uld
have climbed up the dusty wall to avoid her. Lo, here is one stronger
than I! At the next moment the three young rogues were about him, their
knitted hands a fence,--but the eyes of Selvaggia! Terrible twin-fires,
he thought, such as men light in the desert to scare the beasts away
while they sleep, or (as he afterwards improved it for his need) like
the flaming sword of the Archangel, which declared and yet forbade Eden
to Adam and his wife.

Selvaggia, in truth, though she had fourteen years behind her, was a
romp when no one was looking. There were three brothers at home, but no
mother; she was half a boy for all her straight gown. To embarrass this
demure professor, to presume upon her sex while discarding it, was a
great joke after a tediously droned mass at San Jacopo. Nicoletta would
have made room, even the hardier Guglielmotta drew back; but the wicked
Selvaggia pinched their fingers so that they could not escape. All this
time Messer Cino had his eyes rooted in Selvaggia's, reading her as if
she were a portent. She endured very well what she took to be the
vacancy of confusion in a shy recluse.

"Well, Messer Cino, what will you do?" said she, bubbling with mischief.

"Oh, Madonna, can you ask?" he replied, and clasped his hands.

"But you see that I do ask."

"I would stop here all the day if I might," said Messer Cino, with a
look by no means vacant. Whereupon she let him through that minute and
ran away blushing. More than once or twice she encountered him there,
but she never tried to pen him back again.

Little Monna Selvaggia learned that you cannot always put out the fire
which you have kindled. The fire set blazing by those lit green swords
of hers was in the heart of an Assessor of Civil Causes, a brazier with
only too good a draught. For love in love-learned Tuscany was then a
roaring wind; it came rhythmically and set the glowing mass beating like
the sestett of a sonnet. One lived in numbers in those days; numbers
always came. You sonnetteered upon the battlefield, in the pulpit, on
the Bench, at the Bar. Throughout the moil of his day's work at the
Podesta those clinging long words, in themselves inspiration, _disio,
piacere, vaghezza, gentilezza, diletto, affetto,_ beautiful twins that
go ever embraced, wailed in poor Cino's ears, and insensibly shaped
themselves coherent. He thought they were like mirrors, so placed that
each gave a look of Selvaggia. Before the end of the day he had t