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Ridolfo and Ugolino were booted and spurred, their hooded hawks were on their wrists when she got speech of them. They were not very willing witnesses in a cause which now seemed to tell against themselves. Selvaggia's cheeks burned as with poor Cino's live coal when she could piece together all the shameful truth; tears brimmed at her eyes, and these too were scalding hot.
You must have a man drubbed if you want to laugh, and do your rogueries with a pleasant grin if you are inclined to heroism. Ridolfo, reading Selvaggia's sheaf of rhymes that night, was for running Master Cino through the body, jurist or no jurist; but Ugolino saw his way to a jest of the most excellent quality, and prevailed. He was much struck by the poet's preoccupation with his sister's eyes.
Then, feigning a tiff, he would close his manuscript, and all the ladies with their birdlike voices would beseech him with "Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on again; it's SO charming!" while, as if by accident, Madonna Selvaggia's moonlike bosom would once more slip out its heavenly silver, perceiving which, Messer Firenzuola would open his manuscript again and proceed with his sweet learning.
There is hardly a sonnet, there are certainly neither ballate, canzoni, nor capitoli which do not contain some reference to Monna Selvaggia's fine eyes, and always to the same tune. They hold lurking a thief to prey upon the vitals of Cino; they are traitors, cruel lances; they kill him by stabbing day after day.
To embarrass this demure professor, to presume upon her sex while discarding it, was a great joke after a tediously droned mass at San Jacopo. Nicoletta would have made room, even the hardier Guglielmotta drew back; but the wicked Selvaggia pinched their fingers so that they could not escape. All this time Messer Cino had his eyes rooted in Selvaggia's, reading her as if she were a portent.
Thus he would refer to the shape of Madonna Lampiada's sumptuous eyelids, and to her shell-like ears, to the correct length and shape of Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily tower of Madonna Verdespina's throat; nor would the unabashed old Florentine shrink from calling attention to the unfairness of Madonna Selvaggia's covering up her dainty bosom, just as he was about to discourse upon "those two hills of snow and of roses with two little crowns of fine rubies on their peaks."
So at least he had always believed; but now, but now! A beam of gold dust shot down upon the central head. This was Aglaia, fairest of the three Graces; and the other two were Euphrosyne and Thaleia, her handmaids. Thus it struck Cino, heart and head, at this sublime moment of his drab-coloured life. Selvaggia's hair was brown, gold-shot of its own virtue.
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