof were habited in our best bravery of velvets and soft stuffs
and furs and such gold trinkets and jewels as it were in our power to
display, and so looked very frivolous and foppish and at ease, Messer
Simone dei Bardi came among us clad as a soldier-citizen of a great
Republic should be clad in time of danger to his nation. His huge bulk
was built about in steel, a great sword swung at his side, and though
his head was bare, a page in his livery stood close behind him resting
his master's helmet in the bend of his arm. So lapped in mail, so
menacing in carriage, Simone might have seemed some truculent effigy of
the god Mars suddenly appearing from the riven earth in a pastoral
gallantry of shepherds and shepherdesses.

What he was saying he was saying very clearly with the purpose that all
should hear, and I among the rest benefited by what he said. It was to
this effect: that our enemies the Aretines were planning a secret stroke
at Florence, knowledge of which had come to his patriotic ears; and
according to the estimation of his mind, it was no time for Florentine
citizens to be singing and dancing and making merry when there was a
stroke to be struck with a strong hand against her enemies.

These bellicose words of Messer Simone found their immediate echo in the
hearts of all men present; for to do us Florentines justice, we have
never loved frolicking so much that we did not like fighting a great
deal better, and we have never had private business or private pleasure
which we were not ready at a moment's notice to thrust on one side when
the great bell of the city sounded its warning of danger to the
Republic. So for the immediate time Messer Simone was the hour's hero,
and dancing and banqueting and laughing and love-making were clean
forgotten, and every youth and every mature man there present, and, for
that matter, every elder, too, was eager to ring himself in steel and to
teach the devils of Arezzo of what stuff a Florentine citizen was made.
I must honestly and soberly confess that I myself was so readily
intoxicated with the heady wine of the excitement about me that I found
myself cheering and shouting as lustily as the rest, for the which I do
not blame myself, and that I found myself for the moment regarding
Messer Simone dei Bardi as a kind of hero, for the which I severely
blame myself even now, after all this lapse of years.

When Messer Simone found that he had got the company, so to speak, in
the hollow of his hands, he was silent for a little while, looking about
him sharply, as if he were making sure of the courage and enthusiasm of
his fellow-citizens, and seeking to find in the press of flushed and
eager faces any countenance that seemed unwilling to answer to his call.
All about him the elders of the city were gathered giving and taking
counsel, giving, I think for the most part, more readily than taking,
and hurriedly revolving in their minds what were best to do for the city
in the crisis that Messer Simone had made plain to them. While these
deliberations went on, we that had been dancing danced no longer, nor
had desire to dance, and though some talked among themselves, the main
kept silence, for the most part waiting upon events. By this time, my
wits having grown cooler and my old distrust of Messer Simone being
resuscitated, I scrutinized him closely as he stood there in his steel
coats, the centre figure of the assembly.

As I looked at Messer Simone where he stood there, girt with strength in
every line of his body, in every curl of his crisp hair and short beard,
in the watchful ferocity of his eyes, he seemed to me a kind of symbol
of what man may be who is unlifted by any inspiration of divinity or
tincture of letters from the common herd. In him brute strength, brutish
desires, brutal passions were presented, so it seemed to my fancy, as a
kind of warning to others of what man may be that is content to be
merely man, with no higher thought in him than the gratification of his
instincts and his impulses. I have heard tell in travellers' tales of
strange lands, beneath fiercer suns than ours, where naked savages
disport themselves with the lawless assurance of wild beasts, and it
seemed to me--being always given to speculation--that Messer Simone, if
he found himself in such a company, would never be at a loss, but would
straightway be admitted to their ruffian fellowship. I think, indeed, he
would be better suited for such companionship than for citizenship of
the fair, the wise, the gifted, the civilized queen-city of Florence.
But even as such savages are reported to have, in place of a higher
wit, such natural craft as Providence has implanted in the hearts of
foxes and hyenas and other such wild beasts, so Messer Simone, for all
his bestiality, could be cunning enough when it served his ends, as you
shall presently learn.

In a little while Messer Simone began to speak again, and to tell his
hearers of the plan which he had formed for the service of Florence and
the confusion of her enemies. This plan, as you already know, was to be
furthered by the enrollment of all such among the youth of Florence as
desired to prove themselves true patriots into a body which was to be
known by the high-sounding name of the Company of Death, the meaning of
this title being that those who so enrolled themselves were prepared at
any moment to give their lives for the advantage of the mother-city.
Messer Simone's plan had, as we now learned, been applauded by all the
magnates, such as Messer Corso Donati and Messer Vieri dei Cerchi, and
had received the approval of the priors of the city. As the scheme was
due to Messer Simone, it was agreed on all hands that he should be its
leader so long as the Republic of Florence was in a state of war.
Whoever had taught him his lesson, Messer Simone had learned it
creditably enough. He talked well, and while you listened to him it was
hard not to feel that the Company of Death was indeed a very noble and
hopeful thought, and that it might very well be the duty of all
honorable patriots to join it. But such thoughts might have cooled off
under reflection and deliberation if Messer Simone had not been at the
pains to prevent reflection and deliberation by a cunning stroke of
policy.

So he pitched his loud voice some notes higher, bellowing like a bull of
Bashan as he rolled off sonorous sentences very deftly learned and
remembered, in which glory and the service of the state and the example
of old Rome were cleverly compounded into a most patriotic pasty. Even
as he was in the thick of his speaking there came a flourish of trumpets
at the door, and to the sound of that music there came into the room a
brace of pages that were habited in cloth of gold, and that bore on
their breasts the badge that showed them to be the servants of Messer
Simone. This pair of pages carried between them a mighty gold charger,
and on this charger lay a huge book of white vellum that was bound and
clasped in gold. These pages were followed by other two pages, one of
whom carried ink in a great golden ink-horn and sand in a golden basin,
while the other bore a kind of golden quiver that was stuffed full, not
indeed of arrows, but of quills of the gray goose. When this little
company of pages had come anigh to Messer Simone, who seemed to greet
their approach with great satisfaction, the pages that carried the book
stood before their master, and Simone, stooping to the charger,
unclasped the great book and flung it open and showed that its leaves
were white and fair. The book-bearers supported the book so open, on the
charger, making themselves into a living desk, and he that carried the
ink and sand and he that carried the quills came alongside of them, and
stood quietly, waiting for their work to begin.

Then Messer Simone struck with his open palm upon the smooth, fair
parchment, and cried aloud that in time to come this book would prove to
be one of the city's most precious possessions, for it was to be the
abiding record of those noble-souled patriots who had enrolled their
names upon the roll-call of the Company of Death. And he said again that
such a book would be, indeed, a catalogue of heroes; and after much more
talk to this purpose, he called upon all those present that had high
hearts and loved their mother-city to come forward and inscribe their
names, to their own eternal honor, upon the pages of the there presented
volume.

Now at this there came a great shout of applause from many that listened
to Messer Simone, and because men in such an assemblage, at such an
hour, in such a mood of merry-making, are little likely to prove
thoughtful critics of what may be said by a big voice using big words,
it seemed to many of those there standing that Messer Simone's scheme
of the Company of Death was the best that had ever been schemed for the
salvation of the city, and that to write one's name on the pages of
Messer Simone's book was the noblest duty and proudest privilege of a
true citizen.

There was a great hurrying and scurrying on the part of those that stood
around to get to the book and borrow quill and ink from the attendant
pages, and be among the earliest to deserve the honorable immortality
that Messer Simone promised. There were certain restrictions, so Messer
Simone explained, attendant upon the formation of the Company of Death.
Its members must be young men of no less than eighteen and no more than
thirty years of age. You will bear in mind that Messer Dante was but
just turned eighteen, and that Messer Guido was in his
eight-and-twentieth year. But no one thought of that at the time, not
even I, though it showed plain enough to me afterward. Furthermore, the
Companions were to be all unmarried men, such as therefore were free to
dedicate their lives to the cause of their country with a readiness that
was not to be expected or called for from men that had wives and
families.

While Messer Simone thus explained, youth after youth of the young
gentlemen of Florence, both of the Reds and of the Yellows, came forward
and wrote their names with great zeal and many flourishes on the
smooth, white parchment, and soon the white leaves began to be covered
thick with names, and still the would-be votaries came crowding about
the ink-bearer and the pen-bearer, and catching at the quills and
dipping them in the ink. As fast as a sheet was filled the attendant
would spill a stream of golden sand over the wet inscription and make
ready a fresh sheet for the feverish enthusiasm of the signatories.

After a while Messer Simone called a halt in the business of signing,
and now he began to speak anew, and though his voice was rough and harsh
from all the talk that he had talked before, and though he rather
growled his words than gave them liberal utterance, yet what he said was
what he wanted to say, and came from his black heart with a very
damnable aptness. He was speaking in the praise of those Florentine
youths that had first enrolled their names in the book of the Company of
Death, and he was praising them ostentatiously for their valor and their
patriotism, and yet while he praised, I, listening, thought that his
praises were not very good to get, though some share of them was due to
me who had written my name on the pages of the big book, partly because
I had drunk much wine, and partly because I could never resist the
contagion of any enthusiasm, and partly because the pretty girl that was
by my side--I forget her name now--egged me on to the folly.

After Simone had made an end of his laudations, he came to speak with a
rough scorn of those that were content to show their devotion to their
mother-city by no greater sacrifice than the serving to defend her in
case of an attack. While he spoke I could see that his eyes were fixed
upon the face of Dante, where he stood a little apart and watched and
listened. I had lost thought of Dante in my merry-makings and lost sight
of him in the hurly-burly, and now suddenly I saw him leaning against a
pillar a little apart, and looking at the eager crowd of youths and
Simone that was its central figure. If I had been a painter like Messer
Giotto it would have pleased me to paint in the same picture the faces
of those two men, the one no more than beastly flesh, and the other, as
it seemed to me, the iron lamp in which a sacred spirit burned
unceasingly, purifying with its glowing flame the human tabernacle. Then
Messer Simone gave a short laugh, and said, mockingly, that such
stay-at-home tactics were well enough for puling fellows that liked to
lie snug behind city walls and write puling sonnets, and would rather be
busy with such petty business than risk their fine skins in brisk
adventures.

Now, as for the taunt in Messer Simone's speech, it was, as who should
say, an arrow that might have been aimed at the heart of many there,
even at my own poor heart, for I was myself an indifferent poet, as you
know by this time if you have not known it before. But I knew that
Messer Simone had no thought of me when he spoke, for indeed I do not
think he thought of me at all, and for my part I thought of him as
little as I could help, for I have no love for ugliness. Messer Guido
Cavalcanti, who was also there, he, too, was a poet, and a great poet,
but it was not of him that Messer Simone spoke, and if it had been it
would not have mattered, for Messer Guido would have cared no whit for
what Messer Simone said of him or thought of him, and now as Simone
spoke, Guido only stood there and laughed in his face, swaying gently
with the laughter.

Messer Guido despised Simone dei Bardi, thinking him, what indeed he
was, a vulgar fellow, and making no concealment of his thought, and what
Messer Guido thought counted in Florence in those days, for he came of a
great race and was himself a very free-hearted and noble gentleman,
against whom no man had anything to say save this, that it was whispered
that he did not believe as a devout man should believe. This tale, for
my part, I hold to be exaggeration, thinking that Messer Guido, in the
curious clarity and balance of his mind, was less of a sceptic than of a
man who should say, standing in a strange country, "I do not know
whither my road shall lead me, and therefore I will not say that I do
know."

Anyway, it was not with Messer Guido Cavalcanti that Messer Simone dei
Bardi would have chosen to quarrel, unless the quarrel were forced upon
him, and then I will do him the justice to say that he would have fought
for his cause like the untameable male thing he was. But he had set his
eyes evilly upon Messer Dante while he had been speaking, and he kept
them fixed on Messer Dante's face now that he had made an end of
speaking. I saw that Dante's face flushed a little, even to the hair
above the high forehead, and his eyes for a moment seemed to widen and
brighten like those of some fierce, brave bird. Then he pushed his way
to the front of the company and looked up at Simone steadfastly, and his
arms were still folded across his body and his sharp-featured face was
tense with suppressed rage, and he spoke very quickly but clearly, too,
for all the quickness of his words.

What he said was to this effect: "Messer Simone, I thank Heaven that it
may be possible for a man to write verses in the praise of his sweet
lady and to draw sword in the service of his sweet city. Because I think
that no man can honor his lady better than in honoring the city that is
blessed in giving her birth and blessed in sheltering her beauty, I
hereby very cheerfully and joyously give my name to be written on the
list of the Company of Death."

Thereat there was a great cheering and shouting on the part of the
younger men, and they gathered about Dante, hotly applauding him. My
heart was heavy within me, for I looked at the face of Simone dei Bardi
and saw that it shone with pleasure, and I looked at the face of Guido
Cavalcanti and saw that it was gray with pain, and I knew that Messer
Simone had gained his purpose. As I looked from face to face of the two
men that made such ill-matched enemies, Messer Guido Cavalcanti came
forward, and, taking a quill from him that held them, wrote his name on
the book of the Company of Death, just below the name of Dante.




XV

A SPY IN THE NIGHT


Messer Simone had in his service, as you know already who have read this
record of mine, a fellow named Maleotti that was of great use to his
master--a brisk, insidious villain that was ever on good terms with all
the world, and never on such good terms with a man as when he was minded
to do him an ill turn, assuming, of course, that such ill turn was to
his own advantage or in the service of his master, Messer Simone dei
Bardi. To Messer Simone this fellow Maleotti was altogether devoted, as,
indeed, he had a right to be, for Simone was a good paymaster to all
those that served him, and he knew the value of Maleotti's tongue when
it had a lying tale to tell, and Maleotti's hand when it had a knife in
it and a man to be killed standing or lying near to its point.

This Maleotti wisely, from his point of view, made it his business not
merely to serve Messer Simone to the best of his ability in those things
in which Messer Simone directly demanded his obedience and intelligence,
but he also was quick to be of use to him in matters concerning which
Messer Simone was either ignorant or gave no direct instructions. It was
Maleotti's pleasure to mingle amid crowds and overhear talk, on the
chance of gleaning some knowledge which might be serviceable to his
patron, and, indeed, in this way it was said that he had heard not a few
things spoken heedlessly about Messer Simone which were duly carried to
Messer Simone's ears, and wrought their speakers much mischief. Also he
would, if he could find himself in company where his person and service
were unknown, in the wine-house or elsewhere, endeavor to engage those
about him in conversation which he would ever lead deftly to the subject
of his master and his master's purpose, and so win by a side wind, as it
were, a knowledge of Florentine opinion that more than once had been
valuable to Simone.

Now it had occurred to this fellow, since the beginning of the feud
between Simone dei Bardi and Dante dei Alighieri, that it would be to
his master's advantage, and to his own, if thereby he pleased his
master, that he should set himself to spy upon Messer Dante and keep him
as frequently as might be under his eye. It was thus that Messer Simone
came to know--what, indeed, was no secret--that our Dante had devoted
himself very busily to the practice of arms, and was making great
progress therein. But this information, as I learned afterward, did
little more than to tickle Messer Simone and make him grin, for he
believed that he was invincible in arms, and that no man could stand
against him, in which belief he was somewhat excused by his long record
of successes, and it seemed to him no more than a sorry joke that a lad
and a scholar like Dante should really pit his pigmy self against
Simone's giantship. It was no information of Maleotti's that told Simone
the truth about the unknown poet. That, as you know, he found out for
himself, and if he did but despise any skill that Dante might attain in
arms, he had the clumsy man's horror of the thing he could not
understand, of the art of weaving words together to praise fair ladies
and win their hearts. Maleotti did not know what his master knew,
therefore, about Dante, but he came to know it on this night. For
Maleotti was among the hearers when Dante, yielding to Messer Guide's
insistence, consented to read the verses of the unknown poet, and his
quick eyes had been as keen as Messer Guido's to understand the meaning
of Dante's change of voice and color when Madonna Beatrice came into the
room.

Now this fellow Maleotti, having, as it seems, nothing better to do with
his petty existence, must have judged, after this discovery, that it
might please his master in some fashion to keep an eye upon Messer Dante
what time he was the guest of Messer Folco of the Portinari on that
evening of high summer. And I believe it to be little less than certain
that he must have observed the meeting and the greeting between Monna
Beatrice and me, although it is no less certain that he could have heard
none of our speech. So when our speech, whatever it was, for it was all
nothing to Maleotti, had come to an end, and I had glided quietly away
from Madonna Beatrice and carried her message to my friend, the Maleotti
rascal still continued his observation of Messer Dante and his actions.

As I learned afterward from one to whom Maleotti told the matter, he saw
at a later hour Messer Dante linger for a while in the garden as one
that is lost in thought. Maleotti swore that he seemed all of a sudden
to stiffen where he stood, even as a man in a catalepsy might do, and
that he stood so rigid and tense for the space, as it seemed to
Maleotti, of several minutes, though why he stood so or what the cause
of his immobility this Maleotti could in nowise conjecture. I, of
course, know very well that this was one of the moments when the God of
Love made itself manifest to him. But after a while, as he affirmed that
told it to me, Messer Dante seemed to shake off the trance or whatever
it was that held him possessed, and then, moving with the strange
steadiness of one that walks in his sleep, made through the most lonely
part of the garden for that wing of the house of Messer Folco where
Madonna Beatrice was lodged. Maleotti, creeping very stealthily at his
heels, saw how he came, after a space, to a little gate in the wall, and
how, as it seemed to Maleotti, the gate lay open before him, and how
Messer Dante straightway passed through the open gateway and so out of
his sight.

Now Maleotti, who was as familiar with the house of Messer Folco as he
was with his own garret in the dwelling of Messer Simone dei Bardi, knew
that this gateway gave on a winding flight of stairs that led to an open
loggia, on the farther side of which lay the door of Madonna Beatrice's
apartments. Whereupon it pleased this Maleotti, putting two and two
together, after the manner of his kind, and making God knows what of
them, to be quick with villanous suspicions and to be pricked with a
violent desire to let his master know what had happened, partly, as I
believe, knowing the vile nature of the man, because he thought the
knowledge he had to impart might prove a little galling to his master.
However that may be, for in his damnable way he was a faithful servant
to his lord, he waited awhile until he saw that Beatrice walked on the
loggia and that Dante came to her, and that she seemed to greet him as
one expected. Now it taxes no more the wit of a rogue than the wit of an
honest man to guess that when two young people stand apart and talk, it
is God's gold to the devil's silver that they talk love-talk. So as
Maleotti had seen enough, and durst not go nearer to hear aught, he made
his way back as swiftly as he could through the green and silent garden
to the noisy rooms within the house where folk still were dancing and
singing and eating and drinking and making merry, as if they knew not
when they should be merry again.

High at the table Maleotti spied his master, Messer Simone. He had now
disarmed, and sat, very big with meat and drink and very red of face,
talking loudly to a company of obsequious gentlemen who thought, or
seemed to think, his utterances oracular. A good way off, at the head of
his own table, sat Messer Folco, grave and gray and smiling, his one
thought seeming to be that those that came under his roof should be
happy in their own way, so long as that way accorded with the decorum
expected of Florentine citizens. I fancy that his glance must have
fallen more than once, and that unadmiringly, upon that part of the
table where Messer Simone sat and babbled and brawled and drank, as if
drinking were a new fashion which he was resolved to test to the
uttermost. Messer Simone, being such a mighty giant of a man, was
appropriately mighty in his appetites, and could, I truly believe, eat
more and drink more, and in other animal ways enjoy himself more, than
any man in all Italy. But though he would, and often did, drink himself
drunk at the feasts where he was a guest, as very notably in that case
where he made his wager with Monna Vittoria, he could, if need were, and
if occasion called for the use of his activities, shake off the stupor
of wine and the lethargy of gluttony and be ready for any business that
was fitted to the limitations of his intelligence and the strength of
his arms.

Such ways as Messer Simone's, however, were distasteful to the major
part of our Florentine gentry, who always cherished a certain decorum in
their bodily pleasures and admired a certain restraint at table, and
what they approved was naturally even more highly esteemed and commended
by Messer Folco Portinari, who was very fastidious in all his public
commerce with the world, and punctilious in the observance of the laws
and doctrines of good manners. How such a man could ever have consented
to consider Messer Simone for a single moment as a suitor for his
daughter passes my understanding. But Messer Simone was rich and
powerful and of a great house, and Messer Folco loved riches and power
and good birth as dearly as ever a woman loved jewels.

However that may be, our Maleotti got near to Simone, and after trying
unavailingly to catch the attention of his eye, made so bold as to come
hard by him and to pluck him by the sleeve of his doublet once or twice.
This failing to stir Messer Simone, who was thorough in his cups,
Maleotti spurred his resolve a pace further, and first whispered and
then shrieked a call into Messer Simone's ear. The whisper Messer Simone
passed unheeded, the shriek roused him. He turned in his seat with an
oath, and, gripping Maleotti by the shoulder, peered ferociously into
his face. Then, for all his drinking, being clear-headed enough to
recognize his henchman's countenance, he realized that the fellow might
have some immediate business with him, and, relaxing his grip, he asked
Maleotti none too affably what he wanted. Thereupon, Maleotti explained
that he needed some private speech with his master, and very anxiously
and urgently beckoned to him to quit the table and to come apart, the
which thing Messer Simone very unwillingly, and volubly cursing, did.

But when he had risen from the table and quitted the circle of the
revellers, and stood quite apart from curious ears, if any curious ears
there were, his manner changed as he listened to the hurried story that
Maleotti had to tell him. The news, as it filtered through his
wine-clogged brain, seemed to clarify his senses and quicken his wits.
He was, as I guess, no longer the truculent, wine-soaked ruffian, but
all of a sudden the man of action, as alert and responsive as if some
one had come to tell him that the enemy were thundering at the city's
gates. He asked Maleotti, as I understand, if he were very sure of what
he said and of what he saw, and when Maleotti persisted in his
statement, Messer Simone fell for a while into a musing mood that was no
stupor of intoxication. Once or twice he made as if to speak to his
fellow, and then paused to think again, and it was not until after some
minutes that he finally decided upon his course of action.

