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, almost a mendicant--showing forth againstmy will the wound of Fortune, with which the ruined man is oftenunjustly reproached. Truly I have been a ship without a sail andwithout a rudder, borne to divers ports and lands and shores by thedry wind which blows from doleful poverty; and I have appeared vile inthe eyes of many, who perhaps through some report may have imaged mein other form. In the sight of whom not only my person became vile,but each work already completed was held to be of less value than thatmight again be wRead More
