on a high bay, rode one that at the first
glance I took for a youth, and that at the second glance I knew for
Madonna Vittoria in the habit of a youth. It became her plumpness very
lovingly, and, indeed, she looked very well with a scarlet cap set atop
of her twisted-up tresses and her eyes all fire with excitement. She
kept very close to Messer Griffo's side, and looked at him every now and
then as if she loved him, which, as I gathered thereafter, was exactly
what she did. It seems that well-nigh from the first the big Englishman
won her demi-Roman, semi-Grecian heart, and that while he was so smitten
with her as to do her will in that business of Arezzo and Messer Simone,
she, on her side, was so won by his willingness and his bulk and his
blunt love-making, that she cared no longer for the winning of that
wicked old wager, and had but one thought in her head, which was to
become the lawful wife of Messer Griffo of the Claw. This was an
arrangement of their joint affairs which Messer Griffo of the Claw was
very willing to make.

I did not know all this as I stood there in the Place of the Holy
Felicity, though I could guess at a good deal of it, for the tale of
Griffo's love for Vittoria and of Vittoria's love for Griffo was written
in the largest and plainest hand of write. But I could not guess the
causes that had brought Messer Simone and Messer Griffo thus face to
face before Messer Folco's house, in all this pomp and armament of
battle. But I had plenty of friends in the crowd to question, and by the
time that I had elbowed my way to the edge nearest to the
antagonists--aiding my advance by loud proclamations that I was one of
the Company of Death, a statement that insured me help and respect in my
advance--I had learned all that it was necessary for me to know in order
to understand the bellicose state of affairs. You shall understand them
in your turn, but in the first place it is necessary for me to tell what
had happened in those hours when I was snoring, and had led to the
facing of those two armed forces in the Place of the Holy Felicity and
in front of Messer Folco's home.

XXV

MEETING AND PARTING

Dante, when he left me, accompanied Messer Tommaso Severo to the house
of Folco Portinari. He was very silent on the way, thinking troubled
thoughts, but Messer Tommaso Severo talked, telling him many things to
which he listened heedfully in spite of his cares. Messer Tommaso Severo
told him that