I think it would have pleased Messer Simone best if this spying creature
of his had waited for Dante when he came from his meeting, and stabbed
him as he passed. But he thought, as I believe, that what had not been
done by the man might very well be done by the master, and with that, as
I conceive, for his most immediate intention, he had Maleotti wait for
him in the garden. There in a little while he joined him, and the two
went together toward the part of the palace where Beatrice had her
dwelling. But when they came to the gateway beneath the loggia where
Beatrice had talked with Dante, the lovers had parted, and Dante had
gone his ways and Beatrice had returned to her rooms. Then Messer Simone
turned to his follower and bade him hasten to Messer Folco, where he sat
at his wine, and get his private ear, and tell him that a man was having
speech with his daughter on the threshold of her apartments. Messer
Simone knew well enough how great an effect such a piece of news would
have upon the austere nature of his host, and I make no doubt that his
red face grinned in the moonlight as he dispatched his fellow upon his
errand. When Maleotti had gone, Messer Simone slowly ascended the
staircase that conducted to the loggia, and concealed himself very
effectually behind a pillar in a dark corner hard by the door of
Beatrice's rooms.

I have stood upon that loggia in later years, and looked out upon
Florence when all the colors of summer were gay about the city. I know
that the prospect is as fair as man could desire to behold, and I know
that there was one exiled heart which ached to be denied that prospect
and who died in exile denied it forever. I dare swear that his latest
thoughts carried him back to that moon-lit night of July when he made
bold to climb the private stair and seek private speech with Madonna
Beatrice. I can guess very well how the scene showed that night in the
moonbeams--all the city stretched out below, a harlequin's coat of black
and silver, according to the disposition of the homes and the open
spaces with their lights and shadows. I can fancy how, through the
gilded air, came the cheerful sounds of the dancing and the luting and
the laughter and the festival, and how all Florence seemed to be, as it
were, one wonderful, perfect flower of warmth and color and joy.

It is all very long ago, this time of which I write, and it may very
well be that I exaggerate its raptures, as they say--though in this I do
not agree--is the way with elders when they recall the sweet,
honey-tinted, honey-tasting days of their youth. It would not be
possible for any man to overpraise the glories and beauties of Florence
in those days. Those glories, as I think, may be said to have come to an
end with the Jubilee of His Holiness Pope Boniface the Eighth, the poor
pope who was said to be killed by command of the French king, but who,
as I have heard tell, escaped from that fate and died a nameless hermit
in a forest of Greece.

However that may be, I am glad to think, for all that I am now so
chastened, and for all that I have learned patience, that I can recall
so clearly that pillared place with the moonbeams dappling the marble,
and can rekindle in my withered anatomy something of the noble fire that
burned in the heart of Dante, as he stood there in his youth and his
hope and his love, and looked into the eyes of his marvellous lady.
Also, I am glad to think that I know much of the words that passed
between the youth and the maid in that hour, and if not their exact
substance, at least their purport. For though Dante never made
confidence to me of a matter so sacred as the speech exchanged at such
an interview, yet he spoke of it to Messer Guido, whom, after he had
entered into terms of friendship with him, he loved and trusted, very
rightly, better than me. Also--for that was his way--he set much of
that night's discourse into the form of a song which he gave to Messer
Guido. Messer Guido, before his melancholy end, over which, as I
believe, the Muses still weep, knowing how great a concern I had in the
doings of Messer Dante, told me with great clarity the essence of what
Dante had told to him, and showed me the poem, not only allowing me to
read it, but granting me permission, if it so pleased me, to take a
copy. This, indeed, I should have done, but being, as I always have
been, a lazy knave, I neglected to do, thinking that any time would
serve as well as the present, and being, as I fear, entangled in some
pleasant pastime with a light o' love or two that interfered with such
serious interests as I owned in life, and of which certainly none should
have been more serious than any matter concerning my dear friend and
poet. Then, when it was too late for me to amend my error, came Messer
Guido's death, and no man knows now what became of those verses.

As for me, I cannot remember them, try I never so hard to cudgel my
brains for their meaning and sequence. Sometimes, indeed, at night, in
sleep, I seem to see them plain and staring before me on a smooth page
of parchment, every word clear, every rhyme legible, the beautiful
thoughts set forth in a beautiful hand of write; but when I wake they
have all vanished. Sometimes on an evening of late summer, when the
winds are blowing softly through the roses and filling the air with
odors almost unbearably sweet, it seems to me as if the sweet voices of
lovers were chanting those lines, and that I have only to listen
heedfully to have them for my own again. But it is all in vain that I
try to remember them to any profit. A few phrases buzz in my own brains,
but they are no more than phrases, such as I, or any man that was at all
nimble in the spinning of words, might use about love and a sweet lady,
and there are not enough of them left to build up again the noble
structure of so splendid a vision.

Well, as I say, Messer Dante, having quitted the festivity, made his way
into the garden, where he lingered a little while. Then it seemed to him
that the God of Love appeared to him in the same form as before, only
more glorious, and bade him follow, and he went, guided, as it seemed to
him, ever by that strange and luminous presence through this path and
that path, till he came to the appointed staircase and climbed it,
following ever the winged feet of Love. When he came to the top of the
stairway he passed through a little door on to the open, moon-drenched
loggia, and straightway his first thought was that he beheld the stars,
seeing that they seemed to him to shine so very brightly in heaven after
the blackness of the darkness through which he had passed. And I think
it must be some memory of that night which has made him thrice record
with much significant insistence his beholding of the stars.

In the mingled moonlight and starlight of the loggia the figure of the
God of Love showed, he said, as clearly to his eyes as when he had
ascended the winding stair, albeit differently, for whereas in the
darkness the shape of Love had appeared to him luminous and fluttering,
as if it had been composed of many living and tinted fires, now in the
clear light of that open space it showed more like a bodily presence,
not human indeed, but wearing such humanity as it pleased the gods of
old time to assume when they condescended to commune with mortals. I
remember how he said, in the poem which I spoke of, that he could have
counted, had he the leisure, every feather in Love's wings. But the god,
or the vision which he took to be a god, gave him no such leisure, for
he came to a halt, and he had his arrow in his hand, and with that arrow
he pointed before him, and then the image of the God of Love melted into
the moonlight and vanished, and the glory of the stars was forgotten,
and Dante knew of nothing and cared for nothing but that his lady
Beatrice stood there awaiting him.




XVI

THE TALK OF LOVERS


When Dante came to the loggia it was very white in the moonlight, save
where the shadows of the marble pillars barred it with bands of black.
Amid the moonlight and the shade Beatrice walked, and waited for his
coming. When she heard his footsteps she came to a halt in her course,
and he, as he advanced, could see the shining of her eyes and the
quickened color of her cheeks; and it seemed to him in his rapture that
he did not move as mortals do, but that he went on winged feet toward
that vision of perfect loveliness. But when he came nigh to her, so near
that if he had stretched out his arm he could have touched her with his
hand, he stopped, and while he longed with all his soul to speak, the
use of words seemed suddenly to be forbidden to him, and his members
began to tremble again, as they had trembled before, when he came to an
end of reading the poem.

Madonna Beatrice saw the case he was in, and her heart pitied him, and,
perchance, she marvelled that Dante, who carried himself so valiantly
and could make songs of such surpassing sweetness, should be so
downcast and discomfited in the presence of her eighteen years. However
that may be, she addressed him, and the sound of her voice fell very
fresh and soft upon his ears, enriching the summer splendor of the night
with its music as her beauty enhanced its glory with the glory of her
bodily presence. "What have you to say to me," she asked, "that is so
urgent that it cannot wait for the day?"

At this question Dante seemed to pluck up some courage--not much,
indeed, but still a little; and he made bold to answer her after the
manner that is called symbolic, and this, or something like this, is
what he said:

"Madonna, I may compare myself to a man that is going on a journey very
instantly, and since no man that rides out of a gate can say to himself
very surely that he will ride in again, I have certain thoughts in my
heart that clamor to make themselves known to you, and will not by any
means be gainsaid if I can at all compass the way to utter them."

Beatrice smiled at him very kindly in the moonlight, for the youth in
his voice appealed very earnestly to the youth in her heart, and it may
be to a gaingiving that had also its lodging in her body and warned her
of youth's briefness.

While she smiled she spoke. "Many would say that I lacked modesty if
they knew that I talked with you thus belated and unknown, but I think
that I know you too well, though I know you so little, to have any doubt
of your honesty and well-meaning."

At the kindness in her voice and the confidence of her trust Dante
carried himself very straight and held his head very high for pride at
her words, and he was so strangely happy that he was amazed to find
himself even more happy than he had hoped to be in her presence.

With that blissful exaltation upon him, he addressed her again. "Lady,
when a traveller takes the road, if he has possessions, and if he be a
wise man, he makes him a will, which he leaves in safe hands, and he
sets all his poor affairs in order as well as may be. And he leaves this
possession to this kinsman, and that gift to that friend, till all that
he has is properly allotted, so that his affairs may be straight if evil
befall. But I, when I go upon a journey, have no greater estate than my
heart to bequeath." He paused for a moment, watching her wistfully, and
seeing that her face was changeless in the moonlight, showing no sign
either of impatience or of tolerance, he spoke again, in a very low
voice, asking her, "Have I your leave to go on with what I am hot to
say?"

"You may go on," Beatrice answered him, and her voice seemed calm as she
spoke.

But if Dante had known women better--if he had been like me, for
instance--he would have known that, for all her show of calm, she was no
less agitated than he who stood before her and adored her. But he only
saw her divinely aloof and himself most humanly mortal. Yet he took
courage from her permission to speak again. "Madonna, ever since that
sacred day when you gave me the rose that I carry next my heart, my mind
has had no other thought but of you, and my life no other purpose than
to be worthy, if only in a little, of your esteem. Yet, for some reason
unknown to me, you have of late, in any chance encounter, chosen to
withdraw from me the solace of your salutation, and I grieve bitterly
that this is so, though I know not why it is so."

"Let that pass," said Beatrice, gently, "and be as if it had not been. I
had heard that you kept light company. Young men often do so, and it is
no part of my duty to judge them. But you yourself, Messer Dante,
invited my judgment, challenged my esteem, told me that for my sake you
meant to do great things, prove yourself noble, a man I must admire.
When, after all the fine-sounding promises, I found you counted by
gossip as the companion of Vittoria, you need not wonder if I was
disappointed, and if my disappointment showed itself plainly on my
averted face."

"Madonna," Dante began, eagerly, but the girl lifted her hand to check
interruption, and Dante held his peace as the girl continued to speak.

"I know now that I was wrong in my reading of your deed; that what you
did, you did for a reason that you believed to be both wise and good.
Though I do not think that it is ever well for a true man to play an
untrue part, yet I know that you acted thus in the thought of serving
me. So let it pass, and be as if it had not been."

She was silent, and for a little while Dante was silent too, staring at
her beautiful face and clasping his hands tightly together, as one that
has much to say and knows not how to say it. Once and again his lips
that parted to speak closed again, for if he rejoiced greatly to stand
there in her presence and be free to speak his mind unimpeded, yet also
he feared greatly lest the words he might utter should prove unworthy of
this golden chance given him by Heaven.

But at length his longing conquered his alarm, and he spoke quickly.
"Hear me, Beatrice," he pleaded. "My heart is young, and I will never be
so vain as to swear that it is untainted by the folly of youth, or free
from the pride of youth, or clean of the greed of youth. But now it is
swept and garnished, made as a fair shrine for a divine idol, for a
woman, for a girl, for an angel--for you!"

Beatrice looked very steadfastly upon the eager face of her lover while
she listened to his eager words, and when he paused she began to murmur
very softly the opening lines of one of the sonnets that Dante had
written in those days of his secrecy:

     "The lady that is angel of my heart,
     She knows not of my love and may not know--"

She stopped and looked at Dante as if she questioned him, and Dante
answered her by carrying on the lines:

     "Until God's finger gives the sign to show
     That I to her the secret may impart."

He paused for a moment, rejoicing to think that she had so far cherished
his verses; then he went on, eagerly: "God's finger gives me the sign
to-night, and I will speak, lest I die with the message of my soul
undelivered. I love you." It seemed to him that she must needs hear the
fierce beatings of his heart as he spoke these words.

Beatrice looked at him with a melancholy smile. "Is that the message of
your soul?" she asked.

And Dante answered: "That is my soul itself. All my being is uplifted by
my love for you. It has made a new heaven and a new earth for me: a new
heaven whither you shall guide me, a new earth where I shall walk more
bravely, and yet more warily, than of old, fearing nothing, for your
sake, save only to be found unworthy to say, 'I love you.'"

If Dante spoke with a passionate happiness in thus setting free his
soul, there was happiness too, in Beatrice's voice as she answered him.
"I am, indeed, content to hear you speak, for your words seem, as words
seldom seem in this city and in this world, to be quite true words. So
when you say you love me, I feel neither agitation, nor flattered
vanity, nor amazement--all which feelings, as I have read in books and
heard of gossips, are proper to maidens in these hours. Only I know that
I believe you, and that I am glad to believe you."

Dante interrupted her, crying her name with passionate
eagerness--"Beatrice!" But he kept the place where he stood.

The girl spoke again, finishing her thought. "And I think you will
always be worthy to offer love and to win love."

Dante moved a little nearer to her, and he stretched out his hands as
one that begs a great gift. "Beatrice," he entreated, "will you give me
your love?"

The smile that was partly kind and partly wistful came again to the
girl's face. "Messer Dante, Messer Dante," she said, "how can you ask,
and how can I answer? A raw youth and a green girl do not make the world
between them, nor change the world's laws, nor the laws of this little
city, nor the laws of my father in my father's house. And my father's
law is like a hand upon my lips, forbidding them to speak, and like a
hand upon my heart, forbidding it to beat."

Dante protested very vehemently, in all the zeal and freshness of his
youth. "The law of Love is greater than all other laws. The strength of
Love is stronger than all strength. The sword of Love is stronger than
the archangel's sword, and conquers all enemies."

Beatrice shook her head at her lover's fury, and her eyes shone very
brightly in the moonlight. "Oh, Dante! Dante!" she said, softly, "if
this were indeed so, the world would be an easier world for lovers. If
you were to tell my father what you have told me, or if I were to tell
my father what I have told you, he would twit us for a pair of silly
children, and take good heed that we were kept apart. If you were to ask
my father for me, he would deny you, and laugh while he denied; for my
father is a proud man, and one that loves wealth and power very greatly,
and will not give his child save where wealth and power abide. If he
were to come upon us here, now, where we talk alone in the moonlight, he
would raise his hand to slay you, and he has not a neighbor nor a friend
but would say he did right. You know all this, even as I know it. Why,
then, do you ask me to give what I cannot give?"

She was very calm and sad as she spoke, and the truth that was in her
mournful words was not to be denied by Dante. But all the ardors of his
being were spurred by his consciousness that he had made known his love
for her, and that she, surely, had scarcely done less than confess her
love for him, and while such sweet happenings hallowed the world, it did
not seem to the poet possible that any mortal power could come between
them. And in this confidence he addressed his beloved again, all on
fire.

"Dear woman," he urged, "not all the fathers in Florence can bind our
spirits. I love you now, I shall love you while I live--in hunger and
thirst, in feasting and singing, in the church and in the street, in
sorrow and in joy, in cross or success. My life and every great and
little thing within my life is sanctified to a sacrament by my love for
you. Cannot your spirit, that is as free as mine, uplift my heart with a
word?"

So he petitioned her, ardently, and his warmth found favor in the girl's
grave, watchful eyes.

"I have heard you praised highly of late," she said, "and men give you
great promise. But, truly, I judge you with the sight of my own eyes,
not with the sound of others' words. And I think you are indeed a man
that a woman might be happy to love."

Dante's heart leaped to hear such sweet speech, and for very joy he was
silent awhile. Then he said: "If I be indeed anything worth weighing in
the scales of your favor, it is for your sake that I have made myself
so, Madonna."

Beatrice laughed a little, very gently, at his words, and pretended to
frown, and failed. "My cold reason," she asserted, "tells me that I
would rather you bettered yourself just for the sake of being better,
and with no less unselfish intention; but, to be honest, my warm heart
throbs at your homage."

Dante would have come closer, but she stayed him with a gesture. "You
make me very proud," he murmured.

Beatrice went on. "Yet I know well that men have done greatly to please
women that were not worth the pleasing, or merely for the lure of some
grace of hand or lip. I should like to think that my lover would always
live at his best for my sake, though he never won a kiss of me."

"Then here I swear it," Dante said, proudly, "to dedicate my life to
your service, and to make all honorable proof of my devotion. But you,
beloved, will you not give me some words of hope?"

Beatrice extended her hands to him, and he caught those dear hands in
his, and held them tightly, and Beatrice was smiling as she spoke,
although there were tears in her eyes. "So far," she said, "as a woman
can promise the life that is guided by another's law, I give you my
life, Dante. But my love is my own, to hold or to yield, and I give it
all to you with all my heart, knowing that because you think it worth
the winning, you will be worthy of what you have won."

Now, as I think, here my Dante made to take his lady in his arms, but
she denied him, very delicately and gently, pleading with such sweet
reason that the most ardent lover in the world could not refuse her
obedience. For she would have it thus, that until their love could be
avowed, as in time it might be, if Dante won to fame and honor in the
state, until their love could be avowed there should be no lover's
commerce between them, not even to the changing of a kiss. For she would
not have him nor her act otherwise than in perfect honorability as
befitted their great love. Because Dante did, indeed, cherish a great
love for her, that was greater than all temptings of the flesh, he let
it be as she wished. So this pair, that were almost as the angels in the
greatness of their love, pledged their troths with the simplicity of
children, and parted with the innocence of children, as gentle and as
chaste.




XVII

A STRANGE BETROTHAL


What happened now happened after I had left the festival, but I heard
all the facts later from eye-witnesses, so that I honestly think I can
make it as plain a tale as if I had seen the things myself. Messer
Maleotti, doing as he was told and rejoicing in the thought that he was
making mischief, came into the feasting-hall where Messer Folco sat
apart with certain old friends and kinsfolk of his, sober gentlefolk of
age and repute, that made merry in their grave way and laughed
cheerfully over the jests of yesteryear, and one of them was Master
Tommaso Severo, that was Madonna Beatrice's physician. Now Maleotti,
catching sight of a certain ancient servant of Messer Folco's, whom he
knew well to be an honest man and one much trusted by his master, made
for him and drew him a little apart, and whispered into his ear that
very amazing message with which Messer Simone had intrusted him.

This message, bluntly and baldly stated, came to this: that Maleotti,
taking his ease in the garden and wandering this way and that, came at
last by chance beneath the walls of that part of the palace where
Madonna Beatrice dwelt. There, on the loggia, very plain in the
moonlight, he saw Madonna Beatrice in discourse with a man. Though the
moonlight was bright and showed the face of Madonna Beatrice very
distinctly, the man stood at an angle, as it were, and he could make
nothing of him, face or figure. Such was the story which Maleotti,
primed thereto by Simone, had to tell. At first the man to whom he told
it seemed incredulous, as well he might be, albeit it chanced the tale
was true, and then he became doubtful--for, after all, youth is youth
and love love--and finally, upon Maleotti's insistence, he did indeed
consent to go toward his master, and, plucking him by the sleeve,
solicit the favor of a private word with him. Messer Folco, who was
always very affable in his bearing to those that served him, and who had
a special affection for this fellow, rose very good-humoredly from the
table and the converse and the wine, and going a little ways apart,
listened to what his old servant, who seemed so agitated and aghast, had
to tell him.

When Messer Folco heard what it was that his man had to say, Messer
Folco frowned sternly, and expressed a disbelief so emphatic and so
angry that there was nothing for the poor servitor to do but to call
Maleotti himself, who, with great seeming reluctance and with many
protestations of regret, that must have made him seem like a
particularly mischievous monkey apologizing for stealing nuts, repeated,
with a cunning lack of embellishment, the plain statement that he had
made to the retainer. Thereupon, Messer Folco, in a great rage which it
took all his boasted philosophy to keep under control, called to him two
or three of his old cronies that were still lingering about the deserted
tables. These folk were, indeed, also his kinsfolk, and it was from one
of them that I had the particulars which I am about to set forth with
almost as much certainty as if I had seen them myself.

Making hurried excuses to those few that remained at the table, Messer
Folco and his friends quitted the room upon their errand of folly. And
Maleotti, having done his devil's work, departed upon other business of
his master's, that was no less damnable in its nature and no less
threatening to Simone's enemies.

Messer Folco and his friends hurried swiftly and in silence through the
still, moon-lit gardens till they came to the gateway that Dante had
opened and the little staircase whereby Dante had ascended. Passing
through this gateway and mounting those steps, Messer Folco and his
friends came to the loggia and stood there for a moment in silence. Had
they been less busy upon a bad and unhappy errand, they must needs have
been enchanted by the beauty of all that lay before and around them in
that place and on that night of summer.

The air was very hot upon the loggia, and the night was very still. All
over the field of the sky the star-candles were burning brightly, and it
scarcely needed the torches that certain of Messer Folco's companions
carried to see what was to be seen. Those of Messer Folco's kinsfolk
that stood huddled together about the entrance of the loggia, curious
and confused at the suddenness of the unlovely business, could see that
their leader looked very pale and grave as he crossed the pavement and
struck sharply with his clinched hand at the door which faced him. In a
little while the door opened, and one of Madonna Beatrice's ladies
peeped out her head, and gave a little squeal of surprise at the sight
of her lord and the rest of the company, the unexpected presence, and
the unexpected torches. But Messer Folco bade her very sternly be still,
and when Messer Folco commanded sternly he was generally obeyed. Then he
ordered her that she should summon her mistress at once to come to him
there, where he waited for her. When the sorely frightened girl had
gone, there was silence for a little while on the loggia, while the
perplexed friends stared at each other's blanched faces, until presently
the little door opened again and Monna Beatrice came forth from it, and
saluted her father very sweetly and gravely, as if nothing were out of
the ordinary, though some thought, and Messer Tommaso Severo knew, that
there was a troubled look in her usually serene eyes.

Messer Folco addressed her calmly, with the calmness of one that, being
consciously a philosopher, seeks to restrain all needless, unreasonable
rages, and he said, slowly: "Madonna, I have been told very presently by
one that pretends to have seen what he tells, that you talked here but
now with a man alone. The thing, of course, is not true?"

