To guide us in this delicate business we may appeal to a friend of Dante, his fellow-poet Guido Cavalcanti, who will furnish us with another example of this same sort of idealization, and this same sort of inconstancy, expressed in a manner that will repay analysis. Guido Cavalcanti had a Beatrice of his own--something of the kind was then expected of every gentle knight and poet--and Guido's Beatrice was called Giovanna. Dante seems to acknowledge the parity of his friend's passion with his own by coupling the names of the two ladies, Monna Vanna and Monna Bice, in one or two of the sonnets he addresses to Guido. Now it came to pass that Guido, in the fervour of his devotion, at once chivalrous and religious, bethought him of making a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James the Apostle, at Compostela in Spain. Upon this journey--a journey beguiled, no doubt, by thoughts of the beautiful Giovanna he had left in Florence--he halted in the city of Toulouse. But at Toulouse, as chance would have it, there lived a lovely lady by the name of Mandetta, with whom it was impossible for the chivalrous pilgrim not to fall in love; for chivalry is nothing but a fine emblazoning of the original manly impulse to fight every man and love every woman. Now in an interesting sonnet Guido describes the conflict of these two affections, or perhaps we should rather say, their union. "There is a lady in Toulouse so fair, So young, so gentle, and so chastely gay, She doth a true and living likeness bear In her sweet eyes to Love, whom I obey." The word I have, to avoid confusion, here rendered by "Love" is in the original "la Donna mia," "my Lady"; so that we have our poet falling in love with Mandetta on account of her striking resemblance to Giovanna. Is this inconstancy or only a more delicate and indirect homage? We shall see; for Guido goes on to represent his soul, according to his custom, as a being that dwells and moves about in the chambers of his heart; and speaking still of Mandetta, the lady of Toulouse, he continues:-- "Within my heart my soul, when she appeared, Was filled with longing and was fain to flee Out of my heart to her, yet was afeared To tell the lady who my Love might be. She looked upon me with her quiet eyes, And under their sweet ray my bosom burned, Cheered by Love's image, that within them lies." So far we have still the familiar visible in the new and making its power; Mandetta is still nothing but a stimulus to reawaken the memory of Giovanna. But before the end there is trouble. The sting of the present attraction is felt in contrast to the eternal ideal. There is a necessity of sacrifice, and he cries, as the lady turns away her eyes:-- "Alas! they shot an arrow as she turned, And with a death-wound from the piercing dart My soul came sighing back into my heart."