higher up," she said to me, "according to whose rule, in your
world below, there are who vest and veil themselves, so that till
death they may wake and sleep with that Spouse who accepts every
vow which love conforms unto His pleasure. A young girl, I fled
from the world to follow her, and in her garb I shut myself, and
pledged me to the pathway of her order. Afterward men, more used
to ill than good, dragged me forth from the sweet cloister;[2]
and God knows what then my life became. And this other splendor,
which shows itself to thee at my right side, and which glows with
all the light of our sphere, that which I say of me understands
of herself.[3] A sister was she; and in like manner from her head
the shadow of the sacred veils was taken. But after she too was
returned unto the world against her liking and against good
usage, from the veil of the heart she was never unbound.[4] This
is the light of the great Constance,[5] who from the second
wind of Swabia produced the third and the last power."

[1] To learn from her what was the vow which she did not
fulfil.

[2] According to the old commentators, her brother Corso forced
Piccarda by violence to leave the convent, in order to make a
marriage which he desired for her.

[3] Her experience was similar to that of Piccarda.

[4] She remained a nun at heart.

[5] Constance, daughter of the king of Sicily, Roger 1.; married,
in 1186, to the Emperor, Henry VI., the son of Frederick