statement, it must be confessed, not a little encouraging to the
tradition.[12] Be this as it may, Dante married in his twenty-sixth
year; wrote an adoring account of his first love (the _Vita Nuova_) in
his twenty-eighth; and among the six children which Gemma brought him,
had a daughter whom he named Beatrice, in honour, it is understood, of
the fair Portinari; which surely was either a very great compliment, or
no mean trial to the temper of the mother.

We shall see presently how their domestic intercourse was interrupted,
and what absolute uncertainty there is respecting it, except as far as
conclusions may be drawn from his own temper and history.

Italy, in those days, was divided into the parties of Guelphs and
Ghibellines; the former, the advocates of general church-ascendancy
and local government; the latter, of the pretensions of the Emperor of
Germany, who claimed to be the Roman Cæsar, and paramount over the
Pope. In Florence, the Guelphs had for a long time been so triumphant as
to keep the Ghibellines in a state of banishment. Dante was born and
bred a Guelph: he had twice borne arms for his country against Ghibelline
neighbours; and now, at the age of thirty-five, in the ninth of his
marriage, and last of his residence with his wife, he was appointed chief
of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors;--functionaries
who held office only for two months.

Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivided into the
factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides
in a dispute that took place in Pistoia. The consequences becoming
serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the
Emperor; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the