ght-and-twentieth year. But no one thought of that at the time, not
even I, though it showed plain enough to me afterward. Furthermore, the
Companions were to be all unmarried men, such as therefore were free to
dedicate their lives to the cause of their country with a readiness that
was not to be expected or called for from men that had wives and
families.

While Messer Simone thus explained, youth after youth of the young
gentlemen of Florence, both of the Reds and of the Yellows, came forward
and wrote their names with great zeal and many flourishes on the
smooth, white parchment, and soon the white leaves began to be covered
thick with names, and still the would-be votaries came crowding about
the ink-bearer and the pen-bearer, and catching at the quills and
dipping them in the ink. As fast as a sheet was filled the attendant
would spill a stream of golden sand over the wet inscription and make
ready a fresh sheet for the feverish enthusiasm of the signatories.

After a while Messer Simone called a halt in the business of signing,
and now he began to speak anew, and though his voice was rough and harsh
from all the talk that he had talked before, and though he rather
growled his words than gave them liberal utterance, yet what he said was
what he wanted to say, and came from his black heart with a very
damnable aptness. He was speaking in the praise of those Florentine
youths that had first enrolled their names in the book of the Company of
Death, and he was praising them ostentatiously for their valor and their
patriotism, and yet while he praised, I, listening, thought that his
praises were not very good to get, though some share of them was due to
me who had written my name on the pages of the big book, partly because
I had drunk much wine, and partly because I could never resist the
contagion of any enthusiasm, and partly because the pretty girl that was
by my side--I forget her name now--egged me on to the folly.

After Simone had made an end of his laudations, he came to speak with a
rough scorn of those that were content to show their devotion to their
mother-city by no greater sacrifice than the serving to defend her in
case of an attack. While he spoke I could see that his eyes were fixed
upon the face of Dante, where he stood a little apart and watched and
listened. I had lost thought of Dante in my merry-makings and lost sight
of him in the hurly-burly, and now suddenly I saw him leaning against a
pilla