y little enough, upon the toss of a die; and for my greater ease
in this exercise, I ever carried the bones with me in a little inner
pocket at my breast. Now, then, for Dante's pleasure, though indeed I
did not know what he would be at, I lugged them out of their
concealment, and dropped the three, one after the other, into his open
palm, which he held to me extended there as steady as the palm of a
stone image.

Dante laughed a little softly to himself as he looked at my dice where
they lay, and indeed it was curious to see him and them in such close
companionship, for Dante had no taste for those gamblers' games that I
delighted in. Then he turned and showed the dice to Simone, who stared
at him in amazed rage, and he spoke very pleasantly and evenly as he
dandled the tools of chance. "Messer Simone," he said, "here be three
cubes of bone that shall settle our quarrel better than shearing steel.
We will throw on this ground here, you and I in turn, and he that has
the ill-fortune to make the lowest cast shall, on his honor, very
presently kill himself."

At this drolling challenge most of the spectators began to laugh, and
the laughter ran through the ranks of Cavalcanti's adherents, and even
found some echo, albeit soon stifled, among Bardi's men.

But Simone saw no laughter in the matter. "You are a fool!" he fumed. It
was plain that he felt himself to be at a disadvantage before the
gravity of Dante's disdainful courage, and that he was better with blows
than with words. "You are a fool!" he repeated.

But Dante denied him. "I am wise." Then he moved his head a little this
way and that, as if to show that he was addressing all his audience,
and, indeed, there was not a man in all that assemblage that did not
listen to him intently, Simone's own following not excepted. "Fellow
Florentines," he said, "here is a straight challenge. It equals the big
man with the little; it fills me to the giant's girth and inches. It
saves him from shame if he wins, for it were little to his credit to
kill a civilian. It denies me if I win the vainglory of overcoming a
Titan. Is not this an honest dare?"

As he finished speaking he looked about him, and saw sympathy and
approval on the faces of most. As for me, I was so taken with his
ingenuity and his insolence in thus braving the big fellow that I cried
aloud, "Well dared; well done." And Guido called out sharply, addressing
the Bardi, "Do you take him, Messer Simone? I will b