ittle more than twenty-four years old.]

"One reason why this number was so friendly to her may be this: since,
according to Ptolemy and the Christian truth, there are nine heavens
which move, and, according to the common astrological opinion, these
heavens work effects here below according to their relative positions,
this number was her friend, to the end that it might be understood that
at her generation all the nine movable heavens were in most perfect
conjunction.[H] This is one reason; but considering more subtilely and
according to infallible truth, this number was she herself,--I speak in
a similitude, and I mean as follows. The number three is the root of
nine, since, without any other number, multiplied by itself, it makes
nine,--as we see plainly that three times three are nine. Then, if
three is the factor by itself of nine, and the Author of Miracles[I]
by himself is three,--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three and
one,--this lady was accompanied by the number nine that it might be
understood that she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose only root is
the marvellous Trinity. Perhaps a more subtle person might discover some
more subtile reason for this; but this is the one that I see for it, and
which pleases me the best."

[Footnote H: Compare with this passage Ballata v.,

"Io mi son pargoletta bella e nova,"

and Sonnet xlv.,

"Da quella luce che 'I suo corso gira";

the latter probably in praise of Philosophy.]

[Footnote I: The point is here lost in a translation,--_factor_ and
_author_ being expressed in the original by one word, _fattore_.]

After thus treating of the number nine in its connection with Beatrice,
Dante goes on to say, that, when this most gentle lady had gone from
this world, the city appeared widowed and despoiled of every dignity;
whereupon he wrote to the princes of the earth an account of its
condition, beginning with the words of Jeremiah which he quoted at the
entrance of this new matter. The remainder of this letter he does not
give, because it was in Latin, and in this work it was his intention,
from the beginning, to write only in the vulgar tongue; and such was the
understanding of the friend for whom he writes,--that friend being, as
we may suppose, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante, it may be remembered,
has already spoken of as the chief among his friends. Then succeeds
a Canzone lamenting the death of Beatrice, which, instead of being
followed by a verbal e