Page:The Earliest Lives of Dante (Smith 1901).djvu/106

 that this great republic was laboring under the veriest fickleness, in that she feared lest his persuasiveness should move her from that course whereon she had deliberately decided; and, what is baser still, in that she wished to banish eloquence from her city. With great inconvenience the poet, therefore, though ill with fever, made the journey to Ravenna by land, where, a few days after his arrival, he died, and was honored with a public funeral.