As for me, I grinned to think that I was that some one wiser, and that
Guido never suspected it.
Messer Folco touched my dear friend lightly on the shoulder. "It was not
your honor's self?" he asked, benignly, with his shrewd eyes smiling
upon the handsome face.
Messer Guido shook his head. "No, Messer Folco," he protested, "my
little wit flies my flag and wears my coat. If I could write such rhymes
as those I should never be mum about them, I promise you."
Then, with a gracious gesture, as of apology for having failed to
satisfy the curiosity of those that accosted him, he saluted Messer
Folco and moved toward the centre of the room. I was on his heels in an
instant, for I wished for a word with him before he was unfindable in
the thick and press of his friends, and I had somewhat to say to him
concerning the very matter on which he had been speaking. I caught him
by the arm, and he turned to greet me as he greeted all that knew him
and loved him, with a smile, and I whispered him, plucking a paper from
my breast.
"Guido, heart, hearken. Here is a new song sent to your house that seems
better than all the others. I called at your lodgings and saw a scroll
on your table, and knowing what it must be, I made bold to read it, and,
having read it, to bear it to you."
And Messer Guido answered me, eagerly: "I have not been home; I have
been all day with the cardinal. For love's sake, let me see." He took
the paper from me and read it over, and then he said to me, gravely:
"Why, this is better than the best we have had yet. This is the finish
of the ballad of fair Florentines. Here is the nightingale of Florence
singing his heart out for us, and we are at a loss for his name."
Then I, being delighted at my own initiation into this mystery of the
nameless singer, and fired by Guido's praises of him, turned to those
about me, and the room had filled a little by this time, and I cried
out, as indeed I had no business to do in a house where at best I was
little more than a stranger. And this is what I said: "Gentles all,
squires and dames, loving and loved, here is rose-scented news for you.
The unknown poet has sung again, and Messer Guido has the words in his
fingers."
Now there came a hush of talking in the room as I said these words, and
Messer Guido looked at me something reprovingly, because of my
forwardness, and all eyes were fixed upon the pair of us.
Then Messer Folco, moving close up to me, touched me on the shoulder and
said, with a quiet irony, "You are very good, sir, to be my major-domo."
Instantly I bowed to the ground in sober recognition of my error.
"Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I
wither. Unless your pity forgives me, I shall evaporate into air."
Then Messer Folco laughed good-humoredly, and, turning to Guido, said,
"Messer Guido, of your charity, let us hear."
But Guido, the ever obliging, was here unwilling to oblige. "Shall the
owl croak the notes of the nightingale?" he asked, extending his open
palms in a gesture of emphatic denial.
Now even at that moment, with Messer Guido politely declining, and
Messer Folco still in a mood between smiling and frowning on account of
my presumption, and I gaping open-mouthed, and the guests that were
gathered about us staring eagerly at the parchment which my dear friend
held in his hand, something curious occurred. There came a voice from
the press hard by me, a voice that I seemed to know very well and yet
that I could not on the instant name with the owner's name, and this
voice cried aloud, so that all present could hear the cry distinctly:
"Let Messer Dante read the rhymes!" Even as the voice spoke I saw the
reason for its spending of breath, for at that very moment Messer Dante
entered the hall, and was making his way toward Messer Folco with the
bearing of one that courteously salutes his host.
I looked about me sharply to right and to left, in the hope that I might
by chance catch sight of the guest that thus called upon my friend, but
I could see no one to whom I could with any surety credit the utterance.
I observed, indeed, a certain youth that was cloaked as to his body and
masked as to his face slipping out of the crowd about me who might have
been the speaker, but whom I could in nowise identify. It was so much
the mode with many of us that were young in Florence to come--and
sometimes to come unbidden--to such galas as this of Messer Folco's in
antic habits and to hide our features with vizards, that there was
nothing in this costume to single out the youth whom I believed to be
the utterer of that call for Dante. There were many other masked and
muffled figures within the walls of Messer Folco's house that night as
hard to tell apart as one cherry from another. But whoever the speaker
may have been, the speech had the desired effect. Coupled as it so
timely was with the appearance of Dante under Messer Folco's roof, it
caught the fancy of all that heard it, and each hearer echoed readily
enough the suggestion: "Let Messer Dante read the rhymes!" Thus it came
about that Messer Dante had scarcely gone many paces down the hall
toward his host when he became aware that he was the target of all eyes.