The question which went with the utterance of his last words was given
in a very confident voice, and he carried, whether by dissimulation or
no, a very confident countenance.

The look of confidence faded from his face as Madonna Beatrice answered
him very simply. "The thing is true," she said, and then said no more,
as if there were no more to say, but stood quietly where she was,
looking steadily at her father and paying no heed to any other of those
that were present.

The voice of Folco was as stern as before, though harder in its tone as
he again addressed his daughter. "The thing is true, then? I am grieved
to hear it. Who was the man?"

Madonna Beatrice looked at him very directly. She seemed to be neither
at all abashed nor at all defiant, as she answered, tranquilly, "I
cannot tell you, father."

For a little while that seemed a great while a dreary quiet reigned over
that moon-bathed loggia. Father and daughter faced each other with fixed
gaze, and the others, very ill at ease, watching the pair, wished
themselves elsewhere with all their hearts.

While those that assisted reluctantly at this meeting wondered what
would happen next, seeing those two high, simple, and noble spirits
suddenly brought into such strange antagonism--before they, I say, could
formulate any solution of the problem, a man stepped out of the shadow
of the doorway and advanced toward Folco boldly, and the astonished
spectators saw that the man was none other than Messer Simone dei Bardi.
However he may have revelled at the now ended festival, there were no
signs of wine or riot about him now. He stood squarely and steadily
enough, and his red face was no redder than its wont. Only a kind of
ferocious irony showed on it as he loomed there, largely visible in the
yellow air.

"What is all this fuss about?" he asked, with a fierce geniality. "I am
the man you seek after, and why should I not be? Though why you should
seek for me I fail to see. May not a man speak awhile in private to the
lady of his honorable love, and yet no harm done to bring folk about our
ears with torches and talk and staring faces?"

As he spoke those present saw how Madonna Beatrice looked at him, and
they read in her face a proud disdain and a no less proud despair, and
they knew that somehow or other, though of course they could not guess
how, this fair and gracious lady was caught in a trap. They saw how she
longed to speak yet did not speak, and they knew thereby there was some
reason for her keeping silence. Messer Folco looked long at Messer
Simone dei Bardi as he stood there clearly visible in the mingled
lights--large, almost monstrous, truculent, ugly, the embodiment of
savage strength and barbaric appetites. Then Folco looked from Simone's
bulk to his daughter, who stood there as cold and white and quiet as if
she had been a stone image and not a breathing maid.

Folco advanced toward Beatrice and took her by the hand and drew her
apart a little ways, and it so chanced that the place where they came to
a pause was within ear-shot of one of those that Messer Folco had
brought with him, one who stood apart in the darkness and looked and
listened, and this one was Tommaso Severo, the physician. Messer Simone
kept his stand with his arms folded and a smile of triumph on his face,
and I have it on good authority--that, namely, of Messer Tommaso
Severo--that at least one of the spectators wished, as he beheld Simone,
that he had been suddenly blessed by Heaven with the strength of a
giant, that he might have picked the Bardi up by the middle and pitched
him over the parapet into the street below. But as Heaven vouchsafed
this spectator no such grace, Severo kept his place and his peace, and
he heard what Messer Folco said to his daughter Beatrice.

And what he said to her and what she answered to him was very brief and
direct.

Messer Folco asked his daughter, "Was this the man you talked with but
now?"

And Beatrice, looking neither at her father nor at any other one there
present, but looking straight before her over the gilded greenness of
the garden, answered, quietly, "No."

Then Folco questioned her again. "Will you tell me who the man was that
you talked with here?"

And again Beatrice, as tranquil, resolute to shield her lover from
danger, with the same fixed gaze over the green spaces below her,
answered as before the same answer, "No."

Then there came a breathing-space of quiet; Messer Folco looked hard at
his daughter; and she, for her part, looking, as before, away from him,
because, as I guess, she judged that there would be something irreverent
in outfacing her father while she denied his wishes and defied so
strangely his parental authority. Messer Simone stood at his ease a
little apart with the mocking smile of conquest on his face, and the
guests, kinsfolk, and friends, that were witnesses of the sad business,
huddled together uncomfortably.

Then Messer Folco, seeing that nothing more was to be got from the girl,
turned round and addressed himself to those of his kin that stood by the
entrance to the loggia. "Friends," he said, and his voice was measured,
and his words came slow and clear--"kinsmen and friends, I have a piece
of news for you. I announce here and now the betrothal of my daughter
Beatrice to Messer Simone dei Bardi, and I bid you all to the wedding
to-morrow in the church of the Holy Name."

Then, in the silence that greeted this statement, Messer Folco held out
his right hand to Simone and took his right hand, and he drew Simone
toward him and then toward Beatrice, and he lifted the right hand of
Beatrice, that lay limply against her side, and made to place its
whiteness on the brown palm of Messer Simone. Messer Simone's face was
flushed with triumph and Monna Beatrice's face was drawn with pain, and
those that witnessed and wondered thought a great wrong had been
wrought, and wondered why. But before Messer Folco could join the two
hands together Beatrice suddenly plucked her hand away from her father's
clasp.

"No! no! no!" she cried, in a loud voice, and then again cried "No!"
And even as she did so she reeled backward in a swoon, and would have
fallen upon the marble pavement if Messer Severo, that was watching her,
had not sprung timely forward and caught her in his arms.




XVIII

A WORD FOR MESSER SIMONE


I must, in the fulness of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor
of Messer Simone dei Bardi. It is the native, intimate, and commendable
wish of a man to abolish his enemies--I speak here after the fashion of
the worldling that I was, for the cell and the cloister have no concern
with mortal passions and frailties--and Messer Simone was in this, as in
divers other qualities, of a very manly disposition. He thought in all
honesty that it would be very good for him to be the ruler of Florence,
yet, also, and no less, that it would be very good for Florence to be
ruled by him. This is the way of such great personages, as indeed it is
the way of meaner creatures: to persuade themselves very pleasantly that
what they desire for themselves they are justified in desiring on
account of the benefit their accomplished wishes must bear to others.

Messer Simone, having the idea once lodged in his skull--a
dwelling-place of unusual thickness, that was well made for keeping any
idea that ever entered it a prisoner--that it would be well for him to
take charge of Florence, had no room in his pate for tender or merciful
consideration of those that sought or seemed to seek to cross him in his
purpose. They were his enemies; there was no more to be said about it,
and for his enemies, when it was possible, he had ever a short way. Now,
Messer Guido Cavalcanti, and those of his inclining, were very curiously
and truly his enemies, and he had been longing for a great while to get
them out of the way of his ambitions and his purposes, yet could find no
ready means to compass their destruction. But of late he had found a new
enemy in the person of my friend Dante, and a formidable enemy for all
his seeming insignificance; and if Simone sought to crush Dante, I
cannot blame him for the attempt, however much I may rejoice in his
failure.

I believe Messer Simone to have been as much in love with Monna Beatrice
as it was humanly possible for such a man to be in love with such a
maid. He was in love, of course, with the great houses that Messer Folco
owned, with the broad lands that fattened Messer Folco's vineyards; for
though he had houses of his own and broad lands in abundance, wealth
ever covets wealth. But I conceive that whatever of god-like essence was
muffled in the hulk of his composition was quickened by the truly
unearthly beauty of that pale face with its mystic smile and the sweet
eyes that seemed to see sights denied to the commonalty. I think Messer
Simone was in love with Beatrice very much as I might have been, out of
very wonder at a thing so rare and fair and unfamiliar. I was never, as
I have said, in love with Folco's daughter; my tastes are simpler, more
carnal; give me an Ippolita in my affectionate hours, and I ask nothing
better. Love for me must be a jolly companion, never squeamish, never
chilly, never expecting other homage than such salutations as swordsmen
may use for preliminary to a hot engagement. Messer Dante has written a
very beautiful book on his business, its words all fire and golden air,
but I wrote my rhymes in a tavern with red wine at my elbow and a doxy
on my knee. I wonder which of us will be remembered longest.

Yet if I was never in love with Beatrice, I could understand the matter,
and feel how the thick-headed, thick-hearted, thick-fingered giant must
shiver at the unfamiliar twinges and rigors. When a man of such a kind
finds himself in such a dilemma, he is in much such a case as if he were
sick of some childish ailment more dangerous to maturity than to youth.
The thought that another should challenge his right or traverse his
desire galled him to a choler little short of madness. Wherefore, if he
had hated the Cavalcanti faction before, he hated them a thousand times
more now, seeing that Dante was of their number, this Dante that had
gained a rose of lady Beatrice, and wore it next his heart no doubt, and
had denied him and defied him with such cheer and cunning, and dared to
make verses in praise of his lady. If Simone had wished ere this that
the Cavalcanti party was ruined, now he was resolved upon its ruin, and
for no reason more strongly than because it included Dante in its
company. In this resolve, I say again, I cannot honestly blame Messer
Simone. He only acted as most of us would have acted if we had been in
his place.

Messer Simone, I must cheerfully admit, had calculated his plans
cleverly enough. Long before his magnificent appearance at Messer
Folco's house he had been at the pains to make himself aware that the
bulk of the youth of the city were with him hand and heart in his
desperate adventure. To do the youth of Florence the merest justice, it
was every ready to risk its life cheerfully for the advantage of the
city, and, furthermore, for the sheer lust of fighting. What Messer
Simone had hoped to gain at Folco's house, and, indeed, had succeeded in
gaining, was the allegiance of certain young men of the Cavalcanti
inclining, adherents of the Reds, that were not in the natural way of
things affected over kindly to him. All this he had accomplished very
successfully. The heady enthusiasm upon which he had cunningly counted,
the presence of fair women whose sweet breaths are ever ready to fan
the flame of the war-like spirit, the stimulating influences of wine and
light and laughter and dancing--all these had played their parts in
furthering Messer Simone's aims by spurring the Florentine chivalry to a
pitch of exuberance, at which any proposal made in a sounding voice in
the name of the God of War might be relied upon to carry them away. As
you know, it did so carry them away, and Messer Simone's book was
scrawled thick with hurried signatures, and, best of all for his
pleasure, it carried at last the name of Messer Dante, and best of all,
perhaps, for his personal advantage, it carried the name of Messer Guido
Cavalcanti.

I know very well, looking back on those old days, that were so much
better than these new days, that if Messer Simone had failed to lure
Messer Dante into that immediate scheme of his, and had so compelled a
postponement of his revenge, he would still have carried out his purpose
of sending the others that were his enemies to their deaths. But, in his
piggish way, Messer Simone had a kind of knowledge of men. He that was
all ungenerous and bestial--he, this most unknightly giant--he could
realize, strangely enough, what a generous and uplifted nature might do
on certain occasions when the trumpets of the spirit were loudly
blowing. And it was a proof of his mean insight that he had spread his
net in the sight of the bird and had snared his quarry.

Having won so briskly the first move in his game, Messer Simone lost no
time in making the second move. Fortified, as he was, by the friendship
and the approval of certain of the leaders of the city, he could
confidently count upon immunity from blame if any seeming blunder of his
delivered to destruction a certain number of young gentlemen whose
opinions were none too popular with many of those in high office. So,
while still the flambeaux of the festival were burning, and while still
a few late guests were carousing at Messer Folco's tables, the
emissaries of Messer Simone were busy in Florence doing what they had to
do. Thus it was that so many of the fiery-hearted, fiery-headed youths
who had set their names in Messer Simone's Golden Book found, as they
returned gay and belated from Messer Folco's house, the summons awaiting
them--the summons that was not to be disobeyed, calling upon them at
once to prove their allegiance to the Company of Death and obey its
initial command. It is well to recollect that not one single man of all
the men so summoned failed to answer to his name.

It is in that regard, too, that I can scarcely do less than extend my
admiration to Messer Simone. For, in spite of the fact that he was a
very great villain, as he needs must be counted, being the enemy of our
party, he had in him so much as it were of the sovereign essence of
manhood that he could read aright men's tempers. And he knew very well
that such words as "patriotism" and "service of the sweet city" and
"honorable death for a great cause" are as so many flames that will set
the torch of a young man's heart alight. There was no generosity in
Messer Simone, yet--and this I think is the marvel--he could guess at
and count upon the generosity of others, and know that they would be
ready to do in an instant what he would never do nor never dream of
doing. He was not impulsive, he was not high-spirited, he was not
chivalrous; yet he could play upon the impulses, the high spirits, and
the chivalries of those whom he wished to destroy as dexterously as your
trained musician can play upon the strings of a lute. Of course it is
impossible not to admire such a cunning, however perverted the
application of that cunning may be. For there is many a rascal in the
broad world that has no wit to appreciate anything outside the compass
of his own inclinations, and takes it for granted that because he is a
rogue with base instincts, that can only be appealed to by base lures,
all other men are rogues likewise, and only basely answerable to some
base appeal.

Nor can I do otherwise than admire him for the ingenuity of the means by
which he sought to attain his end. It was in its way a masterpiece of
imagination, for one that throve upon banking, to conceive that scheme
of the Company of Death, with its trumpet-call to youth and courage and
the noble heart. It was excellently clever, too, of Messer Simone so to
engineer his contrivance that while he seemingly included in its ranks
the young bloods of every party in the state, he was able, by the wise
adjustment of his machinery, to deal, or at least to intend, disaster
only to those that were opposed to him. Cæsar might well have been
praised for so intelligent an artifice, and yet Messer Simone of the
Bardi, for all that he was brave enough, was very far from being a
Cæsar. However, he planned his plan well, and I praise him for it all
the more light-heartedly because it came to grief so signally, and all
through one whose enmity he rated at too light a price.

It is ever the way of such fellows as Simone, that are of the suspicious
temperament and quick to regard folk as their enemies, to overlook, in
their computation of the perils that threaten their cherished purposes,
the gravest danger of all. Simone had plenty of enemies in Florence, and
he thought that he had provided against all of them, or, at the least,
all that were seriously to be reputed troublesome, when he swaddled and
dandled and matured his precious invention of the Company of Death. But
while he grinned as he read over the list of the recruits to that
delectable regiment, and hugged himself at the thought of how he would
in a morning's work thoroughly purge it of all that were his
antagonists, he suffered his wits to go wool-gathering in one instance
where they should have been most alert. Either he clean forgot or he
disdained to remember a certain wager of his, and a certain very fair
and very cunning lady with whom he had laid it, and to whose very
immediate interest it was that she should win the wager. Messer Simone
seemed either to think that Madonna Vittoria was not in earnest, or that
she might be neglected with safety. Whichever his surmise, Messer Simone
made a very great mistake.

It proved to be one of the greatest factors in the sum of Messer
Simone's blunder that he should have been tempted by ironic fortune to
turn for aid in the ingenious plot he was hatching to the particular man
upon whom he pitched for assistance. Already in those days of which I
write, far-away days as they seem to me now in this green old age--or
shall I, with an eye to my monkish habit, call it gray old age?--of
mine, those gentry existed who have now become so common in Italy, the
gentry that were called Free Companions. These worthy personages were
adventurers, seekers after fortune, men eager for wealth and power, and
heedless of the means by which they attained them. Italian, some of
them, but very many strangers from far-away lands. It was the custom of
these fellows to gather about them a little army of rough-and-ready
resolutes like themselves, whom they maintained at their cost, and whose
services they were always prepared to sell to any person or state that
was willing to pay the captain's price for their aid. And these
captains, as their fortunes waxed, increased the numbers of their
following till they often had under their command as many lances as
would go to the making of a little army. Of these captains that were
then in Italy, and, as I have said, they were fewer in that time than
they are to-day, the most famous and the most fortunate was the man who
was known as Messer Griffo of the Claw. He was so nicknamed, I think,
because of the figure on the banner that he flew--a huge dragon with one
fiercely clawed foot lifted as if to lay hold of all that came its way.

Messer Griffo was a splendid fellow to look at, as big every way as
Messer Simone, but built more shapely, and he had a finer face, and one
that showed more self-control, and he was never given to the beastly
intemperances that degraded the Messer Simone. Messer Griffo and his
levy of lances lived in a castle that he held in the hills some half-way
between Florence and Arezzo. He was, as I believe, by his birth an
Englishman, with some harsh, unmusical, outlandish name of his own that
had been softened and sweetened into the name by which he was known and
esteemed in all the cities of Italy. He had been so long a-soldiering
in our country that he spoke the vulgar tongue very neatly and swiftly,
and was, indeed, ofttimes taken by the people of one town or province in
our peninsula for a citizen of some other city or province of Italy. So
that his English accent did him no more harm in honest men's ears than
his English parentage offended their susceptibilities. For the rest, he
was of more than middle age, but seemed less, was of amazing strength
and daring, and a great leader of Free Companions.

At the time of which I tell he was in command of a force of something
like five hundred lances, that were very well fed, well kept, well
equipped, and ready to serve the quarrel of any potentate of Italy that
was willing to pay for them. He had just captained his rascals very
gallantly and satisfactorily in the service of Padua, and having made a
very considerable amount of money by the transaction, was now resting
pleasantly on his laurels, and in no immediate hurry to further
business. For if Messer Griffo liked fighting, as is said to be the way
of those islanders, he did not like fighting only, but recognized
frankly and fully that life has other joys to offer to a valiant
gentleman. His long sojourn in our land had so civilized and humanized
him that he could appreciate, after a fashion, the delicate pleasures
that are known to us and that are denied to those that abide in his
frozen, fog-bound, rain-whipped island--the delights of fine eating,
fine drinking, fine living, fine loving. Honestly, I must record that he
took to all these delectations very gayly and naturally, for all the
world as if he had the grace to be born, I will not say a Florentine,
but say a man of Padua, of Bologna, or Ferrara. In a word, he had all
the semblance of a very fine gentleman, and when he was not about his
proper business of cutting throats at so much a day, he moved at his
ease with a very proper demeanor.

When Messer Simone began to hatch his little conspiracy of the Company
of Death, he bethought him of Messer Griffo, that was then at liberty
and living at ease, and he sent to the Free Companion a message,
entreating him to visit Florence and be his guest for a season, as he
had certain matters of moment to communicate to him. Now if this Griffo
liked idling very well, he did not like it to the degree that would
permit him to push on one side a promising piece of business. This is, I
believe, the way of his country-people, that are said to be traders
before all, though thereafter they are sailors and soldiers. When the
message of Messer Simone reached him, he appreciated very instantly the
value of Messer Simone's acquaintance, and the probability of good pay
and good pickings if he found reason to enter the Bardi's service. So
with no more unwillingness than was reasonable, considering that he was
passing the time very happily in his house with pretty women and jolly
pot-companions, he made answer to the message that he would wait upon
Messer Simone very shortly in the fair city of Florence. In no very long
time after he kept his word, and came to Florence to have speech with
Messer Simone and drink his wine and consider what propositions he might
have to make.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate for Simone dei Bardi that while there were
many points of resemblance between himself and the Free Companion that
was his guest, the advantages were on the side of the stranger rather
than of the Florentine. Both were big men, both were strong men, both
were practised to the top in all manner of manly exercises. But while
there was a something gross about the greatness of Simone of the Bardi,
the bulk of the Englishman was so well proportioned and rarely adjusted
that a woman's first thought of him would be rather concerning his grace
than his size. While Messer Simone's face betrayed too plainly in its
ruddiness its owner's gratification of his appetites, Messer Griffo's
face carried a clean paleness that commended him to temperate eyes,
albeit he could, when he pleased, eat and drink as much as ever Messer
Simone.

Messer Simone's plan had one great merit to the mind of a foreigner
denied the lucidity of our Italian intelligence--it was adorably
simple. I can give it to you now in a nutshell as I learned it later,
not as I knew it then, for I did not know it then. Nobody knew it then
except Messer Simone of the one part, and Messer Griffo of the other
part, and one other who was not meant to know it or supposed to know it,
but who, in defence of special interests, first guessed at it, and then
made certain of it, with results that were far from satisfactory to
Messer Simone, though they proved in the end entirely pleasing to Messer
Griffo.

Here and now, in few words, was Messer Simone's plan. Messer Griffo was
to enter his, Simone's, service at what rate of pay he might, weighed in
the scale of fairness and with a proper calculation of market values,
demand. At least Messer Simone was not inclined to haggle, and the five
hundred lances would find him a good paymaster. In return for so many
stipulated florins, Messer Griffo was to render certain services to
Messer Simone--obvious services, and services that were less obvious,
but that were infinitely more important.

In the first place, the Free Companion was ostensibly to declare himself
Messer Simone's very good and zealous subaltern in the interests of the
city of Florence, and very especially in those interests which led her
to detest and honestly long to destroy the city of Arezzo. For this
proclaimed purpose he was to hold himself and his men in readiness to
march, when the time came, against Arezzo. This was the first page of
the treaty. But there was a second page of the treaty that, if it were
really written out, would have to be written in cipher. By its
conditions Messer Griffo bound himself to wait with his fellows on a
certain appointed night at a certain appointed place some half-way
between Florence and Arezzo. What his business was to be at this
appointed time and place makes pretty reading even now, when almost all
that were concerned in the conspiracy have passed away and are no more
than moth-like memories.

When Messer Simone dei Bardi contrived to chain upon the Company of
Death that law which bound every member of the fellowship to
unquestioning obedience to its founder, he had in his mind from the
start the goal for which he was playing. At a certain given hour a
certain given number of the Company of Death would be called upon to
foregather outside the walls of Florence, bent on a special adventure
for the welfare of the state. By a curious chance those that were thus
summoned were all to be members of the party that was opposed to Messer
Simone, and would include all those youths who, like Guido Cavalcanti
and Dante Alighieri, had incurred the special detestation of the
would-be dictator.

