What, however, we know for certain is that, after some date early in the year 1302, Dante never saw Florence again. Several attempts were made by the exiles to win their way back, but they were uniformly unsuccessful, and only led to fresh sentences against those who took part in them. Whether Dante was among these, at all events during the earlier years of his exile, seems very doubtful. We know from his own words that he had no sympathy with the men with whom he was thrown. Indeed, it was a curious irony of fate which linked in one condemnation his name and that of Lapo Salterelli, a man whom he selects (_Par._, xv. 128) as an example of the degradation into which the Florentine character had fallen. During this first period he was probably eating his heart, and watching for the coming of the deliverer who, by bringing all the world under one impartial sway, should put an end to faction and self-seeking--the _invidia_ and _avarizia_ against which he is for ever inveighing--and permit every man “to sit at ease and perfect himself in prudence and wisdom;” thus fulfilling his proper task of “making himself immortal,” or, as St. Paul phrases it, coming “to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” It is a noble conception, though the six hundred years which have elapsed since Dante looked for its fulfilment do not seem to have brought us very much more forward in that direction. Still, we can give him the honour due to a lofty standard of political and social conduct in a violent and profligate, if brilliant, age; and we can still read with interest and profit that wonderful repertory of political wisdom, dialectical argument (after the manner of the schoolmen), and passionate pleading for good government, which he calls the _Treatise on Monarchy_. The date at which the _De Monarchia_ was composed is uncertain, but it would seem to belong most fitly to the years which immediately succeeded Dante’s banishment. The Empire was in the hands of the incapable Albert of Hapsburg while the Pope, from 1305, was the creature of the French King. Cæsar and Peter seemed both alike to have abdicated, and the world was going from bad to worse. With the election of Henry of Luxemburg, in 1308, better times may seem to have dawned, when practice might supersede abstract theories. The letter which Dante actually wrote to Henry in 1311 is couched in a far less meditative tone.