[Footnote 2: "To the Gods of the Lower World.--I was not. I remember. I
am not and I heed not. I, Donnia Italia, a maid of twenty, rest here."]


Messer Guido Cavalcanti was, in the twentieth year of his age, the most
agreeable and the best-built man of all the Florentine nobles. Beneath
his long, dark locks, which escaping from under his cap, fell in jetty
curls over his white brow, his eyes, that had a golden gleam in them,
shone out with a dazzling brilliance. He possessed the arms of Hercules
and the hands of a Nymph. His shoulders were broad, and his figure slim
and supple. He was well skilled in breaking difficult horses and
wielding heavy weapons, and a peerless rider at the ring. Whenever he
passed along the city streets to hear Mass at San Giovanni or San
Michele, or walked by Arno side in the water-meadows, that were pranked
with flowers like a beautiful picture, if any fair ladies, going in a
troop together, met him in the way, they never failed to say the one to
the other with a blush: "See, yonder is Messer Guido, son of the Lord
Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. 'Tis a very St. George for comeliness,
pardi!" And men report that Madonna Gemma, wife of Sandro Bujamonte, one
day sent her Nurse to let him know how she loved him with all her soul,
and was like to die of longing. Nor less ardently was he invited to join
the Companies the young Florentine lords were used in those days to form
among themselves, feasting, supping, gaming and hunting together, and
sometimes so dearly loving each other that one and all would wear
garments of a like cut and colour. But with equal disdain he shunned the
society of Florentine ladies and the assemblages of her young Nobles;
for so proud and fierce was his humour, he took no pleasure but in
solitude.

He would often stay all the day shut up in his chamber, then forth to