It should not be overlooked, in mitigation of her occasional asperities, that, Madonna Gemma being the near kinswoman of Corso Donati, Dante's most formidable and inveterate rival in the party feuds of Florence, some drops of the gall of political rancour may have been infused into the matrimonial cup. The poet's known and avowed passion for Beatrice, living and dead, was alone sufficient to afflict a high-minded woman with the rankling consciousness that she had not all her husband's heart. It is, moreover, no small proof of her submission to his will and pleasure, that their only daughter bore the name of his first--last--only love, if we are to believe all the protestations of his verse. Be these things as they may, it must be concluded that he was coupled with a most unpoetical yoke-mate; and she with a lord and master not easy to be ruled by her or any body else. It has been loosely stated that "the poet, not possessing the patience of Socrates, separated himself from his wife, with such vehement expressions of dislike that he never afterwards allowed her to sit down in his presence." When this happened--if it ever so happened--does not appear; nothing further seems certain, except that she did not follow her husband into exile: but Boccaccio himself acknowledges, that after that event, having secured (not without difficulty) a small portion of his effects from confiscation as her dower, she preserved herself and their little children from the wretchedness of absolute poverty, by such expedients of industry and economy as she had never before been accustomed to practise.