So that, coming to die, and having much still due to him, he made a will, and among other bequests this, that whoever owed him should not be held to pay the debt, saying, ‘Whoever has, may keep.’ ” Portarelli thinks that this Marco may be Marco Polo the traveller; but this is inadmissible, as he was still living at the time of Dante’s death. ↩

• What Guido del Duca has told him of the corruption of Italy, in Canto XIV . ↩
• Ovid, Metamorphoses , X , Ozell’s Tr. :⁠— “The god upon its leaves The sad expression of his sorrow weaves, And to this hour the mournful purple wears Ai, ai , inscribed in funeral characters.” ↩
• See the article “Cabala,” at the end of Vol. III . ↩