Though he was surprised at this unexpected attention on the part of so
large a concourse of persons, he was in no sense taken aback or
embarrassed, but came quietly to a halt and looked with a curious and
composed scrutiny at the crowd of men and women that were all regarding
him so intently. As he did so, some one cried again, "Let Messer Dante
read the rhymes!" And this time Dante heard the words, and he saw also
how Messer Guido stood in the throng hard by to Folco and held in his
hands a roll of parchment. For a moment Dante showed some signs of
discomposure. He changed his fresh color a little to an unfamiliar
paleness, and his eyes meeting mine, they flashed a question at me which
I could but answer by a determined shake of the head. For I saw that
Dante's had a misgiving that I had revealed his secret, which indeed I
had not. Then Dante looked at Guido as if to question him, but before he
could speak Messer Folco had paid him a grave salutation and began to
address him gravely.
"Messer Dante," he said, "you are very welcome to my house, and I greet
you cheerfully. Beyond this it is fit that I should explain to you why,
in this instant of your coming, your name is in so many mouths. We were
speaking here but now of the unknown poet whose verses have of late at
once enraptured and bewildered our city, and many of us were entreating
Messer Guido, who holds in his hand the latest verses of the nameless
singer, to read them aloud to us. And he declining from, as we think, an
over-delicate sense of modesty, it was suggested by him or by another, I
know not, on seeing you enter, that you should read to us the rhymes in
question."
Here Messer Folco bowed very courteously to Dante, but before Dante, who
seemed, as indeed he well might, somewhat at a loss what to say, could
utter a syllable in reply, Messer Guido had forestalled him.
"There could not be a better choice," he protested, "though it was none
of my proposing. Messer Dante has a sweet and clear voice, and if it
will but please him to meet our entreaties we shall be indeed his
debtors."
And as he spoke he thrust into Dante's hand the roll of parchment on
which the poem was written, and all that heard him applauded, and waited
for Dante to begin. Indeed, it was a common thing then, in places where
friend met friend, for one that had a voice to read somewhat aloud for
the delectation of the others, whether a pleasant tale in prose or a
poetic canzonet. But Dante, while he took the parchment from Guido's
fingers, looked about him quietly and spoke, and his voice and words
were very decided in denial.
"I do not know," he said, "why this privilege should be given to me, and
with your good leaves I will ask Messer Guido to find him a worthier
interpreter." With that he made as if he would put the parchment back
again into the hand of Messer Guido, and I could understand very well,
if no one else could, why he should be so unwilling to do this thing.
But you know how it is with a crowd: once any mob of men or women, or
men and women, gets an idea into its head, it is an adventure that would
trouble the devil to get it out again. Ever since the masked youth had
voiced his call for Messer Dante to read the poem, it had become the
assembly's hunger and thirst, will, desire, and determination that the
poem should be read by no other than Messer Dante, though I will dare
make wager that any single man or woman of them all, if individually
addressed, would as lief any other than Dante should take up the task. I
thought I caught a glimpse of my masked youth in another part of the
crowd prompting the demand. So Messer Guido, as herald of the general
wish, smilingly refused to take back the paper parchment, and Dante,
ever too wise to be stubborn for stubbornness' sake, surrendered, where
to persist in refusal would have seemed churlish to his host and to his
company.
"Since you honor me so far," he said, with the wistful smile of one who
feels that chance has penned him in a corner, "I must needs obey." And
with the word he began to unroll the parchment carefully. As he did so
something moved me to look round, and I saw that Madonna Beatrice had
entered the great hall and had come to a halt, observing that something
unusual was toward.
Madonna Beatrice stood arrested there among her maidens, pale and fair,
as an angel might stand, ranged about by radiant mortality. I never
could find then, and I never shall find, though I have tried often
enough, Lord knows, the exact word or exact sequence of words that
should fittingly convey the effect of her beauty, even upon those who
having seen it often seemed on each occasion to behold it for the first
time. Of her, as of every beauty that has graced the world since Helen
set fire to Troy, and Semiramis sent dead lovers adrift down the river
of Assyria, and Cleopatra charmed Cæsar and Antony and Heaven knows who
besides, it might be said that she had the familiar features of
womankind; but what it was that made those features so marvellous, ah!
there was the task for a greater poet than I to take upon his shoulders.
