ok when
we read, our feet walked in equal step. Life was one long kiss, our home
was a nest.

"'One day, for the first time, Teresa turned pale and said, "I am in
pain!"--And I was not in pain!

"'She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her golden hair
fade--and I did not die! She smiled to hide her sufferings, but I could
read them in her blue eyes, of which I could interpret the slightest
trembling. "Honorino, I love you!" said she, at the very moment when her
lips turned white, and she was clasping my hand still in hers when death
chilled them. So I killed myself that she might not lie alone in her
sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is above and I am here.
I could not bear to leave her, but God has divided us. Why, then, did
He unite us on earth? He is jealous! Paradise was no doubt so much the
fairer on the day when Teresa entered in.

"'Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted from me!
Paradise must be a desert to her.'

"'Master,' said I with tears, for I thought of my love, 'when this one
shall desire Paradise for God's sake alone, shall he not be delivered?'
And the Father of Poets mildly bowed his head in sign of assent.

"We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise than the birds
that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in the shade of a tree. It
would have been vain to try to check the hapless shade in his blasphemy.
It is one of the griefs of the angels of darkness that they can never
see the light even when they are surrounded by it. He would not have
understood us."

At this moment the swift approach of many horses rang through the
stillness, the dog barked, the constable's deep growl replied; the
horsemen dismounted, knocked at the door; the noise was so unexpected
that it seemed like some sudden explosion.

The two exiles, the two poets, fell to earth through all the space that
divides us from the skies. The painful shock of this fall rushed through
their veins like strange blood, hissing as it seemed, and full of
scorching sparks. Their pain was like an electric discharge. The loud,
heavy step of a man-at-arms sounded on the stairs with the iron clank of
his sword, his cuirass, and spurs; a soldier presently stood before the
astonished stranger.

"We can return to Florence," said the man, whose bass voice sounded soft
as he spoke in Italian.

"What is that you say?" asked the old man.

"The _Bianchi_ are triumphant."

"Are you not mista