[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief stories.
"Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato de la lunga via,
Seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo,
Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
Siena mi fè; disfecemi Maremma;
Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."
Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
(Said then a female soul), remember me,—
Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,
The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled De l'Amour, "obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the Ptolomei, the richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which was the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong reports and suspicions continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore; he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest of his days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's Journey through France and Italy, p. 315.]
[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of M. Raynouard, in his Choix des Poésies des Troubadours, &c.]
[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca." An exquisite image of newness and brilliancy.]
[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant to the Virgin.]