addressed me in the dialect of the Latins with a wondrous
wisdom. And so well pleased was I with her conversation that I am right
fain to marry her."

"Tis at the least," said Messer Betto, "a niece of the Emperor of
Constantinople, or his natural daughter.... How name you her?"

"If needs be," answered Messer Guido, "we must give her a love name,
such as every poet gives to his mistress. I will call her Diotima, in
memory of Diotima of Megara, who showed the way to the lovers of Virtue.
But her public and avowed name is Philosophy, and 'tis the most
excellent bride a man can find. I want no other, and I swear by the gods
to be faithful unto death, which doth put an end to life and thought."

When he heard these sentiments, Messer Betto struck his forehead with
his hand and cried:

"Per Bacco! but I never guessed the riddle! Friend Guido, you have the
subtlest wit under the red lily of Florence. I heartily commend your
taking to wife so high a dame. Of a surety, will spring of this union a
numerous progeny of canzones, sonnets and ballades. I promise to baptize
you these pretty babes to the sound of my flute, with dainty mottoes
galore and gallant devices. I am the more rejoiced at this spiritual
wedlock, seeing it will never hinder you, when the time comes, to marry
according to the flesh some fair and goodly lady of the city."

"Nay! you are out," returned Messer Guido. "They that celebrate the
espousals of the mind should leave carnal marriage to the profane
vulgar, which includes the great Lords, the Merchants and the
Handicraftsmen. If like me you had known my Diotima, you would have
learned, friend Betto, that she doth distinguish two sorts of men, on
the one hand such as, being fruitful only by the body, strive but for
that coarse and commonplace immortality that is won by the generation of
children, on the other they whose soul conceives and engenders what is
meet for the soul to produce, to wit the Good and Beautiful. My Diotima
hath willed I should be of the second sort, and I will not go against
her good pleasure, and copy the mere brutes that breed and procreate."

Messer Betto Brunelleschi by no means approved of this resolution. He
pointed out to his friend that in life we must adapt ourselves to the
different conditions and modes of existence suitable to the different
ages, that after the epoch of pleasures comes that of ambition, and that
it was good and prudent, as youth waned, to contract alliance