He gave me the freedom of it; but it was a freedom of which I never took
advantage in the week that we abode there. Several times was I on the
point of doing so. But I was ever restrained by my unconquerable
diffidence.
And there was something else to impose restraint upon me. Hitherto the
memory of Giuliana had come to haunt me in my hermitage, by arousing in me
yearnings which I had to combat with fasting and prayer, with scourge and
dice. Now the memory of her haunted me again; but in a vastly different
way. It haunted me with the reminder of all the sin in which through her I
had steeped myself; and just as the memory of that sin had made me in purer
moments deem myself unworthy to be the guardian of the shrine on Monte
Orsaro, so now did it cause me to deem myself all unworthy to enter the
garden that enshrined Madonna Bianca de' Cavalcanti.
Before the purity that shone from her I recoiled in an awe whose nature was
as the feelings of a religion. I felt that to seek her presence would be
almost to defile her. And so I abstained, my mind very full of her the
while, for all that the time was beguiled for me in daily exercise with
horse and arms under the guidance of Galeotto.
I was not so tutored merely for the sake of repairing a grave omission in
my education.
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