This is the book of Lappo Lappi, called by his friends the careless, the
happy-go-lucky, the devil-may-take-it, the God-knows-what. Called by his
enemies drinker, swinker, tumbler, tinker, swiver. Called by many women
that liked him pretty fellow, witty fellow, light fellow, bright fellow,
bad fellow, mad fellow, and the like. Called by some women who once
loved him Lapinello, Lappinaccio, little Lappo. Called now in God as a
good religious should be, Lappentarius, from a sweet saint myself
discovered--or invented; need we quibble?--in an ancient manuscript. And
it is my merry purpose now, in a time when I, that am no longer merry,
look back upon days and hours and weeks and months and years that were
very merry indeed, propose to set down something of my own jolly doings
and lovings, and incidentally to tell some things about a friend of
mine that was never so merry as I was, though a thousand times wiser;
and never so blithe as I was, though a thousand times the better man.
For it seems to me now, in this cool grim grayness of my present way,
with the cloisters for my kingdom and the nimbused frescoes on the walls
for my old-time ballads and romances, as if my life that was so sunburnt
and wine-sweetened and woman-kissed, my life that seemed to me as
bright, every second of it, as bright ducats rushing in a pleasant
plenteous stream from one hand to another, was after all intended to be
no more than a kind of ironic commentary on, and petty contrast to, the
life of my friend.
He and I lived our youth out in the greatest and fairest of all cities
that the world has ever seen, greater a thousand times than Troy or
Nineveh, or Babylon or Rome, and when I say this you will know, of
course, that I speak of the city of Florence, and we lived and loved at
the same time, lived and loved in so strangely different a fashion that
it seems to me that if the two lives were set side by side after the
fashion of Messer Plutarch of old days, they would form as diverting a
pair of opposites as any student of humanity could desire for his
entertainment.
I shall begin, with the favor and permission of Heaven, where I think
the business may rightly be said to begin. The time was a May morning,
the morning of May-day, warm and bright with sunlight, one of those
mornings which makes a clod seem like a poet and a poet seem like a god.
The place was the Piazza Santa Felicita, with the Arno flowing pretty
full and freely now between its borders of mud. I can see it all as I
write, as I saw it yesterday, that yesterday so many years ago when
Lappo Lappi was young and Lappentarius never dreamed of.
There is no lovelier day of all the years of days for Florence than
May-day. On that day everybody is or seems to be happy; on that day the
streets of the city are as musical as the courses of the spheres. Youths
and maidens, garlanded and gayly raimented, go about fifing and piping,
and trolling the chosen songs of spring. I think if a stranger should
chance to visit Florence for the first time on a May-day, with the
festival well toward, he might very well think that he had fallen back
by fortunate chance into the youth of the world, when there was nothing
better nor wiser to do than to dance and sing and make merry and make
love. I have heard Messer Brunetto Latini declare, with great eloquence,
that of all the cities man has ever upbuilded with his busy fingers, the
dear city of Cecrops, which Saint Augustine called the dear City of
God--in a word, Athens, was surely the loveliest wherein to live. But
with all respect to Messer Brunetto, I would maintain that no city of
Heathendom or Christendom could be more beautiful than Florence at any
season of the year. What if it be now and then windy; now and then
chilly; now and then dusty? I have talked with a traveller that told me
he had found the winters mighty bitter in Greece. But I think that in
all the history of Florence there never was a May-day like that May-day.
It was gloriously green and gold, gloriously blue and white, gloriously
hot, and yet with a little cool, kissing breeze that made the flaming
hours delectable. And, as I remember so well, I sat on the parapet of
the bridge of the Holy Felicity.
Where the parapet of the embankment joined the beginning of the bridge
of the Santa Felicita there stood, in those days, a large, square,
ornamental fountain. May be it stands there now. I was banished from
Florence at the same time as my friend, and we left our Mother of the
Lilies to seek and find very dissimilar fortunes. This fountain had a
niche above it, in which niche he that built the fountain designed, no
doubt, to set some image of his own design. But he never carried out his
purpose, why or wherefore I neither knew nor cared, and in that niche
some Magnifico that was kindly minded to the people had set up a stone
image, a relic of the old beautiful pagan days, that had been unearthed
in some garden of his elsewhere. It was the figure of a very comely
youth that was clothed in a Grecian tunic, and because, when it was
first dug up, it showed some traces of color on the tunic and the naked
legs and arms and the face and the hair, therefore one of the artificers
of the said Magnifico took it upon himself to paint all as, so he said,
it had once been painted. And he made the limbs a flesh color, and gave
the face its pinks, and the lips their carnation, and the eyes their
blackness, very lively to see; and he adorned the hair very craftily
with gold-leaf, and he painted the shirt of the adorable boy a very
living crimson. It was a very beautiful piece of work with all these
embellishments, and though there were some that said it was an idol and
should not be tolerated, yet, for the most part, the Florentines liked
it well enough, and it saved the cost of a new statue for the vacant
space.
