As the words occurred to him he thought how much better equipped he was for the bitter trial, since had he not the certain hope of another life, and of meeting his beloved in the spaces of endless felicity?  Surely then he should be able to bear his sorrow with as great a fortitude as the pagan poets, who looked forward to nothing but the dust; to whom the fabled dim country beyond the Styx was a cheerless dream, and to whom a living dog upon the earth was more worthy of envy than the King of all Elysium.  He must learn of the ancients.

The magic of the lemon-coloured dawn had vanished now before the swift daylight.  Many bells were ringing in the city, and the first signs of life were stirring in the streets.  He searched for a little book, and read of the consolation which Cicero gave to Laelius in the De Amicitia.  But he had not read many lines before he closed the book.  His wound was too fresh for the balm of reason and philosophy.

“Later,” he thought, “this will strengthen and help me, but not to-day; to-day my wound must bleed and be allowed to bleed, for all the philosophy in the world cannot lessen the fact that yesterday she was and to-day she is not.”

He felt a desire to escape from his room, which had been the chapel of such holy prayers, the shrine where so many fervent tapers of hope had burnt, where so sweet an incense of dream had risen.  He left his room and hurried down the narrow stone stairs into the street.  As he left the house he turned to his right and walked on till he reached Or San Michele; there he turned to his right again and walked straight on till he reached the churches of Santa Reparata and San Giovanni.  He entered San Giovanni and said a brief prayer; then he took the nearest street, east of Santa Reparata, to the Porta a ballo, and found himself beyond the walls of the city.  He walked towards Fiesole.

The glory of the sunrise was still in the sky, the fragrance of the dawning summer (it was the 11th of June) was in the air.  He walked towards the East.  The corn on the hills was green, and pink wild roses fringed every plot of wheat.  The grass was wet with dew.  The city glittered in the plain beneath, clean and fresh in the dazzling air; it seemed a part of the pageant of summer, an unreal piece of imagery, distinct and clear-cut, yet miraculous, like a mirage seen in mid-ocean.  “Truly,” he thought, “this is the city of the flower, and the lily is its fitting emblem.”

But while his heart went out towards his native town he felt a sharp pang as he remembered that the flower of flowers, the queen of the lilies, had been mowed down by the scythe, and the city which to him had heretofore been an altar was now a tomb.  The lovely Virgilian dirge,

     Manibus date lilia plenis . . . 
     His saltem accumulem donis et fungar inani
     Munere,