ed, but he
forestalled our vengeance by poisoning himself--partly, I think, out of
hurt pride at the alleged failure of his cunning device.

I have little more to say--no more, indeed, than this: It has been said
by many, and believed by more, that, after the death of his lady, my
dear friend fell into a kind of moral torpor, in which all sense of
things righteous and things evil was confused. Thus he went his ways,
like the godless man of whom it is spoken in the Wisdom of Solomon,
feeding on mean and secret pleasures, and consorting with the strange
women that are called Daughters of Joy. I do not know that he ever did
so; I should never credit it, though it is such folly as weaker men
might fall into readily enough in the freshness of their despair. But I
will set down this story which I have heard told of him. It relates that
one night Dante drifted toward that quarter of the city where such light
loves find shelter. There many women plucked at his sleeve as he passed,
and, at last, surrendering to temptation, he followed through the
darkness one that was closely cloaked and hooded. It seemed to him that
they went a long way together, he and the hooded woman by his side, and
though at times he spoke to her, she answered him no word. After a while
they came to an open place that was moon-lit, and then the woman paused
and pulled back her hood, and there for a moment Dante looked upon the
face of the dead Beatrice. In that instant Dante found himself alone,
and he fled from the place in a great horror.

NOTE

Those that in their travels in France have had the good-fortune to visit
the Abbey of Bonne Aventure in Poitou can hardly fail to be familiar
with the many and varied treasures of the abbey library. Most of these
treasures were brought together by the erudite Dom Gregory, who had,
among the other honorable passions of a scholar, an enthusiastic desire
for the amassing of rare manuscripts. Perhaps one of the rarest of all
the manuscripts in his great collection is that one which claims to be
written by the Italian poet Lappo Lappi, and to set forth in something
like narrative form an account of the loves of Dante and Beatrice.
Students and scholars who have studied this manuscript have differed
greatly in their conclusions as to its authenticity and its value. The
German Guggenheim is emphatic in his assertion that the work is a late
eighteenth-century forgery, and he bases his conclusions on many small