ply."

So saying, he bounded over the tombs and walked quietly away. The
horsemen looked at one another in amazement; then bursting out laughing,
they gave spur to their steeds. As they were galloping along the
Peretola Road, Messer Bocca said to Messer Betto:

"Who can doubt now but this Guido is gone mad? He told us we were at
home in the graveyard. And to say such a thing, he must needs have lost
his wits."

"True it is," replied Messer Betto, "I cannot imagine what he meant to
have us understand by talking in such a sort. But he is used to
expressing himself in dark sayings and subtle parables. He hath tossed
us a bone this time must be opened to find the marrow."

"Pardi!" ejaculated Messer Giordano; "my dog may have this bone to gnaw,
and the Pagan that threw it to boot."

They soon reached the banks of the Peretola brook, whence the cranes may
be seen rising in flocks at daybreak. During the chase, which was
abundantly successful, Messer Betto Brunelleschi never ceased pondering
the words Guido had used. And by dint of much thinking, he discovered
their signification. Hailing Messer Bocca with loud cries, he said to
him:

"Come hither, Messer Bocca! I have just guessed what it was Messer Guido
meant us to understand. He told us we were at home in a graveyard,
because the ignorant be for all the world like dead men, who, according
to the Epicurean doctrine, have no faculty of thought or knowledge."

Messer Bocca replied, shrugging his shoulders, he understood better than
most how to fly a Flanders hawk, to make knife-play with his enemies,
and to upset a girl, and this was knowledge sufficient for his state in
life.

Messer Guido continued for several years more to study the science of
Love. He embodied his reflexions in canzones, which it is not given to
all men to interpret, composing a book of these verses that was borne in
triumph through the streets, garlanded with laurel. Then, seeing the
purest souls are not without alloy of terrestrial passions, and life
bears us one and all along in its sinuous and stormy course, it fell out
that at the turning-point of youth and age, Messer Guido was seduced by
the ambitions of the flesh and the powers of this world. He wedded, to
further his projects of aggrandizement, the daughter of the Lord
Farinata degli Uberti, the same who one time reddened the Arbia with the
blood of the Florentines. He threw himself into the quarrels of the
citizens with all the pride