So it stood there this day that I think of and write of, a very brave
and radiant piece of color, too, for the eye to rest on that had wearied
of looking at the gray stone palace hard by, the palace of Messer Folco
Portinari, that showed so gray and grim in all weathers, save where the
brown rust on its great iron lamps and on the great rings in the wall
lent its dulness some hint of pigment. Over the wall that hid the garden
of the palace I saw and see crimson roses hang and scarlet pomegranate
blossoms. Opposite this gloomy house of the great man that was so well
liked of the Florentines, against the pillars of the arcade, there
stood, as I recall it, a bookseller's booth, where manuscripts were
offered for sale on a board. Here he that had the means and the
inclination could treat himself at a price to the wisdom of the ancient
world. I fear I was never one of those so minded. The wisdom of my own
world contented me to the full, and ever it seemed to me that it
mattered less what Messer Plato or Messer Cicero said on this matter and
on that matter than what Messer Lappo Lappi said and did in those
affairs that intimately concerned him.
Now, on this day, which I see again so clearly, I was seated, as I say,
on the parapet of the bridge, propped against the fountain. If I turned
my head to the left, I could please myself with a sight of the briskly
painted statue of the young Greek youth. If I turned my head to the
right, I could look on the river and the smiling country beyond. But, as
it happened, I turned my head neither to the left nor to the right, but
straight before me and a little below me. For I was singing a song to a
lute for an audience of pretty girls who looked up at me, some
admiringly and some mockingly, but all very approvingly. One of the
girls was named Jacintha, and one was named Barbara, and another, that
had hair of a reddish-yellow and pale, strange eyes, was called
Brigitta. There were also many others to whom, at this time, I cannot
give a name, though I seem to see their faces very clearly and hear the
sound of their voices, as well I might, for I was very good friends with
most of them then or thereafter. And this is the song that I was
singing:
"Flower of the lily or flower of the rose,
My heart is a leaf on each love-wind that blows.
A face at the window, a form at the door,
Can capture my fancy as never before.
My fancy was captured, since-well, let us say
Since last night, or the night before last, when I lay
In the arms of--but, hush, I must needs be discreet;
So farewell, with a kiss for your hands and your feet.
I worship your fingers, I worship your toes,
Flower of the lily or flower of the rose."
Then the girl Brigitta, she that had the red-gold hair and the eyes like
pale glass, thrust her face very near to me and said, laughing, "Messer
Lappo, Messer Lappo, who is your sweetheart?"
And I, who was ever ready with a brisk compliment to pretty maid or
pretty woman, or pretty matron, answered her as swiftly as you please,
"She shall be named by your name, dainty, if you will lend me a kiss of
the lips."
And, indeed, I wished she would give me my will, for at that time I had
a great desire for Brigitta; but she only pinched up her face to a grin,
and answered me, teasingly, "Nay, I cannot kiss you; I think you have a
Ghibelline mouth."
Now this seemed to me a foolish answer as well as a pert one, for,
besides that I was ever a Guelph and a Red, I think that politics have
no business to interfere with the pleasant commerce and suave affairs of
love, so I answered her reprovingly. "Kisses have no causes," said I; "I
will kiss Guelph-wise; I will kiss Ghibelline-wise; I will kiss Red; I
will kiss Yellow; it's all one to me, so long as the mouth be like
yours, as pink as a cleft pomegranate, and the teeth as white as its
seeds."
Now at this Jacintha, who had eyes the color of amethysts, and dark hair
with a purplish stain in it, wagged a finger at me reprovingly, saying,
"I fear you are a wanton wooer." And at this all the other girls laughed
like the jolly wantons they were.
