Of these years, then, of disappointment and exile the _Divina Commedia_ was the labor and fruit. A story in Boccaccio's life of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence--begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it--continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the _Vita Nuova_. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already beholds the face of the Ever-blessed. And the _envoye_ of the _Vita Nuova_ is the promise of the _Commedia_. "After this sonnet" (in which he describes how beyond the widest sphere of heaven his love had beheld a lady receiving honor and dazzling by her glory the unaccustomed spirit)--"After this sonnet there appeared to me a marvellous vision, in which I saw things which made me resolve not to speak more of this blessed one until such time as I should be able to indite more worthily of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that it shall be the pleasure of Him, by whom all things live, that my life continue for some years, I hope to say of her that which never hath been said of any woman. And afterward, may it please him, who is the Lord of kindness, that my soul may go to behold the glory of her lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously gazes on the countenance of Him, _qui est per omnia secula benedictus_." It would be wantonly violating probability and the unity of a great life to suppose that this purpose, though transformed, was ever forgotten or laid aside. The poet knew not, indeed, what he was promising, what he was pledging himself to--through what years of toil and anguish he would have to seek the light and the power he had asked; in what form his high venture should be realized.