o crown all, they charged him with sharing those false and pernicious
doctrines of Epicurus which had already seduced an Emperor at Naples and
a Pope in Rome, and threatened to turn the peoples of Europe into a herd
of swine, without a thought of God and their own immortal souls. "A
mighty fine gain," they ended up, "when his studies have brought him to
forswear the Holy Trinity!" This last charge they bruited abroad was the
most formidable of all, and might easily work ruin on Messer Guido.

Now Messer Guido Cavalcanti was well aware of the mockery they made of
him in the Companies by reason of the careful heed he had of eternal
things; and this was why he shunned the society of living men and sought
rather to the dead.

In those days the Church of San Giovanni was surrounded with Roman
tombs. Thither would Messer Guido often come at _Ave Maria_ and meditate
far into the silent night. He believed, as the Chronicles reported, that
this fair Church of San Giovanni had been a Pagan Temple before it was a
Christian Church, and the thought pleased his soul, which was enamoured
of the old-world mysteries. Especially he loved to look on these tombs,
where the sign of the Cross found no place, but which bore Latin
inscriptions and were adorned with carven figures of men and gods. They
were long cubes of white marble, on the sides of which could be made out
representations of banquets and hunting parties, the death of Adonis,
the fight of Lapithae and Centaurs, the refusal of the chaste Hippolytus,
the Amazons. Messer Guido would read the lettering with anxious care,
and try hard to penetrate the meaning of these fables. One tomb in
particular occupied him more than all the rest, for it showed him two
Loves, each holding a torch, and he was curious to discover the nature
of these two Loves. Well! one night that he was pondering on these
things more deeply than ever, a shadow rose up above the lid of the
tomb--a luminous shadow, as when you see, or fancy you see, the moon
shining faintly through a cloud. Gradually it took the shape of a
beautiful virgin, and said thus in a voice softer than the reeds waving
in the wind:

"I am she that sleeps within this tomb, and I am called Julia Laeta. I
lost the light on my marriage-day, at the age of sixteen years, three
months and nine days. Since then, whether I am, or am not, I cannot
tell. Never question the dead, stranger, for they see naught, and a
thick night environs them. 'Tis sa