by the hand and
drew him a little nearer to where the girl lay, and Love stooped down
and kissed the white face of Beatrice--kissed her on the forehead and on
the lidded eyes and on the pale lips. Dante heard the voice of the God,
that said, "It is your love that kisses her thus." But Dante spoke no
word, and there were no tears in his eyes; only he stood there a little
while looking at Beatrice, and then he turned and went his ways,
unquestioned and unstayed, back to his own place. When Messer Guido and
I came to him later we found him sitting all alone in his chamber
looking at a little unfinished drawing of an angel, and murmuring to
himself, over and over again, "How doth the city sit solitary that was
full of people? How is she become a widow?"

* * * * *

Here my tale comes to an end. The rascal Maleotti confessed later, on
being put to the question, that it was his master, Simone dei Bardi, who
sent to Madonna Beatrice the casket containing the rose, and that the
petals of the rose had been poisoned by a cunning leech that was in
Messer Simone's service, for Messer Simone was sure that Beatrice would
think it came from Dante, and Messer Simone was of a mind that if he
could not have Beatrice no one else should have her. But when Simone
heard from Maleotti of Dante's visit to the Portinari palace so soon
after the sending of the casket, he felt sure that Dante would deny, as
Dante did deny, the sending of the rose, and that the evil thing would
scarcely have had time to effect its purpose. Then the flames of his
jealousy blazed hotter within him, and he thought that Dante's presence
in the palace would be an excuse for him to break the peace that had
been put upon him, and that he might, after all, win Beatrice for
himself. In this, as you know, he failed, and it is my belief that he
failed in the first part of his plotting, for Messer Tommaso Severo,
that had examined the rose, gave it as his opinion that though the
petals had been impregnated with some kind of venom, their odor had not
been inhaled by Beatrice sufficiently long to cause any malignant
effect, and he affirmed that the fair lady's death was due solely to the
woful agitations of the last hours of her life acting upon a body ever
too frail to house so fine a spirit. However that may be, and I hope it
was so, we found great satisfaction in the hanging of Maleotti. We
would have hanged the leech, too, whom Maleotti accus