to one that writes verses?"

"Is there one in Florence," Dante asked, "that could not say as much?"
Then, as if to break away from bandying of compliments, he asked: "But
what were the rumors you spoke of?"

"Why," replied Guido, looking at him in some wonder, "here was the
daintiest festal ever devised: delicate youths and exquisite maidens
footing it to pipe and cymbal as blithely as if they would never grow
old."

Dante shook his head a little. "I did not mark them."

As for me, I marvelled, and I cried, "A beatific disposition that can
sleep in such a din."

But Dante reproved me with that gravity he always showed when there was
any matter of truth to be considered. "I did not sleep," he asserted. "I
read."

"What, in Heaven's name," asked Guido, "did you read, that could shut
your ears to such a din?"

Dante lifted up toward him the manuscript he had newly bought. "The
love-tale of Knight Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. The fellow that wrote
it discourses nothing but marvels."

Now I was curious, for I love all strange tales, and I questioned him:
"What marvels?"

Dante answered me smiling, and his face was always very sweet when he
smiled. "Why, the rogue will have it that when such a cavalier as
Lancelot tumbles into love he becomes a very ecstatic, and sees the
world as it never is, was, or shall be. The sun is no more than his
lady's looking-glass, and the moon and stars her candles to light her to
bed. You are a lover, Messer Guido. Do you think thus of your lady?"

Messer Guido answered emphatically, for he was indeed deep in love with
a lady well worth the loving. "Very surely and so will you when the
fever wrings you."

Dante turned to me, still with that same luminous smile on his face.
"And you, Lappo?"

Now, it was then and ever my creed that it is a man's best business to
be in love as much and as often as he can, and I answered him according
to my fancy. "I should scorn myself if I did not overtop every conceited
fancy that lover has ever sighed or sung for his lady."

Dante still smiled, but there was now a little scorn in his smile that
nettled me. "It is strange," he said. And then made a feint of returning
to his book, saying, "Well, I will read in my book again if you are no
wiser."

But Guido laid his hand upon the pages and protested. "Plague on your
reading, brother; you read too much. You are young to be so studious of
pothooks and hangers. The Book of Life is a brave book fo