he
whole of her in a sonnet which, if it were as good as it was
comfortable, should needs (he thought) be excellent. The thrill which
marked achievement sent the blood to his head; this time he gloried in
cold feet. He wrote his sonnet out fair upon vellum in a hand no scribe
at the Papal Court could have bettered, rolled it, tied it with green
and white silk (her colours, colours of the hawthorn hedge!), and went
out into the streets at the falling-in of the day to deliver it.

The Palazzo Vergiolesi lay over by the church of San Francesco al Prato,
just where the Via San Prospero debouches into that green place. Like
all Tuscan palaces it was more fortress than house, a dark square box of
masonry with a machicollated lid; and separate from it, but appurtenant,
had a most grim tower with a slit or two halfway up for all its windows.
Here, under the great escutcheon of the Vergiolesi, Cino delivered his
missive. The porter took it with a bow so gracious that the poet was
bold to ask whether the Lady Selvaggia was actually within.

"Yes, surely, Messere," said the man, "and moreover in the kitchen with
the cookmaids. For there is a cake-making on hand, and she is never far
away from that business."

Cino was ravished by this instance of divine humiliation; so might
Apollo have bowed in the house of Admetus, so Israel have kept sheep for
Rachel's sake. He walked away in most exalted mood, his feet no longer
cold. This was a great day for him, when he could see a new heaven and a
new earth.

"Now I too have been in Arcady!" he thought to himself, with tears in
his eyes. "I will send a copy of my sonnet to Dante Alighieri by a sure
hand. He should be at Bologna by this." And he did.

Madonna Selvaggia, her sleeves rolled up, a great bib all about her
pretty person, and her mouth in a fine mess of sugar and crumbs,
received her tribute sitting on the long kitchen-table. It should have
touched, it might have tickled, but it simply confused her. The maids
peeped over her shoulder as she read, in ecstasy that Madonna should
have a lover and a poet of her own. Selvaggia filched another handful of
sugar and crumbs, and twiddled her sonnet while she wondered what on
earth she should do with it. Her fine brows met each other over the
puzzle, so clearly case for a confidence. Gianbattista, her youngest
brother, was her bosom friend; but he was away, she knew, riding to Pisa
with their father. Next to him ranked Nicoletta; she w