(A grave smile passes from face to face, as the friends lean forward attentively to listen; for they know that this born story-teller only tells them when, for the moment, life contents him.)
In hell, among all the brave company that is ever to be found there of lovers, and fair ladies, and men of learning, and poets, and astrologers, amid all the ceaseless movement of doomed bodies, tossing and turning to be rid of the torment of their souls, one woman sat alone and smiled. She had the air of a listener, ever with lifted head and eyes raised, as though some voice from above were attracting her.
“Who is that woman?” enquired a new-comer, struck by the strange loveliness of her face, with its look the meaning of which he could not read, “the one with the smooth, ivory limbs, and the long hair falling down over her arms to the hands resting upon her lap. She is the only soul whose eyes are ever looking aloft. What skeleton does she keep in the cupboard of God up yonder?”
He had not finished speaking before one made haste to answer, a man who carried in his hand a wreath of withered leaves. “They say,” he said, “that once on earth she was a great singer, with a voice like stars falling from a clear sky. So when doom came for her, God took her voice and cast it forth to the eternal echoes of the spheres, finding it too beautiful a thing to let die. Now she hears it with recognition, and remembering how once it was her own, shares still the pleasure which God takes in it. Do not speak to her, for she believes that she is in heaven.”
And when the man, bearing the wreath of withered leaves, had finished, “No,” said another, “that is not her story.”
“What then?”
“It is this,” he said, as the man with the withered wreath turned away: “On earth a poet made his song of her, so that her name became eternally wedded to his verse, which still rings on the lips of men. Now she lifts her head and can hear his praise of her sounded wherever language is spoken. That is her true story.”
“And the poet?” asked the new-comer. “Did she love him well?”
“So little,” replied the other, “that here and now she passes him daily and does not recognize his face.”
“And he?”