Very soon the roll of parchment in Dante"s right hand was larger by much than the roll of parchment in Dante"s left, and it was plain indeed to all present that the reading and the poem were coming to an end. It was also plain to all present that the utterance of the poet was growing more agitated, and his manner more embarra.s.sed and anxious, and it was manifest to me, who watched him keenly, that he was trembling like a cypress in a light wind. As he came to the last verse it seemed as if some irresistible compulsion compelled him to turn his head in the direction where Madonna Beatrice stood apart with her women and her leech. As he did so the parchment fell from his suddenly parted fingers and lay in two rolls at his feet. But, as if he were unaware of what had happened, Dante went on with his recitation of the poem. I could see very clearly that the madness of love was wholly upon him, the madness that makes a man lose all heed of what he does and be conscious of naught save the presence of the beloved. He stood there rigid, as one possessed, with his face turned in the direction where the lady Beatrice stood amid her women, and his hands, newly liberated from the control of the parchment that lay at his feet, were clasped together in a tight embrace. And when I turned my gaze from him to her whose beauty he so pa.s.sionately regarded, I was aware that she too was under the spell of his words, and was conscious of the adoration in his eyes. Truly that boy and that girl, as they stood there in the clean springtide of their youth and comeliness, seemed to me to be a pair very properly and lovingly made by Heaven one for the other. "Here," said I to myself, "if there be any truth in Messer Plato"s theory of affinities, here is a living proof of the Grecian whimsy. And here," I said to myself, "if folk must needs marry--a thing I never could understand--here, as I think, is an instance in which a man and a woman might really be happy together, making true mates, lovers, and friends, finding life sweet to share, and finding nothing in their union that was not n.o.ble and pure."
So I thought while my Dante was betraying his secret by repeating his lesson without his book.
These were the words that he spoke with his eyes fixed upon the lady Beatrice, and they live in my memory as fresh as they seemed on the day when I first read them in Messer Guido"s lodging, and the evening when I first heard them in Messer Folco"s hall. Here is what they said:
"Blessed they name the lady whom I love, Even as the angelic lips in Paradise At last shall bless her when she moves above The sun and all the stars. But while mine eyes Regard her ere she numbers the Nine Skies, Immortal in her mortal loveliness, Can I be scorned if to my soul of sighs Earth"s blessing seems the greater, Heaven"s the less?"
Even as he came to an end in the great quiet that reigned over the place, I saw how Dante grew of a sudden strangely pale, and how his body swayed as if his senses were about to drown themselves in a swoon, and I truly think that he would have fainted away and fallen to the ground in the transport of his pa.s.sion if I had not sprung forward from amid the throng where I stood and caught him in my arms.
XIII
GO-BETWEENS
To most of those that were present in Messer Folco"s house that night it was little less than impossible to misunderstand the meaning of those latest rhymes that Messer Dante had read. Even if none had taken into account the agitation that had come over my friend, and which at least identified him in spirit with the substance of what he read, if it did not patently proclaim him the author, at least it was staringly evident that the stanza was a public tribute to the loveliness of Madonna Beatrice. Did not her name of Beatrice imply blessedness, and was not blessedness, terrestrial and celestial, the intimate theme of the octave? Further, since I speak of the octave, were not those that had nimble judgments and sprightly memories able to recall that Madonna Beatrice"s name was made up of eight letters, and then, following on this pathway of knowledge, to discover that the first letter of each line of the stanza corresponded in its order with the like letter in the name of the daughter of Folco Portinari.
In the face of such an amazing revelation a kind of heavy silence brooded awhile over the company, and lasted, indeed, as long as the time, which was indeed but brief, that Dante lay in my arms in his stupor. While some believed that in Dante they beheld--as in very truth they did--the author of the poem, and in consequence the body of the unknown poet that had haunted their imaginations, others merely appreciated that the unknown poet, whoever he might be, had declared himself very patently the adorer of Monna Beatrice, wherefore it was to be inferred that all those other love-songs, which the golden youth of Florence loved to murmur to the ears of their ladies, were so many roses and lilies and violets laid on the same shrine.
