who travels
alone.

Dante must have held the stern and placid pose of Plato, the confirmed
bachelor, for a full week, then tears came and melted his artificial
granite.

And as for Plato, the confirmed bachelor, legend has it that he was
confirmed by a woman.

* * * * *

In the train of Boccaccio traveled a nephew of Dante who had his
illustrious uncle's interesting history at his tongue's end. By this
nephew we are told that the marriage of Dante and Gemma Donati, in
Twelve Hundred and Ninety-two, when Dante was twenty-seven, was a little
matter arranged by the friends of both parties. Dante was dreamy,
melancholy and unreliable: marriage would sober his poetic debauch and
cause him to settle down!

Ruskin, it will be remembered, was also looked after by the matchmakers
in much the same way.

So Dante was married. Some say that his wife was the gentle lady who
looked like Beatrice, but this is pure conjecture. Four children were
born to them in seven years. One of these was named Beatrice, which
seems to prove that the wife of Dante was aware of his great passion.
One of the sons became a college professor, and wrote a commentary on
"The Commedia," and also an unneeded defense of his father's character
and motives in making love to a married lady.

Dante was a man of influence in the affairs of the city. He occupied
civic offices of distinction, wrote addresses and occasionally poems, in
which he glorified his friends and referred scathingly to his political
adversaries.

Gemma must have been a woman of more than average brain and
intelligence, for when her husband was banished from Florence by the
successful Ghibellines, she kept her little family together, worked
hard, educated her children, and it is said by Boccaccio lived honorably
and indulged in no repining.

So far as we know, Dante sent no remittances home. He moved from one
university to another, and accepted invitations from nobility to tarry
at their castles. He dressed in melancholy black and read his poems to
polite assemblies. Now and then he gave lectures. He was followed by
spies, or thought he was, and now and then quarreled with his associates
or host, and made due note of the fact, leaving the matter to be
adjusted when he had time and wanted raw stock for his writings.

And all the time he mourned not for the loss of Gemma and his children,
but for Beatrice. She it was who met him and Vergil at the gate