To most of those that were present in Messer Folco's house that night it
was little less than impossible to misunderstand the meaning of those
latest rhymes that Messer Dante had read. Even if none had taken into
account the agitation that had come over my friend, and which at least
identified him in spirit with the substance of what he read, if it did
not patently proclaim him the author, at least it was staringly evident
that the stanza was a public tribute to the loveliness of Madonna
Beatrice. Did not her name of Beatrice imply blessedness, and was not
blessedness, terrestrial and celestial, the intimate theme of the
octave? Further, since I speak of the octave, were not those that had
nimble judgments and sprightly memories able to recall that Madonna
Beatrice's name was made up of eight letters, and then, following on
this pathway of knowledge, to discover that the first letter of each
line of the stanza corresponded in its order with the like letter in the
name of the daughter of Folco Portinari.
In the face of such an amazing revelation a kind of heavy silence
brooded awhile over the company, and lasted, indeed, as long as the
time, which was indeed but brief, that Dante lay in my arms in his
stupor. While some believed that in Dante they beheld--as in very truth
they did--the author of the poem, and in consequence the body of the
unknown poet that had haunted their imaginations, others merely
appreciated that the unknown poet, whoever he might be, had declared
himself very patently the adorer of Monna Beatrice, wherefore it was to
be inferred that all those other love-songs, which the golden youth of
Florence loved to murmur to the ears of their ladies, were so many roses
and lilies and violets laid on the same shrine.
Whoever misunderstood the true meaning of what had happened, I think
that Messer Folco understood well enough, and was mightily little
pleased in the understanding. Though Dante had, indeed, the right to
claim nobility of birth, neither his station in the city nor his worldly
means were such as to commend him to Messer Folco's eyes as a declared
lover of his daughter. Whatever annoyance Messer Folco may have felt at
the untoward occurrence, he was too accomplished a gentleman to allow
any sign of chagrin to appear in his voice or countenance or demeanor.
He did no more than thank Dante, who had by this time quite overmastered
his passing weakness, for his courtesy in reading such very pleasing
verses. Then, turning to the guests that stood about, somewhat
disconcerted and puzzled by what had taken place, he addressed them in
loud tones, telling them that a slight banquet was set forth in the
adjacent room, and begged them to enjoy it before the dancing should
begin.
At these pleasant tidings the most of Messer Folco's company were
greatly elated, and hastened to pair themselves off very merrily, and to
make their ways toward the banqueting-room, where, indeed, a very
delectable feast was spread, such an one as might have tickled the
palate and flattered the appetite of any of the high-livers and dainty
drinkers of old Rome. As our jolly Florentine lads and winsome
Florentine lasses ate and drank, they chattered of what they had just
heard, of what they had just seen, and were all agreed to a man Jack and
a woman Jill that Madonna Beatrice was a very flower of women, and that
if Messer Dante laid his heart at her feet it was no doubt a piece of
great presumption, but otherwise an act highly to be applauded. We were
very young in Florence in those days, and our hearts were always quick
to beat time to the drum-taps of love or any other high and generous
passion. If we have changed since, it is the fault of the changing years
and the loss of the Republic.
I make no doubt that there were some who grumbled and carped and
cavilled; said this and said that; grunted porcine over the pretty pass
things were coming to in the city when a nobody or a next-to-nobody like
young Dante of the Alighieri could presume to lift his impudent eyes to
a daughter of a man like Folco Portinari, one of the first citizens of
Florence, and a man that builded hospitals and basilicas at his own
expense. But the growls of these grumblers and carpers and snarlers did
not count in the general and genial applause that our youth gave to
mellifluous numbers and lovely love, and the thousand beautiful things
and thoughts that make this poor life of ours seem for a season Elysium.
So they feasted and prattled, and I turn to another theme.
If the meaning of what Messer Dante said and the meaning of what Messer
Dante did was plain and over-plain to Messer Folco, it was surely in the
very nature of things no less plain to his daughter. To her, at least,
there can have been no riddle to read in the young man's words, in the
young man's actions. Love, splendid and fierce and humble, reigned in
the glowing words that he read, ruled his failing voice, swayed his
reeling figure. She could not question the identity of the Blessed One
whose beauty made the singer sacrilegious in the white-heat of his
devotion. She could not misinterpret the significance of the abandoned
parchment lying discarded where it had fallen on the floor while the
reciter, with his sad eyes fixed upon her face, repeated so familiarly
the words which he was supposed never to have seen. For Beatrice, Dante
of the Alighieri was the author of the ballad in praise of fair
Florentines; for her he was the unknown poet whose fame had flamed
through Florence, and she was the lady that was praised with words of
such enchanting sweetness in his songs.
