e describes what he calls "a battle of
thoughts" concerning Love within his mind, and then goes on to relate
that it happened one day that he was taken, by a friend who thought to
give him pleasure, to a feast at which many ladies were present. "They
were assembled," he says, "to attend a lady who was married that day,
and, according to the custom of the city, they bore her company at her
first sitting at table in the dwelling of her new husband." Dante,
believing thus to do pleasure to his friend, proposed to stand in
waiting upon these ladies. But at the moment of this intention he felt a
sudden tremor, which caused him to lean for support against a painting
which ran round the wall,[I] and, raising his eyes, he beheld Beatrice.
His confusion became apparent; and the ladies, not excepting Beatrice
herself, laughed at his strange appearance. Then his friend took him
from their presence, and having asked him what so ailed him, Dante
replied, "I have set my feet on that edge of life beyond which no man
can go with intent to return." Then leaving him, he went to the chamber
of tears, weeping and ashamed; and in his trouble he wrote a sonnet to
Beatrice, in which he says, that, if she had known the cause of his
trouble, he believes that she would have felt pity for him.[J]

[Footnote I: This is, perhaps, the earliest reference in modern
literature to the use of painting as a decoration for houses. It is
probable that it was a recent application of the art, and resulted from
the revival of interest in its works which accompanied the revival of
the art. We shall have occasion again to note a reference to painting.]

[Footnote J: To this period, apparently, belong Sonnets xxix. and xxx.
of the general collection. The last may not unlikely have been omitted
in the _Vita Nuova_ on account of the tenderness with which the death of
Beatrice had invested every memory of her, preventing the insertion of a
poem which might seem harsh in its expression:--

"I curse the day on which I first beheld
The light of thy betraying eyes."
]

The foregoing passage, like many others in the "Vita Nuova," is full of
the intense and exaggerated expressions of passionate feeling. But this
feeling is recorded with a frank simplicity which carries conviction
of the sincerity of emotion. It may be laughed at, but it cannot be
doubted. It is possible, though hardly probable, that the scene took
place at the wedding festival of Beatrice herself.