Inferno — Part 2

Because together with us they have gone."

From the old bridge we looked upon the train

Which tow'rds us came upon the other border,

And which the scourges in like manner smite.

And the good Master, without my inquiring,

Said to me: "See that tall one who is coming,

And for his pain seems not to shed a tear;

Still what a royal aspect he retains!

That Jason is, who by his heart and cunning

The Colchians of the Ram made destitute.

He by the isle of Lemnos passed along

After the daring women pitiless

Had unto death devoted all their males.

There with his tokens and with ornate words

Did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden

Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived.

There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn;

Such sin unto such punishment condemns him,

And also for Medea is vengeance done.

With him go those who in such wise deceive;

And this sufficient be of the first valley

To know, and those that in its jaws it holds."

We were already where the narrow path

Crosses athwart the second dike, and forms

Of that a buttress for another arch.

Thence we heard people, who are making moan

In the next Bolgia, snorting with their muzzles,

And with their palms beating upon themselves

The margins were incrusted with a mould

By exhalation from below, that sticks there,

And with the eyes and nostrils wages war.

The bottom is so deep, no place suffices

To give us sight of it, without ascending

The arch's back, where most the crag impends.

Thither we came, and thence down in the moat

I saw a people smothered in a filth

That out of human privies seemed to flow;

And whilst below there with mine eye I search,

I saw one with his head so foul with ordure,

It was not clear if he were clerk or layman.

He screamed to me: "Wherefore art thou so eager

To look at me more than the other foul ones?"

And I to him: "Because, if I remember,

I have already seen thee with dry hair,

And thou'rt Alessio Interminei of Lucca;

Therefore I eye thee more than all the others."

And he thereon, belabouring his pumpkin:

"The flatteries have submerged me here below,

Wherewith my tongue was never surfeited."

Then said to me the Guide: "See that thou thrust

Thy visage somewhat farther in advance,

That with thine eyes thou well the face attain

Of that uncleanly and dishevelled drab,

Who there doth scratch herself with filthy nails,

And crouches now, and now on foot is standing.

Thais the harlot is it, who replied

Unto her paramour, when he said, 'Have I

Great gratitude from thee?'--'Nay, marvellous;'

And herewith let our sight be satisfied."

Inferno: Canto XIX

O Simon Magus, O forlorn disciples,

Ye who the things of God, which ought to be

The brides of holiness, rapaciously

For silver and for gold do prostitute,

Now it behoves for you the trumpet sound,

Because in this third Bolgia ye abide.

We had already on the following tomb

Ascended to that portion of the crag

Which o'er the middle of the moat hangs plumb.

Wisdom supreme, O how great art thou showest

In heaven, in earth, and in the evil world,

And with what justice doth thy power distribute!

I saw upon the sides and on the bottom

The livid stone with perforations filled,

All of one size, and every one was round.

To me less ample seemed they not, nor greater

Than those that in my beautiful Saint John

Are fashioned for the place of the baptisers,

And one of which, not many years ago,

I broke for some one, who was drowning in it;

Be this a seal all men to undeceive.

Out of the mouth of each one there protruded

The feet of a transgressor, and the legs

Up to the calf, the rest within remained.

In all of them the soles were both on fire;

Wherefore the joints so violently quivered,

They would have snapped asunder withes and bands.

Even as the flame of unctuous things is wont

To move upon the outer surface only,

So likewise was it there from heel to point.

"Master, who is that one who writhes himself,

More than his other comrades quivering,"

I said, "and whom a redder flame is sucking?"

And he to me: "If thou wilt have me bear thee

Down there along that bank which lowest lies,

From him thou'lt know his errors and himself."

And I: "What pleases thee, to me is pleasing;

Thou art my Lord, and knowest that I depart not

From thy desire, and knowest what is not spoken."

Straightway upon the fourth dike we arrived;

We turned, and on the left-hand side descended

Down to the bottom full of holes and narrow.

And the good Master yet from off his haunch

Deposed me not, till to the hole he brought me

Of him who so lamented with his shanks.

"Whoe'er thou art, that standest upside down,

O doleful soul, implanted like a stake,"

To say began I, "if thou canst, speak out."

I stood even as the friar who is confessing

The false assassin, who, when he is fixed,

Recalls him, so that death may be delayed.

And he cried out: "Dost thou stand there already,

Dost thou stand there already, Boniface?

By many years the record lied to me.

Art thou so early satiate with that wealth,

For which thou didst not fear to take by fraud

The beautiful Lady, and then work her woe?"

Such I became, as people are who stand,

Not comprehending what is answered them,

As if bemocked, and know not how to answer.

Then said Virgilius: "Say to him straightway,

'I am not he, I am not he thou thinkest.'"

And I replied as was imposed on me.

Whereat the spirit writhed with both his feet,

Then, sighing, with a voice of lamentation

Said to me: "Then what wantest thou of me?

If who I am thou carest so much to know,

That thou on that account hast crossed the bank,

Know that I vested was with the great mantle;

And truly was I son of the She-bear,

So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth

Above, and here myself, I pocketed.

Beneath my head the others are dragged down

Who have preceded me in simony,

Flattened along the fissure of the rock.

Below there I shall likewise fall, whenever

That one shall come who I believed thou wast,

What time the sudden question I proposed.

But longer I my feet already toast,

And here have been in this way upside down,

Than he will planted stay with reddened feet;

For after him shall come of fouler deed

From tow'rds the west a Pastor without law,

Such as befits to cover him and me.

