only grieves me, sweet friend, and it is that I cannot bid you farewell at this bitter parting, but accept for excuse that you are the cause of it. Oh, Nisida, Nisida! how true is it of your beauty, that he who dares to look upon it must needs atone for his fault by the penalty of dying for it! Silerio saw it, and if he had not been so struck with it as I believe he has been, he would have lost with me much of the reputation he had for discretion. But since my fortune has so willed it, let Heaven know that I am no less Silerio's friend than he is mine; and, as tokens of this truth, let Timbrio part himself from his glory, exile himself from his bliss, and go wandering from land to land, away from Silerio and Nisida, the two true and better halves of his soul." And straightway, with much passion, he rose from the bed, opened the door, and finding me there said to me: "What do you want, friend, at such an hour? Is there perchance any news?" "Such news there is," I answered him, "that I had not been sorry though it were less." In a word, not to weary you, I got so far with him, that I persuaded him and gave him to understand that his fancy was false, not as to the fact of my being in love, but as to the person with whom, for it was not with Nisida, but with her sister Blanca; and I knew how to tell him this in such a way that he counted it true. And that he might credit it the more, memory offered me some stanzas which I myself had made many days before, to another lady of the same name, which I told him I had composed for Nisida's sister. And they were so much to the purpose, that though it be outside the purpose to repeat them now, I cannot pass them by in silence. They were these: SILERIO. Oh Blanca, whiter than the snow so white, Whose heart is harder yet than frozen snow, My sorrow deem thou not to be so light That thou to heal it mayst neglect. For, lo, If thy soul is not softened by this plight-- That soul that doth conspire to bring me woe-- As black will turn my fortune to my shame As white thou art in beauty and in name. Oh gentle Blanca, in whose snowy breast Nestleth the bliss of love for which I yearn, Before my breast, with woeful tears oppressed, Doth unto dust and wretched earth return, Show that thine own is in some way distressed With all the grief and pain wherein I burn, A guerdon this will be, so rich and sure As to repay the evil I endure.