chief
of the temporary administrators of affairs, called Priors;--functionaries
who held office only for two months.

Unfortunately, at that moment, his party had become subdivided into the
factions of the Whites and Blacks, or adherents of two different sides
in a dispute that took place in Pistoia. The consequences becoming
serious, the Blacks proposed to bring in, as mediator, the French
Prince, Charles of Valois, then in arms for the Pope against the
Emperor; but the Whites, of whom Dante was one, were hostile to the
measure; and in order to prevent it, he and his brother magistrates
expelled for a time the heads of both factions, to the satisfaction of
neither. The Whites accused them of secretly leaning to the Ghibellines,
and the Blacks of openly favouring the Whites; who being, indeed,
allowed to come back before their time, on the alleged ground of the
unwholesomeness of their place of exile, which was fatal to Dante's
friend Cavalcante, gave a colour to the charge. Dante answered it by
saying, that he had then quitted office; but he could not shew that he
had lost his influence. Meantime, Charles was still urged to interfere,
and Dante was sent ambassador to the Pope to obtain his disapprobation
of the interference; but the Pope (Boniface the Eighth), who had
probably discovered that the Whites had ceased to care for any thing but
their own disputes, and who, at all events, did not like their objection
to his representative, beguiled the ambassador and encouraged the French
prince; the Blacks, in consequence, regained their ascendancy; and
the luckless poet, during his absence, was denounced as a corrupt
administrator of affairs, guilty of peculation; was severely
mulcted; banished from Tuscany for two years; and subsequently, for
contumaciousness, was sentenced to be _burnt alive_, in case he returned
ever. He never did return.

From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her
relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except
to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half
the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the
opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others
think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what
property she could, and bring up the children. All that is known is,
that she never lived with him more.

Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused hi