The rest of the scheme was as easy as whistling. The hot-headed,
hot-hearted gallants of the Company of Death were to ride swiftly in the
direction of Arezzo, carrying with them the information that they would
be reinforced half-way upon their journey by a levy of mercenaries under
the command of Griffo. It was, however, privately arranged between
Simone and Griffo that when the young Florentines made their appearance
they were to be very promptly and decisively put to the sword, after
which deed Messer Griffo and his followers were to betake themselves to
Arezzo, declare themselves the saviors of that city, and insist on
entering its service at a price. After a little while Messer Griffo was
to make his peace with indignant Florence by offering to betray, and, in
due course, by betraying, the town of Arezzo into the hands of her
enemies. By such ingenious spider-spinnings of sin did Messer Simone of
the Bardi promise himself that he would within a very little space of
time cleanse Florence of the pick of his enemies, and also earn the
gratitude of her citizens by placing Arezzo within their power. This was
a case of killing two birds with one stone that mightily delighted
Messer Simone, and he made sure that he had found the very stone that
was fit for his fingers in the excellent, belligerent Free Companion.

It is whimsical to reflect that all would probably, nay, almost
certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had
not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady
out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme
well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting
this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, it was
a simple scheme enough that required no feigning to sustain it, no
dissimulation--qualities these apparently repugnant to the English
heart. Griffo also liked the florins of Messer Simone that were to be
spent so plenteously into his exchequer, and he liked exceedingly the
prospect of the later plunder of Arezzo. That he did not like Messer
Simone very much counted for little in the business. It was no part of
his practice to like or dislike his employers, so long as they paid him
his meed. Still, perhaps the fact that if Simone had not been his
employer he would have disliked him may have counted as an influence to
direct the course of later events.

Certainly Messer Griffo had no compunctions, no prickings of the
conscience, to perturb or to deflect the energy of his keen intelligence
from following the line marked out for it. That he was to dispatch
without quarter the flower of the youth of Florence troubled him, as I
take it, no whit. He was too imperturbable, too phlegmatic for that. Had
he been of our race he might, perhaps, have sighed over their fate, for
we that are of the race of Rome have some droppings of the old Roman
pity as ingredients in our composition. Messer Griffo was no such
fantastico, but a plain, straightforward, journeyman sword-bearer that
would kill any mortal or mortals whom he was paid to kill, unless--and
here is the key to his character and the explanation of all that
happened after--unless he was paid a better price by some one else not
to kill his intended victims. In this particular business he was, maugre
Messer Simone's beard, paid a better price not to do what Simone paid a
less price to have done. What that price was you shall learn in due
course.




XIX

THE RIDE IN THE NIGHT


Through all the quiet of that divine night the minions of the Messer
Simone had slipped hither and thither through the moon-lit streets of
Florence, bearing the orders of the captain of the Company of Death to
certain of his loyal lieutenants and faithful federates. And the order
that each man received was to report himself ready for active service
and properly armed at the gate of the city which gave upon the highroad
that led in the fulness of time to Arezzo. It was a curious fact, though
of course it was not realized until later, that no one of these
summonses was delivered to any man other than a man known to be a member
of the Red party, and, therefore, by the same token, one that was an
opponent of Messer Simone dei Bardi and his friends of the Yellow
League. The call to each man told him that at the tryst he would find a
horse ready to carry him to his destination.

Each man that received that summons had but a little while before been
feasting blithely at the house of Messer Folco. Each man hastened to
obey his summons without a sinister thought, without a fear. Each man
hastily armed himself, hurriedly flung his cloak about him, and sped
swiftly from his abode or lodging across the night-quiet streets to the
appointed meeting-place. Each man, on arrival at the indicated gate,
found the warders awake and ready for him, ready on his production of
his summons to pass him through the great unbolted doors into the
liberty of the open country. The later arrivals found those that had
answered earlier to the call waiting for them in the gray vagueness
between night and dawn, each man standing by a horse's head, while a
number of other horses in the care of a company of varlets waited,
whinnying and shivering in the shadow of the walls, to be chosen from by
the new-comers. Every man that crossed the threshold of the gateway that
night found Maleotti waiting for him on the other hand with a smile of
welcome on his crafty face, and whispered instructions on his evil lips.

Those instructions were simple enough. The little company of gallant
gentlemen, citizens, for the most part, in the flower of their youth,
and certainly the very flower of the Red party, was to fall under the
temporary command of Messer Guido Cavalcanti. Messer Guido was to
conduct the party, which numbered in all some two hundred souls, to a
designated place, a thickly wooded spot some half-way between Arezzo and
Florence. Here the adventurers were to find waiting for them a company
of Free Companions, some six hundred lances, under the command of the
very illustrious _condottiere_, Messer Griffo of the Claw, to whom, at
the point of conjunction, Messer Guido was instantly to surrender his
temporary leadership of the dedicated fellowship. After that it was for
Messer Griffo to decide the order of the enterprise and the form in
which the attack upon Arezzo was to be made. These were very plain and
simple instructions, very simple to follow, very simple to understand,
very easy to obey. No man of all the some two hundred men to whom they
were confided by Maleotti, or one of Maleotti's comrades, required to be
told them a second time or felt the need to ask a single explanatory
question.

It was true enough, as Messer Simone had said, that the rogue
Ghibellines of Arezzo had a mind to deal Florence an ugly stroke, if
ever they could, and that the hope of the Aretines was to trap the
Florentines in a snare. As you know, Messer Simone had hatched a
double-edged plot, though we young hot-heads of the Company of Death
knew of but one-half of its purpose. He had caused information to be
sent to Arezzo that there was a traitor within their walls who was
prepared on a certain night to let in a certain number of Florentines,
who thus would seize and hold one of the gates until reinforcements came
from Florence to secure the weakened city. He schemed all this with the
aid of a Guelph that dwelt in Arezzo as a red-hot Ghibelline. Now, it
would have been simple enough for him after this to send the little
handful of Florentines against a warned Arezzo and have them cut to
pieces by an Aretine ambuscade. But his purpose went further than merely
demolishing a number of his enemies. He wanted to win Arezzo, if he
could, as well. So, by his machinations, he arranged that the forces of
Arezzo should be out to meet and overthrow the adventurous Florentines,
whereafter they might march on Florence and take the city unawares. But,
to counteract this, he made his arrangements with Messer Griffo, who
was, in one and the same job, to massacre the Florentines of the Red and
give battle to the Aretines unaware of his presence, and so, at a
stroke, rid Simone of his enemies, and cover him with patriotic glory.

It will be seen by this that Messer Simone, if treacherous to his
enemies within the city, was in nowise treacherous to the city herself.
But we were ignorant of his wiles that night, as we gathered together
outside the gates.

In an amazingly short space of time we were all a-horseback, and riding
quietly through the night on the road toward Arezzo, with Messer
Maleotti, on a high-mettled mount, shepherding us as we rode, as if we
were so many simple sheep and he our pastor. I, that had come late to
the meeting-place, had sought for and found Messer Dante, after a little
seeking hither and thither through the press of eager, generous youths
that were bestirring themselves to strike a good stroke for Florence
that night. I found him standing quietly alone, with his hand resting in
a kindly command upon the neck of the steed that he had chosen, and a
look of great happiness softening the native sternness of his regard. I
stood by him in silence till we rode, for after our first salutation he
chose to be taciturn, and that in no unfriendly seeming, but as one
might that had great thoughts to think and counted very certainly upon
the acquiescence of a friend. And I was ever a man to respect the
humors, grave or merry, of my friends.

So I stood by him and held my peace until the muster-roll of our
fellowship was completed, and it seemed good to Maleotti that the signal
should be given for our departure upon our business. But while I waited
I looked hither and thither through the moon-lit gloom to discern this
face and that of familiar youth, and as I noted them and named them to
myself, I was dimly conscious of a thought that would not take shape in
words, and yet a thought that, all unwittingly, troubled me. I seemed
like a child that tries, and tries in vain, to recall some duty that was
set upon it, and that has wickedly slipped its memory. Man after man of
the figures that moved about me in the darkness was well known to me.
Those faces, those figures, were the faces and figures of intimates
whose pleasures I shared daily, companions with whom I had grown up,
playfellows in the days when we gambolled in the streets, playfellows
now in the pleasant fields of love and revelry. What could there be, I
asked myself, almost unconscious that I did so question--what could
there be in the presence of so many well-known, so many well-liked, so
many well-trusted gentlemen, to make me feel so inexplicably ill at
ease? Where can a man stand better, I seemed to ask myself, than in the
centre of a throng of men that are all his friends? Thus I puzzled and
fumed in the silent minutes ere we started, struggling with my
unaccountable misgivings, not realizing that it was the very fact that
all about me were my friends which was the cause of my most natural
disquiet. It was not until we were all in the saddle and well upon our
way to Arezzo, that with a sudden clearness my muffled thought asserted
itself, and I must needs make it known at once to Dante, at whose side I
rode.

"Friend of mine," I said to him, in a low voice, "I would not willingly
seem either suspicious or timorous, and I hope I am neither. But I think
I have reason for some unquiet. I have noticed something that seems
curious to me in the composition of our company."

To my surprise he turned to me a smiling face, as of one that was too
well contented with his star to be fretted by wayward chances. "I think
I know what you would say," he answered me, cheerfully, "and indeed I
have noticed what you have noticed--that we who ride thus to-night are
all the partisans of one party in Florence. There is not, so far as I
have been able to see, a single man of the other favor among us."

Now this was exactly the fact that I had at last been able to realize,
the portentous fact which had thrilled my spirit with significant
alarms, the fact to which I wished to call his attention, and, behold,
he had anticipated my observation and seemed to draw from it an
agreeable and exhilarating deduction.

"Is it not a compliment," he went on, "to us that are of the Red party,
to be thus signalled out for an errand of such great danger, and, in
consequence, of such great glory, by the head man of the Yellow faction?
I do not suppose," he said, with a smile, "that Messer Simone has
planned the matter solely to pleasure us. Doubtless he has reasoned it
somewhat thusly: if we fail in our enterprise, why then he has very
cleverly got rid of a number of his adversaries."

He paused for a moment, and I caught at the pause to interrupt him
somewhat petulantly. "And if we succeed?" I said, in a questioning
voice, for I was in that happy age of youth and that sanguinity of
temperament which makes it hard to realize that failure can associate
its grayness or its blackness with one's own bright colors of hope. "If
we succeed?"

"If we succeed," Dante echoed me, slowly, "why, if we succeed, then will
not Messer Simone appear indeed to be a very generous and perfect
gentleman, who was willing to give this great opportunity for honor and
conflict to those that were so hotly opposed to him and his people in
the brawls of the city?"

I could not, for my own part, see Messer Simone in this character of the
high-minded and chivalrous knight, and Madonna Vittoria's words of
warning buzzed in my ears with a boding persistence. To be frank, I felt
qualmish, and though I did not exactly say as much, having a sober
regard for the censure of my friend, yet, in a measure, I did indeed
voice my doubts.

But my dear friend was not to be fretted by my agitations, and much to
my surprise and something to my chagrin, would indeed scarcely consider
them as, to my thinking, they deserved to be considered.

"I feel very sure," he said, tranquilly, "that we shall succeed in what
we are set to do to-night, though I could give you no other reason for
my confidence than the certainty that reigns so serenely in my heart.
Have you not already noted, comrade, for all that you are young and the
way of the world before you, how there sometimes comes to one, although
rarely, such a magic mood in which the liberated spirit seems to swim in
an exalted ether, and the body seems to move uplifted in a world made to
its liking?"

It was at a later time that I learned the great cause of Messer Dante's
contentment and serenity displayed in our journey. It came, in the main,
from the fact that he had that night given and taken troth with Madonna
Beatrice, and that he esteemed himself, as most men esteem themselves in
such a case, though not all as rightly, the man the most happy in all
the world. But this joy of his had its complement and sustainer in a
marvel, a portent vouchsafed to him, as he believed and averred, that
same evening and journey. For as himself told me thereafter, he was, or
thought himself, companioned through all that night-riding by a youth
clad after the fashion of the Grecians, that wore a crimson tunic and
that rode a white horse. Ever and anon this youth turned a smiling
countenance upon Dante, as one that bade him be of cheer, for again he
should see his lady. Dante knew that strange and beautiful presence,
seen of him alone, to be the incarnation of the God of Love that had
already appeared to him before this, time and again, ever since that
morning on the Place of the Holy Felicity, where he beheld for the
second time the lady Beatrice. It is one of my regrets that I have never
been favored, on my own account, with any such celestial apparitions,
but I am glad that Dante was so graced, and I wish I had known at the
time that Love was riding by our side. The presence of Love in the
Company of Death: what an allegory for a poet!

It was very beautiful to hear Messer Dante talk as he talked, and his
calm reasoning, together with the sweetness and serenity of his
confidence, cheered me mightily. In such company, and hearkening to such
speech, it was impossible to be downhearted, and as the brave, hopeful
words fell from him, I that had been not a little in the dumps grew
blithe to whistling-point--not that I did whistle, of course, seeing
that such an ebullition of high spirits would be something out of place
on a night march toward an enemy's country, and scarcely to be commended
by your strategists. Some may say, when they learn the leave of my tale,
that it makes an ironic commentary on Messer Dante's speech and Messer
Dante's conviction, to learn, after all, that what saved us from the
destruction that was spread for our feet was no more and no other than
the craft of a woman and a light o' love. But me-thinks the answer to
that is, that the instruments whereby it may please Heaven to work out
its purposes are not of our choosing, but of Heaven's; and those that
cavil may recall, to their own abashment, how one that was of the same
way of life as our Vittoria was permitted by celestial grace to be a
minister unto holiness. I will not venture to say that Monna Vittoria
did that which she did do with any very conscious thought of serving
Heaven. Nay, more, I am very sure that, as far as she knew, her main
purpose was to serve herself; but it is the result we must look to in
such instances as these. After all, the Sybil, when she uttered her
words of wisdom to all Greece, was as ignorant of what she communicated
as a jug is of the liquor it contains, and yet what a mighty service the
jug renders to your true toper!

Now, while we thus wiled away the journey in such profitable
conversation, the tide of the night had turned, the glory of the summer
stars had paled and faded and departed from the lightening skies. Behind
the hills dawn, in its cloak of unearthly colors, was beginning to fill
the cup of heaven, and the multitude of small birds, waking from their
slumbers, unwinged their heads and started to utter their matins like
honest choristers. The world that had been all black and silver, like
the panoply on a knightly catafalque, was now flooded with a gray
clearness in which all things showed strange, as if one dreamed of them
rather than saw them. Below and beyond us lay a great stretch of wooded
land, and here it was that we knew we were to meet our reinforcement;
here we realized that from this point the adventure might veritably be
said to begin. Our spirits rose with the rising day to the blithest
altitudes; already we seemed to savor the taste of brisk campaigning; I
think we all longed boyishly for action. Pray you, remember that the
most of us were very young, that to most of us the events of life had
still something of the zest that a schoolboy finds in robbing an orchard
and glutting himself with its treasures.

But while most of us were thus brimful of eagerness, he that had been
until now our guide and leader, even Simone's man Maleotti, was all of a
sudden retarded in his progress by the ill conduct of his nag. It was
always a mettled beast, but now it turned restive and took to all kinds
of bucking and jibbing and shying, that seemed strangely disconcerting
to its rider, albeit he was known as a skilful cavalier. So Maleotti
must needs dismount and look to his girths and gear, to see what ailed
his steed, while we rode merrily forward, eager to join hands with those
that we knew were awaiting us behind the mask of yonder clump of trees.
What was it to us if Maleotti could not handle an unmanageable horse?
Behind that brown wood Messer Griffo of the Dragon-flag waited for our
coming--Messer Griffo, the famousest soldier of fortune in all Italy.
Who could be more lucky than we to be thus chosen as sharers in an
enterprise that was honored by the alliance of so astonishing a
_condottiere_? If I were to judge of all our fellowship by myself, as I
fairly think I may judge, then I can assure you that all our pulses were
drumming, that we were hungry and thirsty to get to grips with the
devils of Arezzo.

How exquisitely vain is youth! We who rode and thought that we were
going to do great deeds and win endless applause, how little we dreamed
that we were no more than the toys of chance, the valueless shuttles
between a rich man's gold and the kisses of a courtesan. We that likened
ourselves to the conquerors of worlds were no better than petty pawns on
an unfriendly chess-board, making moves of which we knew nothing, in
obedience to forces of which we were as ignorant as children. All we
knew, all we cared to know, in our then mood, was that we had come to
the point where it was ordained that we were to meet and join forces
with Messer Griffo of the Dragon-flag.




XX

THE FIGHT WITH THOSE OF AREZZO


This was what was to have happened at this point; this is what caused
Messer Maleotti to have so much show of trouble with his steed. The
little company of Florentine gentlemen were to have joined their forces
with those that rode under the Dragon-flag of Messer Griffo, were to
have ridden with them into the darkness of the wood, and were then and
there incontinently to have been cut to pieces by the mercenaries.
Maleotti, lingering behind to look after that troublesome horse of his,
saw that much of this came very properly to pass. As the Florentines of
the Company of Death came within view and hail of that midway wood,
there rode out to greet them a number of Free Companions, with Messer
Griffo at their head. In the gray of the growing dawn Maleotti could
recognize him very clearly by his height on horseback and his burly
English bulk, and Maleotti, still busy with his horse, could see how the
two forces joined hands, so to speak, and how the free-lances gathered
around the little company of youths from Florence, and, as it were,
swallowed them up in their greater number, and how the whole force, thus
united, disappeared into the darkness of the wood, as the children in
the fairy tale disappear into the mouth of the giant.

Then Maleotti made up his mind that he had seen enough, and
congratulated himself upon his wisdom in holding aloof from that
meeting, for, as he very sensibly reflected, in a scuffle of the sort
that was arranged to follow, your mercenary who is paid to kill is not
always clear-headed enough to distinguish between his properly appointed
victims and a respectable individual like Maleotti, who was a firm
friend and faithful servant of the master butcher. So Maleotti mounted
on his horse, which, now that we were out of sight, had very suddenly
and unexpectedly grown quiet again, and rode off at an easy walking pace
toward Florence, congratulating himself and his master upon a night's
work well done.

Yet Maleotti had to learn that it does not always follow in life that
because the first portion of a carefully prepared plan goes as it was
intended to go, the rest of the plan must necessarily move with equal
success along its appointed lines. Though Maleotti was as sure as if he
had seen it of our slaughter in the forest shambles, there came no
moment in that journey of ours through the darkness of the wood when
Messer Griffo, drawing his sword, thundered an appointed order, and
forces of destruction were let loose upon the Company of Death. On the
contrary, Messer Griffo rode very quietly and pleasantly by the side of
Messer Guido, chatting affably of the affairs of Florence and the
pleasures and advantages of a morning attack, when you take your enemy
by surprise, and ever and anon, to Messer Guido's surprise, leading the
conversation craftily to the name of Monna Vittoria, and dwelling
enthusiastically on her manifold charms and graces. I, still by the side
of Dante, trotted on in the most blissful unconsciousness that if things
had gone as they were intended to go, we should all be lying on the
carpet of the wood with our throats cut.

It was only later that I learned, partly from the lady herself that was
the main cause of the change, and partly from Messer Griffo, in a moment
of confidence over a flask of Lacrima Christi, when all those things
that I am speaking of were as ancient as the Tale of Troy. Julius Cæsar!
what that morning's business might have been, and was meant to be, by
our friend Simone! It seems that Monna Vittoria, being a woman, and
shrewd, and knowing her Simone pretty well, saw clearer through the
device of the Company of Death when it was first hinted at than any of
the feather-headed enthusiasts who were eager to swell its levy. And
being a watchful woman and a cunning and a clever, she soon found out
that Messer Simone was in treaty with Messer Griffo of the Dragon-flag,
and feeling sure that what she might fail to elicit from Simone she
could get from Messer Griffo, she was at pains to make herself
acquainted with that gallant adventurer, and to show him certain favors
and courtesies which won his English heart. So that in a little while
Madonna Vittoria knew all about Simone's purposes, and very pleasantly
resolved to baffle them.

In her opinion, it was a very important point in her game that Dante
should be alive and well, and the wooer of lady Beatrice. So long as
Dante lived to love and be loved, as she, with her cunning intuition,
guessed him to love and be loved, so long there was little likelihood
that Messer Simone would win the girl's hand and his wager, and leave
her, Vittoria, very patently in the lurch. She reasoned rightly that
such a maid as Beatrice would not yield her love while her lover lived,
and she hoped that Messer Folco, for all he liked to play the Roman
father, was in his heart over fond of his daughter to seek to compel her
to a hateful marriage by force. It was, therefore, of the first
importance to Vittoria to thwart the devices of Simone having for their
object the death of Dante, and, to a woman like Vittoria, it was by no
means of the first difficulty to carry out her purpose.

The winning over of Messer Griffo was no very difficult business. He
was paid so much by Messer Simone; it only remained for Monna Vittoria
to pay him more to secure at least a careful consideration of her
wishes. She pointed out to the _condottiere_ that all the advantage lay
for him in doing what she desired and leaving undone what was desired by
Messer Simone. Messer Griffo would serve Florence by preserving the
lives of so many of her best citizens; he would serve Florence by aiding
those citizens in that raid upon Arezzo, from which so much was hoped;
he would serve Florence by saving Messer Simone from the stain of such
unnecessary blood-guiltiness; above all, which to her, and indeed to the
Free Companion, seemed perhaps the most important point in the argument,
he would serve Monna Vittoria.

Messer Griffo had ever an eye for a fine woman, and he was mightily
taken with Monna Vittoria, and made his taking plain in his bluff,
simple, soldierly fashion with a fine display of jewels and gold, which
only served to move Monna Vittoria to laughter, for she had as much as
she cared to have of such trifles, and was not to be purchased so. But
she clinched her bargain with him by assuring him, when she paid into
the hands of a sure and trusted third party the overprice agreed upon,
which was to make Messer Griffo false to Messer Simone, that after the
return to Florence of the Company of Death uninjured by him or his, he
would be a very welcome visitor at her house, and might consider
himself for a season the master of everything it contained. Messer
Griffo was in his way an amorist and in his way an idealist, to the
extent of regarding one pretty woman as more important than another
pretty woman, so he took Monna Vittoria's money and fooled Messer
Simone, and spared the lives of the young Florentine gentlemen, and rode
with them and fought with them, as you shall presently hear.

