ed man, no longer
indifferent to the great concerns of state, no longer absorbed in
unproductive studies to the extinction of all sense of citizenship, but
a patriotic youth keenly alive to the duties that devolved upon a
true-hearted Florentine, and zealous in the practice of all those arts
that should make him more worthy to be called her son. If he had
surprised me by his quiet and his wiliness on the day of his quarrel
with Messer Simone dei Bardi, if he had amazed me by the writing of
those verses, the authorship of which Madonna Vittoria had been the
first to make known to me, he astonished me still more now by the proofs
of his application to military and political science. He would talk very
learnedly of the disposition of armies in the field, of the advantages
and disadvantages of the use of mercenary troops, and the best way to
defend and the best way to assault a well-walled citadel, so that you
would think, to listen to him, that he was some gray old generalissimo
steeped in experience, and not the smooth-cheeked fellow whom we knew,
as we thought, so well, and whom perhaps we knew so little. He showed
himself as eager for the affairs of state as for the affairs of war,
ever ready to weigh new problems of political administration, and to
argue as to the merits or defects of this or that form of government.

In a word, from being a reserved and scholarly lad that seemed to take
little or no interest in the busy world about him, he had suddenly
become an active, enthusiastic man to whom all living questions seemed
exceedingly alive. And with all this he kept on with his sword-practice
as if he had not other thought but arms, and kept on at his rhymings as
if he had no other thought but love and song. And since I kept the
knowledge that Monna Vittoria had given me to myself--yea, kept it even
from Messer Guido Cavalcanti--those in Florence that cared for verses
still marvelled at the music of the unknown, and wondered as to his
identity.

Now, as the natural result of the great ferment and headiness in the
city and in the hearts of all men in Florence, there was a mighty desire
to come to a proper understanding with these Aretines, the proper
understanding having, of course, for its object the placing of the neck
of Arezzo under the heel of Florence. But though, as I have said, the
bickerings between the two powers had been going on for a long while,
Florence did not as yet, in view of the complications that e