ension, and might
perplex me. But proudest of all was I when you began to reason with
me. What will now be my pride if you are convinced by the first
arguments I ever have opposed to you; or if you only take them up and
try if they are applicable. Certainly do I know (indeed, indeed I do)
that even the patience to consider them will make you happier. Will it
not then make me so? I entertain no other wish. Is not this true love?

_Dante._ Ah, yes! the truest, the purest, the least perishable, but
not the sweetest. Here are the rue and hyssop; but where the rose?

_Beatrice._ Wicked must be whatever torments you: and will you let
love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of God. Are you
willing that the tempter should intercept it, and respire it polluted
into your ear? Do not make me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you,
nor tremble lest she look down on you with a reproachful pity. To her
alone, O Dante, dare I confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my
confidence in my only refuge.

_Dante._ God annihilate a power so criminal! Oh, could my love flow
into your breast with hers! It should flow with equal purity.

_Beatrice._ You have stored my little mind with many thoughts; dear
because they are yours, and because they are virtuous. May I not, O my
Dante! bring some of them back again to your bosom; as the _contadina_
lets down the string from the cottage-beam in winter, and culls a few
bunches of the soundest for the master of the vineyard? You have not
given me glory that the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove
that I am worthy of the smallest part of it, I must obey God; and,
under God, my father. Surely the voice of Heaven comes to us audibly
from a parent's lips. You will be great, and, what is above, all
greatness, good.

_Dante._ Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice, have you spoken in
this estimate. Greatness is to goodness what gravel is to porphyry:
the one is a movable accumulation, swept along the surface of the
earth; the other stands fixed and solid and alone, above the violence
of war and of the tempest; above all that is residuous of a wasted
world. Little men build up great ones; but the snow colossus soon
melts: the good stand under the eye of God; and therefore stand.

_Beatrice._ Now you are calm and reasonable, listen to me, Bice. You
must marry.

_Dante._ Marry?

_Beatrice._ Unless you do, how can we meet again unreservedly? Worse,
worse than ever! I cannot bear to see