But I pretended to take it all mighty seriously, and answered as
solemnly as any philosopher, "Never say it, never think it. I am the
golden rose of constancy; I have loved a lass for three days on end, and
never yawned once."
Now, while I was talking thus, and pulling my face to keep it from
laughing, the girl that was named Barbara had come up very close to me,
and I was minded to slip my arm about her waist and draw her closer with
a view to the kissing of lips. But she had only neighbored me to mock
me, for she cried aloud, "Mirror of chivalry, I will give you a Guelph
cuff on your Ghibelline cheek." And as she spoke, being a girl of
spirit, she kept her word very roundly, and fetched me a box on the ear
with her brown hand that made my wits sing.
Now this was more than my philosophy could stomach, so I made a grab at
her, but she dipped from my outstretched fingers and slipped into the
midst of the crowd of other girls, and straightway I dropped from my
parapet and ran after her, vowing the merriest, pleasantest skelping.
However, she was too swift for me, and too nimble, capering behind this
girl and that girl, and ever eluding me when I seemed to be on the point
of seizing the minx, till at last, what with laughing and running and
calling, my breath failed me, and I stood in the midst of the pretty
jades, panting.
"Nay, I am fairly winded," I protested. "If some sweet she do not give
me a kiss, I shall die of despair."
Then Brigitta, who was nearest to me, came nearer with a kind look in
her strange eyes. "Nay then," she said, "for your song's sake, and to
save your life." So she said and so she did, for she kissed me full on
the mouth before all of them, and, indeed, this was the first time I had
kissed her, though I thank Heaven it was not the last.
And because there is nothing so contagious as kindness and so
stimulating as a good example, the other girls were now ripe and ready
to do as she did, and Jacintha cried, "I will be generous, too!" and set
her red lips where Brigitta's kiss had rested, and then one kissed me
and another, and at the end of it all, Barbara herself, that had been so
ready with her fingers, surrendered and kissed me too. And it was while
she was kissing me, and I was making rather a long business of it,
seeing how she was the last to be kissed, and how she had provoked me,
that there came unobserved into our group another youth whose coming I
had not noticed, being so busy on pleasant business.
But I heard a very sweet and tunable voice speak, and the voice asked,
"When the air is so brisk with kisses, is there never a kiss for me?"
And I looked up from the lips of Barbara and saw that my very dear
friend, Messer Guido Cavalcanti, was newly of our company.
It is many a long year since my dear friend Messer Guido dei Cavalcanti
died of that disastrous exile to which, by the cynical irony of fate, my
other dear friend, Messer Dante dei Alighieri, was foredestined to doom
him. That sadness has nothing to do with this sadness, and I here give
it the go-by. But at nights when I lie awake in my cell--a thing which,
I thank my stars happens but rarely--or in the silence of some more than
usually quiet dawn, I seem to see him again as I saw him that morning,
so blithe, so bright, so delightful. Never was so fine a gentleman. It
is to be regretted, perhaps, that his was not a spirit that believes. I
that am a sinner have no qualms and uncertainties, but credit what I am
told to credit, and no more said. After all, why say more? But Messer
Guido was of a restless, discontented, fretting spirit, that chafed at
command and convention, and would yield nothing of doubt for the sake of
an easy life. Well, he was the handsomest man I have ever known, and he
never seemed fairer than on that May morning--Lord, Lord, how many
centuries ago it seems!--when he came upon me in the sunlit Place of the
Holy Felicity, and thereafter, for the first time, made the acquaintance
of Messer Dante.
When the girls heard that complaint of Messer Guido's, they gathered
about him noisily, crying, "Surely, Messer Guido, surely!" and pushing
their impudent faces close to his, and catching him with their hands,
for indeed Messer Guido was a very comely personage, and one that was
always well-eyed by women.
But it seems that for all his asking he had little mind for the amorous
traffic, for he laughingly disengaged himself from the girls, and I said
to him, pretending to be jealous, "If you taste of their bounty, I shall
tell Monna Giovanna"--for so was named the lady he loved--"and then you
will weep red tears."
Messer Guido pointed to me with a mock air of indignation. "See what it
is," he said, "to take a traitor to one's heart." He ran his laughing
eyes over the little knot of us, and went on, "Sweet ladies, and you,
sour gentleman, I have news for you."
