But when he had risen from the table and quitted the circle of the revellers, and stood quite apart from curious ears, if any curious ears there were, his manner changed as he listened to the hurried story that Maleotti had to tell him. The news, as it filtered through his wine-clogged brain, seemed to clarify his senses and quicken his wits. He was, as I guess, no longer the truculent, wine-soaked ruffian, but all of a sudden the man of action, as alert and responsive as if some one had come to tell him that the enemy were thundering at the city's gates. He asked Maleotti, as I understand, if he were very sure of what he said and of what he saw, and when Maleotti persisted in his statement, Messer Simone fell for a while into a musing mood that was no stupor of intoxication. Once or twice he made as if to speak to his fellow, and then paused to think again, and it was not until after some minutes that he finally decided upon his course of action.
I think it would have pleased Messer Simone best if this spying creature of his had waited for Dante when he came from his meeting, and stabbed him as he passed. But he thought, as I believe, that what had not been done by the man might very well be done by the master, and with that, as I conceive, for his most immediate intention, he had Maleotti wait for him in the garden. There in a little while he joined him, and the two went together toward the part of the palace where Beatrice had her dwelling. But when they came to the gateway beneath the loggia where Beatrice had talked with Dante, the lovers had parted, and Dante had gone his ways and Beatrice had returned to her rooms. Then Messer Simone turned to his follower and bade him hasten to Messer Folco, where he sat at his wine, and get his private ear, and tell him that a man was having speech with his daughter on the threshold of her apartments. Messer Simone knew well enough how great an effect such a piece of news would have upon the austere nature of his host, and I make no doubt that his red face grinned in the moonlight as he dispatched his fellow upon his errand. When Maleotti had gone, Messer Simone slowly ascended the staircase that conducted to the loggia, and concealed himself very effectually behind a pillar in a dark corner hard by the door of Beatrice's rooms.
I have stood upon that loggia in later years, and looked out upon Florence when all the colors of summer were gay about the city. I know that the prospect is as fair as man could desire to behold, and I know that there was one exiled heart which ached to be denied that prospect and who died in exile denied it forever. I dare swear that his latest thoughts carried him back to that moon-lit night of July when he made bold to climb the private stair and seek private speech with Madonna Beatrice. I can guess very well how the scene showed that night in the moonbeams—all the city stretched out below, a harlequin's coat of black and silver, according to the disposition of the homes and the open spaces with their lights and shadows. I can fancy how, through the gilded air, came the cheerful sounds of the dancing and the luting and the laughter and the festival, and how all Florence seemed to be, as it were, one wonderful, perfect flower of warmth and color and joy.
It is all very long ago, this time of which I write, and it may very well be that I exaggerate its raptures, as they say—though in this I do not agree—is the way with elders when they recall the sweet, honey-tinted, honey-tasting days of their youth. It would not be possible for any man to overpraise the glories and beauties of Florence in those days. Those glories, as I think, may be said to have come to an end with the Jubilee of His Holiness Pope Boniface the Eighth, the poor pope who was said to be killed by command of the French king, but who, as I have heard tell, escaped from that fate and died a nameless hermit in a forest of Greece.
However that may be, I am glad to think, for all that I am now so chastened, and for all that I have learned patience, that I can recall so clearly that pillared place with the moonbeams dappling the marble, and can rekindle in my withered anatomy something of the noble fire that burned in the heart of Dante, as he stood there in his youth and his hope and his love, and looked into the eyes of his marvellous lady. Also, I am glad to think that I know much of the words that passed between the youth and the maid in that hour, and if not their exact substance, at least their purport. For though Dante never made confidence to me of a matter so sacred as the speech exchanged at such an interview, yet he spoke of it to Messer Guido, whom, after he had entered into terms of friendship with him, he loved and trusted, very rightly, better than me. Also—for that was his way—he set much of that night's discourse into the form of a song which he gave to Messer Guido. Messer Guido, before his melancholy end, over which, as I believe, the Muses still weep, knowing how great a concern I had in the doings of Messer Dante, told me with great clarity the essence of what Dante had told to him, and showed me the poem, not only allowing me to read it, but granting me permission, if it so pleased me, to take a copy. This, indeed, I should have done, but being, as I always have been, a lazy knave, I neglected to do, thinking that any time would serve as well as the present, and being, as I fear, entangled in some pleasant pastime with a light o' love or two that interfered with such serious interests as I owned in life, and of which certainly none should have been more serious than any matter concerning my dear friend and poet. Then, when it was too late for me to amend my error, came Messer Guido's death, and no man knows now what became of those verses.
As for me, I cannot remember them, try I never so hard to cudgel my brains for their meaning and sequence. Sometimes, indeed, at night, in sleep, I seem to see them plain and staring before me on a smooth page of parchment, every word clear, every rhyme legible, the beautiful thoughts set forth in a beautiful hand of write; but when I wake they have all vanished. Sometimes on an evening of late summer, when the winds are blowing softly through the roses and filling the air with odors almost unbearably sweet, it seems to me as if the sweet voices of lovers were chanting those lines, and that I have only to listen heedfully to have them for my own again. But it is all in vain that I try to remember them to any profit. A few phrases buzz in my own brains, but they are no more than phrases, such as I, or any man that was at all nimble in the spinning of words, might use about love and a sweet lady, and there are not enough of them left to build up again the noble structure of so splendid a vision.
Well, as I say, Messer Dante, having quitted the festivity, made his way into the garden, where he lingered a little while. Then it seemed to him that the God of Love appeared to him in the same form as before, only more glorious, and bade him follow, and he went, guided, as it seemed to him, ever by that strange and luminous presence through this path and that path, till he came to the appointed staircase and climbed it, following ever the winged feet of Love. When he came to the top of the stairway he passed through a little door on to the open, moon-drenched loggia, and straightway his first thought was that he beheld the stars, seeing that they seemed to him to shine so very brightly in heaven after the blackness of the darkness through which he had passed. And I think it must be some memory of that night which has made him thrice record with much significant insistence his beholding of the stars.
In the mingled moonlight and starlight of the loggia the figure of the God of Love showed, he said, as clearly to his eyes as when he had ascended the winding stair, albeit differently, for whereas in the darkness the shape of Love had appeared to him luminous and fluttering, as if it had been composed of many living and tinted fires, now in the clear light of that open space it showed more like a bodily presence, not human indeed, but wearing such humanity as it pleased the gods of old time to assume when they condescended to commune with mortals. I remember how he said, in the poem which I spoke of, that he could have counted, had he the leisure, every feather in Love's wings. But the god, or the vision which he took to be a god, gave him no such leisure, for he came to a halt, and he had his arrow in his hand, and with that arrow he pointed before him, and then the image of the God of Love melted into the moonlight and vanished, and the glory of the stars was forgotten, and Dante knew of nothing and cared for nothing but that his lady Beatrice stood there awaiting him.