shrewd a man
that none ever came to him twice with a lying tale or tempted his
beneficence with false credentials. He would say, and, indeed, I have
heard him say it, though he spoke not to me indeed, for I was never one
of those that he would have chosen for intimate conversation--he would
say that charity, to be of any service in the world, should be as stern
and swerveless a judge as ever Minos was. Like all good Florentines, he
loved the liberal arts, and no little share of his money went in the
encouragement of painters and musicians, and the gravers of bronze and
the workers of marble, and those whose splendid pleasure it was to shape
buildings that should be worthy of the city.

As the top and crown of all these commendabilities, he had a very
liberal and hospitable spirit, loving to entertain, not indeed
ostentatiously, but still with so much of restrained magnificence as
became so wealthy and so honorable a man. It was in the service of this
spirit that Messer Folco, some good while after that lovers' meeting
which had been so strangely brought about, and which was to have so
strange an issue, made up his mind to give a great entertainment to all
his friends and lovers in the city. Because it might be said of him that
every man that knew him was his friend, and that many that knew him not
loved him for his good deeds and the clarity of his good name, it came
about that the most part of Florence that were of Messer Folco's station
were bidden to come and make merry at the Palace of the Portinari. Among
the number, to his great satisfaction, was your poor servant who tells
you this tale.

The Palace of the Portinari was a great and stately building, with great
and stately rooms inside it, stretching one out of another in what
seemed to be an endless succession of ordered richness, and behind the
great and stately house and within the great and stately walls that
girdled it lay such a garden as no other man in Florence owned, a garden
so well ordained after a plan so well conceived that though it was
spacious indeed, it seemed ten times more spacious than it really was
from the cunning and ingenuity with which its lawns and arbors, its
boscages and pergolas, its hedges and trees, its alleys and avenues were
adapted to lead the admiring wanderer on and on, and make him believe
that he should never come to the end of his tether.

This garden was, for the most part, dedicated to the service of Monna
Beatrice and h