Whoever misunderstood the true meaning of what had happened, I think that Messer Folco understood well enough, and was mightily little pleased in the understanding. Though Dante had, indeed, the right to claim n.o.bility of birth, neither his station in the city nor his worldly means were such as to commend him to Messer Folco"s eyes as a declared lover of his daughter. Whatever annoyance Messer Folco may have felt at the untoward occurrence, he was too accomplished a gentleman to allow any sign of chagrin to appear in his voice or countenance or demeanor.
He did no more than thank Dante, who had by this time quite overmastered his pa.s.sing weakness, for his courtesy in reading such very pleasing verses. Then, turning to the guests that stood about, somewhat disconcerted and puzzled by what had taken place, he addressed them in loud tones, telling them that a slight banquet was set forth in the adjacent room, and begged them to enjoy it before the dancing should begin.
At these pleasant tidings the most of Messer Folco"s company were greatly elated, and hastened to pair themselves off very merrily, and to make their ways toward the banqueting-room, where, indeed, a very delectable feast was spread, such an one as might have tickled the palate and flattered the appet.i.te of any of the high-livers and dainty drinkers of old Rome. As our jolly Florentine lads and winsome Florentine la.s.ses ate and drank, they chattered of what they had just heard, of what they had just seen, and were all agreed to a man Jack and a woman Jill that Madonna Beatrice was a very flower of women, and that if Messer Dante laid his heart at her feet it was no doubt a piece of great presumption, but otherwise an act highly to be applauded. We were very young in Florence in those days, and our hearts were always quick to beat time to the drum-taps of love or any other high and generous pa.s.sion. If we have changed since, it is the fault of the changing years and the loss of the Republic.
I make no doubt that there were some who grumbled and carped and cavilled; said this and said that; grunted porcine over the pretty pa.s.s things were coming to in the city when a n.o.body or a next-to-n.o.body like young Dante of the Alighieri could presume to lift his impudent eyes to a daughter of a man like Folco Portinari, one of the first citizens of Florence, and a man that builded hospitals and basilicas at his own expense. But the growls of these grumblers and carpers and snarlers did not count in the general and genial applause that our youth gave to mellifluous numbers and lovely love, and the thousand beautiful things and thoughts that make this poor life of ours seem for a season Elysium.
So they feasted and prattled, and I turn to another theme.
If the meaning of what Messer Dante said and the meaning of what Messer Dante did was plain and over-plain to Messer Folco, it was surely in the very nature of things no less plain to his daughter. To her, at least, there can have been no riddle to read in the young man"s words, in the young man"s actions. Love, splendid and fierce and humble, reigned in the glowing words that he read, ruled his failing voice, swayed his reeling figure. She could not question the ident.i.ty of the Blessed One whose beauty made the singer sacrilegious in the white-heat of his devotion. She could not misinterpret the significance of the abandoned parchment lying discarded where it had fallen on the floor while the reciter, with his sad eyes fixed upon her face, repeated so familiarly the words which he was supposed never to have seen. For Beatrice, Dante of the Alighieri was the author of the ballad in praise of fair Florentines; for her he was the unknown poet whose fame had flamed through Florence, and she was the lady that was praised with words of such enchanting sweetness in his songs.
While the guests were going toward the banquet as brisk as bees to blossoms, Dante caught me by the hand and drew me apart, and entreated me to seek speech with Beatrice, and to entreat her to grant him an interview in private that very night. He dared not, so he said, approach her himself, in the first place because the doing so might prove too noticeable after what had occurred, and, in the second place, because he feared that she had some cause of complaint against him, seeing that she had of late refused him her salutation. He bade me urge her very strenuously to grant his prayer, for his soul"s sake and his body"s sake, that he might live and not die.