Even the great poet that loved her--and I keep his love-book on my shelf
to this hour, wedged in between a regiment of the Fathers--even Dante
has told us nothing that shall serve to make the ages yet to come
understand what the woman was like that a man could love with so
rapturous a madness of passion. Sometimes I have thought, in my gropings
after the phrase to express her, that the word "luminous" was, perhaps,
of all single words, the word that seemed to hold shut in its casket the
most of the meaning that I sought to convey. There seemed to be about
her, even to me that was never her lover, a radiancy, a nimbus, as it
were, of celestial light that gave to pulsing flesh and running blood
and circumambient skin a quality that was, as it were, flamelike,
ethereal, unreal.
Yet though the essence of her bodily being was, as I knew, so frail,
there was no show of frailness in her gracious presence. She was tall
for a woman, and her coloring was fresh and sane; her bust and limbs
were moulded with a wise and restrained generosity that became her
youth, and promised nobility of proportion for her maturity. She moved
with the smooth and lively carriage of a nymph down the woodland lawns,
with her head easily erect and her eyes steadily seeing the world. She
might almost have been the youngest of the Amazons or the latest of
those strange demi-deities that haunted the hills and woods and waters
until the death of the god Pan dealt them, too, their death-blow. Her
eyes had the clearness of a clear night in June; her lips were quick
with the brisk crimson of a pink quince. Oh, Saint Cupido, what vanity
is this, to essay to paint the unpaintable! Enough that she was young
and fair and shapely, and that if in her eyes there dwelt the
pensiveness of those whose very loveliness suggests a destined
melancholy, her lips were always smiling, and her greeting always
blithe, yet I seemed to see black care incarnate behind her, and I will
tell you why.
Among the girls that were gathered about her, plump, comely, jolly girls
that were, I will readily confess it, more in my way of wooing than
their radiant mistress, there stood the figure of a thin and withered
man in black, with very white hair and very smooth, gray cheeks and very
bright, wise eyes. Him I knew to be Messer Tommaso Severo, that had
served the Portinari as leech for longer years than many in Florence
could count. He it was that had ushered Messer Folco himself into this
troublesome world, that is, however, less troublesome at Florence than
elsewhere. He had done the like for Madonna Beatrice, and from the hour
of her birth he, whom many blamed for a pagan cynicism and philosophic
disdain of humanity, had watched over her life with the tenderness that
watches the growth of some fair and unfamiliar flower. He was, besides
being a master-physician, one that was thoroughly learned in the science
of the stars, and I have always heard that the horoscope he drew for my
lady Beatrice was the chief cause of his tireless devotion and care. To
her service he had dedicated the lees of his life and the ripeness of
his knowledge. It was he who had carried her away for so long a space of
years from the summer heats and winter colds of Florence to the green
temperance and tranquillity of the hills. It was he who at last, still
guided by that horoscope of which he alone knew the lesson, sanctioned
the maiden's return to the city, to live outside which, though even in
the loveliest places thereafter attainable, is to live in exile. I know
for sure that he said of his sweet charge that flesh and spirit were so
exquisitely poised in her perfect body that it needed but some breath of
fate to scatter them irrevocably apart, as a child's breath can scatter
the down of a dandelion to all the corners of a field. But though I
thought of this now, as I beheld the girl and the elder so close
together, I could not, for my life, believe it, seeing how buoyantly she
carried her beauty and the nobility of her color.
Messer Dante still had the two ends of the roll of parchment in his
fingers as Madonna Beatrice entered the hall, and in the very instant of
her appearance he was aware of her presence, and I that was watching all
things at once, like Argus in the antique fable, I saw how his hands
trembled and how his lips quivered with the knowledge of her approach.
But otherwise he showed no sign of the advance of divinity, and holding
the parchment well before his face, rolling and unrolling as the duty
needed, he began to read what was written on the skin.