But I protested, drolling him, for it was always our custom when we met
to toss jests and mockery to and fro, as children toss a ball. "Do not
heed him," I said, "Guido's news is always eight days old."
Then the girls laughed at him, for I think in their hearts they were
vexed because he had not taken their kisses--at least, most of them; for
I have it in mind that Brigitta was content with my kissing and none
other. But Guido was not to be downed by their laughter.
"This is not an hour old," he said. "You should all be at the Signory.
The fair ladies of Florence have chosen Monna Beatrice, of the
Portinari, for the queen of their May festival, and will bear her about
the city presently in triumph."
Now this was no piece of news for me, but I was where I was for a
reason, which was to meet Messer Dante. It was news to the girls,
though, for Brigitta cried, "Monna Beatrice, she who has been away from
Florence these nine years?" and Jacintha questioned, "Monna Beatrice! Is
she daughter of Folco Portinari that builds hospitals?" and Barbara
sighed, "Monna Beatrice, whom some call the loveliest girl in the city?"
And Guido gave to their several questions a single answer: "Even she.
For her beauty's sake and in compliment to Messer Folco, because he
builds hospitals."
Now, though I had little interest in this news of Guido's, I was so glad
of his coming that I was as ready to be rid of the girls by this time as
I had been eager before to keep them about me. So I waved my hand at
them as housewives wave their hands to scare the chickens, and I called
to them: "So! Away with you girls to join the merry-making. I will kiss
you all another day."
Then the girls began to mock at me again, and Jacintha hailed me as
prince of poets, and Brigitta, half laughing and half earnest, called me
prince of lovers, and Barbara shot out her pink tongue at me, saying,
"Prince of liars!"
Straightway I made as if I would catch them and slap them, and they all
ran away laughing, and Messer Guido and I were left alone, at the corner
of the bridge of the Holy Felicity, with the image of the God of Love
hard by.
"Good-bye, lilies of life!" I called after the flying fugitives, kissing
my hand at them; and then I turned to my friend. "This lady Beatrice," I
questioned, "is she very fair?" For though I had heard not a little of
her return to our city from Fiesole, I had not yet seen her, and I am
always curious--I mean I was then always curious--about fair women.
"Angel fair," Guido answered, briskly. "Our Florence is ever a nest of
loveliness, but no one of her women is fairer than Folco's daughter."
"May be she seems fairer, being strange," I hinted, quizzically. "Are we
not Athenian in our love of new things?"
Guido answered me very gravely. "I think we should have held her as
precious if she had never left us."
Now, I had never given the affairs of the Portinari many thoughts, and
though I had heard how Messer Folco had brought his daughter home of
late from Fiesole, I knew nothing more than so much, wherefore I
questioned, less because I cared, than because Messer Guido seemed to
care, "Why did she leave us?"
Guido seated himself by my side on the parapet, swinging his slim legs,
and told the tale he wanted to tell.
"It is nine years ago. She was one of those fairy children--I remember
her very well--too divine, too bright, it might seem, to hold in the
four walls of any mortal mansion. That as it may, the physicians found
her a delicate piece of flesh, and so banished her out of our hot
Florence into the green coolness of the hills."
I do not think that I cared very much about what Messer Guido was
telling me, but because I loved him I feigned to care.
"And has she lived there ever since?" I asked, with such show of
interest as I could muster.
And he answered me, very lively. "There she has lived ever since. But
now Messer Folco, being reassured of her health, brings her to Florence,
where her beauty will break hearts, I promise."
I think he sighed a little, and I know that I laughed as I spoke. "Well,
I that have broken my heart a hundred times will break it again for her,
if she pleases."
Messer Guido grinned at me a little maliciously. "Better not let Messer
Simone dei Bardi hear you," he said, and his words suddenly brought
before me the image of a very notable figure in the Florence of my
youth, a very forward man in the squabbles of the Yellows and the Reds.
It would, I think, be very hard to make any stranger acquainted with the
state of our city at this time, for it was more split and fissured with
feuds and dissensions than a dried melon rind. It had pleased Heaven in
its wisdom to decide that it was not enough for us to be distraught with
the great flagrant brawls between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines,
between those that stood for Roman Emperor and those that stood for
Roman Pope. No, we must needs be divided again into yet further
factions and call ourselves Reds and Yellows, and cut one another's
throats in the name of these two colors with more heat and zeal in the
cutting than had ever stirred the blood of the partisans of the two
great camps.
