it was no doubt a piece of
great presumption, but otherwise an act highly to be applauded. We were
very young in Florence in those days, and our hearts were always quick
to beat time to the drum-taps of love or any other high and generous
passion. If we have changed since, it is the fault of the changing years
and the loss of the Republic.

I make no doubt that there were some who grumbled and carped and
cavilled; said this and said that; grunted porcine over the pretty pass
things were coming to in the city when a nobody or a next-to-nobody like
young Dante of the Alighieri could presume to lift his impudent eyes to
a daughter of a man like Folco Portinari, one of the first citizens of
Florence, and a man that builded hospitals and basilicas at his own
expense. But the growls of these grumblers and carpers and snarlers did
not count in the general and genial applause that our youth gave to
mellifluous numbers and lovely love, and the thousand beautiful things
and thoughts that make this poor life of ours seem for a season Elysium.
So they feasted and prattled, and I turn to another theme.

If the meaning of what Messer Dante said and the meaning of what Messer
Dante did was plain and over-plain to Messer Folco, it was surely in the
very nature of things no less plain to his daughter. To her, at least,
there can have been no riddle to read in the young man's words, in the
young man's actions. Love, splendid and fierce and humble, reigned in
the glowing words that he read, ruled his failing voice, swayed his
reeling figure. She could not question the identity of the Blessed One
whose beauty made the singer sacrilegious in the white-heat of his
devotion. She could not misinterpret the significance of the abandoned
parchment lying discarded where it had fallen on the floor while the
reciter, with his sad eyes fixed upon her face, repeated so familiarly
the words which he was supposed never to have seen. For Beatrice, Dante
of the Alighieri was the author of the ballad in praise of fair
Florentines; for her he was the unknown poet whose fame had flamed
through Florence, and she was the lady that was praised with words of
such enchanting sweetness in his songs.

While the guests were going toward the banquet as brisk as bees to
blossoms, Dante caught me by the hand and drew me apart, and entreated
me to seek speech with Beatrice, and to entreat her to grant him an
interview in private that very night. He dared not, so he