say, indeed, to the very extreme of verity, that Messer Folco of
the Portinari was an excellent man. I will never say that he had not his
faults, for he had them, being mortal. He was, it may be, natived with
something of a domineering disposition. Feeling himself worthy to
command, he liked, perhaps as often as not, to assert that worthiness.
It is very certain that what Messer Guido said of him was true, and that
with regard to his own family he was indeed the Roman father, one whose
word must be law absolute and unquestionable for all his children. Yet
withal a just man whose judgments seldom erred in harshness. Although
not acrimonious, he was inclined to be choleric, and he was punctilious
to a degree that would never have suited my humor on all matters that
concerned what he regarded as the sober conduct of life. Enough of this.
Let us turn to the good man's patent virtues.

Though his steadfast adhesion to his own party had earned him many
enemies among those of the opposing faction, he was never so hot and
desperate a politician as the most of his compatriots. There was in him
something of the ancient humor and the ancient sweetness of them that
wrote and taught with Cicero, and though he thought as highly as any
Roman of them all of the honor and glory of the commonweal, he was so
much of a philosopher as to believe that honor and glory to be earned,
at least as much, by the welfare in mind and body of the citizens as by
the triumph of one party over another party. He was alive with all the
delicate and sensible charities, was forever scheming and planning to
lessen distress and lighten sorrows, and if he could have had his way
there would never have been a sick man or a poor man within the walls of
Florence. Toward this end, indeed, he employed the major portion of his
considerable wealth with more zeal, and yet at the same time with more
prudence, than any other benefactor in the city. Vacant spaces of land,
whose title-deeds lay to his credit, were now busy with men laying brick
upon brick for this building that was to be a little temple of learning,
and that building that was to be a hospital for the hurts and the
sufferings of troubled men, and this other that was in time to be a
church and sanctuary for the spirit as its fellow-edifices were
sanctuaries for the body and the mind.

Messer Folco also gave largely in charities, both public and private,
and yet, for all his sweetness of generosity he was so