"Venus, my Patroness! what a pass have his books brought my handsome St.
George to! He is good for naught now but to throw away his lance and
hold a writing-reed in hand instead." So they miscalled him sore, saying
he toyed only with the bookworms and spiders, and was tied to the
apron-strings of Mistress Philosophia. Nor did they stop short at
such-like light raillery, but let it be understood he was too learned by
far to be a good Christian, that he was given over to Magic Arts, and
held converse with the Devils of Hell.

"Folk do not lurk in hiding like that," they said to each other, "for
any reason but to foregather with the Devils, male and female, and get
gold of them as the price of revolting and shameful acts."

To crown all, they charged him with sharing those false and pernicious
doctrines of Epicurus which had already seduced an Emperor at Naples and
a Pope in Rome, and threatened to turn the peoples of Europe into a herd
of swine, without a thought of God and their own immortal souls. "A
mighty fine gain," they ended up, "when his studies have brought him to
forswear the Holy Trinity!" This last charge they bruited abroad was the
most formidable of all, and might easily work ruin on Messer Guido.

Now Messer Guido Cavalcanti was well aware of the mockery they made of
him in the Companies by reason of the careful heed he had of eternal
things; and this was why he shunned the society of living men and sought
rather to the dead.

In those days the Church of San Giovanni was surrounded with Roman
tombs. Thither would Messer Guido often come at _Ave Maria_ and meditate
far into the silent night. He believed, as the Chronicles reported, that