ivate stair and seek private speech with Madonna
Beatrice. I can guess very well how the scene showed that night in the
moonbeams--all the city stretched out below, a harlequin's coat of black
and silver, according to the disposition of the homes and the open
spaces with their lights and shadows. I can fancy how, through the
gilded air, came the cheerful sounds of the dancing and the luting and
the laughter and the festival, and how all Florence seemed to be, as it
were, one wonderful, perfect flower of warmth and color and joy.

It is all very long ago, this time of which I write, and it may very
well be that I exaggerate its raptures, as they say--though in this I do
not agree--is the way with elders when they recall the sweet,
honey-tinted, honey-tasting days of their youth. It would not be
possible for any man to overpraise the glories and beauties of Florence
in those days. Those glories, as I think, may be said to have come to an
end with the Jubilee of His Holiness Pope Boniface the Eighth, the poor
pope who was said to be killed by command of the French king, but who,
as I have heard tell, escaped from that fate and died a nameless hermit
in a forest of Greece.

However that may be, I am glad to think, for all that I am now so
chastened, and for all that I have learned patience, that I can recall
so clearly that pillared place with the moonbeams dappling the marble,
and can rekindle in my withered anatomy something of the noble fire that
burned in the heart of Dante, as he stood there in his youth and his
hope and his love, and looked into the eyes of his marvellous lady.
Also, I am glad to think that I know much of the words that passed
between the youth and the maid in that hour, and if not their exact
substance, at least their purport. For though Dante never made
confidence to me of a matter so sacred as the speech exchanged at such
an interview, yet he spoke of it to Messer Guido, whom, after he had
entered into terms of friendship with him, he loved and trusted, very
rightly, better than me. Also--for that was his way--he set much of
that night's discourse into the form of a song which he gave to Messer
Guido. Messer Guido, before his melancholy end, over which, as I
believe, the Muses still weep, knowing how great a concern I had in the
doings of Messer Dante, told me with great clarity the essence of what
Dante had told to him, and showed me the poem, not only allowing me to
read it, but granting me perm