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Severo informed Dante that Folco was within, but keeping his rooms in much gloom because of all that had occurred, and the physician made no offer to bring Dante to his presence. After a time Severo came to a halt before a certain door, on which he knocked again three times, as before. One of Beatrice's women answered his summons, and after a moment's whispered colloquy the girl withdrew.
And even as she did so she reeled backward in a swoon, and would have fallen upon the marble pavement if Messer Severo, that was watching her, had not sprung timely forward and caught her in his arms. I must, in the fulness of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor of Messer Simone dei Bardi.
With the next morning there came one to my abode asking to have speech with me, and when I went to see who it was I found that my visitor was none other than Messer Tommaso Severo, that was so long physician to the Portinari family.
Between him and Simone stood his doomed daughter, Beatrice, resting a little on the arm of her physician, Messer Tommaso Severo, and pale with such a paleness as I never yet saw upon the face of a woman, living or dead. It was, as who should say, a kind of frozen paleness, the pallor of a marble statue, the outward sign of a sorrow so great that time could never soften its sting.
An instant later Severo pushed Dante into the room, and Dante found himself in the presence of Beatrice. As Dante entered the room, Beatrice rose from the couch and advanced toward him with extended hands. "You are welcome, friend," she said. Dante looked upon her paleness, and trembled and hardly knew what to say. "My lady, my dear lady " he began, and paused and looked at her wistfully.
Severo believed that Messer Folco would now be willing, if only he could liberate his child from the weight of the Bardi name, to leave her all liberty of choice as to the man she would wed, even if that man had neither wealth nor fame to back him.
And in the Chapel of the Madonna in S. Severo, a little monastery of the Order of Camaldoli, in the same city, he painted in fresco a Christ in Glory, and a God the Father with angels round Him, and six saints seated, S. Benedict, S. Romualdo, S. Laurence, S. Jerome, S. Mauro, and S. Placido, three on either side; and on this picture, which was held at that time to be most beautiful for a work in fresco, he wrote his name in large and very legible letters.
It seems that when the morning came Madonna Beatrice showed herself unexpectedly and unfamiliarly opposed, not merely to her parent's wish, but to her parent's commands. Messer Folco, who had not seen his daughter since the previous night, when she fell swooning in the arms of Messer Tommaso Severo, at first could not believe in her opposition.
Hearing people coming, Teodora hides herself in Ernesto's bedroom, where she is discovered by her husband's attendants. Don Julián, wounded and enfevered, now at last believes the worst. Ernesto seeks and slays Don Julián's assailant. But now the whole world credits what the whole world has been whispering. In vain Ernesto and Teodora protest their innocence to Don Severo and to Doña Mercedes.
When the sorely frightened girl had gone, there was silence for a little while on the loggia, while the perplexed friends stared at each other's blanched faces, until presently the little door opened again and Monna Beatrice came forth from it, and saluted her father very sweetly and gravely, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, though some thought, and Messer Tommaso Severo knew, that there was a troubled look in her usually serene eyes.
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