While the guests were going toward the banquet as brisk as bees to
blossoms, Dante caught me by the hand and drew me apart, and entreated
me to seek speech with Beatrice, and to entreat her to grant him an
interview in private that very night. He dared not, so he said, approach
her himself, in the first place because the doing so might prove too
noticeable after what had occurred, and, in the second place, because he
feared that she had some cause of complaint against him, seeing that she
had of late refused him her salutation. He bade me urge her very
strenuously to grant his prayer, for his soul's sake and his body's
sake, that he might live and not die.
Since I was ever willing to serve my friend, I agreed to do this thing,
and so left him to the care of Messer Guido, who came up on that instant
and addressed him in very loving terms, charging him with being indeed
the poet whose name they had sought so long. Dante not denying this, as
indeed denial would have been idle, even if Dante had been willing, as
indeed he never was, to utter such a falsehood, saying that he had not
done that which he had done, Messer Guido began to praise him in such
glowing words as would have made another man happy. But for Dante
happiness lay only in the kind thoughts of his lady, and the very shaft
of his ambition was only to please her. He listened very quietly while
Messer Guido praised him so highly, and I, for my part, set about
performing the task with which he had intrusted me.
I did not know at the time, though I learned it later, that my mission,
if not forestalled, had in very truth been rendered much easier by the
action of another. That masked youth I told you of, who would needs have
Dante read his own poem that none there knew for his, was no other a
person than Monna Vittoria. Vittoria had ever a freakish humor for
slipping into man's apparel, which some of her friends found diverting
and others not, as the mood took them. Madonna Vittoria took it into her
head that she would be present at Messer Folco's festival, and to do so
was easy enough for her when once she had clothed her shapely body in
the habit of a cavalier, and flung a colored cloak about her, and curled
her locks up under a cap, and clapped a vizard upon her face. She went
to Messer Folco's house for this reason most of all, that she meant to
speak with Madonna Beatrice, a thing not ordinarily very easy to come
at for such as she. Indeed, there was no risk for her of discovery,
doing what she did in the way she did, with a man's jacket on her back
and a man's hose upon her legs.
She came, as it seems, upon Beatrice in the early hours of the festival,
having bided her time till she should find Folco's daughter alone or
nearly so, and then and there addressed her earnestly with a request for
some private speech. In such a season of merry-making the request did
not come so strangely from a masked youth as to seem either insolent or
unfitting. But Beatrice knew at once that the voice was a woman's, and
so said, smilingly, as she drew a little apart with her challenger. Then
it appears that Vittoria unmasked and named herself, and that Beatrice
looked at her very steadily and gravely, and said no more than this: "I
have heard of you. You are very beautiful," the which words, as Vittoria
told me later, gave her a greater pleasure than any she had ever tasted
from the praises of men's lips.
Vittoria said, "If you have heard of me, perhaps you will think that I
should not be here and seeking speech with you."
To which Beatrice answered, very sweetly, that it was no part of the law
of her life to deny hearing to one that wished for speech with her, and
while she spoke she was still smiling kindly, and there was no anger in
her eyes and no scorn, but only a kind of sad wonder. Then Vittoria
said that she had made bold to do what she did for the sake of a friend
and for the sake of Beatrice herself. Thereat the manner of Beatrice,
albeit still courteous, grew colder, and she answered that she did not
know how the doings of any friend of Vittoria's could concern her, and
Vittoria knew that she guessed who the friend was.
Vittoria said, "The friend of whom I speak, the friend whom I would
serve with you, is not and never has been more than my friend."
At this Beatrice made a gesture as if to silence her and a movement as
if to leave her.
But Vittoria barred her way and delayed her entreatingly, saying, "Do
not scorn me because I am what I am."
Whom, thus entreated, Madonna Beatrice answered, very gently: "Indeed, I
do not scorn you for being what your are. I will not even say that I do
not understand you, for I have it in my heart that a woman must always
understand a woman, however different the way of the one may be from the
way of the other. And it might very well have happened, if our
upbringings had been other, that you were as I am and I as you."
Vittoria answered: "I think not so, for God has so made you that you
would never care for the things I care for, and God has so made me that
I should always care for them."
Beatrice replied: "Very well, then; let us leave the matter with God,
who made us, and say to me what you wish to say."
