I fell to thinking about my own life, now so debilitated, and reecting how short this life is, even in health, I began to weep about our wretched state. Sighing deeply, I said to myself: ‘One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die.’ This thought threw me into such a state of bewilderment that I closed my eyes, and I began, like a person who is delirious, to be tormented by these fantasies.