ered her jewels
for her hair, neck, fingers, wrists, ankles; she laughed, and said that
they were not for the likes of her. They spoke of Alessandro, the Poet.
She asked if he were any relation to the Signor Sotto-Prefetto. He was
that same, said they.

"Dio buono!" cried Ippolita. "Is he the gentleman who wants to undo me?"

They were shocked. "He asks no more than to sit at your feet, Ippolita,
and read the secrets of your beautiful eyes. It is your soul he loves;
he asks nothing of your body." "They never do, Madonna," said Ippolita;
"but I am a poor girl, so please you, who have to look every way at
once, as the saying is. Domeneddio is the only Signore I ever heard tell
of who could get on with people's souls. Men want more of us than that."

Protests were wasted, and Alessandro, watchful of his nails, went mad in
numbers. This it was to be tall out of common, this to lift up in
dark-browed Padua a brave golden head; this to carry the bosom of an
Oread beneath the smock of a girl in her teens; this, merciful Heaven,
to be a vortex when poets are swirling down the stream of Time.

II

MESSER ALESSANDRO THINKS TO CUT HIS NAILS

Not to weary you, it is clear that Ippolita was the fashion. The poets,
the courtiers, the painters, of whom in that age of peace Padua was
full, were wild about this glowing girl, this sumptuous nymph of the Via
Agnus Dei; they were melodiously, caperingly, symphonically wild,
according to their bents. She saw herself on plates of faience, where
the involutions of a ribbon revealed "Ippolita Bella" to the patient
eye; she found herself (or they found her) an inordinate tri-syllable
for a canzone, saw her colours of necessity reproduced on her lover's
legs and shoulders as colours of election. One by one she could appraise
her own possessions, and those they fabled of her. Her hair was
Demeter's crown of ripe corn--she knew nothing of the lady, but hoped
for the best. Her eyes were dark blue lakes in a field of snow--this she
thought very fine. Her lips were the amorous petals of a rose that needs
must kiss each other; kissing, they made a folded flower--ah!

"La virtu della bocca,
Che sana cio che tocca,"

sighed the poets. But, bless her good innocence! that sweet mouth had
touched nothing more mannish than her father's forehead or the feet of
the Crucified. Her cheeks, said they, were apple-blossoms budded, her
neck the stem of a chalice, her breast--but I spa