On that summer morning which saw us riding homeward, all flushed and
triumphant over our little victory, all Florence was early astir.
Florence was ever a matutinal city, and her citizens liked to be abroad
betimes to get at grips with their work, which they did well, and earn
leisure for their pleasures, which they enjoyed as thoroughly. But on
this especial morning the town seemed to open its eyes earlier than
usual, and shake itself clear of sleep more swiftly, and to bestir
itself with an activity unfamiliar even to a town of so active a
character. The cause for this unwonted bustle was not easy to ascertain
with precision. Somehow or other rumors, vague, fantastic,
contradictory, perplexing, irritating, bewildering, had blown hither and
thither as it were along the eaves and through chinks of windows and
under doorways, as an autumn wind carries the dried dead leaves. These
were rumors of some event of moment to the Republic that either had
happened, or was about to happen, or was happening at that very instant
of time. What this event of moment might precisely be, few, indeed,
could say, though all could make a guess and all availed themselves of
the power, and many and varied were the guesses that men made, and very
confident was every man that his particular guess was the only right and
true one.
It is, indeed, strange how often, when some subtle move of statecraft is
being made whereof secrecy is the very vital essence, though those that
be in that secret keep their lips truly sealed, some inkling of what is
going on seems by some mysterious intuition to be given to folk that
have neither need of such knowledge, nor right nor title to it. So it
certainly proved in Florence on the morning after the ride against
Arezzo. Every man that came out into the streets--and the streets were
soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds--was positive
that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that
something of importance was going to happen, or that something of
importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked
out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their
dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus
absent were members of the same party, and that party the one which was
held in no great affection by Messer Simone, the party of the Reds.
Furthermore, the story of the formation of the Company of Death had
become known, and it needed no very elaborate process of speculation to
assume that the youths whose lodgings lacked their presence had
overnight, in Messer Folco's palace, inscribed their names in Messer
Simone's great book of enrollment.
It being established, therefore, definitely, beyond doubt or cavil, that
something had happened, the next great question for the expectant
Florentines was, What thing had happened? But the answer to this
question was not yet, and in the meantime the expectant Florentines had
another matter of interest to consider and to discuss. Through all the
noise and babble and brawling of that agitated morning there came a
whisper, at first of the very faintest, which breathed insidiously and
with much mystery a very amazing piece of news. Men passed the whisper
on to men, women to women, till in a little while it had swelled into a
voice as loud as the call of a public crier, carrying into every corner
of the quarter where Messer Folco lived, and from thence into every
other quarter of the city its astonishing message of amazing wedlock.
Gossip told to gossip, with staring eyes and wagging fingers, that
Messer Folco's daughter, Monna Beatrice, she that had been the May-day
queen, and was so young and fair to look upon, she was to be married at
nine of that morning to Messer Simone dei Bardi, the man that so few
Florentines loved, the man that so many Florentines feared. It had, of
course, long been known in Florence, where the affairs of any family or
individual are for the most part familiar to all neighbors, that Messer
Simone wished to wed Monna Beatrice. It was known, too, that Messer
Folco was in nowise opposed to the match. Yet, for the sake of the
girl's sweetness and loveliness, all were ready to hope that such ill
nuptials would never come to pass. Thus, when the news of the immediate
marriage fluttered through Florence streets, it was the cause of no
little astonishment to those that first heard it, and they carried it on
the very edge of their lips to the nearest ears, and so made the circle
of astonishment greater.
I am proud to say it, to the credit of my fellow-citizens, that the
greater part of those that heard the tidings shook their heads and
sighed. And, indeed, it needed no very great niceness of feeling or
softness of heart to recognize that a marriage between a man like Messer
Simone and a maid like Monna Beatrice was no admirable marriage, however
much the wish of a parent was to be respected. Every one recognized that
Beatrice was a maid as unusual in her goodness as Simone was a man,
thank Heaven, unusual in his badness. Wherefore, all detested the
undertaking. Yet disbelief in the story, a disbelief that was popular,
had perforce to change into unpopular belief when the very church was
named in which the ceremony was to take place--the Church of the Holy
Name; and those that hastened thither did indeed find all preparations
being made for a wedding, and learned from the sacristan that Messer
Simone did, indeed, upon that very morning, mean to marry the daughter
of Folco Portinari. Yet, as I learned afterward, for all these
assurances and all these preparations, the marriage was, up to a certain
moment, no such sure a matter as Messer Simone wished and Messer Folco
willed and the good-hearted folk of Florence regretted.
