That there was any foundation for the charge of corruption it is impossible to believe. Dante’s faults were many, but they did not lie in that direction; and the honest Villani, though he appears to have sided with the Black party, and indeed held office himself as Prior only a few years later, seems to have introduced the words which we have italicised in the passage given above, with the express intention of indicating this. On the other hand, it may be noted that the charge was ingeniously devised. Dante is known to have been in debt, for some of his notes-of-hand exist, belonging to the years preceding 1300; while in the course of 1301 he was engaged in superintending the performance of certain public works in the city. Thus it would be matter of common knowledge both that he was short of money and that he had recently been in a position offering good opportunities for peculation, a fact of which his unscrupulous adversaries would naturally avail themselves. We may perhaps see, in the large space which he devotes, in the _Hell_, to the crime of _baratteria_, evidence of a wish to express his especial detestation of it.
What, however, we know for certain is that, after some date early in the year 1302, Dante never saw Florence again. Several attempts were made by the exiles to win their way back, but they were uniformly unsuccessful, and only led to fresh sentences against those who took part in them. Whether Dante was among these, at all events during the earlier years of his exile, seems very doubtful. We know from his own words that he had no sympathy with the men with whom he was thrown. Indeed, it was a curious irony of fate which linked in one condemnation his name and that of Lapo Salterelli, a man whom he selects (_Par._, xv. 128) as an example of the degradation into which the Florentine character had fallen. During this first period he was probably eating his heart, and watching for the coming of the deliverer who, by bringing all the world under one impartial sway, should put an end to faction and self-seeking--the _invidia_ and _avarizia_ against which he is for ever inveighing--and permit every man “to sit at ease and perfect himself in prudence and wisdom;” thus fulfilling his proper task of “making himself immortal,” or, as St. Paul phrases it, coming “to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” It is a noble conception, though the six hundred years which have elapsed since Dante looked for its fulfilment do not seem to have brought us very much more forward in that direction. Still, we can give him the honour due to a lofty standard of political and social conduct in a violent and profligate, if brilliant, age; and we can still read with interest and profit that wonderful repertory of political wisdom, dialectical argument (after the manner of the schoolmen), and passionate pleading for good government, which he calls the _Treatise on Monarchy_.