Since I was ever willing to serve my friend, I agreed to do this thing, and so left him to the care of Messer Guido, who came up on that instant and addressed him in very loving terms, charging him with being indeed the poet whose name they had sought so long. Dante not denying this, as indeed denial would have been idle, even if Dante had been willing, as indeed he never was, to utter such a falsehood, saying that he had not done that which he had done, Messer Guido began to praise him in such glowing words as would have made another man happy. But for Dante happiness lay only in the kind thoughts of his lady, and the very shaft of his ambition was only to please her. He listened very quietly while Messer Guido praised him so highly, and I, for my part, set about performing the task with which he had intrusted me.
I did not know at the time, though I learned it later, that my mission, if not forestalled, had in very truth been rendered much easier by the action of another. That masked youth I told you of, who would needs have Dante read his own poem that none there knew for his, was no other a person than Monna Vittoria. Vittoria had ever a freakish humor for slipping into man"s apparel, which some of her friends found diverting and others not, as the mood took them. Madonna Vittoria took it into her head that she would be present at Messer Folco"s festival, and to do so was easy enough for her when once she had clothed her shapely body in the habit of a cavalier, and flung a colored cloak about her, and curled her locks up under a cap, and clapped a vizard upon her face. She went to Messer Folco"s house for this reason most of all, that she meant to speak with Madonna Beatrice, a thing not ordinarily very easy to come at for such as she. Indeed, there was no risk for her of discovery, doing what she did in the way she did, with a man"s jacket on her back and a man"s hose upon her legs.
She came, as it seems, upon Beatrice in the early hours of the festival, having bided her time till she should find Folco"s daughter alone or nearly so, and then and there addressed her earnestly with a request for some private speech. In such a season of merry-making the request did not come so strangely from a masked youth as to seem either insolent or unfitting. But Beatrice knew at once that the voice was a woman"s, and so said, smilingly, as she drew a little apart with her challenger. Then it appears that Vittoria unmasked and named herself, and that Beatrice looked at her very steadily and gravely, and said no more than this: "I have heard of you. You are very beautiful," the which words, as Vittoria told me later, gave her a greater pleasure than any she had ever tasted from the praises of men"s lips.
Vittoria said, "If you have heard of me, perhaps you will think that I should not be here and seeking speech with you."
To which Beatrice answered, very sweetly, that it was no part of the law of her life to deny hearing to one that wished for speech with her, and while she spoke she was still smiling kindly, and there was no anger in her eyes and no scorn, but only a kind of sad wonder. Then Vittoria said that she had made bold to do what she did for the sake of a friend and for the sake of Beatrice herself. Thereat the manner of Beatrice, albeit still courteous, grew colder, and she answered that she did not know how the doings of any friend of Vittoria"s could concern her, and Vittoria knew that she guessed who the friend was.
Vittoria said, "The friend of whom I speak, the friend whom I would serve with you, is not and never has been more than my friend."
At this Beatrice made a gesture as if to silence her and a movement as if to leave her.
But Vittoria barred her way and delayed her entreatingly, saying, "Do not scorn me because I am what I am."
Whom, thus entreated, Madonna Beatrice answered, very gently: "Indeed, I do not scorn you for being what your are. I will not even say that I do not understand you, for I have it in my heart that a woman must always understand a woman, however different the way of the one may be from the way of the other. And it might very well have happened, if our upbringings had been other, that you were as I am and I as you."
Vittoria answered: "I think not so, for G.o.d has so made you that you would never care for the things I care for, and G.o.d has so made me that I should always care for them."
Beatrice replied: "Very well, then; let us leave the matter with G.o.d, who made us, and say to me what you wish to say."
Then Vittoria told Beatrice of Dante, how he was devoted soul and body to Beatrice, and how it was only in consequence of Vittoria"s well-meant but ill-proving advice that he at all sought her society. She told how she had given that advice to save the youth from the hatred of Simone, but had not told him this, telling him rather that by so doing he would keep his love for Beatrice a secret from the world. Then the paleness of Beatrice changed for a little to a soft red, and Vittoria saw that she believed, and kissed her hand and left her. Thus it came about that my labor was already lightened, though I knew it not when I set out to seek for Beatrice on behalf of my friend.