I have always accepted the customs of my time, and found them on the
whole excellent, and it has ever been our custom for us to wed our
daughters as we will, and not according to their wishes, our view being
that elders are wiser than youngsters, and that it is more becoming and
orderly that a maid should marry to please her father than that she
should marry to please herself. For there may be a thousand reasons for
a certain marriage, very obvious to a prudent parent, such as land,
houses, plate, linen, vineyards, florins, and the like, all of which are
of the utmost importance in the economy of a well-domesticated
household, but are unhappily little calculated to attract the dawning
senses of a nubile girl. Yet in a little while, when she has become a
matron and got used to her husband, with what a complacent, with what a
housewifely approving eye she will behold her treasures of gold and
silver and pewter and fine linen and the rest of her possessions. So,
for the most part, it should always be; but there is no rule that has
not its exception, and if ever there were a case in which a daughter
might be justified for resisting the will of her parent in the matter of
a marriage, I think the case of Folco's daughter is the case, and I for
one can never be brought to blame her in the slightest degree for her
conduct, or call it misconduct.
It seems that when the morning came Madonna Beatrice showed herself
unexpectedly and unfamiliarly opposed, not merely to her parent's wish,
but to her parent's commands. Messer Folco, who had not seen his
daughter since the previous night, when she fell swooning in the arms of
Messer Tommaso Severo, at first could not believe in her opposition. She
told him, astonished as he was at this amazing mutiny, that she could
not and would not wed Messer Simone, because her heart was pledged to
another, and that other one whom she would not name. Madonna Beatrice
kept silence thus rigorously the identity of her lover, because of her
certainty that the swords of her kinsmen would be whetted against him
the moment that his name was known. In this she was right, for Dante was
everything that the Portinari scorned, being poor with a poverty that
tarnished, in their eyes, his rightful nobility, being of the Reds,
being of no account in the affairs of Florence. That he was a poet
would no more hinder them from killing him than the gift of song would
save a nightingale from a hawk. Messer Folco was at first very stern and
then very angry at his daughter's attitude, but he was stern and angry
alike in vain. The more Messer Folco stormed, the less he effected.
Though Beatrice seemed to grow paler and frailer at her father's
nagging, she grew none the less stubborn, and Messer Folco's fury flamed
higher at her unwonted obstinacy. His naturally choleric disposition got
the better of his philosophic training and his habitual self-restraint,
and he threatened, pleaded, and commanded in turns without making any
change in Beatrice's frozen resistance. The pitiable struggle lasted
until Messer Maleotti, having ridden leisurely through the cool of the
morning, chose, when within sight of Florence, to spur his horse to a
gallop and to come tearing through the gates, reeling on his saddle, as
one that bore mighty tidings, which must be delivered to Messer Simone
dei Bardi without delay.
What these tidings were Folco was soon enough to learn. Messer Simone
hastened to Messer Folco's house and demanded audience of the lady
Beatrice. He found her and her father together, Messer Folco still
fuming, Madonna Beatrice still pale and resolved. Simone stayed with a
large gesture Messer Folco's protestations of regret at having so
unmannerly a daughter, and, addressing himself to Beatrice, asked her if
it was true that her affection for another stood in the way of her
obedience to her father's wishes. She seemed to be almost past speech
after the long struggle with her father, but she made a sign with her
head to show that this was so. Thereupon Simone, making his voice as
gentle and tender as it was possible for him to make it, went on to ask
her if by any chance the man she so favored was young Messer Dante of
the Alighieri. Madonna Beatrice would not answer him this question,
either by word or sign. Then Simone, allowing his voice to grow sad, as
one that sorrows for another's loss, assured her that if that were so,
there could be no further obstacle to her father's wishes, because he
was at that moment the bearer of the bad news that Messer Dante and all
those that were with him had been killed that morning by treason in a
wood half-way to Arezzo. While Messer Simone was telling this tale to
Beatrice, the same story was running like fire through the streets of
Florence, for Messer Maleotti was very willing to tell what had
happened, or rather what he thought had happened, to whomsoever cared to
ask or to listen, and I take it that there was not a man or woman in all
Florence who did not seek to have news at first hand of the disaster.