It is no part of my intention to rehearse all that happened as the
result of our little raid. You can read all about it at great length
elsewhere. It was, as it proved, a very successful little raid. The
Aretines, marching out of their stronghold in good force to assault us,
whom they expected to find marching in all innocence to our doom, were
very neatly and featly taken in ambuscade by us. For, by the advice and
orders of Messer Griffo, who knew his business if ever a soldier of
fortune did, we that were of the Company of Death, we that the men of
Arezzo expected to see, we rode the latter part of our ride alone, as if
indeed we were the only attacking force, the while Messer Griffo
dissimulated his lances easily enough in the woods and valleys adjacent.
And when the Aretines perceived us, they shouted for satisfaction and
made to fall upon us pell-mell, having no heed of order or the
ordinances of war. Then it was, while they were in this hurly-burly,
that Messer Griffo launched his men upon them from the right and from
the left, and that the real business of the day began. For what seemed
to me quite a long space of time, though indeed the whole business
lasted little more than an hour, there was some very pretty fighting,
with the solution of the war-like riddle far from certain. For the
Aretines were more numerous than we expected by a good deal, and, for
all they were taken by surprise, they carried themselves, as I must
confess, with a very commendable display of valor.

To be entirely honest, I must confess that I remember very little about
the skirmish or scuffle or battle or whatever you may please to call it.
There was a great deal of charging and shouting, and though there were a
good many of us engaged on both sides on that field, it seemed to me, at
the time, as if I enjoyed a kind of isolation, and had no immediate, or
at least dangerous, concern with all those swords and lances that were
hacking and thrusting everywhere about me. I have since been told by
tough soldiers that when they were tender novices they felt much the
same as I felt in the clash of their first encounter, felt as if the
whole thing were a business that, however serious and significant to
others, was of no more moment than a pageant or a play to them
themselves that were having their first taste of war. Though I gave and
took some knocks as the others did, and shouted as they shouted, I had
at the time no fear, not because of my valor, but because of a sudden
numbing of my wits, which left me with no intelligence to do otherwise
than charge and shout and lay about me like the rest.

I am glad to record that Dante carried himself valiantly; not, indeed,
that I saw him at all till the tussle was over and such of our enemies
as were left taking to their heels as nimbly as might be. But I had it
on the word of Messer Guido, who could see as well as do, and who told
me the tale, that our friend bore himself most honorably and
courageously in the skirmish, which ended by beating back the
discomfited and diminished Aretines within the shelter of their walls.
It was, indeed, but a petty engagement, yet to those concerned it was as
serious as any pitched battle, and afforded the same chance of a wreath
of laurel or a broken head. And it seems certain that our Dante deserved
the wreath of laurel. He showed a little pale at first, according to
Guido, when the moment came to engage, and it may be that there was a
little trembling of the unseasoned members that was not to be
overmastered. But in a twinkling our Dante was as calm as a tempered
veteran, and in the thickest of the scrimmage he urged himself as
indifferent to peril as if, like Achilles in the old story, he had been
dipped in Styx.

What he told me himself later, as we rode for home, though he spoke but
little of the business and unwillingly, in reply to my eager and
frequent questionings, did but confirm what Guido related. He had, he
admitted frankly, been somewhat scared at first, but instantly he had
thought of his lady, and with that thought all terror fell away from
him, and his one desire became so to carry himself in that encounter as
to be deserving of her esteem. Afterward he told me that while he was in
the tremors of that first and unavoidable alarm he was cheered by a
miracle. You know already how the God of Love, in very person, had
ridden, visible only to the eyes of Dante, by Dante's side that night,
though the vision vanished at the time when the lances of the
Dragon-flag rode out of the sheltering wood to welcome our coming. Well,
now it seems that, when Dante was assailed by that very human, pitiable,
and pardonable pain and frailty, he suddenly became aware again of the
God of Love that was riding hard by him, but this time a little in
front, and this time on a great black war-horse. It seemed to Dante that
the wonderful youth turned a little in his saddle as he rode, and showed
his comely face to Dante and smiled, and it appeared to Dante as if Love
said to him, "Where I go, will not you go too?" And at the sound of
those words, Dante's heart was as hot as fire within his body, and he
carried himself very valiantly in the battle, as every man should that
serves his city and loves a fair woman.

Now if you that read me be at all inclined to wonder why we rode back so
rapidly to Florence on the very top of our victory, I am very ready to
tell you the why. It was Messer Griffo's doing, which is as much as to
say that it was Monna Vittoria's doing, who had laid her commands upon
her trusty Free Companion for her own ends. When the battered Aretines
had scurried back within the shelter of their walls, we would have been
ready and willing enough, we of the Company of Death, to stay and
besiege them. But Messer Griffo would not have it so, and Messer Griffo
was our captain. His orders were that as soon as we were breathed after
our battle--for I like to call it a battle--and had eaten and drunk of
the food and wine with which the mercenaries were plentifully provided,
we should ride back to Florence as briskly as might be, and uplift the
hearts of our fellow-citizens with our joyful tidings of triumph. Which
is why we got back to Florence on the morning of our engagement, as
Monna Vittoria wished, but not so early as Monna Vittoria would have
wished if she had known what was happening in our absence--known what
you are about to know.




XXI

MALEOTTI BEARS FALSE WITNESS


On that summer morning which saw us riding homeward, all flushed and
triumphant over our little victory, all Florence was early astir.
Florence was ever a matutinal city, and her citizens liked to be abroad
betimes to get at grips with their work, which they did well, and earn
leisure for their pleasures, which they enjoyed as thoroughly. But on
this especial morning the town seemed to open its eyes earlier than
usual, and shake itself clear of sleep more swiftly, and to bestir
itself with an activity unfamiliar even to a town of so active a
character. The cause for this unwonted bustle was not easy to ascertain
with precision. Somehow or other rumors, vague, fantastic,
contradictory, perplexing, irritating, bewildering, had blown hither and
thither as it were along the eaves and through chinks of windows and
under doorways, as an autumn wind carries the dried dead leaves. These
were rumors of some event of moment to the Republic that either had
happened, or was about to happen, or was happening at that very instant
of time. What this event of moment might precisely be, few, indeed,
could say, though all could make a guess and all availed themselves of
the power, and many and varied were the guesses that men made, and very
confident was every man that his particular guess was the only right and
true one.

It is, indeed, strange how often, when some subtle move of statecraft is
being made whereof secrecy is the very vital essence, though those that
be in that secret keep their lips truly sealed, some inkling of what is
going on seems by some mysterious intuition to be given to folk that
have neither need of such knowledge, nor right nor title to it. So it
certainly proved in Florence on the morning after the ride against
Arezzo. Every man that came out into the streets--and the streets were
soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds--was positive
that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that
something of importance was going to happen, or that something of
importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked
out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their
dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus
absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was
held in no great affection by Messer Simone, the party of the Reds.
Furthermore, the story of the formation of the Company of Death had
become known, and it needed no very elaborate process of speculation to
assume that the youths whose lodgings lacked their presence had
overnight, in Messer Folco's palace, inscribed their names in Messer
Simone's great book of enrollment.

It being established, therefore, definitely, beyond doubt or cavil, that
something had happened, the next great question for the expectant
Florentines was, What thing had happened? But the answer to this
question was not yet, and in the meantime the expectant Florentines had
another matter of interest to consider and to discuss. Through all the
noise and babble and brawling of that agitated morning there came a
whisper, at first of the very faintest, which breathed insidiously and
with much mystery a very amazing piece of news. Men passed the whisper
on to men, women to women, till in a little while it had swelled into a
voice as loud as the call of a public crier, carrying into every corner
of the quarter where Messer Folco lived, and from thence into every
other quarter of the city its astonishing message of amazing wedlock.
Gossip told to gossip, with staring eyes and wagging fingers, that
Messer Folco's daughter, Monna Beatrice, she that had been the May-day
queen, and was so young and fair to look upon, she was to be married at
nine of that morning to Messer Simone dei Bardi, the man that so few
Florentines loved, the man that so many Florentines feared. It had, of
course, long been known in Florence, where the affairs of any family or
individual are for the most part familiar to all neighbors, that Messer
Simone wished to wed Monna Beatrice. It was known, too, that Messer
Folco was in nowise opposed to the match. Yet, for the sake of the
girl's sweetness and loveliness, all were ready to hope that such ill
nuptials would never come to pass. Thus, when the news of the immediate
marriage fluttered through Florence streets, it was the cause of no
little astonishment to those that first heard it, and they carried it on
the very edge of their lips to the nearest ears, and so made the circle
of astonishment greater.

I am proud to say it, to the credit of my fellow-citizens, that the
greater part of those that heard the tidings shook their heads and
sighed. And, indeed, it needed no very great niceness of feeling or
softness of heart to recognize that a marriage between a man like Messer
Simone and a maid like Monna Beatrice was no admirable marriage, however
much the wish of a parent was to be respected. Every one recognized that
Beatrice was a maid as unusual in her goodness as Simone was a man,
thank Heaven, unusual in his badness. Wherefore, all detested the
undertaking. Yet disbelief in the story, a disbelief that was popular,
had perforce to change into unpopular belief when the very church was
named in which the ceremony was to take place--the Church of the Holy
Name; and those that hastened thither did indeed find all preparations
being made for a wedding, and learned from the sacristan that Messer
Simone did, indeed, upon that very morning, mean to marry the daughter
of Folco Portinari. Yet, as I learned afterward, for all these
assurances and all these preparations, the marriage was, up to a certain
moment, no such sure a matter as Messer Simone wished and Messer Folco
willed and the good-hearted folk of Florence regretted.

I have always accepted the customs of my time, and found them on the
whole excellent, and it has ever been our custom for us to wed our
daughters as we will, and not according to their wishes, our view being
that elders are wiser than youngsters, and that it is more becoming and
orderly that a maid should marry to please her father than that she
should marry to please herself. For there may be a thousand reasons for
a certain marriage, very obvious to a prudent parent, such as land,
houses, plate, linen, vineyards, florins, and the like, all of which are
of the utmost importance in the economy of a well-domesticated
household, but are unhappily little calculated to attract the dawning
senses of a nubile girl. Yet in a little while, when she has become a
matron and got used to her husband, with what a complacent, with what a
housewifely approving eye she will behold her treasures of gold and
silver and pewter and fine linen and the rest of her possessions. So,
for the most part, it should always be; but there is no rule that has
not its exception, and if ever there were a case in which a daughter
might be justified for resisting the will of her parent in the matter of
a marriage, I think the case of Folco's daughter is the case, and I for
one can never be brought to blame her in the slightest degree for her
conduct, or call it misconduct.

It seems that when the morning came Madonna Beatrice showed herself
unexpectedly and unfamiliarly opposed, not merely to her parent's wish,
but to her parent's commands. Messer Folco, who had not seen his
daughter since the previous night, when she fell swooning in the arms of
Messer Tommaso Severo, at first could not believe in her opposition. She
told him, astonished as he was at this amazing mutiny, that she could
not and would not wed Messer Simone, because her heart was pledged to
another, and that other one whom she would not name. Madonna Beatrice
kept silence thus rigorously the identity of her lover, because of her
certainty that the swords of her kinsmen would be whetted against him
the moment that his name was known. In this she was right, for Dante was
everything that the Portinari scorned, being poor with a poverty that
tarnished, in their eyes, his rightful nobility, being of the Reds,
being of no account in the affairs of Florence. That he was a poet
would no more hinder them from killing him than the gift of song would
save a nightingale from a hawk. Messer Folco was at first very stern and
then very angry at his daughter's attitude, but he was stern and angry
alike in vain. The more Messer Folco stormed, the less he effected.
Though Beatrice seemed to grow paler and frailer at her father's
nagging, she grew none the less stubborn, and Messer Folco's fury flamed
higher at her unwonted obstinacy. His naturally choleric disposition got
the better of his philosophic training and his habitual self-restraint,
and he threatened, pleaded, and commanded in turns without making any
change in Beatrice's frozen resistance. The pitiable struggle lasted
until Messer Maleotti, having ridden leisurely through the cool of the
morning, chose, when within sight of Florence, to spur his horse to a
gallop and to come tearing through the gates, reeling on his saddle, as
one that bore mighty tidings, which must be delivered to Messer Simone
dei Bardi without delay.

What these tidings were Folco was soon enough to learn. Messer Simone
hastened to Messer Folco's house and demanded audience of the lady
Beatrice. He found her and her father together, Messer Folco still
fuming, Madonna Beatrice still pale and resolved. Simone stayed with a
large gesture Messer Folco's protestations of regret at having so
unmannerly a daughter, and, addressing himself to Beatrice, asked her if
it was true that her affection for another stood in the way of her
obedience to her father's wishes. She seemed to be almost past speech
after the long struggle with her father, but she made a sign with her
head to show that this was so. Thereupon Simone, making his voice as
gentle and tender as it was possible for him to make it, went on to ask
her if by any chance the man she so favored was young Messer Dante of
the Alighieri. Madonna Beatrice would not answer him this question,
either by word or sign. Then Simone, allowing his voice to grow sad, as
one that sorrows for another's loss, assured her that if that were so,
there could be no further obstacle to her father's wishes, because he
was at that moment the bearer of the bad news that Messer Dante and all
those that were with him had been killed that morning by treason in a
wood half-way to Arezzo. While Messer Simone was telling this tale to
Beatrice, the same story was running like fire through the streets of
Florence, for Messer Maleotti was very willing to tell what had
happened, or rather what he thought had happened, to whomsoever cared to
ask or to listen, and I take it that there was not a man or woman in all
Florence who did not seek to have news at first hand of the disaster.

It seems that at this news the unnatural resistance of Madonna Beatrice
to her father's orders broke down entirely. I use the term "unnatural"
as one in nowise implying any censure of Madonna Beatrice for her
resistance to her father's wishes, but rather as describing the strength
beyond her nature which she put into that resistance. For I hold that
the dominion of parents on the one side, and the obedience of children
and the deference of children to that dominion on the other side, may be
made too much of and thought too much of, and in no case more so than
when a controversy arises concerning matters of the heart. All this
wisdom by the way. If Madonna Beatrice had been pale before, she was
paler now, and for a breathing-while it seemed as if she would swoon,
but she did not swoon. They sent for her physician, Messer Tommaso
Severo, who could do nothing, and said as much. Madonna Beatrice, he
declared, was very weak; it were well not to distress her over-much.
Beyond that he said little, partly because he was naturally enough in
agreement with Messer Folco in his views as to the rule of parents over
children, and partly because he was aware how frail a spirit of life was
housed in her sweet body, and knew that no art of his or of any man's
was of avail to strengthen it or to hinder its departure when the time
must be.

While all this was toward, Madonna Beatrice seemed to come out of the
silent fit into which the false news of Dante's death had cast her, and
when her father asked her again, something less sternly than before,
but still peremptorily, if she would have Messer Simone for mate, she
did no more than incline her head in what Messer Folco took to be a
signal of submission to his will. At this yielding he, being by nature
an authoritarian, seemed not a little pleased. For the death of Dante,
and the effect that death might have upon his daughter's welfare, he did
not care and did not profess to care in the least. Dante as a human
being was nothing to him--nothing more, at least, than a young man who
belonged to an opposite party, had no money or family backing, and owed
what little esteem he had gained in the public mind to his writing some
clever verses and making a mystery about their authorship, the said
verses being particularly offensive to him, Folco Portinari, because
they had the insolence to be aimed at his daughter. So having carried
his point and enforced his authority, Messer Folco straightway sent a
messenger to the church chosen for the ceremony to have all in readiness
for the immediate nuptials.

As for Beatrice, though she still seemed like a woman that was stricken
with a catalepsy, she was, by her father's orders, girded in a white
gown and girdled and garlanded with white roses, and in such guise
Messer Folco and Messer Simone between them--with my curse on them for a
fool and a knave--led their helpless victim from the Portinari house
into the open air. There a litter awaited her, into which she went
unresisting, and so with the people of her father's household about her,
wearing her father's crest upon their coats, she went her way to the
Church of the Holy Name.

I do not think that in all the tragic tales of old time there is one
more lamentable than this of lady Beatrice. Monna Iphigenia, so
piteously butchered in Aulis, that the Greek kings might have a
soldier's wind toward Troy, was not more sadly sacrificed, and in the
case of Beatrice, as in that of the Greek damsel, a father was a
consenting party to the crime. The case of Jephthah's daughter was less
pathetic, for there at least the parent was deeply afflicted by the
darts of destiny, whereas old Agamemnon and our Folco were, whatever
their reluctance to dedicate their daughters to an uncomfortable fate,
quite prepared to do so. All of which goes to show that humanity is the
same to-day as it was yesterday, and will, in all likelihood, be the
same to-morrow. There will always be good and bad, kind and unkind, wise
and foolish, always sweet lovers will be singing their songs in the
praise of their sweethearts that are walking in the rose-gardens, and
sour parents will be scowling from the windows. For my own part, I am
always on the side of any lover, young or old, straight or crooked,
gentle or simple, for to my mind, in this muddle of a world, the state
of being in love is at least a definite state, and, whenever and however
gratified, a pleasant state.

I can honestly say, in looking back over the book of my memory, that I
can find no page therein which is not overwritten with the name of some
pretty girl. And though I will not be such a coxcomb as to assert that I
was always favored by any fair upon whom it might please me to cast an
approving eye, yet I must needs admit that I found a great deal of
favor. This I attribute largely to a merry disposition and a ready
desire to please, together with a very genial indifference if, by any
chance, the maid should prove disdainful. For it may be taken as a
general principle that maids are the less tempted to be disdainful if
they guess--and they are shrewd guessers--that their disdain will be met
with a blithe carelessness. Speaking of carelessness and disdain and the
like, reminds me that I have never done what I meant to from the
beginning, and tell you how I fared in my love-affair with Brigitta, the
girl that gave me the cuff and had such strange eyes. But I fear now
that I am too deeply embarked upon the love-affairs of another to have
the leisure to digress into my own adventures. The world is more
interested in love's tragedies than in the comedies of love, wherein I
have ever played my part, and so I will go back to my Dante and his sad
affairs, and leave my little love-tale for another occasion. But at
least I may be suffered to set down this much in passing--that Brigitta
was a very attractive girl, and that I was really very fond of her.




XXII

THE RETURN OF THE REDS


The Church of the Holy Name was filled as full as it could hold, and
those outside were grumbling at their hard case in being cut off from so
much solemnity or jollification, according to their opinion of the
ceremony inside. But it came to pass that the lot of these outsiders
proved, from the point of view of those that like to assist, if only as
spectators, at the making of history, to be more fortunate than that of
those who had gained admittance to the church. For suddenly, from far
away, there came a shouting, meaningless at first, but momentarily
growing in meaning, till at last men shrieked into their neighbors' ears
that the supposed lost and slaughtered of the youth of Florence were not
lost nor slaughtered at all, but were alive and well, and were riding in
triumph through the city gates, having inflicted innumerable woes upon
the devils of Arezzo.

Such tidings were unbelievable, were not to be believed, were not
believed, were believed--all in the winking of an eyelid. The insolent
chivalry of the Company of Death were, as it seemed, all, or almost
all, to hand with Messer Guido Cavalcanti at their head. With them came
the news that the Aretines had been beaten in battle, and that the ever
illustrious _condottiere_, Griffo of the Claw, was flying his
Dragon-flag in the very face of the scared burghers of Arezzo, huddled
behind their naughty walls. Here was a mighty change in the fortunes of
Florence, its full significance understood by few then, and not by many
until long after that day.

At first the news seemed incredible to those that had not ocular proof
of its verity, but these soon were convinced. Was not Messer Guido
Cavalcanti riding through the city gates, whither all were now running,
and was not Messer Dante by his side, and your humble servant who writes
these lines, and many another youth well known to the Florentine
populace? So that, in a little while, the space before the church, that
had been so thickly crowded, was as empty as my palm, and Messer Guido
and his fellowship of the Company of Death were like to be unhorsed and
swallowed up in a wave of popular enthusiasm. Messer Guido restrained
the kindly intentions of the crowd with some difficulty, and thereafter
harangued them at some length, and with eloquence worthy of a Roman
patrician of old days. He told them how the fortunes of Florence were
again, as ever before, triumphant, how the devils of Arezzo had been
taught a lesson they would not be likely to forget in a hurry, and,
furthermore, how much Florence owed to the splendid assistance given to
her arms by Messer Griffo of the Dragon-flag and his Free Companions.

Now, at every pause in Messer Guido's speech, the air was shattered with
deafening huzzas, some echo of which would, one must surely think, find
its way into that solemn and sombre church where the fairest lady in
Florence was being given to Florence's greatest knave. How great a knave
none of us realized at that moment, for we, of course, were ignorant of
the intention of Messer Simone with regard to us, and the narrow escape
we had from being annihilated by those very Free Companions whose
praises Messer Guido was so generously voicing. Even while Guido was
speaking, those of us behind and about him heard many things hurriedly
from the citizens that pressed against us. One of them was the news of
our own supposed slaughter at the hands of the people of Arezzo, and the
other--more terrible, indeed, to one of us--was that on that very
instant Madonna Beatrice was being wedded to Simone dei Bardi in the
Church of the Holy Name.

It was just when Messer Guido had made an end of speaking that the ill
news came to Dante's ears, and when he heard it he gave a great cry and
urged his horse forward through the throng, crying to the people in a
terrible voice to let him pass, and there was something in his set face
and angry eyes, and in the manner of his command, which made the people
yield to them, and so he rode his way, slowly, indeed, because of the
press, but as quickly as he could, and still calling, like one
possessed, for free passage. When Guido knew what had happened, for the
tale was soon told to him, he foresaw what trouble might come to pass,
and he resolved to stand by Dante and lend him a hand in case of need.
So he called upon his friends to keep with him, and we all followed hard
upon Dante's heels, and, as rapidly as was possible for the crush in the
streets, we made our way to the open space in front of the church, the
open space that now lay so vacant under the noontide sun. There Messer
Dante flung himself from his horse and made to run at full speed toward
the church door, and we, too, dismounting hurriedly, made after him, for
we feared greatly what he might do or say in his anger, even within the
precincts of the sacred place. Messer Guido, though I fear he had no
great regard for the sanctity of such shrines and temples, made haste to
restrain him, for he knew very well how it would hurt his friend in the
eyes of devout Florentines if he were to cause any scandal in a church.

