fficulties with a dauntless spirit, and that no enemy or bunch of
enemies would ever get the better of that so long as it still held a
lodging within the carnal house. If I was glad, on the whole, that I was
not in Messer Dante's shoes, I may say very truly that I did not think
any the better of myself then, and do not think any the better of myself
now, for being so glad. But it is well to know one's own boundaries, and
I knew very well that I was never made for Dante's loves or Dante's
hates or Dante's adventures on life's highway. Well, if there must be
knights-errant, there must also be more easy-going, flower-picking
pilgrims in the pageant of life.

XXIV

BREAKING THE PEACE

Now, of course, it is one thing to put the Peace of the City upon a man,
and another thing to make him abide by his peaceful promise. Messer
Simone had put his pledge, with his palm and fingers, into the hand of
the Captain of the People, but he had done so because at the given
instant he could not very well see that there was anything else for him
to do--as, indeed, there was not. But Simone was never a man to give
undue weight to the words or forms of a foolish ceremony if the
ceremonial stood in the way of anything he wished to accomplish and saw
the chance of accomplishing. Therefore, Messer Simone did not intend to
keep the Peace of the City a moment longer than was convenient for him.
But before deciding to break it he had other things to do which he set
about doing with all possible dispatch.

In the first place, he was very wild to know how he had been baffled and
bubbled in the business of the Aretine expedition, and who had played
him false in that matter. Interrogation of Maleotti made it plain to
him that Maleotti had acted in good faith if Maleotti had acted
foolishly. He had been confident, and, as Simone could not but admit,
reasonably confident, that when he saw the little fellowship of the
Company of Death ride into the wood with Griffo's lances about them and
Griffo's Dragon-flag above them, that they would never emerge alive from
the wood, but would leave their bones to whiten amid its leaves. Why,
then, had Messer Griffo been untrue to his promise? Simone could not
admit that any arguments or promises of his intended victims would have
had power to stay his lifted sword, for there was no one in all their
number who could pay down the money that Simone could pay down; and as
to argument, Griffo of the Dragon-flag