ch his forebears had
amassed, and there was no one in all Florence more prompt than he to
fling hoarded florins out of the window. By rights he should have been a
free-companion, and received on the highroad at the heads of a levy of
lesser devils, for of a truth he was too turbulent and quarrelsome for
Florence, which is saying much. The men of my spring days, as I have
written, were ranged in many ways of opposition, Guelph against
Ghibelline, Red against Yellow, Donati against Cerchi, and Messer Simone
should have been content to be Guelph and Yellow and Cerchi, but at
times he carried himself as if he were ranged against every one, or
perhaps I should rather say that he carried himself as if his single
will was above all the wranglers of others, and that it was given to him
to do as he pleased, heedless of the feelings of any faction. Had he had
but the wit to balance his arrogance, Messer Simone might have been a
great man in Florence. As it proved, he was only a great plague.

Now I laughed at Guido's words, for it seemed strange to me to think of
Messer Simone dei Bardi as a wooer of countrified damsels. "What has
that Bull-face to do with it?" I asked, and whistled mockingly after the
asking.

Guido still looked grave. "Why, I think his fist gapes, finger and
thumb, to seize Monna Beatrice," he said, and he said no more, but
looked as if he could say much.

Here was an oracle anxious to be interrogated, so I questioned him
further. I knew by report that the girl was fair, but I could not think
of her in any fashion as a maid for Messer Simone, and I conveyed my
doubts to Guido. "Is the girl to be snared so?" I asked.

Guido looked cryptic. "That is for father Folco to settle," he said.
"And father Folco is a man that loves his fellow-men, but would have his
children obey him even to the death, like a Roman father of old."

I began to take the matter hotly, thinking it over and looking at it
this way and that way. "Well, if I were a woman," I protested, "which I
thank Heaven I am not," I interpolated, fervently, "I would drown in
Arno sooner than be bride to Simone of the Bardi."

Guido shrugged his shoulders. He was a man that believed anything of
women. "Yet I think Vittoria loves him," he said, softly, more as if to
himself than to me.

But, bless you, I caught him up nimbly, seeing the weakness of his
argument. "Vittoria, the courtesan! She loves any man, every man."

Guido looked at me very thoughtf