[Illustration: ACROSS THE PONTE VECCHIO] Dante is believed to have been absent from Florence on an embassy to the Pope when Charles of Valois came, and to have heard the news of his ruin at Siena as he hurried homewards--though both embassy and absence have been questioned by Dante scholars of repute. His ancestor, Cacciaguida, tells him in the _Paradiso_:-- "Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta più caramente, e questo è quello strale che l'arco dello esilio pria saetta. Tu proverai sì come sa di sale lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale."[11] [11] "Thou shall abandon everything beloved most dearly; this is the arrow which the bow of exile shall first shoot. "Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another's bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount upon another's stair." Wicksteed's translation. The rest of Dante's life was passed in exile, and only touches the story of Florence indirectly at certain points. "Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence," he tells us in his _Convivio_, "to cast me forth from her most sweet bosom (in which I was born and nourished up to the summit of my life, and in which, with her good will, I desire with all my heart to rest my weary soul and end the time given me), I have gone through almost all the parts to which this language extends, a pilgrim, almost a beggar, showing against my will the wound of fortune, which is wont unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to the wounded."