ured image! You only, while you were made famous by
illustrious men, you only have shown no care for your great poet. Your
Dante Alighieri died in exile, to which you unjustly, envious of his
greatness, destined him! A crime not to be remembered, that the mother
should bear an envious malignity to the virtues of a son! Now cease to
be unjust! He cannot do you that, now dead, which living he never did do
to you! He lies under another sky than yours, and you never can see him
again, but on that day, when all your citizens shall view him, and the
great Remunerator shall examine, and shall punish! If anger, hatred, and
enmity are buried with a man, as it is believed, begin then to return to
yourself; begin to be ashamed to have acted against your ancient
humanity; begin, then, to wish to appear a mother, and not a cold
negligent step-dame. Yield your tears to your son; yield your maternal
piety to him whom once you repulsed, and, living, cast away from you!
At least think of possessing him dead, and restore your citizenship,
your award, and your grace, to his memory. He was a son who held you in
reverence, and though long an exile, he always called himself, and would
be called a Florentine! He held you ever above all others; ever he loved
you! What will you then do? Will you remain obstinate in iniquity? Will
you practise less humanity than the barbarians? You wish that the world
should believe that you are the sister of famous Troy, and the daughter
of Rome; assuredly the children should resemble their fathers and their
ancestors. Priam, in his misery, bought the corpse of Hector with gold;
and Rome would possess the bones of the first Scipio, and removed them
from Linternum, those bones, which, dying, so justly he had denied her.
Seek then to be the true guardian of your Dante, claim him! show this
humane feeling, claim him! you may securely do this: I am certain he
will not be returned to you; but thus at once you may betray some mark
of compassion, and, not having him again, still enjoy your ancient
cruelty! Alas! what comfort am I bringing you! I almost believe, that if
the dead could feel, the body of Dante would not rise to return to you,
for he is lying in Ravenna, whose hallowed soil is everywhere covered
with the ashes of saints. Would Dante quit this blessed company to
mingle with the remains of those hatreds and iniquities which gave him
no rest in life? The relics of Dante, even among the bodies of emperors
and o