What amount of intercourse he was able to maintain with Florence during his wanderings is a matter of mere speculation, although of a more interesting kind than that concerned with the chronology of his uneasy travels. That he kept up at least some correspondence with his friends is proved by the letter regarding the terms of his pardon. There is also the well-known anecdote told by Boccaccio as to the discovery and despatch to him of the opening Cantos of the _Inferno_--an anecdote we may safely accept as founded on fact, although Boccaccio's informants may have failed to note at the time what the manuscript consisted of, and in the course of years may have magnified the importance of their discovery. With his wife he would naturally communicate on subjects of common interest--as, for instance, that of how best to save or recover part of his property--and especially regarding the welfare of his sons, of whom two are found to be with him when he acquires something like a settlement in Verona. It is quite credible that, as Boccaccio asserts, he would never after his exile was once begun 'go to his wife or suffer her to join him where he was;' although the statement is probably an extension of the fact that she never did join him. In any case it is to make too large a use of the words to find in them evidence, as has frequently been done, of the unhappiness of all his married life, and of his utter estrangement from Gemma during his banishment. The union--marriage of convenience though it was--might be harmonious enough as long as things went moderately well with the pair. Dante was never wealthy, but he seems to have had his own house in Florence and small landed possessions in its neighbourhood.[108] That before his banishment he was considerably in debt appears to be ascertained;[109] but, without knowing the circumstances in which he borrowed, it is impossible to be sure whether he may not only have been making use of his credit in order to put out part of his means to advantage in some of the numerous commercial enterprises in which his neighbours were engaged. In any case his career must have seemed full of promise till he was driven into banishment. When that blow had fallen, it is easy to conceive how what if it was not mutual affection had come to serve instead of it--esteem and forbearance--would be changed into indifference with the lapse of months and years of enforced separation, embittered and filled on both sides with the mean cares of indigence, and, it may be, on Gemma's side with the conviction that her husband had brought her with himself into disgrace. If all that is said by Boccaccio and some of Dante's enemies as to his temperament and behaviour were true, we could only hope that Gemma's indifference was deep enough to save her from the pangs of jealousy. And on the other hand, if we are to push suspicion to its utmost length, we may find an allusion to his own experience in the