The good chance that sometimes favors the amba.s.sadors of Love served me in good stead very presently by affording me occasion to approach Madonna Beatrice and engage her in speech, for she was ever courteous in her bearing toward her father"s guests. After we had discoursed for a brief while on trifles, I, finding that where we stood and talked I might speak with little fear of being overheard, straightway disclosed my mission to her, and delivered my errand, putting it, as I think, in words no less apt than choice, and making a very proper plea for my friend, presenting, indeed, his pet.i.tion so well that, though I say it who, perhaps, should not say it, I do not think that he could have done it any better himself. I made bold to add that my friend went in fear that he had in some way offended her, but that I was very sure he would be able to excuse himself to her eyes if only she would afford him the opportunity to do so.
Madonna Beatrice listened to me very quietly while I delivered myself of my message and of such embroideries of my own as I saw fit to tag on to its original simplicity, and though I thought I could discern that she was affected not unkindly toward my friend, in spite of whatever fault he might have committed, she did not in any way change color or display any other of those signals by which ladies are accustomed to make manifest their agitation when any whisper of love business is in the air. When I had finished, she did no more at first than to ask me if, indeed, Messer Dante was the unknown poet who had so delighted Florence.
To which question I made answer that the truth was indeed so, at which a.s.surance she seemed to me at first to smile, and then to look sad, and then to smile again. But when I was beginning to utter some golden words in the praise of my friend"s verses, she very sweetly but very surely cut my compliments short, and gave me the answer to my emba.s.sy.
"Tell Messer Dante," she said, "that he is so great a poet that it were scarcely gracious for me to refuse him the favor he asks, though, indeed, he must know as well as I know that it is no small favor. It is not perhaps fitting, and it certainly is not easy, for a maiden to accord a lonely meeting to a youth, even when that youth has some reason to call himself the maiden"s friend. But I shall retire before this festival comes to an end, and I shall walk awhile on the loggia above in the moonlight and the sweet air before going to my sleep. If he will come to me there I will speak with him and hear him speak for a little while. Tell him I do this for the sake of his verses."
Therewith she made me a suave salutation and turned to speak to another, and I, finding myself thus amiably dismissed, and being very well satisfied with the fruits of my enterprise, bowed very lowly before her, and turned and went my ways, seeking my friend. Soon I found him with many youths and elders about him, all as eager as Guido had been to congratulate him on what he had done. But if Dante seemed pleased to hear their praises, as it was only right he should seem pleased, he showed still greater pleasure in beholding me and reading the message of my smiling face.
He made some excuse for quitting his company and drawing apart with me, and when he had heard what I had got to say, I think that he looked the happiest man that I had ever seen. "Heaven bless my lady Beatrice for her sovereign grace," he said, very softly and earnestly, and then he wrung me very hard by the hand, and left me and went back to his admirers, and thereafter, during the progress of the night"s pleasures, I saw him move and take his share with an unwonted brightness of countenance and mirthfulness of bearing, and I was glad with all my heart to see him so cheerful.
Indeed, that was a cheering time, and the man or woman would have been hard to please who found nothing to delight or to amuse at Messer Folco"s festival. To speak for myself, I had never known better diversion. There was a whole world of pretty women a.s.sembled within Messer Folco"s walls, and I may as well confess here, if I have not confessed it already, that I take great delectation in the companionship of pretty women. How many little hands, I wonder, did I press that night, with the tenderest protestations? How many kisses, I wonder, did I venture to steal, or, rather, pretend to steal? for I swear the dainty rogues met me half way in the matter of the robbery. Well, well, it was all very merry and pleasant, and we feasted very gayly, and we danced very nimbly, and we wandered in the green glooms of the garden, and then we feasted anew, and after that we set to work to dancing in good earnest. Save for a few, we all danced and danced and danced again, as if we could dance the world back into its young-time.
