’I will speak first of the Duchess, to whom I delivered your letter. She is a most sweet lady, with eyes, so kind and loving were they, they made me think of those soft stars which light the flocks to fold. She asked me did I remember my mother? "That is a strange question," quoth I, "to a foundling." "Ah!" said she, "poor child! I had forgot how thou fell’st, a star, into Mary’s lap. I would have taken care, for my part, not so to tumble out of heaven." "Nay," I said, "but if thou, a mother there, hadst let slip thy baby first?" "What," she said, looking at me so strange and wistful, "did she follow, then?" My father, thou know’st my fancies. "I cannot tell," I said. "Sometimes, in a dream, the dim, sad shadow of a woman’s face seems to hang over me lying on that altar." She held out her arms to me, then withdrew them, and she was weeping. "We are all wicked," she cried; "there is no heart, nor faith, nor virtue, in any of us!" and she ran away lamenting. Now, was not that strange? for she is in truth a lady of great virtue, a pure wife and mother, and to me most sweet-forgiving for an ill-favour I was forced to do her upon one of her servants. But not women nor men know their own hearts. They wear the devil’s livery for fashion’s sake, when he introduces it on a pretty sister or young gentleman, and so believe themselves bound to his service. But it is as easy as talking to make virtue the mode. Thou shalt see. ’Does not the beautiful Duomo itself stand in their midst, the fairest earnest of their true piety? Could intrinsic baseness conceive this ethereal fabric, or, year by year, graft it with sprigs of new loveliness? There is that in them yet like a little child that stretches out its arms to the sky. ’I have, besides the greatest, two converts, or half-converts, already, my dear Carlo and his Fool. The former is a great bull gallant, whom a spark will set roaring and a kiss allay. I love him greatly, and he bellows and prances, and swearing "I will not" follows to the pipe of peace. Alas! if I could woo him from a great wrong! It will happen, when men see honour whole, and not partisanly. In the meantime I have every reason to be charitable to that lady Beatrice, sith she holds herself my mortal enemy. And indeed I excuse her for myself, but not for the honest soul she keeps in thrall. My father, is it not a strange paradox, that holding the senses such a rich possession and life so cheap? Here is one would prolong the body’s pleasure to eternity, yet at any moment will risk its destruction for a spite. Nathless she is warm, loamy soil for the bearing of our right lily of love, and some day shall be fruitful in cleanliness.