f you ever love, if you are constant to any woman from
Springtime to the last leaf of Autumn, it will be to some fair creature
who dwells for ever, and only, in your imagination, whom you will never
press to your bosom. You poets love beauty, you love passion, you love all
things fair and great, and you make a vision of them all. You sing them,
and there's an end."

"Well, well," said the poet, warding off the attack with a smile, "I have
brought down, it seems, a severe castigation on myself."

"Dear, dear Petrarch! let it teach you never again to give advice to a
lover, unless it be to show him how, or where, he is to meet his mistress.
Fool that I am! she is, perhaps, all this time in the Church of St
Giovanni." And without another word he darted up a street that led to that
same church, leaving his friend to follow or not, as he pleased.

CHAPTER II.

There was, indeed, something like perversity, it must be allowed, in this
firm refusal of Constantia to reward so devoted an attachment. Even her
stern, grave uncle, whose judicial functions were not likely to give him
much leisure or disposition to interfere with the love affairs of his
niece, had dropt a hint that the suit of Giacomo da Valencia would not be
displeasing to himself. Bologna could not have supplied a more fitting
match; our lover, therefore, was not guilty of presumption, though of much
obstinacy. It was his _right_, this blessed hand of Constantia--he felt it
was his right, and he would win it.

Some _one_, some _day_, she must surely love, he argued to himself, and
why not me? and why not now? Oh, could I but plead my passion, he would
say, alone,--pour it out unrestrained at her feet, she would surely see
how _reasonable_ it was that she should love, that she ought, that she
must! To his excited and impetuous mood of mind, it appeared that nothing
but the artificial barrier which the customs of society interposed in
their intercourse, prevented his success. He could never see her alone,
never speak unreservedly and passionately. The presence of others imposed
restraints on both; and if an opportunity occurred to speak without being
overheard, the few moments were filled with embarrassment by reason of
their brief and precarious tenure. Nay, what were a few moments to him who
had so full a heart to utter? "Oh, could I place her _there_!" he would
exclaim, pointing to the upper end of the spacious room he occupied, "and
there kneel down, and pra