e form of a gentle Lady; and I could imagine her in
no other attitude than a compassionate one, because if willingly the
sense of Truth beheld her, hardly could it turn away from her. And
with this imagination I began to go where she is demonstrated
truthfully, that is, to the Schools of the Religious, and to the
disputations of the Philosophers; so that in a short time, perhaps of
thirty months, I began to feel her sweetness so much that my love for
her chased away and destroyed all other thought. Wherefore I, feeling
myself to rise from the thought of the first Love to the virtue of
this new one, as if wondering at myself, opened my mouth in the speech
of the proposed Song, showing my condition under the figure of other
things: for of the Lady with whom I was enamoured, no rhyme of any
Vernacular was worthy to speak openly, neither were the hearers so
well prepared that they could have easily understood the words without
figure: neither would faith have been given by them to the true
meaning, as to the figurative; since if the truth of the whole was
believed, that I was inclined to that love, it would not be believed
of this. I then begin to speak: "Ye who, intent of thought, the third
Heaven move."

And because, as has been said, this Lady was the daughter of God, the
Queen of all, the most noble and most beautiful Philosophy, it remains
to be seen who these Movers were, and what this third Heaven. And
firstly of the third Heaven, according to the order which has been
gone through. And here it is not needful to proceed to division, and
to explanation of the letter, for, having turned the fictitious speech
away from that which it utters to that which it means, by the
exposition just gone through, this meaning is sufficiently made
evident.

CHAPTER XIV.

In order to see what is meant by the "third Heaven," one has in the
first place to perceive what I desire to express by this word Heaven
alone: and then one will see how and why this third Heaven was needful
to us. I say that by Heaven I mean Science, and by the Heavens "the
Sciences," from three resemblances which the Heavens have with the
Sciences, especially by the order and number in which they must
appear; as will be seen by discussing that word Third. The first
similitude is the revolution of the one and the other round one fixed
centre. For each movable Heaven revolves round its centre, which, on
account of its movement, moves not; and thus each Scie