amelike,
ethereal, unreal.

Yet though the essence of her bodily being was, as I knew, so frail,
there was no show of frailness in her gracious presence. She was tall
for a woman, and her coloring was fresh and sane; her bust and limbs
were moulded with a wise and restrained generosity that became her
youth, and promised nobility of proportion for her maturity. She moved
with the smooth and lively carriage of a nymph down the woodland lawns,
with her head easily erect and her eyes steadily seeing the world. She
might almost have been the youngest of the Amazons or the latest of
those strange demi-deities that haunted the hills and woods and waters
until the death of the god Pan dealt them, too, their death-blow. Her
eyes had the clearness of a clear night in June; her lips were quick
with the brisk crimson of a pink quince. Oh, Saint Cupido, what vanity
is this, to essay to paint the unpaintable! Enough that she was young
and fair and shapely, and that if in her eyes there dwelt the
pensiveness of those whose very loveliness suggests a destined
melancholy, her lips were always smiling, and her greeting always
blithe, yet I seemed to see black care incarnate behind her, and I will
tell you why.

Among the girls that were gathered about her, plump, comely, jolly girls
that were, I will readily confess it, more in my way of wooing than
their radiant mistress, there stood the figure of a thin and withered
man in black, with very white hair and very smooth, gray cheeks and very
bright, wise eyes. Him I knew to be Messer Tommaso Severo, that had
served the Portinari as leech for longer years than many in Florence
could count. He it was that had ushered Messer Folco himself into this
troublesome world, that is, however, less troublesome at Florence than
elsewhere. He had done the like for Madonna Beatrice, and from the hour
of her birth he, whom many blamed for a pagan cynicism and philosophic
disdain of humanity, had watched over her life with the tenderness that
watches the growth of some fair and unfamiliar flower. He was, besides
being a master-physician, one that was thoroughly learned in the science
of the stars, and I have always heard that the horoscope he drew for my
lady Beatrice was the chief cause of his tireless devotion and care. To
her service he had dedicated the lees of his life and the ripeness of
his knowledge. It was he who had carried her away for so long a space of
years from the summer heats and winter