miliar to all neighbors, that Messer
Simone wished to wed Monna Beatrice. It was known, too, that Messer
Folco was in nowise opposed to the match. Yet, for the sake of the
girl's sweetness and loveliness, all were ready to hope that such ill
nuptials would never come to pass. Thus, when the news of the immediate
marriage fluttered through Florence streets, it was the cause of no
little astonishment to those that first heard it, and they carried it on
the very edge of their lips to the nearest ears, and so made the circle
of astonishment greater.

I am proud to say it, to the credit of my fellow-citizens, that the
greater part of those that heard the tidings shook their heads and
sighed. And, indeed, it needed no very great niceness of feeling or
softness of heart to recognize that a marriage between a man like Messer
Simone and a maid like Monna Beatrice was no admirable marriage, however
much the wish of a parent was to be respected. Every one recognized that
Beatrice was a maid as unusual in her goodness as Simone was a man,
thank Heaven, unusual in his badness. Wherefore, all detested the
undertaking. Yet disbelief in the story, a disbelief that was popular,
had perforce to change into unpopular belief when the very church was
named in which the ceremony was to take place--the Church of the Holy
Name; and those that hastened thither did indeed find all preparations
being made for a wedding, and learned from the sacristan that Messer
Simone did, indeed, upon that very morning, mean to marry the daughter
of Folco Portinari. Yet, as I learned afterward, for all these
assurances and all these preparations, the marriage was, up to a certain
moment, no such sure a matter as Messer Simone wished and Messer Folco
willed and the good-hearted folk of Florence regretted.

I have always accepted the customs of my time, and found them on the
whole excellent, and it has ever been our custom for us to wed our
daughters as we will, and not according to their wishes, our view being
that elders are wiser than youngsters, and that it is more becoming and
orderly that a maid should marry to please her father than that she
should marry to please herself. For there may be a thousand reasons for
a certain marriage, very obvious to a prudent parent, such as land,
houses, plate, linen, vineyards, florins, and the like, all of which are
of the utmost importance in the economy of a well-domesticated
household, but are unhappily little calcula