I can wed none other, now at any rate!" "Yes," cried
Aldruda, "for I will pay the penalty for thee." "Then will I have her,"
said Buondelmonte. "Cosa fatta capo ha," was the famous comment of the
outraged house--"stone dead has no fellow"--and as Dino puts it, in the
most ordinary way in the world, "they settled to kill him the day he
was to have married the damsel, and so they did." "Kill, kill," echoes
everywhere through the story of these Florentine nobles. Assassination
is an event of every day. Corso Donati sends murderers to kill an enemy
among the Cerchi. Guido Cavalcanti strives to stab Corso in the back as
he passes him. Where the dagger fails, they try poison without scruple.
The best of them decline a share in a murder much as an Irish peasant
may decline a share in an agrarian outrage, with a certain delicacy and
readiness to stand by and see it done. When the assassination of the
Bishop of Arezzo was decided on, Guglielmo da Pazzi, who was in the
counsel, protested "he would have been content had it been done without
his knowledge, but were the question put to him he might not be guilty
of his blood."

Among such men even Corso Donati towers into a certain grandeur:--

"Knight he was of great valour and renown, gentle of blood and
manners, of a most fair body even to old age, comely in
figure, with delicate features, and a white skin; a pleasing,
prudent, and eloquent speaker; one who ever aimed at great
ends; friend and comrade of great lords and nobles; a man too
of many friends and great fame throughout all Italy. Foe he
was of the people and its leaders; the darling of soldiers,
full of evil devices, evil-hearted, cunning."

Such was the man who drove Dante into exile:--

"Who for his pride was called 'Il Barone,' so that when he
passed through the land many cried 'Viva Il Barone!' and the
land seemed all his own."

He stood not merely at the head of the Florentine nobility, but at the
head of the great Guelph organization which extended from city to city
throughout Tuscany--a league with its own leaders, its own policy, its
own treasure. In the attempt to seize this treasure for the general
service of the State the most popular of Florentine leaders, Giano della
Bella, had been foiled and driven into exile. An honest attempt to
secure the peace of the city by the banishment of Corso and his friends
brought about the exile of Dante. It is plain