_Dante._ For another?

_Beatrice._ Childhood can never have a second.

_Dante._ But childhood is now over.

_Beatrice._ I wonder who was so malicious as to tell my father that?
He wanted me to be married a whole year ago.

_Dante._ And, Bice, you hesitated?

_Beatrice._ No; I only wept. He is a dear good father. I never
disobeyed him but in those wicked tears; and they ran the faster the
more he reprehended them.

_Dante._ Say, who is the happy youth?

_Beatrice._ I know not who ought to be happy if you are not.

_Dante._ I?

_Beatrice._ Surely you deserve all happiness.

_Dante._ Happiness! any happiness is denied me. Ah, hours of
childhood! bright hours! what fragrant blossoms ye unfold! what bitter
fruits to ripen!

_Beatrice._ Now cannot you continue to sit under that old fig-tree at
the corner of the garden? It is always delightful to me to think of
it.

_Dante._ Again you smile: I wish I could smile too.

_Beatrice._ You were usually more grave than I, although very often,
two years ago, you told me I was the graver. Perhaps I _was_ then
indeed; and perhaps I ought to be now: but really I must smile at the
recollection, and make you smile with me.

_Dante._ Recollection of what in particular?

_Beatrice._ Of your ignorance that a fig-tree is the brittlest of
trees, especially when it is in leaf; and moreover of your tumble,
when your head was just above the wall, and your hand (with the verses
in it) on the very coping-stone. Nobody suspected that I went every
day to the bottom of our garden, to hear you repeat your poetry on the
other side; nobody but yourself; you soon found me out. But on that
occasion I thought you might have been hurt; and I clambered up our
high peach-tree in the grass plot nearest the place; and thence I saw
Messer Dante, with his white sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the
seeds sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing, and trying
to conceal his calamity, and still holding the verses. They were all
about me.

_Dante._ Never shall any verse of mine be uttered from my lips, or
from the lips of others, without the memorial of Bice.

_Beatrice._ Sweet Dante! in the purity of your soul shall Bice live;
as (we are told by the goatherds and foresters) poor creatures have
been found preserved in the serene and lofty regions of the Alps, many
years after the breath of life had left them. Already you rival Guido
Cavalcante and Cino da Pistoja: you must attempt