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Updated: June 26, 2025
At this moment came a rapping at his door. He went to open it, dreaming no harm. There stood Ridolfo and Ugolino with swords in their right hands; in his left Ugolino carried a brazier. "Gentlemen," said Cino, "what is the meaning of this? Will you break in upon the repose of your father's guest? And do you come armed against an unarmed man?"
Cino plunged into the icy pool of explanation, and splashed there at large. "I mean, I mean" he waved his hands in the air "it is most difficult to explain. We must apprehend Love aright if we can. He is a grim and dreadful lord, it appears, working out the salvation of the souls of poets, and other men, by great sufferings. There is no other way, as the books teach us.
'I kept my terms in Civil Law, he said, 'and made some progress; but I gave up the subject on becoming my own master, not because I disliked the Law, which no doubt is full of the Roman learning, but because it is so often perverted by evil-minded men. He seems to have worked for a time under his friend Cino of Pistoia, and to have attended the lectures of the jurist Andrea, whose daughter Novella is said to have sometimes taken the class 'with a little curtain in front of her beautiful face. While studying at Bologna, Petrarch made his first collection of books instead of devoting himself to the Law.
The lane was so narrow that only three could pass abreast; it was abreast these three were coming, as Cino saw. On a sudden his heart began to knock at his ribs; that was when the light fell aslant upon the maid. He could no more have taken his eyes off Selvaggia than he could have climbed up the dusty wall to avoid her.
The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante, showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so musical, that they are only surpassed by those of Dante, who, as the author of the "Vita Nuova," belongs to this lyric school.
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.
You are of course within your rights. However, I will beg leave to be excused the red pepper of Messer Ugolino." "You prefer coals?" cried Ugolino, starting up. "Good! you shall have them." That was all; but the malign smile upon the dark youth's face gave a ring to the words, and an omen. Late that night Cino was in his chamber writing a ballata.
Gianbattista, her youngest brother, was her bosom friend; but he was away, she knew, riding to Pisa with their father. Next to him ranked Nicoletta; she would be at mass to-morrow that would do. Meantime the cook produced a most triumphal cake hot and hot, and the transports of poor Messer Cino were forgotten.
For the early Italian poets, excepting Carducci's "Cino da Pistoia," my references are the same as those in Rossetti's "Dante and his Cycle," especially the "Rime Antiche" and the "Poeti del Primo Secolo." Professor d'Ancona's pleasant volume has greatly helped me in the history of the transformation of the courtly poetry of the early Middle Ages into the folk poetry of Tuscany.
This was chilly comfort; but by the time it reached him Cino was beyond the assault of chills. Equally interesting should it be to record the conversation of Monna Selvaggia with her discreet friend Nicoletta; yet I cannot record everything.
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