"South of the church, east of the belfry-tower,"
on which, according to long-believed tradition, the future poet of the other world was wont to
"Sit conversing in the sultry time,"
with those,
"Who little thought that in his hand he held
The balance, and assign'd, at his good pleasure,
To each his place in the invisible world."
ROGER's Italy.
Here also, according to his own record, in rescuing a child which had fallen into the water, he accidentally broke one of the baptismal fonts,—a circumstance which seems to have been maliciously misrepresented as an act of wilful sacrilege. His stern anxiety to clear himself is characteristically indicated by the brief but dignified attestation of the real fact, in the last line of the following singular parallel between objects not otherwise likely to be brought into comparison with each other. Describing the wells in which; head-downward, simoniacal offenders (among the rest pope Nicholas III.) were tormented with flames, that glanced from heel to toe along the up-turned soles of their feet, he says,—
"The sides and bottom of that livid rock
Were scoop'd into round holes, of equal size,
Which seem'd not less nor larger than the fonts
For baptism, in my beautiful St. John's;
And one of which, not many years ago,
I broke to save a drowning child from death:
—Be this my seal to undeceive the world."[16]
Dell' Inferno, canto XIX.
Dante resided several years at Ravenna, with the noble-minded Guido da Polenta, who, of his own accord, had invited him thither, and who, to the last moment of his life, made him feel no other burden in his service than gratitude for benefits bestowed with such a grace as though the giver, and not the receiver, were laid under obligation. By him being sent on an embassy to Venice, with the government of which Guido had an unhappy dispute, Dante not only failed to accomplish a reconciliation, but was even refused an audience, and compelled to return by land for fear of the enemy's fleet, which had already commenced hostilities along the coast. He arrived at Ravenna broken-hearted with the disappointment, and died soon afterwards,—according to his epitaph, on the 14th of September, 1321, though some authorities date his demise in July preceding.