But before Dante could reach the blessed house its great doors yawned
open, and many of those that were inside came tumbling out and down the
steps to form a hedge on either side, and through the human lane thus
made the wedding party came out into the fierce sunlight. They stood for
a moment on the threshold, very plain for all to see. Messer Simone
showed very large and gorgeous, shining in some golden stuff like the
gilded image of a giant, his great face flushed with triumph. Hard by
him stood Messer Folco, looking very anxious and haughty and stern,
grimly conscious, I suppose, that he had played the Roman father very
properly, and yet, as I take it, not without some tragic aches and
pinches at his heart for the consequences of his deed. Between him and
Simone stood his doomed daughter, Beatrice, resting a little on the arm
of her physician, Messer Tommaso Severo, and pale with such a paleness
as I never yet saw upon the face of a woman, living or dead. It was, as
who should say, a kind of frozen paleness, the pallor of a marble
statue, the outward sign of a sorrow so great that time could never
soften its sting. Behind these three stood the friends and kinsfolk of
Simone and the friends and kinsfolk of Messer Folco, and made a brave
background for the tragedy. So, for a moment, the three stood looking
straight into the square before them, and then it was plain that they
suddenly became conscious of untoward events, and Messer Simone forgot
his triumph, and Messer Folco his pride, and Madonna Beatrice her
misery, when they saw Dante standing all armored in front of them, and
behind him the triumphant faces of the Company of Death. Then Madonna
Beatrice gave a great cry and ran quickly forward to Dante, and Dante
caught her in his arms.

"They told me you were dead," she sobbed, and then lay very quiet in his
embrace, whispering to him what had been related to her.

Messer Simone gave a great bellow of rage, and bent his head like an
angry bull, and he wrenched his sword from the hand of the serving-man
that carried it, and plucked its blade from its house. Very plainly he
must have seen that his damnable plan had miscarried, and that in some
unfathomable manner the men he had devoted to destruction, and of all
these men most notably Dante, had escaped the fate he had arranged for
them. Messer Dante, still holding Beatrice in his arms, had his sword
drawn, and stood very steadfastly awaiting Simone's onslaught, looking,
as it seemed to me, like some young saint from a Book of Hours abiding
the attack of some pagan monster. But before Simone could move, Messer
Guido and the rest of us had swarmed up beside and about Dante, and all
our victorious swords were bare, and we seemed a menacing body enough to
any that chose to oppose us. So those of Messer Simone's friends
immediately about him flung themselves upon him, persuading him by
words and restraining him with difficulty by force, for he dragged them
hither and thither, clinging to him as a wounded bear plays with a
huddle of dogs.

Then Messer Folco, very gray in the face and stately of bearing,
advanced in front of Messer Simone, where he struggled with his friends,
and addressed us. "Sirs," he said, gravely, "what has come to the city
of Florence, so famous for its decorum and its dignity, when the
marriage of one of her citizens is thus rudely interrupted by roysterers
in arms?"




XXIII

THE PEACE OF THE CITY


While Messer Folco spoke, he did not look at Messer Dante at all, but
seemed to address himself solely to Messer Guido, as being the man of
most standing present among his antagonists, and he began to reprove
Messer Guido very sharply for such brawling and riotous conduct. But
Messer Guido answered him very plainly and courteously that he was there
present merely as a friend of his friend, and that it was for Messer
Dante and not for him to speak as to the reasons for what he had done.

Then Dante cried out in a loud voice to those about him, saying: "Oh,
Florentines, I am here to demand justice of the Republic! For this lady
and I were troth-pledged, and she has only been persuaded to marry my
enemy through a lying tale of my death."

At these words of Dante's, the clamor and tumult that had lulled for a
moment broke out afresh, every man striving to say his say at the same
time, with the result that no man was anywise audible in the great din
that followed. It seemed likely that Florence would see again enacted
one of those bloody public feuds such as had not now, for some time,
desolated her hearths and distracted her streets. People were beginning
to divide on this unexpected quarrel and take this side or that, as
their fancy or their allegiance might lead them, and I think that the
most part of the public took sides with Dante, partly because he was
young and a lover, and partly because he was one of the victors in the
fight against the Aretines, and fresh from the field of triumph, and
partly, too, out of a very general dislike to Messer Simone. But Simone
had plenty of followers too, that were very ready to draw sword and to
strike for him, and Messer Folco Portinari had his friends and his
kinsfolk, who shared his indignation at the wrong which, as they
conceived, was thus publicly put upon him.

The object of Messer Folco's friends was to take away Beatrice from
Dante, by whose side she now stood, very pale and calm and determined.
The object of Messer Simone was now, if by any means he could compass
it, to kill Dante where he stood, and as many of his friends as were
with him, and so get rid of this troublesome young opponent once for
all. Therefore, many swords were raised in the air, and many voices
screamed old war-cries that had not vexed the winds of Florence for long
enough, and enemy taunted enemy, and antagonist challenged antagonist,
and it needed but a little thing to set fire to the torch of civic war.
But before any sword could strike against another, and before those
zealous champions of peace, that were running as fast as they could to
the Signory to summon the city authorities to intervene and stay strife,
could gain their end, there came an unexpected interruption to the
threatened conflict.

It was Beatrice herself who held back the hostile forces and stayed the
lifted swords. She moved from her place by the side of her lover and
stood a little ways apart from him, at about an equal distance between
him and her father, and she raised her voice to speak to the people of
her city; and those about her, seeing what she meant to do, were
instantly silent, and the silence spread over all the assembled crowd;
and when Beatrice spoke she was heard by all who were present. It was a
rare and a strange thing for a Florentine woman thus to address a
turbulent assemblage of citizens that seemed bent on immediate battle.
Yet the lady Beatrice spoke to all those fierce and eager people as
sweetly and as quietly as if she had been welcoming her father's guests
in her father's house. What she said was to the effect that she
entreated all those that were about her to have patience, even as she
would have patience. She further said that a great wrong had been done
to her, for it was indeed true that she had plighted her troth to Messer
Dante there present, though this had been done in secret, for which
secrecy she now asked her father's forgiveness, but that when her father
desired her to marry Messer Simone, she had refused to wed another than
the man she loved, whatever might come of it. Then she said she had been
told of Dante's death, and had no further strength left in her to
disobey her father's wishes, seeing that if her lover were indeed dead,
she had no care for what might become of her. Now she appealed to her
father and to the people of her city to take her strange and sad case
into their hands, and to protect her until it was made plain that she
had been wrought upon by fraud and cunning, and forced by false
representations into a marriage that should never have taken place and
should now be annulled.

All the people marvelled to hear her speak so calmly and so wisely, and
the most part of them applauded her when she had done speaking, and
Messer Folco, for all his anger and his wounded pride, was touched by
her words, and extended his hand to her, and she came to him and stood
by his side. But Messer Simone and Messer Simone's people would have
none of the proposal, and shouted loudly against it, and it seemed as if
the brawl were likely to begin again on the instant, and I am very sure
it would have done so had it not been for the arrival of the Priors of
the city with an armed following. These kept the two opposing parties
asunder, and the Captain of the People of the city demanded to know the
meaning of what had happened, and Messer Guido Cavalcanti began to tell
him the tale.

Now, while he did so, and while all were listening to him in silence,
Messer Dante, who was standing very still and stern, with his hands
resting upon the hilt of his sword, felt that one plucked him by the
garment, and, turning, found that a woman stood at his side with a hood
drawn closely over her face. This woman told him, in a low voice that
seemed to him familiar, that if he was alive in that hour it was no
thanks to Messer Simone, who had sold him to Griffo, and had, as he
believed, sent him and his companions to a certain and treacherous
death, and that he would have perished if Messer Griffo had not been
persuaded to play an honorable part and be faithful to the city of
Florence. When the woman had done speaking she slipped away from Dante
and disappeared into the crowd, and Dante, with that strange story
humming in his brain, waited with little patience till Messer Guido had
finished saying his say to the listening authorities. Then he sprang
forward toward the Captain of the People, declaring, in a loud voice,
that Messer Simone was a traitor to the city, inasmuch as to gratify a
private hate, he had sent him and his fellows to perish in an ambuscade.

Now at these words, of course, the brawling was renewed a thousandfold
worse than before, every man screaming at the top of his voice and
gesticulating, as if in the hope that pantomime might succeed in
conveying his opinions where words indeed must fail in the hubbub. Under
cover of the clamor, men of the Red party and men of the Yellow party
challenged one another to the arbitrament of steel, and what with the
shouting and counter-shouting and the clatter of weapons, and the
stamping of many feet on the cobbles, there was such a din set up as
seemed to some of us, in our bewilderment, likely to last forever. Words
would speedily have become blows and blows brought blood, and all the
place become a battle-field very presently, if it had not been for the
presence of the Captain of the People and the Priors of the city, whose
dignity indeed counted for nothing to allay the tumult, but whose strong
escort of armed men served the turn better by keeping the would-be
combatants apart, that were so lusting to be upon one another. After a
while, for want of a better settlement, this composition was agreed
upon, or, rather, was decided upon by the Priors, that were enabled to
enforce their authority by their showing of armed force.

What they did was to put the Peace of Florence, as the custom was in
those days, upon the belligerent disputants. According to this custom,
each of the parties to any quarrel that threatened to become such a
public brawl as might cause disturbance to the state was called upon to
clasp the hand of the Captain of the People, and swear to keep the Peace
of the City. If he did this, he was suffered to go to his own house,
where for a while, as I think, authority kept a wary eye upon him. If he
would not do this, then the Captain of the People had the right to clap
him into prison and keep him there till he was of a more reasonable and
pacific mood of mind. All of which serves to show how excellent were our
laws and customs, and how intelligently and discriminatingly they were
administered.

Well, our Captain and Priors put the Peace of the City upon Messer
Simone dei Bardi, that was on one side of the quarrel, and on Messer
Dante dei Alighieri, that was on the other side of the quarrel. Messer
Simone took the peace because he could not very well help doing so at
that time and in that place, being, as it were, in a tight corner. He
was outnumbered for the moment; the feeling of the fickle public was
against him, taken, as it naturally was and rightly was, by the
love-tale and Dante's youth and daring, and Beatrice's beauty and her
sadness and her courage. So, with a sour smile enough, the bull-faced
fellow flung out his right hand to the Captain of the People and gave
the clasp of peace, and then drew back a little, very sullen and
scowling, yet for the nonce tame enough. Then Dante in his turn came
forward to give and take the pressure of peace, and all we that looked
upon him and loved him, Messer Guido and I and others of our age and
company, thought that we had never beheld him show more noble. His
spirit, that had been tempered in conflict, gave an elder's dignity to
his youth; his anger had set him in a splendid sternness, while his love
had invested him with the raiment of a no less splendid serenity. It was
a brave and chivalrous soldier that stood there in the sight of all
Florence, a figure infinitely better to my eyes than the scholar who
dogged the footsteps of Brunetto Latini, or even than the poet whose
songs had enchanted the city. For a scholar is often a thing of naught,
and a poet, as I know, may be little enough, but our Dante, as he stood
there and gave the pledge of peace, was indeed a man.

So it was for the time arranged and settled. Madonna Beatrice, she that
was a wife and yet no wife, went with her father to her father's house,
there to abide until such time as a decision might be come to as to her
case. Messer Simone, in high dudgeon, withdrew to his dwelling-place
with his friends about him. As for Messer Dante, he was for going to his
lodging, very lonely and stern and silent, but I would not have it so.
For I could guess, being, after all, no fool, how bad it might be for
one of so sensitive a disposition as my friend to fret his spirit in
isolation. So I persuaded him--and indeed I think in the end he was not
sorry to be so persuaded--to take up his quarters with me.

Mine were merry rooms in a merry house of a merry neighborhood, and
therein I installed him, and did my best to cheer him, and in the end
persuaded him to talk a little, but not much. For he was one of those
that will spin out the secret of his heart in rhymes for all the world
to read, but is inclined to be sullenly mumchance if invited to open his
bosom to a sympathetic listener. But anyways I sang to him; I had a
mellow voice in those days, and even now, though I ought not to say it,
Brother Lappentarius is as good as another, and perhaps better, when it
comes to chanting a hymn. I pressed food and wine upon him, of which,
however, he would taste but little, for the which lack of
good-fellowship I was obliged to make amends myself, that was ever a
good trencherman, by eating and drinking for the pair of us. Which I
did, as I am pleased to believe, very honestly and thoroughly. But I
think, on the whole, I was glad, as I sat and watched him sitting there
by my hearth, with the brooding look on his face that was already so
eagle-like, that my love-affairs had not conducted me to such great
stresses of the soul. I had enjoyed myself very much. I was, as I am
pleased to record, to enjoy myself even more in the years that
followed. But my pastimes had never cost me, and never did cost me, an
hour's sleep for any cares that they brought me, and I never had to
strive with the great ones of the earth for the smiles of any she. While
here was my Dante, very unhappy, in a position of great danger, menaced
by mighty enemies, threatened by an infinity of perils, and all for a
woman. "All for _the_ woman!" he would have answered me, rebuking me, if
I had been so unwise as to set my views of life and love before him on
that day.

I was not so unwise. I merely babbled and chanted to divert him from his
distress, and was careful to keep my thoughts to myself. In my heart I
wondered how it was all to end for him, that was so young and so little
rich, pitted against such powerful interests. At least I could read in
his face, and in those lines which destiny was already tracing with iron
pencil on his springtime's flesh, that he would face his dangers and his
difficulties with a dauntless spirit, and that no enemy or bunch of
enemies would ever get the better of that so long as it still held a
lodging within the carnal house. If I was glad, on the whole, that I was
not in Messer Dante's shoes, I may say very truly that I did not think
any the better of myself then, and do not think any the better of myself
now, for being so glad. But it is well to know one's own boundaries, and
I knew very well that I was never made for Dante's loves or Dante's
hates or Dante's adventures on life's highway. Well, if there must be
knights-errant, there must also be more easy-going, flower-picking
pilgrims in the pageant of life.




XXIV

BREAKING THE PEACE


Now, of course, it is one thing to put the Peace of the City upon a man,
and another thing to make him abide by his peaceful promise. Messer
Simone had put his pledge, with his palm and fingers, into the hand of
the Captain of the People, but he had done so because at the given
instant he could not very well see that there was anything else for him
to do--as, indeed, there was not. But Simone was never a man to give
undue weight to the words or forms of a foolish ceremony if the
ceremonial stood in the way of anything he wished to accomplish and saw
the chance of accomplishing. Therefore, Messer Simone did not intend to
keep the Peace of the City a moment longer than was convenient for him.
But before deciding to break it he had other things to do which he set
about doing with all possible dispatch.

In the first place, he was very wild to know how he had been baffled and
bubbled in the business of the Aretine expedition, and who had played
him false in that matter. Interrogation of Maleotti made it plain to
him that Maleotti had acted in good faith if Maleotti had acted
foolishly. He had been confident, and, as Simone could not but admit,
reasonably confident, that when he saw the little fellowship of the
Company of Death ride into the wood with Griffo's lances about them and
Griffo's Dragon-flag above them, that they would never emerge alive from
the wood, but would leave their bones to whiten amid its leaves. Why,
then, had Messer Griffo been untrue to his promise? Simone could not
admit that any arguments or promises of his intended victims would have
had power to stay his lifted sword, for there was no one in all their
number who could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as
to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag was too busy a man to bother
about other people's arguments. Yet Griffo left the Company of Death a
misnomer, as far as he was concerned. Griffo had let the Reds ride
onward to Arezzo and back to Florence, very much to Simone's annoyance
and discomfiture. What, then, was the cause of Griffo's defalcation, and
who had inspired him to this signal piece of treachery?

Simone shrewdly suspected Madonna Vittoria to be at the back of the
matter, a suspicion that was plentifully fed by Maleotti, who was eager
enough to get his patron's angry thoughts directed against any other
than himself. Luckily, however, for Madonna Vittoria, she very shrewdly
suspected that Simone would shrewdly suspect her, and she laid her
plans accordingly. After she had whispered into Dante's ear, in the
square before the Church of the Holy Name, the secret of Simone's
treason, she decided that it might be as well for her to change the air
of Florence for one which she could breathe in greater security. Simone
of the Bardi, never a pleasant man in his best moods, would be very far
indeed from proving a pleasant man to any crosser of his purpose, even
if that crosser were a woman as fair as Monna Vittoria. The woman's
imagination could feel the grip of Simone's fingers about her throat,
and she shivered at the thought in the warm air. She could see Simone's
eyes glaring wolfishly down upon her, and she lowered her own lids at
the fancied sight and shuddered. When she had a little shaken off the
effects of this most disagreeable vision, she took her precautions to
prevent its becoming a reality.

When, therefore, Simone came in a rage to Vittoria's villa with a tale
of his trustiest ruffians at his heels, he found no Madonna Vittoria
waiting to receive him, to be questioned, to be forced to confess, to be
punished. Far away on the highroad toward Arezzo a youth was riding
furiously, a comely youth that seemed not a little plump in his clothes
of golden brocade, a youth with a scarlet cap on a crown of dark hair, a
youth that kept a splendid horse galloping at full speed toward Messer
Griffo's encampment outside Arezzo. If Messer Simone could have known of
that riding figure he would have been even angrier than he was. All he
did know was that Monna Vittoria was nowhere within the liberties of her
villa, and as he realized this fact he stood for a while closing and
unclosing the fingers of his great hands with an expression on his face
that would have made Vittoria sick could she but see it.

Though his business with Monna Vittoria was thus, and thus far, proved a
failure, Simone had another matter to attend to which yielded a more
successful issue. Messer Simone wished to ascertain how far his standing
in the city had been injured by recent events, and how far he might
count on the support of those that had always hitherto been reckoned as
his friends. As to the first horn of the dilemma, he really felt little
anxiety. There was never a man of all the men in the party of the
Yellows that could be found to utter disapproving word of a plan that
had promised to annihilate at a single stroke the majority of those that
were most important among their opponents. Some few, indeed, might be
inclined, on general patriotic grounds, to protest against a course of
action which slaughtered one's private foes--however commendable the
slaughter might be under ordinary circumstances--while engaged in
military operations against an enemy of the city, and under the very
eyes, as it were, of that enemy. But here Messer Simone had his
comfortable answer in reserve. The very wiping out of his private
enemies was to be an important factor in the later wiping out of the
public enemy. Was not Arezzo, deceived by this action of private
justice, to take Messer Griffo to her arms, only to find that she had
cuddled a cockatrice? Up to this point Messer Simone felt fairly sure of
himself and of his ground.

He received no goring from the second horn--nay, not so much as a prick
to break the skin. His friends were as plentiful, his friends were as
zealous as ever, as ready to serve Messer Simone with enthusiasm so long
as Messer Simone had the millions of his kinsmen and the bank behind
him. Simone made sure, and very sure, that a very respectable army would
rise behind him if he chose to cry his war-cry, and season that
utterance with the relish of the added words, "Death to the
Reds!"--words that were always in Simone's heart, and would now, as he
believed, be very soon upon his lips, to the discomfiture of his
adversaries. In a word, Messer Simone was ripe, and overripe, for a
breach of the peace, and could barely be persuaded to wait for
opportunity and a pretext. He did wait, however, and he soon got both.

With the next morning there came one to my abode asking to have speech
with me, and when I went to see who it was I found that my visitor was
none other than Messer Tommaso Severo, that was so long physician to the
Portinari family. He told me that he heard that Messer Dante was for the
time dwelling with me as my guest, and when I told him that this was so
he went on that he had come the bearer of a message to my friend, asking
him to come very instantly to the Portinari palace. When I showed some
surprise at this, Messer Tommaso Severo told me that Madonna Beatrice
desired most earnestly to speak with Dante, and that her father had
consented to this out of his great love for his child, which seemed
suddenly to have grown stronger in the midst of all these
ill-happenings. He further told me that Messer Folco had long been bound
to Simone because of large sums that ruffian had lent him from time to
time for the building of his hospitals and the like, which had swallowed
up the mass of Messer Folco's own fortune. Not that Messer Simone cared
for any such good works, but because, by doing as he did, he laid Messer
Folco under heavier obligations to him. Now, however, according to
Messer Tommaso, Folco saw more clearly the character of the man that he
had made his son-in-law, and also the character of his own daughter that
he had never understood till now, and he was now resolved to repay
Messer Simone all he owed him if he sold everything he possessed to do
so, and thereafter use all his credit among his friends at Rome, and he
had many there, to get the marriage annulled by the Holy See. Then I
went and summoned Dante, and he came out and greeted Messer Tommaso and
went away with him, going like one that moves in the grave joy of some
fair dream.

Now what chanced to Dante when he went his ways to the Portinari palace
I shall set down presently as it has come to me, seeing that I was not
present, but giving, as I believe, the substance and the truth. But when
he and Messer Tommaso had left me, I thought to myself that I would busy
my leisure with writing a sonnet or so to some merry jills of my
acquaintance. But when I had got me ink and parchment, I found, to my
surprise, that I was in no fit mood for wooing the muses, and that the
rhymes that were wont to be so ready to jig to my whistle were now most
fretfully rebellious, and would not come, for all my application. So
there I sat and stared at the unstained whiteness of my sheets and
grumbled at the sluggishness of my spirit, and presently I applied
myself pretty briskly to the wine-flask, in the hope of quickening my
spirits. But the wine proved as hostile to my rhyming as the muses had
been, and after a little while, when I had drunk a toast to some half a
dozen sweetnesses that were then very dear to me, what must I do but
fall into the depths of a very profound sleep.

How long I lay in that lethargy I do not know; only I remember dreaming
incoherent and distorted dreams, because, after all, a chair is no
proper place in which to seek slumber. I thought I was wandering in a
wood where satyrs grinned at me and nymphs eluded me, and where I was
mightily vexed at my ill fortune. Then suddenly all the trees began to
talk at the tops of their voices, and though it did not surprise me in
the least that trees could talk, yet it annoyed me that I could not hear
what they said, because of their all talking together, and in my
indignation I awoke to find that the trees were still talking as it
seemed, and that the sound of their voices filled the chamber where I
sat uncomfortably enough, staring about me with drowsy eyes. All of a
sudden I realized that the noises I heard were the voices of no trees,
but the clamor of human voices in the streets outside, and that they
swelled to a great roar of menace and alarm and anger.

