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I have seen in the depths of her soul such treasures that the beautiful line of Dante on eternal happiness, which I heard her interpreting to you the other day, "Senza brama sicura ricchezza," seems as if made for her. She has talked to me of her career; she has related her life, showing me how love, that object of our prayers, our dreams, has ever eluded her.
Against the dark background of the abominations committed by harsh rulers and worthless officials, the spectacle of these simple souls recalls those angels described by Dante, who give scarcely a sign of life and yet illuminate by their very presence the fearful darkness of hell; or those beautiful Greek sarcophagi upon which fair and graceful scenes are depicted upon a background of desolation.
"D'you remember that day in London when I burst in upon your solitude with Dante, and was actually jealous of the 'Paradiso'?" "Yes," she said, smiling. "But you forgave me, or I shouldn't be here now." He gave her his cup for some more tea. "You can't imagine how absolutely wonderful it is to me to be here after what I've been through."
Pilgrimages were made to the poet's tomb. And later on he was raised to the rank of a saint by Dante. A caravan was encamped on a height eastward of the ancient Egyptian town Heliopolis. There were many people in it, but all were Hebrews. They had come on camels and asses from Palestine through the desert the same desert which the Israelites had passed through thousands of years before.
Horror upon horror follows, like those pictured a hundred years before by Herrad von Landsperg, abbess at Hohenburg, in Alsace, and, fifty years later, by Dante, and when she concludes by saying that, after seeing the terrors of Hell, all her five senses were paralysed for three days, as if struck by lightning, it is significant that Dante tells that, overwhelmed with sorrow for the lovers, doomed for ever to be borne upon the winds, he “fainted with pity ... and fell, as a dead body falls.”
Pantaleone promptly put on a displeased air, frowned, ruffled up his hair, and declared that he had given it all up long ago, though he could certainly in his youth hold his own, and indeed had belonged to that great period, when there were real classical singers, not to be compared to the squeaking performers of to-day! and a real school of singing; that he, Pantaleone Cippatola of Varese, had once been brought a laurel wreath from Modena, and that on that occasion some white doves had positively been let fly in the theatre; that among others a Russian prince Tarbusky 'il principe Tarbusski' with whom he had been on the most friendly terms, had after supper persistently invited him to Russia, promising him mountains of gold, mountains!... but that he had been unwilling to leave Italy, the land of Dante il paese del Dante!
He ranks with Conde, Henry IV., Frederic the Great, Marlborough, and Wellington; not, perhaps, with Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, those phenomena of military genius, the exalted trio who shine amid the glories of the battlefield, as Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare loom up in fame above other immortal poets.
He could say with Dante, that "no word had ever forced him to say what he would not, though he had forced many a word to say what it would not," but only in the sense that the mighty magic of his imagination had conjured out of it its uttermost secret of power or pathos.
So Messer Guido stood between Dante and Simone, looking from one to the other of the pair and waiting for his answer. Dante answered in a kind of ironic simplicity, and he seemed to me as I looked upon him like a man exalted out of all reason by some great joy. "It is but a gardener's wrangle how best to guard roses from slugs."
'You can't let everything go, because there's a war. 'I see! You remind me of a man I know, who's translating Dante. He's just over military age, and there he sits in a Devonshire valley, with a pile of books. I happen to know a particular department in a public office that's a bit hustled for want of men, and I suggested that he should lend a hand.
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