The God of Love
by Justin H. McCarthy · English · Gutenberg #24672 · 470,475 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The God of Love
Author: Justin H. McCarthy
Release date: February 23, 2008 [eBook #24672]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOD OF LOVE ***
Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
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
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