h the house of Messer Folco as he
was with his own garret in the dwelling of Messer Simone dei Bardi, knew
that this gateway gave on a winding flight of stairs that led to an open
loggia, on the farther side of which lay the door of Madonna Beatrice's
apartments. Whereupon it pleased this Maleotti, putting two and two
together, after the manner of his kind, and making God knows what of
them, to be quick with villanous suspicions and to be pricked with a
violent desire to let his master know what had happened, partly, as I
believe, knowing the vile nature of the man, because he thought the
knowledge he had to impart might prove a little galling to his master.
However that may be, for in his damnable way he was a faithful servant
to his lord, he waited awhile until he saw that Beatrice walked on the
loggia and that Dante came to her, and that she seemed to greet him as
one expected. Now it taxes no more the wit of a rogue than the wit of an
honest man to guess that when two young people stand apart and talk, it
is God's gold to the devil's silver that they talk love-talk. So as
Maleotti had seen enough, and durst not go nearer to hear aught, he made
his way back as swiftly as he could through the green and silent garden
to the noisy rooms within the house where folk still were dancing and
singing and eating and drinking and making merry, as if they knew not
when they should be merry again.

High at the table Maleotti spied his master, Messer Simone. He had now
disarmed, and sat, very big with meat and drink and very red of face,
talking loudly to a company of obsequious gentlemen who thought, or
seemed to think, his utterances oracular. A good way off, at the head of
his own table, sat Messer Folco, grave and gray and smiling, his one
thought seeming to be that those that came under his roof should be
happy in their own way, so long as that way accorded with the decorum
expected of Florentine citizens. I fancy that his glance must have
fallen more than once, and that unadmiringly, upon that part of the
table where Messer Simone sat and babbled and brawled and drank, as if
drinking were a new fashion which he was resolved to test to the
uttermost. Messer Simone, being such a mighty giant of a man, was
appropriately mighty in his appetites, and could, I truly believe, eat
more and drink more, and in other animal ways enjoy himself more, than
any man in all Italy. But though he would, and often did, drink himself
drunk at th