At the time of this expatriation of his friends, Dante was absent, having undertaken an embassy to Rome to solicit the good offices of the pope towards pacifying his fellow-citizens without foreign interference. Boccaccio records a singular specimen at once of his self-confidence, and his disparagement of others, which, if true, betrays the most unamiable feature of his character, and throws additional light on a circumstance not otherwise well accounted for,--why, with all his admirable qualities, Dante was unhappy in domestic life, and in public life made so many and such inveterate enemies.--When his associates in the government proposed this embassy to him, he haughtily enquired,--"If I go, who will stay? If I stay, who will go?" It was fortunate for the poet that his holiness and himself, on this occasion, were unconsciously playing at cross purposes, though he was beaten in the game,--the very intervention which he had gone to deprecate taking place whilst he was on the journey. Had he been at home, it is not improbable that death, rather than banishment with the Bianchi, would have been his lot, from the exasperation of the Neri against him individually, whom they regarded as the chief agent in their disgrace and exile, as well as the patron of their rivals. It is remarkable that the pretext on which the failing party were now expelled was, that _they_ had secretly intrigued with Pietro Ferranti, the confidant of Charles of Valois, to give him the castle of Prato, on condition that he prevailed upon his master to allow them the ascendancy under him in Florence. Charles himself countenanced the accusation, and affected high displeasure at the insulting offer, as derogatory to his immaculate purity; though the purport of it was no other than to concede to him the express object of his ambition, if he would grant to the Bianchi faction what he did grant to the perfidious Neri. A document was long preserved as the genuine letter to Ferranti, with the seals and signatures of the principal Bianchi attached, containing the traitorous proposal; but Leonardo Aretino, who had himself seen it in the public archives, declares his perfect conviction that it was a forgery.