You may believe that I was up and awake in a twinkling, and that I
caught up my sword as a wise citizen does when there is brawling abroad
in the streets of Florence, and in less time than I take to tell it I
was out of my house and in the open, looking eagerly about me. The
street was all full of people running and shouting as they ran, and man
caught at man as they ran and asked questions and was answered, and I
heard the name of Simone dei Bardi and of the Portinari palace, and that
was enough for me. If I had borne wings on my heels, like Hermes of
old, or carried a pair on each shoulder, like Zetes and Calais of pagan
memory, I could scarcely have sped swifter than I did along the streets
of Florence, threading my way with amazing dexterity through the throng
that hurried, like me, in the same direction. In a few wild minutes I
found myself in the Place of the Holy Felicity, which was now no other
than a camping-ground for two opposing forces under arms. As I began to
realize what these opposing forces were, I also realized that the time
of the day was long past noon, and that I must have slept my heavy,
dream-disturbed sleep for some hours that were eventful hours to many
that were familiar to me.

Let me try and present a picture of what I saw that afternoon in the
Place of the Holy Felicity. In front of the house of Messer Folco
Portinari, that seemed to me more grim and solemn than ever that day,
were ranged a number of the soldiers of the authorities of the city,
that had evidently been set there to protect Messer Folco's house from
attack, and that were far too few for the purpose, considering who was
the assailant and what his powers of aggression. For the assailant was
Messer Simone dei Bardi, that strode a big horse and was girt with a big
sword, and looked for all the world like the painted giant of a puppet
play. Behind Messer Simone was massed a mighty following, that took up
much of the space in the square and flowed off into the other streets
adjacent, which his men held, that no assistance might be sent to the
soldiers of the authorities. It was not these soldiers, indeed, that
stayed Messer Simone from his purpose of forcing an entrance to the
Portinari palace, but the presence of other elements in the struggle
that was to be striven that day.

One of these elements was represented, to my wonder and delight, by my
dear Dante, who stood on the steps of the Portinari palace with a great
sword in his hand. So standing, he looked like some guardian angel of
the place, appointed to protect it from desecration. His face was very
calm, and he kept his gaze ever fixed most steadily upon Simone of the
Bardi, and he seemed eager for the conflict that must surely be. Below
him were gathered many of his friends, many of the Reds, many of the
fellowship of the Company of Death, that had fought and beaten the
Aretines but yesterday, and among these, of course, and of course in the
foremost place, was Messer Guido Cavalcanti. But though the friends of
Dante were many, they were but few in comparison with the numbers that
were led by Simone dei Bardi, and Simone could have swept his enemies
away from the threshold of the Portinari palace were it not for the
existence of a further element in the struggle. That element was
represented by a multitude of armed men on horseback that were ranged
in front of the palace in manifest antagonism to Messer Simone and his
supporters. Over the helms of these horsemen floated the Dragon-flag
that I now knew so well, and at their head, mounted on a great gray
horse that he held well reined in, Messer Griffo of the Claw, that made
a fine opposition to Messer Simone, both in bulk and bearing.

By the side of Messer Griffo, on a high bay, rode one that at the first
glance I took for a youth, and that at the second glance I knew for
Madonna Vittoria in the habit of a youth. It became her plumpness very
lovingly, and, indeed, she looked very well with a scarlet cap set atop
of her twisted-up tresses and her eyes all fire with excitement. She
kept very close to Messer Griffo's side, and looked at him every now and
then as if she loved him, which, as I gathered thereafter, was exactly
what she did. It seems that well-nigh from the first the big Englishman
won her demi-Roman, semi-Grecian heart, and that while he was so smitten
with her as to do her will in that business of Arezzo and Messer Simone,
she, on her side, was so won by his willingness and his bulk and his
blunt love-making, that she cared no longer for the winning of that
wicked old wager, and had but one thought in her head, which was to
become the lawful wife of Messer Griffo of the Claw. This was an
arrangement of their joint affairs which Messer Griffo of the Claw was
very willing to make.

I did not know all this as I stood there in the Place of the Holy
Felicity, though I could guess at a good deal of it, for the tale of
Griffo's love for Vittoria and of Vittoria's love for Griffo was written
in the largest and plainest hand of write. But I could not guess the
causes that had brought Messer Simone and Messer Griffo thus face to
face before Messer Folco's house, in all this pomp and armament of
battle. But I had plenty of friends in the crowd to question, and by the
time that I had elbowed my way to the edge nearest to the
antagonists--aiding my advance by loud proclamations that I was one of
the Company of Death, a statement that insured me help and respect in my
advance--I had learned all that it was necessary for me to know in order
to understand the bellicose state of affairs. You shall understand them
in your turn, but in the first place it is necessary for me to tell what
had happened in those hours when I was snoring, and had led to the
facing of those two armed forces in the Place of the Holy Felicity and
in front of Messer Folco's home.




XXV

MEETING AND PARTING


Dante, when he left me, accompanied Messer Tommaso Severo to the house
of Folco Portinari. He was very silent on the way, thinking troubled
thoughts, but Messer Tommaso Severo talked, telling him many things to
which he listened heedfully in spite of his cares. Messer Tommaso Severo
told him that Messer Folco had greatly changed in his bearing toward his
daughter, the which, indeed, he had already told me, and that he seemed
to understand, as it were, for the first time, how precious a life hers
was, and how lovely and how fragile. Severo believed that Messer Folco
would now be willing, if only he could liberate his child from the
weight of the Bardi name, to leave her all liberty of choice as to the
man she would wed, even if that man had neither wealth nor fame to back
him. Such changes of mood, the physician averred, were not uncommon in
men of Messer Folco's temperament, who are led by pride and vanity and
many selfish motives into some evil course without rightly appreciating
the fulness of the evil. But when, by some strange chance, their eyes
are cleansed to see the folly or the wickedness of their conduct, the
native goodness in them asserts itself very violently, to the complete
overthrow and banishment of the old disposition, and they are
straightway as steadfast in the good extreme as of old they had been
stubborn in the bad.

But what Messer Severo most spoke of was the strange delicacy of the
physical nature and composition of Beatrice. Never, he declared, in all
his long experience as a physician, had he met with any case like to
hers. Although she seemed to the beholder to carry the colors of health
in her cheeks and the form of health on her body, he asserted that she
was of so ethereal a creation that the vital essence was barely housed
by its tenement of flesh, and could, as he fancied, set itself free from
its trammels with well-nigh unearthly ease. All of which he dwelt upon,
because, being a man of science, it interested him mightily, and though
he loved the girl dearly, it did not enter his wise head that what he
said must cause a pang to the youth by his side, the youth who also
loved her. But Dante made no sign that he heeded him to his hurt, but
marched on doggedly, with a grim determination on a face that had aged
much in a few days.

Florence was quiet enough as they trudged along through the streets that
had been so crowded, so uproarious, yesterday. We soon settle down again
after one of our little upheavals, and whether the event has been
Guelph killing Ghibelline, or Yellow hounding Red, or Black baying at
White, the next morning sees the sensible Florentines going about their
affairs as composedly as if nothing ever had happened, or, indeed, ever
could happen, out of the common. So when the pair came to the Portinari
palace, the Piazza of the Santa Felicita was well-nigh as desolate as
the desert. Dante glanced, you may be very sure, at that painted image
of the God of Love that ruled above the fountain by the bridge, and it
seemed to him as if the statue gave him a melancholy glance. Yet Dante
was going to see his beloved, and he could not be downcast.

When the two were under the shadow of the Portinari palace, Messer
Tommaso Severo ceased talking, and going to the little door, knocked
thrice upon it, whereupon the warder within, after peeping for a moment
through a grill, opened it and admitted the doctor and his companion. In
silence Severo conducted Dante through the silent corridors of the great
house, which seemed strangely quiet in its contrast to the gayety on the
night when Dante last beheld it. The pair met no one in their progress
through the palace. Severo informed Dante that Folco was within, but
keeping his rooms in much gloom because of all that had occurred, and
the physician made no offer to bring Dante to his presence. After a time
Severo came to a halt before a certain door, on which he knocked again
three times, as before. One of Beatrice's women answered his summons,
and after a moment's whispered colloquy the girl withdrew. An instant
later Severo pushed Dante into the room, and Dante found himself in the
presence of Beatrice.

As Dante entered the room, Beatrice rose from the couch and advanced
toward him with extended hands. "You are welcome, friend," she said.

Dante looked upon her paleness, and trembled and hardly knew what to
say. "My lady, my dear lady--" he began, and paused and looked at her
wistfully.

Beatrice smiled sadly at him. "Our loves have fallen upon evil days,
Messer Dante," she said. "It is but a few poor hours ago since we
changed vows, and here am I wedded to your enemy, wedded to my enemy.
Dear God, it is hard to bear!" For a moment she hid her face in her
hands, as if her sorrow was too great for her.

Dante's heart seemed to burn with a fierce flame. "It shall not be
borne, Madonna!" he cried. "I have hands and a heart and a brain as good
as Simone's. I would rather play the knave and stab him in the back than
have him live to be your lord. But there is no need of stabbing or idle
talk of stabbing. This false wedlock shall be broken like a false ring."

Beatrice chilled the hope of his mind with a look of despair. "I do not
know," she sighed, "I do not know. My father will do all he can. My
father is a changed man in these hours. He weeps when he sees me, poor
soul. But it is not sure we can break the marriage, after all."

"The Pope can break the marriage," Dante said.

Beatrice shook her head. "The Pope can do what he will, but he may not
choose to tamper with a sacrament for the sake of two young lovers. It
is all the world and its sober governance against two young lovers. It
is all my fault, Dante."

Dante interrupted her with a groan. "Oh, my love--" he said, and said no
more, for her look stayed him.

The girl went on, sadly: "If I had not yielded when I thought you dead,
yielded in obedience, yielded in despair, we should be free now, you and
I, to change many sweet thoughts into sweet words. But we are not so
free, and it may be that we never shall be so free."

Dante compelled himself to speak bravely, combating her alarms.
"Dearest, have no fear, have no doubt. Why, I will fight this Simone.
Never smile at my slightness. All these weeks I have labored to make
myself master of my sword, and I have mastered it. I tested my courage
and my skill yesterday. Of my courage it is not fitting for me to speak,
but my skill is a thing outside myself that I may speak of, and I found
it sufficient. I will fight Simone, I will kill Simone, you will be
free."

Beatrice sighed. "Are we right to talk so lightly of life and death, you
and I? Are we not wasting time? I sent for you to tell you that if I can
never be yours, I will never be another's. I have no right to kill my
body, that I know, but neither have I the right to kill my soul; and of
the two sins I will choose the lesser, and sooner kill myself than lie
in loveless arms. I gave myself to you, my lover, that night, when we
changed vows in the moonlight. I will kiss no other man's lips, I will
share no other man's bed. I am your wife by the laws of God, and I will
die before I dishonor my bridal."

Dante took her hand and held it in his. "Oh, if Heaven could grant me a
thousand hearts to house my love in and a thousand tongues to give my
love utterance, I should still seem like a child stammering over its
alphabet when I tried to tell how I love you. All about me I seem to
hear the swell of mighty voices that thunder what my lips are too weak
to whisper, yet what they say is only as if a chorus of angels cried
aloud what I say beneath my breath, the three words that mean
everything--I love you!"

Before the warmth and passion of his words a faint color kindled in the
girl's cheeks as she gave him back assurance for assurance.

"I love you, Dante, as you love me, and if, on this earth, we should
never meet again, my love would remain unchangeable with the changing
days. If I that am now young live to be old, I shall think, with death
before me and Heaven behind the wings of death, that my withered body in
the Holy Field shall quicken into the fragrance of spring flowers
because of the cleanness and the sweetness of my faith. My love shall
keep the spirit of the girl that was Beatrice fresh and blithe for the
boy that was Dante when they meet again in Heaven beyond the frontier of
the stars."

Her voice seemed to fail a little as she spoke, but she held herself
erect, as if her unconquerable purpose lent her the strength she lacked.
Dante stood before her, silent, in a kind of awe. His passion for the
girl had always been so chastened by reverence, his desires so girdled
about by mystical emotions, that it seemed to him in that memorable hour
as if he and she were rather the priest and priestess of some fair and
ancient faith than man and woman that were lover and lover. His great
love seemed to burn about him like a fierce white flame consuming all
that was evil, all that was animal, in his corporeal being, and leaving
nothing after its fiery caress but a body so purified as to be scarcely
distinguishable from pure spirit. So Dante felt, enchanted, gazing in
adoration upon Beatrice, and reading in the rapture of her answering
eyes the same splendid, terrible exaltation.

The spell lasted for an age-long while, and then Beatrice broke it,
turning away from her lover's gaze, and as she did so Dante, lowering
his eyes, saw how upon a table near the girl there stood a little silver
casket, richly wrought with images of saints, and the lid of the casket
was lifted, and in the casket Dante saw that there lay a single red
rose, or, rather, that which had once been a red rose, but now lay
withered and faded, the mummy of its loveliness. Dante looked at it in
some wonder, and Beatrice followed his gaze and saw what he saw, and
turned to him, smiling.

"Forgive me, friend," she said, "if in the joy of seeing you I forgot to
thank you for your gift."

And Dante looked from the rose to her and from her to the rose, and his
wonder grew, and he said, quickly, "I sent you no gift."

Then Beatrice gazed at him in surprise and told him. "One left this
casket here for me this morning, a little while ago, shortly after I had
sent for you, saying that it came from him whose name would be revealed
by the treasure it contained. When I opened it I saw this rose, and I
made sure it came from you, for I thought, 'This is the rose that I gave
him, and he sends it to me in sign of greeting and of faith.'"

Dante shook his head, and he put his hand to his bosom and drew forth a
small piece of crimson, colored silk and unfolded it, and within the
silk there lay a withered red rose, and he showed it to Madonna
Beatrice, holding it on his extended hand.

"This is the rose you gave me, Madonna," he said. "Ever since that day
it has lived next to my heart." And as he spoke his wonder seemed
growing into fear, and he looked again at the casket and the rose that
it held.

"What, then, is this rose?" Beatrice asked. "And who sent it?"

Dante folded his own rose away in its coverlet of silk, and put it back
into his bosom. He shook his head. He was still full of wonder, the
wonder that was growing into fear. Before he could put his troubled
thoughts into words there came a hurried knocking at the door, and
Messer Tommaso Severo entered, looking anxious and alarmed.

"I fear there is some new trouble moving," he said; "there is one come
to your father with grave tidings, for Messer Folco's face was troubled;
but I know not what the tidings are."

Dante paid no heed to the old man's words. He took the mysterious rose
from the casket, and held it toward Severo. "Here," he said, "is a token
that was sent to Madonna Beatrice this morning; do you know anything of
it?"

Severo shook his head. "I know nothing of it," he said. "Who should send
Madonna Beatrice a withered rose?" He lifted it for a moment to his
nostrils. "For all it is withered," he said, "it has a strange scent, a
strong scent." He looked at the girl anxiously. "Have you smelled it?"
he asked.

"Yes," said Beatrice, "I have smelled it, and I have kissed it, for I
thought it came from Dante."

The old man muttered to himself, examining the flower and peering
curiously into its petals. He seemed as if he would have spoken again,
but was interrupted ere he could do so by the entrance of Messer Folco
looking very wrathful and stern. Folco showed no surprise at Dante's
presence, and saluted him with grave courtesy. Before Messer Folco could
speak, Severo slipped from the room.

Folco spoke. "Beatrice," he said, "here is bad news. Messer Simone of
the Bardi is coming hither at the head of an armed following to claim
you and take you."

Beatrice said nothing in reply to these words. She only clasped her
hands against her heart and looked wistfully at her lover.

Dante spoke. "Surely this cannot be, Messer Folco, seeing that the Peace
of the City was put upon him, as upon me, yesterday, before all
Florence."

"Messer Simone is no stickler for principles," Folco said, sourly; "he
cares for no laws that he can break. But in this case he claims to be
acting according to his right, since the breaking of the peace comes
from you."

"From me!" Dante stared at Folco in amazement.

But Messer Folco nodded his head emphatically in support of what he had
just affirmed. "I have it all," he said, "from a friend of mine that has
just come hotfoot from his neighborhood to give me warning, so that we
may be ready to yield without making difficulties. Messer Simone affirms
that you have broken the peace by visiting his wedded wife without his
knowledge or consent, and that he is in his rights as a citizen, a
husband, and a man in coming here to claim his bride and to defend her
from your advances."

"I do no wrong in coming here," Dante said, sternly. "I came here
without secrecy, as I had a right to come if you were not unwilling."

"Yes, yes," Folco said, "you came here without secrecy; but Simone's
man, Maleotti, sees you and runs to tell his master, and presently his
master will be here to claim his wife."

"What will you do, then?" asked Dante, studying the elder's face.

Messer Folco spoke proudly. "Folco Portinari will defend his daughter.
Folco Portinari will defend his house so long as the stones of its walls
hold together. My servants are arming now. I have sent to the Signory
for aid from the Priors. If the Bardi beards me, let him look to
himself." He turned to Dante, and addressed him. "Young man, I know you
better than I did, and rate you higher. I overheard your talk with my
daughter just now, as I had a right to do, and I esteem you a brave and
honorable man. You have already shown that you can serve the state. If
there comes a happy way out of this tangle, I shall be glad to welcome
you again. But now it were well you should leave us."

Dante respectfully saluted Folco. "I thank you with all my heart," he
said, simply, "for to-day's favor. I take my leave quickly, for I have a
word to say to Simone." He turned to Beatrice, took her hand, and,
bending, kissed it reverentially. "Most dear lady, farewell." He looked
once, longingly, into the wide, tearless eyes of Beatrice, then turned
and left the room rapidly.

With a loving glance at his daughter, Messer Folco turned and followed
him. A minute later Tommaso Severo, entering the room with a look of
grave anxiety on his face, was but just in time to catch Beatrice in his
arms as she fell in a swoon.

As Dante made his way through the corridors of the palace, Messer Folco
came after him hot upon his heels. "You will lose your way, Messer
Dante," he panted, "if you have not me to guide you." He led Dante
quickly by the way along which he had come, the two going in silence.

Suddenly Dante caught his companion by the arm, and addressed him
eagerly: "Do me a good turn before I go," he said. "You see me with the
Peace of the City upon me; I carry no weapon. Lend me a sword."

Messer Folco would have dissuaded Dante, urging him to put himself in
some place of safety as speedily as might be.

But Dante shook his head. "I must have a sword," he insisted. "I wish to
speak with my enemy at the gate."

Then Messer Folco, seeing that he was obdurate, and in his heart
applauding his obstinacy, took him aside to a kind of armory, and there,
from an abundance of weapons, Dante chose him a long sword, which he
thrust into his belt. Thus weaponed, he followed Messer Folco to the
gate of the palace and passed out into the fierce daylight, and as he
heard the bolts shot behind him, he looked about him to see if there was
any one hard by whom he knew. He saw a youth with whom he had some
acquaintance, and called him to him, and begged him to go with all speed
to Messer Guido Cavalcanti and tell him that his friend Dante waited for
him and such friends as he could muster at the Portinari palace. And
when the youth had gone Dante stood patiently, waiting for the things to
be.




XXVI

THE ENEMY AT THE GATE


Dante had not long to wait. From all directions folk came hurrying into
the Place of the Holy Felicity, presaging by their presence untoward
events. Among these were certain friends of Dante's, youths that, like
him, had enrolled themselves on the fellowship of the Company of Death
and had ridden to Arezzo together. These he called toward him, and put
them quickly in possession of what was toward, and those that carried
weapons stood by him, and those that were weaponless hastened to find
weapons and came back swiftly. As the square was filling with people
there came along at a trot the few guards that the Priors, in their
wisdom, had deemed it sufficient to send for the defence of Messer
Folco's house, and these gathered together hard by the door and stood
there, seeming to find little comfort in their business. Scarcely had
they taken their places when a great roar from the farther end of the
square announced some event of moment, and immediately thereafter Messer
Simone rode forward on his great war-horse with a small army of
soldiers, friends, and adherents after him. At the selfsame moment
Messer Guido Cavalcanti and a number of his friends came racing into the
square from the other corner and rushed in a body toward the door of the
Portinari palace, where Dante was standing very quietly, seemingly all
unconscious of the myriads of eyes that were fixed upon him. Thus, by
the time that Messer Simone and his followers had advanced half-way
across the square, there was a goodly number of well-armed and resolute
gentlemen gathered about the doors of Folco's palace, and their strength
was increased almost every instant by new additions to their count.

When Messer Simone saw the opposition that was intended to him, and who
those were that offered it, he was hugely delighted, for he perceived
now an excellent opportunity of getting rid of the majority of his
enemies at a single stroke, as it were. The men he had with him that
filled a goodly part of the square were far more numerous than those
that had been thus hastily rallied against him, and he chuckled at his
luck. But when he saw Dante where he stood he reviled him, calling him
the thief that would steal a man's wife from his side, and summoning him
to yield himself a prisoner instantly. He did this to put himself in the
right with the people before he made an attack, and to disgrace Dante in
their eyes. But Dante answered him very quietly, saying that he was a
liar and a traitor that had cheated a woman with fables like a coward,
and sent his fellow-citizens to death by treachery like a rogue. "But,"
so Dante went on, "liar though you be, and traitor and coward and rogue,
as this is our quarrel, yours and mine and no other man's, I call upon
you to dismount and meet me here sword in hand, that it shall be seen
which of us two is the friend of God in this matter."

At these brave words many of the people cheered, and Simone was in a red
rage at their cries, but he laughed at Dante and mocked him; yet I think
he cannot have been so sure of himself as before, or he would have taken
Dante's challenge for the pleasure of slaying him with his own hands. I
am not sure that he would have slain Dante, and very possibly Dante
might have slain him, for Dante's skill with the weapon was now
marvellous for his age. But, however, that was not to be. Then Messer
Simone bade Messer Guido and his friends stand away from Messer Folco's
gates, for he had a mind to go in and get his wife. When Messer Guido
denied him steadfastly, and called upon him to keep the peace, Messer
Simone grinned, and, turning to his men, was for giving them the word to
fall on. But even then another great roar from the crowd told of some
new thing, and the trampling of many horses was heard, and over the
bridge came a company of lances, and over their heads fluttered the
Dragon-flag of Griffo of the Claw, and the great Free Companion and his
fellows forced their way through the yielding throng and took up their
station opposite Messer Simone and his friends, and it was very plain
that it was their intention to oppose him. This was just the time that I
got to the square, as I have already told.

