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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.
The son of a lawyer named Alighieri, Dante was born in 1265, but whether or not in this Casa Dante is an open question, and it was in the Baptistery that he received the name of Durante, afterwards abbreviated to Dante Durante meaning enduring, and Dante giving.
Wherefore it happened, that, among the rest, Folco Portinari, a man held in much honor in those times among the citizens, had collected his neighbors at a feast in his own house on the first of May. Among them was the before-named Alighieri, and, as little boys are wont to follow their fathers, especially to festive places, Dante, whose ninth year was not yet finished, accompanied him.
Some less melancholy face, some more intelligible courtship, triumphed over the questionable flattery of the poet's gratuitous worship; and the idol of Dante Alighieri became the wife of Messer Simone de' Bardi. Not a word does he say on that mortifying point. It transpired from a clause in her father's will.
Then Vittoria seemed indeed grieved, and she commended Dante for keeping away from her, and vowed that he should be set right some way or other in the eyes of his lady. Indeed, it was a pleasure and a marvel that Madonna Vittoria could show such zeal and heat for so simple a love-business as this of the boy of the Alighieri and the girl of the Portinari.
"When was the Signor Alighieri born?" inquired Graf von Lira, very suddenly, as though to catch him. "May 1265, in Florence," answered the other, as quickly. "I said when, not where. I know he was in Florence born. When and where died he?" The question was asked fiercely. "Fourteenth of September 1321, at Ravenna."
By ill hap Bob, coming in to ask some question, found me studying the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, and hit upon one of the engravings representing the torments of purgatory. What must he do but report it, and immediately a hue and cry arises that I am being corrupted with Popish books.
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