citizens with all the pride and impetuosity of his nature. And he took
for mistresses the Lady Mandetta and the Lady Giovanna, who represented
the one the Albigensians, the other the Ghibellines. It was the time
when Messer Dante Alighieri was Prior of the Arts and Liberty. The city
was divided into two hostile camps, those of the Bianchi and the Neri.
One day when the principal citizens were assembled in the Piazza of the
Frescobaldi, the Bianchi on one side the square and the Neri on the
other, to assist at the obsequies of a noble lady of Florence, the
Doctors and the Knights were seated as the custom was, on raised
benches, while in front of them the younger men sat on the ground on
rush mats. One of the latter standing up to settle his cloak, those who
were opposite thought he was for defying them. They started to their
feet in turn, and bared their swords. Instantly every one unsheathed,
and the kinsmen of the dead lady had all the difficulty in the world to
separate the combatants.

From that day, Florence ceased to be a town gladdened by the work of its
handicraftsmen, and became a forest full of wolves ravening for each
other's blood. Messer Guido shared these savage passions, and grew
gloomy, restless and sullen. Never a day passed but he exchanged
sword-thrusts with the Neri in the streets of Florence, where in old
days he had meditated on the nature and constitution of the soul. More
than once he had felt the assassin's dagger on his flesh, before he was
banished with the rest of his faction and confined in the
plague-stricken town of Sarzana. For six months he languished there,
sick with fever and hate. And when eventually the Bianchi were recalled,
he came back to his native city a dying man.

In the year 1300, on the third day after the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, he found strength enough to drag himself as far as his own