It seems that at this news the unnatural resistance of Madonna Beatrice
to her father's orders broke down entirely. I use the term "unnatural"
as one in nowise implying any censure of Madonna Beatrice for her
resistance to her father's wishes, but rather as describing the strength
beyond her nature which she put into that resistance. For I hold that
the dominion of parents on the one side, and the obedience of children
and the deference of children to that dominion on the other side, may be
made too much of and thought too much of, and in no case more so than
when a controversy arises concerning matters of the heart. All this
wisdom by the way. If Madonna Beatrice had been pale before, she was
paler now, and for a breathing-while it seemed as if she would swoon,
but she did not swoon. They sent for her physician, Messer Tommaso
Severo, who could do nothing, and said as much. Madonna Beatrice, he
declared, was very weak; it were well not to distress her over-much.
Beyond that he said little, partly because he was naturally enough in
agreement with Messer Folco in his views as to the rule of parents over
children, and partly because he was aware how frail a spirit of life was
housed in her sweet body, and knew that no art of his or of any man's
was of avail to strengthen it or to hinder its departure when the time
must be.
While all this was toward, Madonna Beatrice seemed to come out of the
silent fit into which the false news of Dante's death had cast her, and
when her father asked her again, something less sternly than before,
but still peremptorily, if she would have Messer Simone for mate, she
did no more than incline her head in what Messer Folco took to be a
signal of submission to his will. At this yielding he, being by nature
an authoritarian, seemed not a little pleased. For the death of Dante,
and the effect that death might have upon his daughter's welfare, he did
not care and did not profess to care in the least. Dante as a human
being was nothing to him--nothing more, at least, than a young man who
belonged to an opposite party, had no money or family backing, and owed
what little esteem he had gained in the public mind to his writing some
clever verses and making a mystery about their authorship, the said
verses being particularly offensive to him, Folco Portinari, because
they had the insolence to be aimed at his daughter. So having carried
his point and enforced his authority, Messer Folco straightway sent a
messenger to the church chosen for the ceremony to have all in readiness
for the immediate nuptials.
As for Beatrice, though she still seemed like a woman that was stricken
with a catalepsy, she was, by her father's orders, girded in a white
gown and girdled and garlanded with white roses, and in such guise
Messer Folco and Messer Simone between them--with my curse on them for a
fool and a knave--led their helpless victim from the Portinari house
into the open air. There a litter awaited her, into which she went
unresisting, and so with the people of her father's household about her,
wearing her father's crest upon their coats, she went her way to the
Church of the Holy Name.
I do not think that in all the tragic tales of old time there is one
more lamentable than this of lady Beatrice. Monna Iphigenia, so
piteously butchered in Aulis, that the Greek kings might have a
soldier's wind toward Troy, was not more sadly sacrificed, and in the
case of Beatrice, as in that of the Greek damsel, a father was a
consenting party to the crime. The case of Jephthah's daughter was less
pathetic, for there at least the parent was deeply afflicted by the
darts of destiny, whereas old Agamemnon and our Folco were, whatever
their reluctance to dedicate their daughters to an uncomfortable fate,
quite prepared to do so. All of which goes to show that humanity is the
same to-day as it was yesterday, and will, in all likelihood, be the
same to-morrow. There will always be good and bad, kind and unkind, wise
and foolish, always sweet lovers will be singing their songs in the
praise of their sweethearts that are walking in the rose-gardens, and
sour parents will be scowling from the windows. For my own part, I am
always on the side of any lover, young or old, straight or crooked,
gentle or simple, for to my mind, in this muddle of a world, the state
of being in love is at least a definite state, and, whenever and however
gratified, a pleasant state.
I can honestly say, in looking back over the book of my memory, that I
can find no page therein which is not overwritten with the name of some
pretty girl. And though I will not be such a coxcomb as to assert that I
was always favored by any fair upon whom it might please me to cast an
approving eye, yet I must needs admit that I found a great deal of
favor. This I attribute largely to a merry disposition and a ready
desire to please, together with a very genial indifference if, by any
chance, the maid should prove disdainful. For it may be taken as a
general principle that maids are the less tempted to be disdainful if
they guess--and they are shrewd guessers--that their disdain will be met
with a blithe carelessness. Speaking of carelessness and disdain and the
like, reminds me that I have never done what I meant to from the
beginning, and tell you how I fared in my love-affair with Brigitta, the
girl that gave me the cuff and had such strange eyes. But I fear now
that I am too deeply embarked upon the love-affairs of another to have
the leisure to digress into my own adventures. The world is more
interested in love's tragedies than in the comedies of love, wherein I
have ever played my part, and so I will go back to my Dante and his sad
affairs, and leave my little love-tale for another occasion. But at
least I may be suffered to set down this much in passing--that Brigitta
was a very attractive girl, and that I was really very fond of her.