XIV
MESSER SIMONE SPOILS SPORT
The dance was at the very top of its progress; all the youths and maidens were bright and smiling; the musicians sc.r.a.ped and plucked like mad, and the strings quivered with happy melody. All about against the wall the elders ranged at gaze, recalling wistfully or cheerfully, according to their temperaments, the days when they, too, tripped lightly to music and made love in a measure, and some old toes ached for a caper. While the mirth was at its blithest there suddenly came an interruption to the gayety, and in a twink, one knew not how, the dance that had been so jovial and harmonious seemed suddenly resolved into its individual elements, so many youths and men, and so many maids and matrons staring at the thing that had thus suddenly marred their pleasure. I, that had been placed by chance at a post in the dance the most removed from the main door of the apartment, was not at first aware of what had caused the commotion among the dancers; I was only aware of the commotion and the pause in the dancing and the knowledge that the faces of those near to me showed surprise or fear or wonder, according to their instinct. Meanwhile the musicians in their gallery, knowing nothing of any reason why they should stop, were still twitching their strings busily, though no one marked them and no one danced to their music. But I, being resolved to argue, as it were, from the effect to the cause, pushed my way through the men and women that were huddled together in my neighborhood, and then I came to an open s.p.a.ce of the floor, and face to face, at a distance, with the cause of the disturbance.
This cause was Messer Simone dei Bardi, who was standing in the centre of the room with Messer Folco Portinari and other grave elders about him, and he was talking in a loud voice, as it were, to them in particular, but also in general to the a.s.sembled company. Now, I had never in all my life felt any kindly liking for Messer Simone, but I had to confess to myself that he cut something of a flourishing figure just then and just there. While all of us that were gathered under Messer Folco"s roof were habited in our best bravery of velvets and soft stuffs and furs and such gold trinkets and jewels as it were in our power to display, and so looked very frivolous and foppish and at ease, Messer Simone dei Bardi came among us clad as a soldier-citizen of a great Republic should be clad in time of danger to his nation. His huge bulk was built about in steel, a great sword swung at his side, and though his head was bare, a page in his livery stood close behind him resting his master"s helmet in the bend of his arm. So lapped in mail, so menacing in carriage, Simone might have seemed some truculent effigy of the G.o.d Mars suddenly appearing from the riven earth in a pastoral gallantry of shepherds and shepherdesses.
What he was saying he was saying very clearly with the purpose that all should hear, and I among the rest benefited by what he said. It was to this effect: that our enemies the Aretines were planning a secret stroke at Florence, knowledge of which had come to his patriotic ears; and according to the estimation of his mind, it was no time for Florentine citizens to be singing and dancing and making merry when there was a stroke to be struck with a strong hand against her enemies.
These bellicose words of Messer Simone found their immediate echo in the hearts of all men present; for to do us Florentines justice, we have never loved frolicking so much that we did not like fighting a great deal better, and we have never had private business or private pleasure which we were not ready at a moment"s notice to thrust on one side when the great bell of the city sounded its warning of danger to the Republic. So for the immediate time Messer Simone was the hour"s hero, and dancing and banqueting and laughing and love-making were clean forgotten, and every youth and every mature man there present, and, for that matter, every elder, too, was eager to ring himself in steel and to teach the devils of Arezzo of what stuff a Florentine citizen was made.
I must honestly and soberly confess that I myself was so readily intoxicated with the heady wine of the excitement about me that I found myself cheering and shouting as l.u.s.tily as the rest, for the which I do not blame myself, and that I found myself for the moment regarding Messer Simone dei Bardi as a kind of hero, for the which I severely blame myself even now, after all this lapse of years.
When Messer Simone found that he had got the company, so to speak, in the hollow of his hands, he was silent for a little while, looking about him sharply, as if he were making sure of the courage and enthusiasm of his fellow-citizens, and seeking to find in the press of flushed and eager faces any countenance that seemed unwilling to answer to his call.
