"Yonder I see a spirit, fix'd in thought, Alone and gazing earnestly upon us, He will point out the readier way to take. Tow'rds him we went--Soul of a Longobardian! How didst thou stand aloof with haughty bearing, And lordly eyes, slow-moving as we moved! --He utter'd not a word, but let us pass, On-looking like a lion from his lair: But Virgil, drawing near, entreated him To show the easiest path for our ascent: Still to that meek request he answer'd not, But of our country and our way of life Enquired;--my courteous guide began then, 'Mantua'; Straight at the word, that spirit, erewhile so wrapt Within himself, sprang from his place, and cried, 'O Mantuan! I'm thy countryman, Sordello;' And one the other instantly embraced."[21] The reserve of Sordello is generally attributed to stubbornness or pride; but is it not manifest that, on the first sight of the strangers, he had a misgiving hope (if the phrase be allowable) which he feared might deceive him, that they were countrymen of his, wherefore, absorbed in that sole idea, he disregards their question concerning the road, and directly comes to the point which he was anxious to ascertain; and this being resolved by the single word "Mantua," his soul flies forth at once to embrace the speaker? In the tenth canto of the "Inferno," where heretics are described as being tormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over them till the day of judgment, Dante finds Farinata d'Uberti, an illustrious commander of the Ghibellines, who, at the battle of Monte Aperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Guelfs of Florence, that the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel was taken to raze it to the ground: but Farinata, because his bowels yearned towards his native city, stood up alone to oppose the barbarous design; and partly by menace--having drawn his sword in the midst of the assembly--and partly by persuasion, preserved the city from destruction. The interview is thus painted; but to prepare the reader for well understanding the nature of the by-play which intervenes, it is necessary to state that Cavalcante Cavalcanti, whose head appears out of an adjacent sepulchre, was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet, the particular friend of Dante, and chief of the Bianchi party banished during his priorship.