This Red and Yellow business began simply enough and grimly enough in a
quarrel between two girls, distant kinswomen, of the House of the Casa
Bella. One of these girls maintained, at some merry-making, that she was
comelier than the other, which that other very stoutly denied, and from
the bandying of words they came to the bandying of blows, and because it
is never a pretty sight to see two women at clapper-claws together,
those about bestirred themselves to sunder the sweet amazons, and in the
process of pulling them apart more blows were given and exchanged
between those that sought at first to be peacemakers, and there were
many hot words and threats of vengeance.
From this petty beginning, like your monumental oak from your pigmy
acorn, there grew up a great feud between the families of the two girls,
and like a poison the plague of the quarrel spread to Florence, and in a
twinkling men were divided against each other in a deathly hatred that
in their hearts knew little of the original quarrel, and cared nothing
at all for it. But as all parties must needs have a nickname, whether
chosen or conferred, the first of these parties was called Yellow,
because the girl that began the quarrel had yellow eyes; and the other
party in mockery called itself Red, because the girl that was, as it
were, the patron saint of their side of the squabble had red hair. These
Reds and Yellows fought as fiercely in Florence as ever the Blues and
the Greens in Constantinople of old time. And in our city the Donati
sided with the Reds, and the Cerchi with the Yellows, and all that loved
either of these great houses chose their color and conducted themselves
accordingly. But you must not suppose that the heads of the great houses
of the Donati and the Cerchi publicly avowed themselves as the leaders
of these whimsical factions, however much they might, for their own
purposes, foster and encourage their existence. At the time of which I
write Messer Guido Cavalcanti was ostensibly the chief man among the
Reds, and the chief man among the Yellows was Messer Simone dei Bardi.
Here, in consequence of this business of Reds and Yellows, was a
thickening of the imbroglio of Florentine life. For now it was not
enough to be told whether a man was Guelph or Ghibelline in order to
know how to deal with him. It was not merely prudent but even imperative
to inquire further, for a rooted Guelph might be Red or Yellow in this
other scuffle, and so might a rooted Ghibelline. Thus our poor City of
the Lilies was become a very Temple of Discord, and at any moment a
chance encounter in the street, a light word let fly--nay, even no more
than a slight glance--might be the signal for drawn swords and runnels
of blood among the cobbles. Truly, therefore, it is not to be denied
that for such poor gentlemen as, like myself, desired their ease,
together with much singing and kissing and sipping, Florence was by no
means an Arcadia. And yet there was no one of us that would willingly
have lived elsewhere, for all the quarrelling and all the feuds.
Now I do not say it because I was a Red myself, but I do think that the
Reds were of a better temper than the Yellows. Very certainly no one was
less eager to fan the flames of these quarrellings and feuds than the
man that was by my side, Messer Guido Cavalcanti. And no less certainly
of those that were hottest for quarrellings and keenest to keep old
feuds alive, and to enforce distinctions of faction, and make much of
party cries, there was no one hotter and keener than Messer Simone dei
Bardi, whose name had just come to Messer Guido's lips.
Messer Simone came of a house that was of excellent good repute in our
city. Bankers his folk were, very busy and prosperous, and bankers they
had been for many a long day before Messer Simone was begotten. Messer
Simone was not the greatest heir, but I think in his way he was the
most notable, though his way was not quite the way of the family, no
less steady-going than honorable, from which he came. For, indeed, it
was his chief delight to lavish the money which his forebears had
amassed, and there was no one in all Florence more prompt than he to
fling hoarded florins out of the window. By rights he should have been a
free-companion, and received on the highroad at the heads of a levy of
lesser devils, for of a truth he was too turbulent and quarrelsome for
Florence, which is saying much. The men of my spring days, as I have
written, were ranged in many ways of opposition, Guelph against
Ghibelline, Red against Yellow, Donati against Cerchi, and Messer Simone
should have been content to be Guelph and Yellow and Cerchi, but at
times he carried himself as if he were ranged against every one, or
perhaps I should rather say that he carried himself as if his single
will was above all the wranglers of others, and that it was given to him
to do as he pleased, heedless of the feelings of any faction. Had he had
but the wit to balance his arrogance, Messer Simone might have been a
great man in Florence. As it proved, he was only a great plague.
