colds of Florence to the green
temperance and tranquillity of the hills. It was he who at last, still
guided by that horoscope of which he alone knew the lesson, sanctioned
the maiden's return to the city, to live outside which, though even in
the loveliest places thereafter attainable, is to live in exile. I know
for sure that he said of his sweet charge that flesh and spirit were so
exquisitely poised in her perfect body that it needed but some breath of
fate to scatter them irrevocably apart, as a child's breath can scatter
the down of a dandelion to all the corners of a field. But though I
thought of this now, as I beheld the girl and the elder so close
together, I could not, for my life, believe it, seeing how buoyantly she
carried her beauty and the nobility of her color.

Messer Dante still had the two ends of the roll of parchment in his
fingers as Madonna Beatrice entered the hall, and in the very instant of
her appearance he was aware of her presence, and I that was watching all
things at once, like Argus in the antique fable, I saw how his hands
trembled and how his lips quivered with the knowledge of her approach.
But otherwise he showed no sign of the advance of divinity, and holding
the parchment well before his face, rolling and unrolling as the duty
needed, he began to read what was written on the skin.

The poem, as I already knew, made up the second part of a lengthy ballad
in praise of the ladies of Florence. It was cast in an allegorical
fashion, aiming to portray a pageant of fair women, each single verse
seeking to picture some one of the many lovely ladies that in those days
made Florence a very Venus Hill for the ravishment of the senses and the
stirring of the blood. I wish with all my heart that I could set the
whole of it down here, for it was most ingeniously fancied and handled,
and it was not over difficult for the admirers of any particular beauty
to pierce the dainty veil of symbolism with which the poet had pretended
to envelop her identity. Alas! my memory will not serve me to recall the
greater part of it, or, indeed, any but a little, though that little is
in truth the very kernel of the whole, and I have no copy of the ballad
by me to mend my memory. But, as I say, what I do remember is the
centre-jewel of its crown of song.

My Dante read the verses that were his own verses in a voice that was
very even, melodious, but so sustained and tamed as to make it seem
plain to all that l