Only once after this did they come near meeting. It was at a wedding-party where Dante had gone evidently without an invitation. He inwardly debated whether he should remain to the feast or not, and the ayes had it. He was about to be seated at the table, when a sudden sense of first heat and then cold came over him and he grasped his chair for support. The light seemed blinding. He closed his eyes, and then opened them; and looking up, on the opposite side of the room he saw his Beatrice!
A friend seeing his agitation and thinking him ill, led him forth into the open air and there chafed his icy fingers asking, "What can it be—what is the matter?"
And Dante answered, "Of a surety I have set my feet on a point of life beyond which he must not pass who would return!"
Immediately thereafter—probably the next day—Dante began a poem, very carefully thought out, in celebration of the beauty and virtue of Beatrice. He had written but one stanza when he tells us that, "The Lord God of Justice called my most gracious Lady to Himself." And Beatrice was dead, aged twenty-five years.
Through her death Dante was indeed wedded to her memory. He calls her the bride of his soul.
We can not resign from life gracefully. Work has to be performed, even when calamity comes, and we stand by an open grave and ask old Job's question, "If a man die shall he live again?"
Dante felt sure that Beatrice must live again in all her loveliness. "Heaven had need of her," he cries in his grief. And then again, "She belonged not here, and so God took her to Himself." At first he was dumb with sorrow, and then tears came to his relief, and a little later he eased his soul through expression: he indited an open letter, a kind of poetic proclamation to the citizens of Florence, in which he rehearsed their loss and offered them consolation in the thought that they now had a guardian angel in Heaven.
The lover, like an artist or skilled workman, always exaggerates the importance of his passion, and links his love with the universal welfare of mankind.
And stay! after all he may be right—who knows! So a year passed away in sadness, with a few bad turnings into sensuality, followed by repenting in verse. It was the anniversary of her death, and Dante was outlining angels to illustrate his sonnets wherein he apotheosized Beatrice. And behold! as he day-dreamed of his Beatrice sweet consolation came in double form. First he saw a gentle lady who looked very much like the lady he lost. Lovers are always looking for resemblances—on the street, in churches, at the theater or the concert, in travel—looking always, ever looking for the face and form of the beloved. Strange resemblances are observed—persons are followed—the gait, height, attire, carriage of the head are noted, and hearts beat fast!