d to pay no heed to the impatience or the disdain of his
master. He went on talking as if he were talking to himself, or to some
congenial companion such as I would be.

"Sometimes I dream of that laurel-tree, and then I wake with joy in my
heart and verses humming in my brain. They vanish when I try to set them
down, but they sweeten the leave of the day."

I think Messer Brunetto did not like the turn which his pupil's thoughts
had taken. "Dreams are but dreams," he answered, impatiently. "Wisdom,
philosophy, these are the true treasures. There is no harm in a Latin
ode after the manner of Messer Ovidius, but for the most part poets or
those that call themselves such are foolish fellows enough, and keep
very bad company. Ply your book, my son, and avoid them."

"Messer Guido Cavalcanti is a poet," Dante objected, firmly, yet gently,
for he was speaking to his elder, and to a very great and famous man,
and he always carried himself with a becoming reverence to those that
should be revered.

The scholar smiled a little acidly. "He is of a noble house, and he may
divert himself with such trifles and no harm done."

Then I saw Dante raise his head, and his eyes flashed and his cheeks
flushed. "I, too, am of a noble house," he asserted, proudly; and indeed
this was true, for he could claim descent from people of very pretty
genealogy. "I, too, am of a noble house," he insisted. "I derive from
the Alighieri of Ferrara, the Frangipani of Rome. Heaven my witness,
that matters little, but to be a great poet would matter much."

Messer Brunetto patted my Dante very kindly on the shoulder, and looked
at him with the look that old men wear when they are advising young men.

"I have better hopes for you," he declared, "for I swear you have in you
the makings of a pretty scholar."

He smiled as he spoke, paternally, as one that feels he has spoken the
last word that has any need to be spoken on any matter of dispute.

But Dante seemed to be little impressed by his advice, and he showed his
own thoughts in his words, for when he spoke it was rather as if he were
speaking to himself than to his companion. "Am I a fool to feel these
stirrings of the spirit? God knows. But my dreams are full of stars and
angels, and the sound of sweet words like many winds and many waters.
And then I wake in an exultation and the words die on my lips."

Messer Brunette lifted his hands in protest. "Thank Heaven they do die.
It must needs be s