l that no painter nor our poet Pulci,
nor any imagination of man could have figured the like. I was standing in
the forecourt of this garden, the door whereof was open, and there was
another door on the opposite side, when lo! I beheld before me a damsel
clad in white. I embraced and kissed her; but before I could kiss her
again, the gardener closed the door. I straightway begged him earnestly
that he would open it again, but I begged in vain; wherefore, plunged in
grief and clinging to the damsel, I seemed to be shut out of the garden.

"A little time after this there was a rumour in the town of a house on
fire, and I was roused from sleep to hurry to the spot. Then I learned
that the house belonged to one Altobello Bandarini,[50] a captain of the
Venetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no acquaintance with him,
in sooth I scarcely knew him by sight. Now it chanced that after the fire
he hired a house next door to my own, a step which displeased me somewhat,
for such a neighbour was not to my taste; but what was I to do? After the
lapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girl
who, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I had
beheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I,
poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except a
crowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as I
can hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, or
to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be some
tale-bearers about; and her father, being a fellow-townsman and a soldier
to boot, would not sit down lightly under such an injury. In this case, or
in that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for if this
affair should come to the issue I most desire, I must needs fly the
place.' From that same hour these thoughts and others akin to them
possessed my brain, which was only too ready to harbour them, and I felt
it would be better to die than to live on in such perplexity. Thenceforth
I was as one love-possessed, or even burnt up with passion, and I
understood what meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream.
Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain which had held me back
from marriage. Thus I, a willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, her
kinsfolk questioning us how this thing had been brought about, and
offering us any help which might be of service; which he