Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/79

Rh a most beautiful peacock in his stead. Stirred by this marvel, the gentle lady broke her sweet slumber, and saw him no more.

The Divine Goodness, to-day and from eternity, foresees every future event, when nature, its general minister, is about to produce some strange effect among mortals. Moved by its own goodness, it is wont to make us aware thereof through some demonstration, either by sign or by dream, or in some other manner, to the end that we may be convinced by this foreshadowing that all knowledge rests in the Lord of nature, the all-producer.

Such prefiguration, if we observe closely, was made for the coming into the world of that poet of whom so much has been said above. And by whom could He have made it seen or observed with such affection as by her who was to be, indeed was already, the mother of the thing revealed? Certainly to her only was it shown. And what God revealed to her is already manifest to us through the above account, but what He intended thereby must be scrutinized with a keener vision. It seemed to the lady that she gave birth to a son, and this in truth came to pass a little after the vision was seen, but what the lofty laurel signifies, beneath which she bore him, is now to be examined.

It is the opinion of astrologers and of many natural philosophers that by the virtue and influence of the superior bodies the inferior are produced, nourished, and, if a most powerful cause illumined by divine grace does not resist, are guided. Wherefore, observing what superior body is most powerful in the degree which mounts above the horizon at the hour when any one is born, they say that that person is completely controlled by this more potent body, that is, in accordance with its qualities. It seems to me therefore that by the laurel, beneath which it appeared to the lady that she gave our Dante to the world, the disposition of heaven is shown, for this at his nativity foretold magnanimity and poetic eloquence. Both these qualities are signified by the laurel, the tree of Phoebus, with whose