and comfortless.
Yesterday he sent me a bunch of violets. When I took them up,
delighted as I felt at that sweetest of odours, which you and I once
inhaled together....

_Dante._ And only once.

_Beatrice._ You know why. Be quiet now, and hear me. I dropped the
posy; for around it, hidden by various kinds of foliage, was twined
the bridal necklace of pearls. O Dante, how worthless are the finest
of them (and there are many fine ones) in comparison with those little
pebbles, some of which (for perhaps I may not have gathered up all)
may be still lying under the peach-tree, and some (do I blush to say
it?) under the fig! Tell me not who threw these, nor for what. But you
know you were always thoughtful, and sometimes reading, sometimes
writing, and sometimes forgetting me, while I waited to see the
crimson cap, and the two bay-leaves I fastened in it, rise above the
garden-wall. How silently you are listening, if you do listen!

_Dante._ Oh, could my thoughts incessantly and eternally dwell among
these recollections, undisturbed by any other voice ... undistracted
by any other presence! Soon must they abide with me alone, and be
repeated by none but me ... repeated in the accents of anguish and
despair! Why could you not have held in the sad home of your heart
that necklace and those violets?

_Beatrice._ My Dante! we must all obey ... I my father, you your God.
He will never abandon you.

_Dante._ I have ever sung, and will for ever sing, the most glorious
of His works: and yet, O Bice! He abandons me, He casts me off; and He
uses your hand for this infliction.

_Beatrice._ Men travel far and wide, and see many on whom to fix or
transfer their affections; but we maidens have neither the power nor
the will. Casting our eyes on the ground, we walk along the straight
and narrow road prescribed for us; and, doing this, we avoid in great
measure the thorns and entanglements of life. We know we are
performing our duty; and the fruit of this knowledge is contentment.
Season after season, day after day, you have made me serious, pensive,
meditative, and almost wise. Being so little a girl, I was proud that
you, so much taller, should lean on my shoulder to overlook my work.
And greatly more proud was I when in time you taught me several Latin
words, and then whole sentences, both in prose and verse, pasting a
strip of paper over, or obscuring with impenetrable ink, those
passages in the poets which were beyond my compreh