weaponless hastened to find
weapons and came back swiftly. As the square was filling with people
there came along at a trot the few guards that the Priors, in their
wisdom, had deemed it sufficient to send for the defence of Messer
Folco's house, and these gathered together hard by the door and stood
there, seeming to find little comfort in their business. Scarcely had
they taken their places when a great roar from the farther end of the
square announced some event of moment, and immediately thereafter Messer
Simone rode forward on his great war-horse with a small army of
soldiers, friends, and adherents after him. At the selfsame moment
Messer Guido Cavalcanti and a number of his friends came racing into the
square from the other corner and rushed in a body toward the door of the
Portinari palace, where Dante was standing very quietly, seemingly all
unconscious of the myriads of eyes that were fixed upon him. Thus, by
the time that Messer Simone and his followers had advanced half-way
across the square, there was a goodly number of well-armed and resolute
gentlemen gathered about the doors of Folco's palace, and their strength
was increased almost every instant by new additions to their count.

When Messer Simone saw the opposition that was intended to him, and who
those were that offered it, he was hugely delighted, for he perceived
now an excellent opportunity of getting rid of the majority of his
enemies at a single stroke, as it were. The men he had with him that
filled a goodly part of the square were far more numerous than those
that had been thus hastily rallied against him, and he chuckled at his
luck. But when he saw Dante where he stood he reviled him, calling him
the thief that would steal a man's wife from his side, and summoning him
to yield himself a prisoner instantly. He did this to put himself in the
right with the people before he made an attack, and to disgrace Dante in
their eyes. But Dante answered him very quietly, saying that he was a
liar and a traitor that had cheated a woman with fables like a coward,
and sent his fellow-citizens to death by treachery like a rogue. "But,"
so Dante went on, "liar though you be, and traitor and coward and rogue,
as this is our quarrel, yours and mine and no other man's, I call upon
you to dismount and meet me here sword in hand, that it shall be seen
which of us two is the friend of God in this matter."

At these brave words many of the people cheered, and Simo