t also in general to the assembled company. Now, I had
never in all my life felt any kindly liking for Messer Simone, but I had
to confess to myself that he cut something of a flourishing figure just
then and just there. While all of us that were gathered under Messer
Folco's roof were habited in our best bravery of velvets and soft stuffs
and furs and such gold trinkets and jewels as it were in our power to
display, and so looked very frivolous and foppish and at ease, Messer
Simone dei Bardi came among us clad as a soldier-citizen of a great
Republic should be clad in time of danger to his nation. His huge bulk
was built about in steel, a great sword swung at his side, and though
his head was bare, a page in his livery stood close behind him resting
his master's helmet in the bend of his arm. So lapped in mail, so
menacing in carriage, Simone might have seemed some truculent effigy of
the god Mars suddenly appearing from the riven earth in a pastoral
gallantry of shepherds and shepherdesses.

What he was saying he was saying very clearly with the purpose that all
should hear, and I among the rest benefited by what he said. It was to
this effect: that our enemies the Aretines were planning a secret stroke
at Florence, knowledge of which had come to his patriotic ears; and
according to the estimation of his mind, it was no time for Florentine
citizens to be singing and dancing and making merry when there was a
stroke to be struck with a strong hand against her enemies.

These bellicose words of Messer Simone found their immediate echo in the
hearts of all men present; for to do us Florentines justice, we have
never loved frolicking so much that we did not like fighting a great
deal better, and we have never had private business or private pleasure
which we were not ready at a moment's notice to thrust on one side when
the great bell of the city sounded its warning of danger to the
Republic. So for the immediate time Messer Simone was the hour's hero,
and dancing and banqueting and laughing and love-making were clean
forgotten, and every youth and every mature man there present, and, for
that matter, every elder, too, was eager to ring himself in steel and to
teach the devils of Arezzo of what stuff a Florentine citizen was made.
I must honestly and soberly confess that I myself was so readily
intoxicated with the heady wine of the excitement about me that I found
myself cheering and shouting as lustily as the rest, for