We are not sure, but we fancy we catch the momentary flicker of a
smile across those serious eyes of Dante's. There is something like
humor in the opening verses of the XVI. Paradiso, where Dante tells
us how even in heaven he could not help glorying in being gently
born,--he who had devoted a Canzone and a book of the Convito to
proving that nobility consisted wholly in virtue. But there is, after
all, something touchingly natural in the feeling. Dante, unjustly
robbed of his property, and with it of the independence so dear to
him, seeing
"Needy nothings trimmed in jollity,
And captive Good attending Captain Ill,"
would naturally fall back on a distinction which money could neither
buy nor replace. There is a curious passage in the Convito which
shows how bitterly he resented his undeserved poverty. He tells us
that buried treasure commonly revealed itself to the bad rather than
the good. "Verily I saw the place on the flanks of a mountain in
Tuscany called Falterona, where the basest peasant of the whole
countryside digging found there more than a bushel of pieces of the
finest silver, which perhaps had awaited him more than a thousand
years." (Tr. IV. c. 11.) One can see the grimness of his face as he
looked and thought, "how salt a savor hath the bread of others!"
[160] L'Envoi of Canzone XIV.
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