Messer Folco had greatly changed in his bearing toward his
daughter, the which, indeed, he had already told me, and that he seemed
to understand, as it were, for the first time, how precious a life hers
was, and how lovely and how fragile. Severo believed that Messer Folco
would now be willing, if only he could liberate his child from the
weight of the Bardi name, to leave her all liberty of choice as to the
man she would wed, even if that man had neither wealth nor fame to back
him. Such changes of mood, the physician averred, were not uncommon in
men of Messer Folco's temperament, who are led by pride and vanity and
many selfish motives into some evil course without rightly appreciating
the fulness of the evil. But when, by some strange chance, their eyes
are cleansed to see the folly or the wickedness of their conduct, the
native goodness in them asserts itself very violently, to the complete
overthrow and banishment of the old disposition, and they are
straightway as steadfast in the good extreme as of old they had been
stubborn in the bad.

But what Messer Severo most spoke of was the strange delicacy of the
physical nature and composition of Beatrice. Never, he declared, in all
his long experience as a physician, had he met with any case like to
hers. Although she seemed to the beholder to carry the colors of health
in her cheeks and the form of health on her body, he asserted that she
was of so ethereal a creation that the vital essence was barely housed
by its tenement of flesh, and could, as he fancied, set itself free from
its trammels with well-nigh unearthly ease. All of which he dwelt upon,
because, being a man of science, it interested him mightily, and though
he loved the girl dearly, it did not enter his wise head that what he
said must cause a pang to the youth by his side, the youth who also
loved her. But Dante made no sign that he heeded him to his hurt, but
marched on doggedly, with a grim determination on a face that had aged
much in a few days.

Florence was quiet enough as they trudged along through the streets that
had been so crowded, so uproarious, yesterday. We soon settle down again
after one of our little upheavals, and whether the event has been
Guelph killing Ghibelline, or Yellow hounding Red, or Black baying at
White, the next morning sees the sensible Florentines going about their
affairs as composedly as if nothing ever had happened, or, indeed, ever
could happen, out of the common.