Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to
do: he joined the old exiles whom he had helped to make such, the party
of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he never was really of any party
but his own; a naïve confession, probably true in one sense, considering
his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the
large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon
quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party,
however stanch he apparently remained to their cause. His former
associates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him and for
their self-seeking; he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated
the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfering with
Florence; and he had come to love the Emperor for being hated by them
all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting
Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of himself, and
the mistress of the world.

With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in
which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons afforded him,
he now began to wander over Italy, like some lonely lion of a man,
"grudging in his great disdain." At one moment he was conspiring and
hoping; at another, despairing and endeavouring to conciliate his
beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of
the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and re-abusing
her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his
thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is
conjectured, that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether
with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his
"sacred poem." Every body who jarred against his sense of right or his
prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe: the strangest
people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted