as hostile to my rhyming as the muses had
been, and after a little while, when I had drunk a toast to some half a
dozen sweetnesses that were then very dear to me, what must I do but
fall into the depths of a very profound sleep.

How long I lay in that lethargy I do not know; only I remember dreaming
incoherent and distorted dreams, because, after all, a chair is no
proper place in which to seek slumber. I thought I was wandering in a
wood where satyrs grinned at me and nymphs eluded me, and where I was
mightily vexed at my ill fortune. Then suddenly all the trees began to
talk at the tops of their voices, and though it did not surprise me in
the least that trees could talk, yet it annoyed me that I could not hear
what they said, because of their all talking together, and in my
indignation I awoke to find that the trees were still talking as it
seemed, and that the sound of their voices filled the chamber where I
sat uncomfortably enough, staring about me with drowsy eyes. All of a
sudden I realized that the noises I heard were the voices of no trees,
but the clamor of human voices in the streets outside, and that they
swelled to a great roar of menace and alarm and anger.

You may believe that I was up and awake in a twinkling, and that I
caught up my sword as a wise citizen does when there is brawling abroad
in the streets of Florence, and in less time than I take to tell it I
was out of my house and in the open, looking eagerly about me. The
street was all full of people running and shouting as they ran, and man
caught at man as they ran and asked questions and was answered, and I
heard the name of Simone dei Bardi and of the Portinari palace, and that
was enough for me. If I had borne wings on my heels, like Hermes of
old, or carried a pair on each shoulder, like Zetes and Calais of pagan
memory, I could scarcely have sped swifter than I did along the streets
of Florence, threading my way with amazing dexterity through the throng
that hurried, like me, in the same direction. In a few wild minutes I
found myself in the Place of the Holy Felicity, which was now no other
than a camping-ground for two opposing forces under arms. As I began to
realize what these opposing forces were, I also realized that the time
of the day was long past noon, and that I must have slept my heavy,
dream-disturbed sleep for some hours that were eventful hours to many
that were familiar to me.

Let me try and present a picture of what I