perfect conjunction.[H] This is one reason; but considering more subtilely and according to infallible truth, this number was she herself,—­I speak in a similitude, and I mean as follows.  The number three is the root of nine, since, without any other number, multiplied by itself, it makes nine,—­as we see plainly that three times three are nine.  Then, if three is the factor by itself of nine, and the Author of Miracles[I] by himself is three,—­Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three and one,—­this lady was accompanied by the number nine that it might be understood that she was a nine, that is, a miracle, whose only root is the marvellous Trinity.  Perhaps a more subtle person might discover some more subtile reason for this; but this is the one that I see for it, and which pleases me the best.”

[Footnote H:  Compare with this passage Ballata v.,

  “Io mi son pargoletta bella e nova,”

and Sonnet xlv.,

  “Da quella luce che ’I suo corso gira”;

the latter probably in praise of Philosophy.]

[Footnote I:  The point is here lost in a translation,—­factor and author being expressed in the original by one word, fattore.]

After thus treating of the number nine in its connection with Beatrice, Dante goes on to say, that, when this most gentle lady had gone from this world, the city appeared widowed and despoiled of every dignity; whereupon he wrote to the princes of the earth an account of its condition, beginning with the words of Jeremiah which he quoted at the entrance of this new matter.  The remainder of this letter he does not give, because it was in Latin, and in this work it was his intention, from the beginning, to write only in the vulgar tongue; and such was the understanding of the friend for whom he writes,—­that friend being, as we may suppose, Guido Cavalcanti, whom Dante, it may be remembered, has already spoken of as the chief among his friends.  Then succeeds a Canzone lamenting the death of Beatrice, which, instead of being followed by a verbal exposition, as is the case with all that have gone before, is preceded by one, in order that it may seem, as it were, desolate and like a widow at its end.  And this arrangement is preserved in regard to all the remaining poems in the little volume.  In this poem he says that the Eternal Sire called Beatrice to himself, because he saw that this world was not worthy of such a gentle thing; and he says of his own life, that no tongue could tell what it has been since his lady went away to heaven.

Among the sonnets ascribed to Dante is one which, if it be his, must have been written about this time, and which, although not included in the “Vita Nuova,” seems not unworthy to find a place here.  Its imagery, at least, connects it with some of the sonnets in the earlier portion of the book.

  “One day came Melancholy unto me,
    And said, ‘With thee I will awhile abide’;
    And, as it seemed, attending at her side,
    Anger and Grief did bear her company.