Messer Simone's plans had been grievously marred by the, for him,
untimely appearance of Messer Griffo and his lances. Up to that moment
he seemed to have the city pretty well at his mercy. His party counted
the more numerous adherents and the better prepared. The Reds were taken
by surprise, and were largely scattered about among the crowd, instead
of being drawn together into a solid body like the Yellows. In the seats
of authority counsels were much divided, and, in view of such division,
it was difficult, if not impossible, to take any decided action against
Simone and his friends. Moreover, there was, or so at least it seemed to
many who were not necessarily on Messer Simone's side, on the face of
it, not a little to be said for Bull-face of the Bardi. The daughter of
Folco Portinari was indeed his wife, and it seemed to those that were
sticklers for the solemnity of the married state, however brought about,
that he had every right to claim her, and, if put to it by unwise
opposition, to take her from her father's house.

That the girl's consent to the wedding had been either extorted from her
by menace or won from her by means of a sorry trick mattered little in
the eyes of these disciplinarians. A daughter, according to their
philosophy, had no right to have an opinion of her own as to her spouse.
She was bound by the old rules and customs of the country to accept with
submission, and not merely with submission but with meekness, and not
merely with meekness but with gratitude, the husband that might be
selected for her by the wisdom of her elders. All this volume of
feeling--and it ran with a pretty strong current--was in favor of Messer
Simone, and Messer Simone knew that it would be so in his favor, and
counted on it, and made the most of it, displaying himself very
obstreperously before the city as the defrauded husband.

Nor, as I have said, was the fact that Messer Simone had been a
party--if, indeed, this could be proved against him, and were no more
than mere malicious rumor--to a planned ambuscade, with its consequent
slaughter of Florentine chivalry, found to weigh very heavily against
him in the minds of many that belonged to the Yellow fellowship. A man
must get rid of his enemies as best he can, after all, and the
misfortune in this matter for Messer Simone was that he had flagrantly
failed in his enterprise, and had rather strengthened than weakened his
adversaries by his misadventure. Anyway, he may have had nothing
whatever to do with the matter, and must for the present be accorded the
benefit of the doubt.

All these things combined to make Messer Simone's rising a mighty
serious matter, and his appearance at the head of his little army of
followers before the house of Messer Folco of the Portinari a thing of
sufficiently grave concern for Messer Folco. Simone clamored for his
wife, Simone insisted on his wife being delivered over to him, Simone
loudly announced his intention, if the girl were not promptly and
peaceably surrendered to him, of laying siege to the Portinari palace
and taking her thence by force.

Now, of the populace of Florence, that was soon set astir and buzzing by
all this war-like circumstance, I think that the most part were against
Messer Simone in this business, because of the general pity felt for the
girl, and the general admiration for young Dante that was now proved
poet and proved soldier, and the general sympathy for two young lovers
troubled by adverse stars. But such sympathy could do little against the
grim arguments of Simone, against those steady ranks of his adherents,
heavily armed, and resolute to follow their leader wherever he might
choose to lead them. Yet the people had found a leader in Dante, whose
words had set their minds on fire, and the gradually increasing number
of the Reds that had made their way to the place and were clustered
about Guido Cavalcanti stiffened their fluent units into something like
a solidity of opposition. But the odds were amazingly on the side of the
Yellows in everything that was necessary for success, in readiness, in
discipline, in weapons, in stubbornness of determination to do the thing
they wished to do--as indifferent to the laws of the city as heedless of
the laws of Heaven. The points of the game were all in favor of Messer
Simone.

But when Messer Griffo of the Claw rode into the city at the head of his
levy of lances, with Monna Vittoria in her male attire riding by his
side, and the Dragon banner flapping over all, things began to wear a
very different face. Messer Griffo and his merry men forced their way
easily enough across the bridge, pushing steadily through the crowds
that gave way before them and cheered them as they passed, for Griffo of
the Claw was popular in Florence. The company of mercenaries, as I have
said, came to a halt by Messer Folco's house, and drew up in face of
Simone and his forces.

Now, when I came upon the scene, I was still a little dizzy with wine
and sleep, whose fumes my race through the streets of the city had not
wholly dissipated, but I was beginning to collect my senses and to
understand what was going forward. My Dante, standing with his drawn
sword in front of Folco's door, the few and frightened civic guards
about the Portinari palace, the group of Guido Cavalcanti and his
brethren of the Red, the Bull-face Bardi with a multitude behind him,
and in front of these the new-come Free Companions, calm as statues
behind their master and the man-woman by his side--all these made up
such a sight as I never saw before and have never seen since, though I
saw much in my time when I was a worldling, but naught to equal that
day's doings.

I have told you already how I forced and coaxed a passage through the
throng on the piazza as quickly as I could, with the aid of my cry,
"Make way for the Company of Death!" shouted with great assurance, as if
I had at my heels all who had enrolled themselves in that strange
brotherhood. As a fact, many of the company were ranked behind Messer
Simone, serving his cause, and of those that rode with me to Arezzo, the
most part were gathered together about Messer Guido Cavalcanti and
backed Dante's quarrel, and, indeed, the company never served together
as a company after that day. But the name was just then very pleasing to
Florentine ears, because of the little triumph over the Aretines, and so
the name of the company served me as a talisman to squeeze me through
the press to the front, and so to place myself by Guido's side.

Messer Simone glared very ferociously at the new-comers, at Griffo of
the Claw, that had lost him one toss already, and at the woman who rode
beside him so gay and debonair in her mannish habit--the woman he had
slighted, the woman who had, as he guessed, baffled his plans once, and
had now come, as he might be very sure, to baffle them again. It was
plain to him that he had lost the day. It needed no great tactician, no
strategist, to perceive that the coming of the _condottieri_ had turned
the scale against him. They were better weaponed than his men, and when
their strength was added to that of the adversaries already arrayed
against him, he was gravely outnumbered. The arrival of the mercenaries
had served to define the mood of many a waverer and to stiffen the
courage of many that had been against Simone all along, but feared to
make themselves marked men by publicly opposing him. The most prudent
thing for Messer Simone to do--and I am sure he knew it--was to give up
his game, withdraw his forces, and trust to the chance of some
opportunity of revenge hereafter. This was assuredly the wisest course
open to Simone to pursue. But Simone did not pursue that wisest course.
His temper was worse than his intelligence.

When Dante, from where he stood, saw the coming of Griffo, he saluted
him with his sword, for he rightly believed that he came as a friend to
himself, or at least as a foe to Simone; and Messer Guido, that had a
right to take a foremost place in the affairs of the City, especially
in such a time and place where none of those in authority were present,
went up to the _condottiere_ and stood by his bridle, and spoke him
fair, and asked him very courteously why he came thus among them. And
Griffo answered, speaking also very courteously and quietly, that he had
heard from a sure source that there were dissensions in Florence whereby
some of his friends were in danger whom he would be sorry to have come
to hurt--and as he spoke he saluted Messer Guido very civilly and also
Dante--and that in consequence he had ridden over, he and his men, from
the neighborhood of Arezzo, in the hope that perhaps he and they might
be of some service to the authorities in aiding them to keep the public
peace.

Now, Messer Griffo said what he said in a very loud voice, so that as
many as might be should hear him. As the people were keeping very still
since the coming of the mercenaries, out of eagerness and curiosity,
very many did hear him, and naturally Messer Simone, that was only a few
feet away, heard him. It seemed as if his rage and hatred boiled over
within him, so that he could not abide in silence, but must needs give
speech to his spleen. So he urged his horse a little forward and looked
straight at Messer Griffo, and very fiercely. Then he called out, in a
huge voice, "Florence has come to a poor pass if her peace depends upon
a scoundrel and his strumpet!" And as he said this he pointed a great
finger direct at Vittoria, and burst out into a horrible laugh. And
Griffo showed no sign that he had as much as heard Simone, but the woman
went pale under the insult, and tried to speak, but at first she could
not.

At length, in a little, she found her breath, and she cried back at the
giant: "You have won your wager, Messer Simone, and I wish you joy of
your winning and the wife that loves another lord! But I would not have
you now or ever, for I have found a better man!"

At this I guessed, and was right in my guesswork, that she meant Messer
Griffo, of whom, it seems, that she had suddenly become overweeningly
fond, as indeed he of her. Then Madonna Vittoria pulled with her right
hand at a finger of her left, and drew thence a heavy gold ring that
carried a great emerald set in its socket, and I remembered, as I saw
that this was the ring she had staked in her wager against Simone's
promise to wed. She rose a little in her stirrups, holding up the ring.
"Take your gain, beast!" she screamed, and she flung the ring with all
her force in Simone's face, and struck him on the left cheek and cut it
open, and the ring fell clattering to the ground among the horses'
hooves, and the red blood ran over Simone's face, very ugly to behold.

What happened then happened more quickly than I can write it down,
happened more quickly than I could tell it across a table to a friend.
With a cry that was more like the bellow of some beast of the field than
any sound of a man's voice, Simone drove his horse against Vittoria,
and, bending over his charger's neck, gripped the woman about the neck
with both hands, and, lifting her out of her saddle, flung her across
his crupper and held her there, squeezing at her throat. For what seemed
to me an age, I and those near me stared at Vittoria's face, all red and
swollen with the choked blood, made horrid with the starting eyes, its
beauty ruined by the grasp of those two strangling hands. Simone was a
madman at the moment, with a madman's single thought, to kill his
victim, his fingers tightening and his blood-stained face twisted into a
hideous grin. Before the ghastly sight men stood still, and knew not
what to do--all but one man.

Griffo's sword rose in the air, shining like fire in the sunlight;
Griffo's sword fell like a falling star for swiftness, and struck Simone
between the head and the shoulder, slicing into the flesh as a knife
slices into an apple. It was a well-nigh headless trunk that rolled from
the saddle fountaining its blood. As the dead giant fell, Griffo let his
sword drop clanging on the stones and caught hold of Vittoria, and,
wrenching her from the relaxing fingers, clasped her senseless body in
his arms.

In the fury of confusion that followed--the screaming and plunging of
startled horses, the shouts and oaths and cries of men that seemed to
themselves to have kept silence for a great while, and, finding voice as
last, must needs use it inarticulately, like savages--I remember best
how I saw Dante standing erect on the palace steps, with his sword held
high above him, and his face was set and stern as the face of some
herald of the wrath of Heaven.

"The judgment of God!" he shouted, in a voice so loud that I heard it
above all the din, and many others heard it too, "the judgment of God!
the judgment of God!"




XXVII

THE SOLITARY CITY


With the death of Simone the immediate brawl came to an end. In the
first fury after his fall certain of his followers began to cry for
vengeance, but the cry was not caught up with any fulness of assurance,
and soon faded into silence. The men of the Yellows, so suddenly made
leaderless and faced by enemies so many and determined, could not fuse
into concerted action. They hesitated, looked foolishly at one another,
and lost whatever chance they had of success. Messer Simone's body,
almost decapitated from the stroke of Griffo, was fished up from
underneath the hooves of his rearing charger, laid upon a dismounted
door, covered with a cloak, and hurriedly conveyed away to his house.
Madonna Vittoria, snatched just in time from the clutch of those cruel
fingers, drew her breath in and out again; the blood that had suffused
her swollen face flowed back into its proper channels; she quickened to
existence clinging to her Griffo's breast. Messer Guido, taking to
himself authority as the chief man of his party there present, called
upon the party of the dead Bardi to disperse, and disperse they did,
cowed by the presence of the lances of the Dragon-flag, even before the
belated arrival of authority, backed by all the forces it could command,
had made dispersal a necessity.

Authority, now that Simone dei Bardi was indubitably dead, held a united
mind against Simone dei Bardi, and entertained no thoughts of punishing
his slayer, who, indeed, would scarcely have been minded to tolerate
their jurisdiction. Messer Griffo was left to ride unchecked to Monna
Vittoria's villa with his lances at his back. In that villa Monna
Vittoria recovered briskly, thanks to her youth and her health, and in
that villa a little later the adventurer wedded the adventuress, and
proved to the end of their days patterns of wedded content and pleasure.
Messer Simone's body was buried stealthily at night, and authority
vindicated its dignity by confiscating his houses and his goods, though
it restored to Madonna Vittoria her emerald ring, which was picked up on
the field of fight, as some salve for her rough handling. So ended, as
far as the feud of Reds and Yellows was concerned, that wild day which
is remembered, whimsically enough, in the annals of Florence as the Day
of the Felicity, from the name of the place where the contest began and
ceased. From that day the words Red and Yellow as party terms ceased to
be used, because the parties had ceased to exist. The Yellows fell to
pieces with the death of Simone, and the Reds, having no appreciable
antagonists, ceased in their turn to be.

As for my Dante, his joy in that day's work lived a short life. Let the
story of his woe be told quickly. When the door of the house of Folco
was opened to him, he faced its master on the threshold, clad in his
ancient armor for the defence of his dwelling, and his face was strained
with sadness, and he seemed gray with the double of his years.

"My child lies in a swoon," he said. "The physician cannot awaken her as
yet. Go to your lodging. I will send for you when she comes to herself."

With that Dante had to be content, and he went back to the place where
he abode, and he sat in his lonely room to await the coming of Folco's
messenger. His heart was heavy within him, and his thoughts were
troubled, and he feared the great fear. Then, to while away the weary
time, and to stay his care from feeding on his spirit, he sought some
work for his hands. He could write no verses, but because he was not
without skill as a draughtsman he took up, wherewith to draw, his tables
and a pencil, and he began to trace the face of an angel, and under his
working fingers the face of the angel had the face of a girl, and the
face of the girl was the face of Beatrice. But while he drew he became
of a sudden aware that there was another in the room with him, although
he knew that he had fastened the door behind him when he came in, and
that none could have entered without his knowledge. Turning his head, he
beheld that the God of Love was standing in the room, even as he seemed
in the form of the image that stood over the fountain by the bridge. But
now the bright feathers of his wings were faded, and his face was wan,
and the garment that he wore was no longer red but black, and he looked
very sadly upon Dante, and Dante felt his spirit grow cold and old
within him before that melancholy gaze. Then the God of Love made a sign
to Dante to rise and Dante rose, and Love beckoned to him to follow and
Dante followed. The God of Love went out at the door and down the stair
with Dante ever after him, and so into the air. No one in the street saw
that gloomy figure of Love, no one save Dante, and Dante followed his
guide through the bright evening, heeding no one, thinking no other
thought than to go where his mournful herald led him. The God of Love
conducted him to the house of Folco Portinari. Even as Dante came to the
door the door opened and a man came forth, and the man was Messer
Tommaso Severo, that was setting out to seek for Dante. Severo saw
Dante, but he did not see the God of Love, and he told Dante that he was
on the point of seeking him.

And Dante cried out one word--"Beatrice!"

And Messer Severo answered the question in his cry, very slowly and
sadly, "Madonna Beatrice is dead."

Then Dante cried, "Take me to her!" And after that he spoke no other
word, but walked in silence and tearless by Severo's side till they came
to the room where Beatrice lay in her last sleep. The women that were
about the bier drew away, and the God of Love took Dante by the hand and
drew him a little nearer to where the girl lay, and Love stooped down
and kissed the white face of Beatrice--kissed her on the forehead and on
the lidded eyes and on the pale lips. Dante heard the voice of the God,
that said, "It is your love that kisses her thus." But Dante spoke no
word, and there were no tears in his eyes; only he stood there a little
while looking at Beatrice, and then he turned and went his ways,
unquestioned and unstayed, back to his own place. When Messer Guido and
I came to him later we found him sitting all alone in his chamber
looking at a little unfinished drawing of an angel, and murmuring to
himself, over and over again, "How doth the city sit solitary that was
full of people? How is she become a widow?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Here my tale comes to an end. The rascal Maleotti confessed later, on
being put to the question, that it was his master, Simone dei Bardi, who
sent to Madonna Beatrice the casket containing the rose, and that the
petals of the rose had been poisoned by a cunning leech that was in
Messer Simone's service, for Messer Simone was sure that Beatrice would
think it came from Dante, and Messer Simone was of a mind that if he
could not have Beatrice no one else should have her. But when Simone
heard from Maleotti of Dante's visit to the Portinari palace so soon
after the sending of the casket, he felt sure that Dante would deny, as
Dante did deny, the sending of the rose, and that the evil thing would
scarcely have had time to effect its purpose. Then the flames of his
jealousy blazed hotter within him, and he thought that Dante's presence
in the palace would be an excuse for him to break the peace that had
been put upon him, and that he might, after all, win Beatrice for
himself. In this, as you know, he failed, and it is my belief that he
failed in the first part of his plotting, for Messer Tommaso Severo,
that had examined the rose, gave it as his opinion that though the
petals had been impregnated with some kind of venom, their odor had not
been inhaled by Beatrice sufficiently long to cause any malignant
effect, and he affirmed that the fair lady's death was due solely to the
woful agitations of the last hours of her life acting upon a body ever
too frail to house so fine a spirit. However that may be, and I hope it
was so, we found great satisfaction in the hanging of Maleotti. We
would have hanged the leech, too, whom Maleotti accused, but he
forestalled our vengeance by poisoning himself--partly, I think, out of
hurt pride at the alleged failure of his cunning device.

I have little more to say--no more, indeed, than this: It has been said
by many, and believed by more, that, after the death of his lady, my
dear friend fell into a kind of moral torpor, in which all sense of
things righteous and things evil was confused. Thus he went his ways,
like the godless man of whom it is spoken in the Wisdom of Solomon,
feeding on mean and secret pleasures, and consorting with the strange
women that are called Daughters of Joy. I do not know that he ever did
so; I should never credit it, though it is such folly as weaker men
might fall into readily enough in the freshness of their despair. But I
will set down this story which I have heard told of him. It relates that
one night Dante drifted toward that quarter of the city where such light
loves find shelter. There many women plucked at his sleeve as he passed,
and, at last, surrendering to temptation, he followed through the
darkness one that was closely cloaked and hooded. It seemed to him that
they went a long way together, he and the hooded woman by his side, and
though at times he spoke to her, she answered him no word. After a while
they came to an open place that was moon-lit, and then the woman paused
and pulled back her hood, and there for a moment Dante looked upon the
face of the dead Beatrice. In that instant Dante found himself alone,
and he fled from the place in a great horror.




NOTE


Those that in their travels in France have had the good-fortune to visit
the Abbey of Bonne Aventure in Poitou can hardly fail to be familiar
with the many and varied treasures of the abbey library. Most of these
treasures were brought together by the erudite Dom Gregory, who had,
among the other honorable passions of a scholar, an enthusiastic desire
for the amassing of rare manuscripts. Perhaps one of the rarest of all
the manuscripts in his great collection is that one which claims to be
written by the Italian poet Lappo Lappi, and to set forth in something
like narrative form an account of the loves of Dante and Beatrice.
Students and scholars who have studied this manuscript have differed
greatly in their conclusions as to its authenticity and its value. The
German Guggenheim is emphatic in his assertion that the work is a late
eighteenth-century forgery, and he bases his conclusions on many small
inaccuracies of time and place and fact which his zeal and pertinacity
have discovered. On the other hand, Prof. Hiram B. Pawling, whose
contributions to the history of Italian literature form some of the
brightest jewels in the crown of Harvard University, is inclined, after
careful consideration, to believe that the manuscript is, on the whole,
a genuine work.

Undoubtedly the sheets of parchment upon which the remarkable document
is written are older than the fourteenth century, some time in whose
first half Lappo, if he be the author, must have written the book. The
keen scrutiny of powerful magnifying-glasses has revealed the fact that
much of it is inscribed on skins which had formerly been used for the
recording of a series of Lives of the Saints, whose almost effaced
letters belong, without question, to the latter part of the twelfth
century. Whoever wrote this story of Dante must have been at the
economical pains to erase carefully the ecclesiastical script, thus
curiously avenging so many palimpsests of Greek poets and Latin poets,
whose lyrics have been scrubbed away with pumice-stone to make room for
homilies and liturgies and hagiologies. If the writer of the story be
indeed Lappo Lappi, it would be quite in keeping with his character, as
we know it, to imagine him enjoying very greatly this process of
obliterating some saintly relation in order to set down upon the
restored surfaces his testimony to the greatest love-story of Italy. It
is, however, unfortunately impossible to maintain with certainty that
the writing is actually from the hand of Lappo. Though it appears to be
a clerkly calligraphy of the fourteenth century, such things have been
imitated too often to enable any but the rashest and most headstrong of
scholars to give a definite and unquestionable opinion. One may cherish
with reason a private belief that the thing is indeed Lappo's work in
Lappo's writing, but with the memory of some famous literary impositions
fresh upon us, very notably the additions to Petronius, we must pause
and pronounce warily. It may be, indeed, that although the book be
genuine enough in its creation, it was never intended to be regarded as
a serious statement of facts, but rather to be taken as an essay in
romance by one who wished the facts were as he pictured them. If this be
so, the narrative is even less historically reliable than the _Fiametta_
of Boccaccio.

In any case, the manuscript, whenever written, wherever written, and by
whom written, is in a far from perfect condition. Though the care of Dom
Gregory had encased it in a wrapping of purple-colored vellum, it still
seems to have suffered from time and careless treatment. Probably its
greatest injuries date from that period when, during the stress of the
French Revolution, the treasures of the abbey library were hurriedly
concealed in underground cellars, and suffered no little from damp and
dirt during the period of their incarceration. Many portions of the
narrative are either wholly absent or exist in such a fragmentary
condition that, like a corrupt Greek text, they have to be restored by
the desperate process of guesswork. Those, therefore, who thirst for the
exact text of the tale, must either wait in patience for Professor
Pawling's long promised edition, or satisfy their curiosity by a visit
to the Abbey of Bonne Aventure in Poitou.

                    THE END




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