The Banquet

Book Excerpt: shment unjustly; the punishment, I say, of exile andpoverty! Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the mostbeautiful and the most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast meout from her most sweet bosom (wherein I was born and nourished evento the height of my life, and in which, with her goodwill, I desirewith all my heart to repose my weary soul, and to end the time whichis given to me), I have gone through almost all the land in which thislanguage lives--a pilgrim,...