The poem, as I already knew, made up the second part of a lengthy ballad
in praise of the ladies of Florence. It was cast in an allegorical
fashion, aiming to portray a pageant of fair women, each single verse
seeking to picture some one of the many lovely ladies that in those days
made Florence a very Venus Hill for the ravishment of the senses and the
stirring of the blood. I wish with all my heart that I could set the
whole of it down here, for it was most ingeniously fancied and handled,
and it was not over difficult for the admirers of any particular beauty
to pierce the dainty veil of symbolism with which the poet had pretended
to envelop her identity. Alas! my memory will not serve me to recall the
greater part of it, or, indeed, any but a little, though that little is
in truth the very kernel of the whole, and I have no copy of the ballad
by me to mend my memory. But, as I say, what I do remember is the
centre-jewel of its crown of song.
My Dante read the verses that were his own verses in a voice that was
very even, melodious, but so sustained and tamed as to make it seem
plain to all that listened that he was dealing with somewhat whose
matter he had never seen before. And as he read each stanza, with its
laudation of some lovely lady that was one of the living graces and
glories of our city, those that spelled the cryptic riddle of its
meaning clapped their hands for pleasure and turned their eyes to where
the lady thus bepraised stood and smiled at her, and she, delighted,
would bridle and fidget with her fan and seek to maintain herself as if
she did not care one whit for what in reality she prized very highly. So
the river of sweet words ran on, sweetly voiced, and flowing in its
appointed course with a golden felicity of thought and phrase.
Very soon the roll of parchment in Dante's right hand was larger by much
than the roll of parchment in Dante's left, and it was plain indeed to
all present that the reading and the poem were coming to an end. It was
also plain to all present that the utterance of the poet was growing
more agitated, and his manner more embarrassed and anxious, and it was
manifest to me, who watched him keenly, that he was trembling like a
cypress in a light wind. As he came to the last verse it seemed as if
some irresistible compulsion compelled him to turn his head in the
direction where Madonna Beatrice stood apart with her women and her
leech. As he did so the parchment fell from his suddenly parted fingers
and lay in two rolls at his feet. But, as if he were unaware of what had
happened, Dante went on with his recitation of the poem. I could see
very clearly that the madness of love was wholly upon him, the madness
that makes a man lose all heed of what he does and be conscious of
naught save the presence of the beloved. He stood there rigid, as one
possessed, with his face turned in the direction where the lady Beatrice
stood amid her women, and his hands, newly liberated from the control of
the parchment that lay at his feet, were clasped together in a tight
embrace. And when I turned my gaze from him to her whose beauty he so
passionately regarded, I was aware that she too was under the spell of
his words, and was conscious of the adoration in his eyes. Truly that
boy and that girl, as they stood there in the clean springtide of their
youth and comeliness, seemed to me to be a pair very properly and
lovingly made by Heaven one for the other. "Here," said I to myself, "if
there be any truth in Messer Plato's theory of affinities, here is a
living proof of the Grecian whimsy. And here," I said to myself, "if
folk must needs marry--a thing I never could understand--here, as I
think, is an instance in which a man and a woman might really be happy
together, making true mates, lovers, and friends, finding life sweet to
share, and finding nothing in their union that was not noble and pure."
So I thought while my Dante was betraying his secret by repeating his
lesson without his book.
These were the words that he spoke with his eyes fixed upon the lady
Beatrice, and they live in my memory as fresh as they seemed on the day
when I first read them in Messer Guido's lodging, and the evening when I
first heard them in Messer Folco's hall. Here is what they said:
"Blessed they name the lady whom I love,
Even as the angelic lips in Paradise
At last shall bless her when she moves above
The sun and all the stars. But while mine eyes
Regard her ere she numbers the Nine Skies,
Immortal in her mortal loveliness,
Can I be scorned if to my soul of sighs
Earth's blessing seems the greater, Heaven's the less?"
Even as he came to an end in the great quiet that reigned over the
place, I saw how Dante grew of a sudden strangely pale, and how his body
swayed as if his senses were about to drown themselves in a swoon, and I
truly think that he would have fainted away and fallen to the ground in
the transport of his passion if I had not sprung forward from amid the
throng where I stood and caught him in my arms.