r a youth to
read in."

And here I put in my word. "And the two best chapters, by your leave,
are those that treat of Squire Bacchus and Dame Venus."

"You are a pretty ribald," Dante said to me, mockingly. "Leave me to my
ease. Let our star wheel where it pleases; I cannot guide the chariot of
the sun. Let me bask in its bounty, warm my hands at it, eat the fruit
it ripens, and drink the wine it kindles. I am content. Florence is the
fairest city in the world. I shall be happy to grow old in Florence,
studiously, peacefully, pleasantly, dreaming my dreams."

Guido protested against his placidity. "What a slugabed spirit! Rings
there no alarum in your blood?"

Dante said nothing, but looked at me, and I supported Guido's theme.
"There are ladies in Florence as lovely as the city's lilies. I would
rather lie in white arms than dream dreams."

Dante shook his head, and he fluttered the pages of his book as he
answered us slowly: "Restless, feverish Titans, forever challenging the
great gods of Love and War. Give me the dappled shade of a green garden,
the sable shadows quivering on a ground of gold, a book of verse by me
to play with when I would be busy, and a swarm of sweet rhythms like
colored butterflies floating about my drowsy senses. What to me are wars
and rumors of wars in that delicious ease? What to me are the white
breasts of the fair Florentines?"

Guido and I looked at each other in wonder, and then Guido asked again,
"Tell me, comrade, have you ever been in love?"

Now, when Guido asked him that question, I expected to hear from Dante a
mocking answer, but instead, to my surprise, he sat quite still for a
little while, almost like a man in a trance, with his hands clasped
about his knees, and it seemed to me as if he were seeing, as indeed he
was seeing, things that we who were with him did not see and could not
see. After a while he spoke in a soft voice, and for the most part his
words came sharp and clear, like the words of a man that speaks in a
dream.

"Once, when I was still a child, I saw a child's face, a girl's face; it
lives in my memory as the face of an angel. It was a sunny morning, a
May morning, such a morning as this, one of those days that always make
one think of roses. I had a rose in my hand, and I was smelling at
it--and then I saw the child. She was younger than I--and I was very
young."

Now, although I am a liberal lover of women, I have, I thank Heaven,
such a nature tha