When the story told by the discreet and modest Vicenza had come to an end—a story which pleased all the ladies mightily—the Signora bade her to propound her enigma in due course, and she, raising her pretty smiling face, instead of one of her songs gave the following riddle:
When hope and love and strong desire
Are born to set the world on fire,
That self-same hour a beast is born,
All savage, meagre, and forlorn.
Sometimes, with seeming soft and kind,
Like ivy round an elm-tree twined,
It clips us close with bine and leaf,
But feeds on heartache, woe, and grief.
Ever in mourning garb it goes,