sealed, some inkling of what is
going on seems by some mysterious intuition to be given to folk that
have neither need of such knowledge, nor right nor title to it. So it
certainly proved in Florence on the morning after the ride against
Arezzo. Every man that came out into the streets--and the streets were
soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds--was positive
that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that
something of importance was going to happen, or that something of
importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked
out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their
dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus
absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was
held in no great affection by Messer Simone, the party of the Reds.
Furthermore, the story of the formation of the Company of Death had
become known, and it needed no very elaborate process of speculation to
assume that the youths whose lodgings lacked their presence had
overnight, in Messer Folco's palace, inscribed their names in Messer
Simone's great book of enrollment.

It being established, therefore, definitely, beyond doubt or cavil, that
something had happened, the next great question for the expectant
Florentines was, What thing had happened? But the answer to this
question was not yet, and in the meantime the expectant Florentines had
another matter of interest to consider and to discuss. Through all the
noise and babble and brawling of that agitated morning there came a
whisper, at first of the very faintest, which breathed insidiously and
with much mystery a very amazing piece of news. Men passed the whisper
on to men, women to women, till in a little while it had swelled into a
voice as loud as the call of a public crier, carrying into every corner
of the quarter where Messer Folco lived, and from thence into every
other quarter of the city its astonishing message of amazing wedlock.
Gossip told to gossip, with staring eyes and wagging fingers, that
Messer Folco's daughter, Monna Beatrice, she that had been the May-day
queen, and was so young and fair to look upon, she was to be married at
nine of that morning to Messer Simone dei Bardi, the man that so few
Florentines loved, the man that so many Florentines feared. It had, of
course, long been known in Florence, where the affairs of any family or
individual are for the most part fa