Then Vittoria told Beatrice of Dante, how he was devoted soul and body
to Beatrice, and how it was only in consequence of Vittoria's well-meant
but ill-proving advice that he at all sought her society. She told how
she had given that advice to save the youth from the hatred of Simone,
but had not told him this, telling him rather that by so doing he would
keep his love for Beatrice a secret from the world. Then the paleness of
Beatrice changed for a little to a soft red, and Vittoria saw that she
believed, and kissed her hand and left her. Thus it came about that my
labor was already lightened, though I knew it not when I set out to seek
for Beatrice on behalf of my friend.
The good chance that sometimes favors the ambassadors of Love served me
in good stead very presently by affording me occasion to approach
Madonna Beatrice and engage her in speech, for she was ever courteous in
her bearing toward her father's guests. After we had discoursed for a
brief while on trifles, I, finding that where we stood and talked I
might speak with little fear of being overheard, straightway disclosed
my mission to her, and delivered my errand, putting it, as I think, in
words no less apt than choice, and making a very proper plea for my
friend, presenting, indeed, his petition so well that, though I say it
who, perhaps, should not say it, I do not think that he could have done
it any better himself. I made bold to add that my friend went in fear
that he had in some way offended her, but that I was very sure he would
be able to excuse himself to her eyes if only she would afford him the
opportunity to do so.
Madonna Beatrice listened to me very quietly while I delivered myself of
my message and of such embroideries of my own as I saw fit to tag on to
its original simplicity, and though I thought I could discern that she
was affected not unkindly toward my friend, in spite of whatever fault
he might have committed, she did not in any way change color or display
any other of those signals by which ladies are accustomed to make
manifest their agitation when any whisper of love business is in the
air. When I had finished, she did no more at first than to ask me if,
indeed, Messer Dante was the unknown poet who had so delighted Florence.
To which question I made answer that the truth was indeed so, at which
assurance she seemed to me at first to smile, and then to look sad, and
then to smile again. But when I was beginning to utter some golden words
in the praise of my friend's verses, she very sweetly but very surely
cut my compliments short, and gave me the answer to my embassy.
"Tell Messer Dante," she said, "that he is so great a poet that it were
scarcely gracious for me to refuse him the favor he asks, though,
indeed, he must know as well as I know that it is no small favor. It is
not perhaps fitting, and it certainly is not easy, for a maiden to
accord a lonely meeting to a youth, even when that youth has some reason
to call himself the maiden's friend. But I shall retire before this
festival comes to an end, and I shall walk awhile on the loggia above in
the moonlight and the sweet air before going to my sleep. If he will
come to me there I will speak with him and hear him speak for a little
while. Tell him I do this for the sake of his verses."
Therewith she made me a suave salutation and turned to speak to another,
and I, finding myself thus amiably dismissed, and being very well
satisfied with the fruits of my enterprise, bowed very lowly before her,
and turned and went my ways, seeking my friend. Soon I found him with
many youths and elders about him, all as eager as Guido had been to
congratulate him on what he had done. But if Dante seemed pleased to
hear their praises, as it was only right he should seem pleased, he
showed still greater pleasure in beholding me and reading the message of
my smiling face.
He made some excuse for quitting his company and drawing apart with me,
and when he had heard what I had got to say, I think that he looked the
happiest man that I had ever seen. "Heaven bless my lady Beatrice for
her sovereign grace," he said, very softly and earnestly, and then he
wrung me very hard by the hand, and left me and went back to his
admirers, and thereafter, during the progress of the night's pleasures,
I saw him move and take his share with an unwonted brightness of
countenance and mirthfulness of bearing, and I was glad with all my
heart to see him so cheerful.
Indeed, that was a cheering time, and the man or woman would have been
hard to please who found nothing to delight or to amuse at Messer
Folco's festival. To speak for myself, I had never known better
diversion. There was a whole world of pretty women assembled within
Messer Folco's walls, and I may as well confess here, if I have not
confessed it already, that I take great delectation in the companionship
of pretty women. How many little hands, I wonder, did I press that
night, with the tenderest protestations? How many kisses, I wonder, did
I venture to steal, or, rather, pretend to steal? for I swear the dainty
rogues met me half way in the matter of the robbery. Well, well, it was
all very merry and pleasant, and we feasted very gayly, and we danced
very nimbly, and we wandered in the green glooms of the garden, and then
we feasted anew, and after that we set to work to dancing in good
earnest. Save for a few, we all danced and danced and danced again, as
if we could dance the world back into its young-time.