was sworn in as a deputy sheriff, and did some valiant
fighting for the Guelfs, for which privilege he was to pay when the
Ghibellines came back.

Just what his every-day occupation was we are not sure, but as he was
admitted a member of the Guild of Apothecaries we assume that he clerked
in a drugstore, and often expressed himself thus: "Lady, I am all out of
liverwort today, but I have something just as good!"--and he read her a
few stanzas from the "Vita Nuova," which he had just written behind the
screen at the prescription-counter.

In the year Twelve Hundred Eighty-five, Charles of Anjou, brother of
Saint Louis, came to Florence, and Dante was appointed one of the
committee to look after his entertainment.

Charles was a man of intelligence and discrimination, a lover of letters
and art. He and Dante became fast friends, and it seems Dante became a
kind of honorary member of his court.

Dante could paint a little, he played on the harp, and he also recited
his own poems. His love of Beatrice de Bardi was an open secret--all
Florence knew of it. He had sung her beauty, her art, her intelligence
in a way that made both locally famous.

He had written a poem on the sixty chief belles of Florence, and in this
list he had not placed Beatrice first, but ninth. Just why he did this,
unless to emphasize his favorite number, we do not know. In any event it
made more talk than if he had placed her first.

And once at church where he had followed Beatrice, he made eyes openly
at another lady, to distract the attention of the observing public. The
plan worked so well that Beatrice, seeing the flirtation, shortly
afterward met Dante and cut him dead, or, to use his own phrase,
"withheld her salutation."

This caused the young man such bitter pain that he wrote a veiled poem,
explaining the actual facts. These facts were that out of his great love
for Beatrice, in order to protect her good name, he had openly made love
to another.

I said that the fact that Beatrice had declined to speak to Dante as
they passed by had caused him bitter pain. This is true; but after a few
days the matter took on a new light. If Beatrice was indifferent to
him, why should she be displeased when he had made eyes at another? She
evidently was jealous, and Dante was in a paradise of delight, or in
purgatory, or both, according to the way the wind sat.

There is no reason to suppose that Dante and Beatrice ever met and
talked things over.