All about him the elders of the city were gathered giving and taking counsel, giving, I think for the most part, more readily than taking, and hurriedly revolving in their minds what were best to do for the city in the crisis that Messer Simone had made plain to them. While these deliberations went on, we that had been dancing danced no longer, nor had desire to dance, and though some talked among themselves, the main kept silence, for the most part waiting upon events. By this time, my wits having grown cooler and my old distrust of Messer Simone being resuscitated, I scrutinized him closely as he stood there in his steel coats, the centre figure of the a.s.sembly.
As I looked at Messer Simone where he stood there, girt with strength in every line of his body, in every curl of his crisp hair and short beard, in the watchful ferocity of his eyes, he seemed to me a kind of symbol of what man may be who is unlifted by any inspiration of divinity or tincture of letters from the common herd. In him brute strength, brutish desires, brutal pa.s.sions were presented, so it seemed to my fancy, as a kind of warning to others of what man may be that is content to be merely man, with no higher thought in him than the gratification of his instincts and his impulses. I have heard tell in travellers" tales of strange lands, beneath fiercer suns than ours, where naked savages disport themselves with the lawless a.s.surance of wild beasts, and it seemed to me--being always given to speculation--that Messer Simone, if he found himself in such a company, would never be at a loss, but would straightway be admitted to their ruffian fellowship. I think, indeed, he would be better suited for such companionship than for citizenship of the fair, the wise, the gifted, the civilized queen-city of Florence.
But even as such savages are reported to have, in place of a higher wit, such natural craft as Providence has implanted in the hearts of foxes and hyenas and other such wild beasts, so Messer Simone, for all his b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, could be cunning enough when it served his ends, as you shall presently learn.
In a little while Messer Simone began to speak again, and to tell his hearers of the plan which he had formed for the service of Florence and the confusion of her enemies. This plan, as you already know, was to be furthered by the enrollment of all such among the youth of Florence as desired to prove themselves true patriots into a body which was to be known by the high-sounding name of the Company of Death, the meaning of this t.i.tle being that those who so enrolled themselves were prepared at any moment to give their lives for the advantage of the mother-city.
Messer Simone"s plan had, as we now learned, been applauded by all the magnates, such as Messer Corso Donati and Messer Vieri dei Cerchi, and had received the approval of the priors of the city. As the scheme was due to Messer Simone, it was agreed on all hands that he should be its leader so long as the Republic of Florence was in a state of war.
Whoever had taught him his lesson, Messer Simone had learned it creditably enough. He talked well, and while you listened to him it was hard not to feel that the Company of Death was indeed a very n.o.ble and hopeful thought, and that it might very well be the duty of all honorable patriots to join it. But such thoughts might have cooled off under reflection and deliberation if Messer Simone had not been at the pains to prevent reflection and deliberation by a cunning stroke of policy.
So he pitched his loud voice some notes higher, bellowing like a bull of Bashan as he rolled off sonorous sentences very deftly learned and remembered, in which glory and the service of the state and the example of old Rome were cleverly compounded into a most patriotic pasty. Even as he was in the thick of his speaking there came a flourish of trumpets at the door, and to the sound of that music there came into the room a brace of pages that were habited in cloth of gold, and that bore on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s the badge that showed them to be the servants of Messer Simone. This pair of pages carried between them a mighty gold charger, and on this charger lay a huge book of white vellum that was bound and clasped in gold. These pages were followed by other two pages, one of whom carried ink in a great golden ink-horn and sand in a golden basin, while the other bore a kind of golden quiver that was stuffed full, not indeed of arrows, but of quills of the gray goose. When this little company of pages had come anigh to Messer Simone, who seemed to greet their approach with great satisfaction, the pages that carried the book stood before their master, and Simone, stooping to the charger, unclasped the great book and flung it open and showed that its leaves were white and fair. The book-bearers supported the book so open, on the charger, making themselves into a living desk, and he that carried the ink and sand and he that carried the quills came alongside of them, and stood quietly, waiting for their work to begin.