Now I laughed at Guido's words, for it seemed strange to me to think of
Messer Simone dei Bardi as a wooer of countrified damsels. "What has
that Bull-face to do with it?" I asked, and whistled mockingly after the
asking.
Guido still looked grave. "Why, I think his fist gapes, finger and
thumb, to seize Monna Beatrice," he said, and he said no more, but
looked as if he could say much.
Here was an oracle anxious to be interrogated, so I questioned him
further. I knew by report that the girl was fair, but I could not think
of her in any fashion as a maid for Messer Simone, and I conveyed my
doubts to Guido. "Is the girl to be snared so?" I asked.
Guido looked cryptic. "That is for father Folco to settle," he said.
"And father Folco is a man that loves his fellow-men, but would have his
children obey him even to the death, like a Roman father of old."
I began to take the matter hotly, thinking it over and looking at it
this way and that way. "Well, if I were a woman," I protested, "which I
thank Heaven I am not," I interpolated, fervently, "I would drown in
Arno sooner than be bride to Simone of the Bardi."
Guido shrugged his shoulders. He was a man that believed anything of
women. "Yet I think Vittoria loves him," he said, softly, more as if to
himself than to me.
But, bless you, I caught him up nimbly, seeing the weakness of his
argument. "Vittoria, the courtesan! She loves any man, every man."
Guido looked at me very thoughtfully. Then he said, slowly: "I will
tell you a tale I heard yesterday. Some while ago our bull-headed
Simone, being with Vittoria at supper at her house, and as drunk as is
his custom at the tail of the day, dozed on a sofa while the company
began to talk of fair women."
I was horrified at the ill-manners of the hog, though it all seemed of a
piece with his habitual hoggishness. "One should never be too drunk," I
averred, "to talk on that illuminating theme."
Now Guido was fretted at my interruption, and he showed it with a frown
and a silencing gesture of his hand. "Peace, Lappo, peace!" he cried;
"this is my story. Some praised this lady, some praised that, all, as
was due to their guesthood, giving the palm to Vittoria, till some one
said there lived a lady at Fiesole that was lovelier than a dream."
"Who was this nonesuch?" I asked, all agog over any word of loveliness.
Guido chastened my impatience with a grave glance. "I come to that," he
continued. "She was named Beatrice, daughter of Folco Portinari, and he
that praised her averred that whoso might wed her would be the happiest
of mortals."
Now, though the air was warm, I shivered at his words, as if it had
suddenly turned cold, for, indeed, I was never a marrying man, and my
pleasantest memories of women are not memories of any wife of mine.
"Marriage--and happiness?" I said, questioning and grinning. "I am not
of his mind."
Guido looked at me with a good-humored smile, as one that was prepared
to bear with my interruptions. "Nor he of yours," he answered. "Now, as
they talked thus, our Simone stirred in his stupor, and swore that if
this were true he would marry the maiden. Vittoria laughed, and her
laughter so teased the ruffian that he swore a great oath he would take
any wager he would wed this exquisite maiden."
"Who took him?" I asked. The tale promised to be interesting, and
spurred my curiosity.
Guido went on with his narrative. "No man. Simone's luck is proverbial
as his enmity deadly. But Vittoria grinned at him, swearing no such maid
would marry him, and at last so goaded him that he defied her to a
wager. Then she dared him to this--staking her great emerald, in a ring
that the French prince gave her, on the terms that if he failed to gain
the daughter of Folco Portinari he was in all honor and solemnity to
marry her, Vittoria."
I remember as well as if it were yesterday my amazement when I heard
this story, and am inclined now to uplift my hands as I then uplifted
them in wonder, and am inclined to say again, as I said then, "Gods,
what a wager!"
Guido seemed amused at my astonishment, for he laughed a little while
softly to himself, and then went on with his tale-telling. "Simone's red
gills winced, like a dying fish, but he was too drunk to qualify. He
swore a foul oath, 'I will marry this lily,' says he, 'within a year,
and if I do not, why I will wed you, you--' And he called Vittoria by
such lewd names as your wit can picture. But she, turning no hair,
called for pen and parchment, and had it fairly engrossed and Simone's
sprawling signature duly witnessed before even the company departed. So
it stands--Simone must win the maid or wed the light o' love."