o your taste?"

We watched Dante examining the manuscripts eagerly, and putting the most
part of them impatiently aside. One seemed to attract his attention, for
he gave it a second and more careful glance, and then addressed the
bookseller. "This seems to be a knightly tale," he said, extending the
volume. "What do you ask for it?"

The bookseller took the manuscript from him, glanced at it, and then
handed it back to him. "Take it or leave it, three florins is its
price."

We heard Dante sigh a little, and we saw Dante smile a little, and he
answered the bookseller, humorously: "My purse is as lean as Pharaoh's
kine, but the story opens bravely, and a good tale is better than
shekels or bezants. What do you buy with your money that is worth what
you sell for it?"

The bookseller shrugged his stooped shoulders. "Food and drink and the
poor rags that Adam's transgression enforces on us."

Dante laughed at his conceit. "You are a merry peddler," he said, and
took out of his pouch a few coins, from which he counted scrupulously
the sum that the bookseller had asked, and gave it to him. Then he moved
slowly away from the stall, reading in his new purchase until he came to
the fountain that had the painted statue over it. There he sat himself
down on a stone bench in the angle of the wall and buried himself in his
book.

And by now we were resolved to address him, but again we were diverted
from our purpose, for there came by a little company of merrymakers,
youths and maidens, that were making sport as is fit for such juvenals
in that season of felicity which is named May-day. Some had pipes and
some had lutes and some had tambourines, and all were singing as loud as
they could and making as much noise as they might, and when they came
into the open space hard by the fountain they paused for a while in
their progress, and broke into as lively a morris-dance as ever I had
seen skipped. How they twisted and turned and tripped; how bravely they
made music; how lustily they sang. I recall them now, those bright
little human butterflies. I can see the pretty faces and slim figures of
the girls, the blithe carriage of the lads. The musical tumult that they
make seems to be ringing in my ears as I write, and my narrow room
widens to its harmony.

But would you believe it, no sound of all that singing and dancing
served to rouse Messer Dante for one moment from his book. Though the
air was full of shrill voices and sweet