New Jason will he be, of whom we read

In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant,

So he who governs France shall be to this one."

I do not know if I were here too bold,

That him I answered only in this metre:

"I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure

Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first,

Before he put the keys into his keeping?

Truly he nothing asked but 'Follow me.'

Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias

Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen

Unto the place the guilty soul had lost.

Therefore stay here, for thou art justly punished,

And keep safe guard o'er the ill-gotten money,

Which caused thee to be valiant against Charles.

And were it not that still forbids it me

The reverence for the keys superlative

Thou hadst in keeping in the gladsome life,

I would make use of words more grievous still;

Because your avarice afflicts the world,

Trampling the good and lifting the depraved.

The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind,

When she who sitteth upon many waters

To fornicate with kings by him was seen;

The same who with the seven heads was born,

And power and strength from the ten horns received,

So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing.

Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver;

And from the idolater how differ ye,

Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship?

Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother,

Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower

Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!"

And while I sang to him such notes as these,

Either that anger or that conscience stung him,

He struggled violently with both his feet.

I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased,

With such contented lip he listened ever

Unto the sound of the true words expressed.

Therefore with both his arms he took me up,

And when he had me all upon his breast,

Remounted by the way where he descended.

Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him;

But bore me to the summit of the arch

Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage.

There tenderly he laid his burden down,

Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep,

That would have been hard passage for the goats:

Thence was unveiled to me another valley.

Inferno: Canto XX

Of a new pain behoves me to make verses

And give material to the twentieth canto

Of the first song, which is of the submerged.

I was already thoroughly disposed

To peer down into the uncovered depth,

Which bathed itself with tears of agony;

And people saw I through the circular valley,

Silent and weeping, coming at the pace

Which in this world the Litanies assume.

As lower down my sight descended on them,

Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted

From chin to the beginning of the chest;

For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned,

And backward it behoved them to advance,

As to look forward had been taken from them.

Perchance indeed by violence of palsy

Some one has been thus wholly turned awry;

But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be.

As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit

From this thy reading, think now for thyself

How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,

When our own image near me I beheld

Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes

Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak

Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said

To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;

Who is a greater reprobate than he

Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom

Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;

Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'

And downward ceased he not to fall amain

As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!

Because he wished to see too far before him

Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,

When from a male a female he became,

His members being all of them transformed;

And afterwards was forced to strike once more

The two entangled serpents with his rod,

Ere he could have again his manly plumes.

That Aruns is, who backs the other's belly,

Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs

The Carrarese who houses underneath,

Among the marbles white a cavern had

For his abode; whence to behold the stars

And sea, the view was not cut off from him.

And she there, who is covering up her breasts,

Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses,

And on that side has all the hairy skin,

Was Manto, who made quest through many lands,

Afterwards tarried there where I was born;

Whereof I would thou list to me a little.

After her father had from life departed,

And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved,

She a long season wandered through the world.

Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake

At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany

Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

With water that grows stagnant in that lake.

Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,

And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.

Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks,

Where round about the bank descendeth lowest.

There of necessity must fall whatever

In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

And grows a river down through verdant pastures.

Soon as the water doth begin to run,

No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,

Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

Not far it runs before it finds a plain

In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,

And oft 'tis wont in summer to be sickly.

Passing that way the virgin pitiless

Land in the middle of the fen descried,

Untilled and naked of inhabitants;

There to escape all human intercourse,

She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise

And lived, and left her empty body there.

The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,

Collected in that place, which was made strong

By the lagoon it had on every side;

They built their city over those dead bones,

And, after her who first the place selected,

Mantua named it, without other omen.

Its people once within more crowded were,

Ere the stupidity of Casalodi

From Pinamonte had received deceit.

Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest

Originate my city otherwise,

No falsehood may the verity defraud."

And I: "My Master, thy discourses are

To me so certain, and so take my faith,

That unto me the rest would be spent coals.

But tell me of the people who are passing,

If any one note-worthy thou beholdest,

For only unto that my mind reverts."

Then said he to me: "He who from the cheek

Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders

Was, at the time when Greece was void of males,

So that there scarce remained one in the cradle,

An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment,

In Aulis, when to sever the first cable.

Eryphylus his name was, and so sings

My lofty Tragedy in some part or other;

That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it.

The next, who is so slender in the flanks,

Was Michael Scott, who of a verity

Of magical illusions knew the game.

Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente,

Who now unto his leather and his thread

Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents.

Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle,

The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers;

They wrought their magic spells with herb and image.

But come now, for already holds the confines

Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville

Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns,

And yesternight the moon was round already;

Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee

From time to time within the forest deep."

Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while.

Inferno: Canto XXI

From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things

Of which my Comedy cares not to sing,

We came along, and held the summit, when

We halted to behold another fissure

Of Malebolge and other vain laments;

And I beheld it marvellously dark.

As in the Arsenal of the Venetians

Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch

To smear their unsound vessels o'er again,

For sail they cannot; and instead thereof

One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks

The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;

One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,

This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,

Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen;

Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine,

Was boiling down below there a dense pitch

Which upon every side the bank belimed.

I saw it, but I did not see within it

Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised,

And all swell up and resubside compressed.

The while below there fixedly I gazed,

My Leader, crying out: "Beware, beware!"

Drew me unto himself from where I stood.

Then I turned round, as one who is impatient

To see what it behoves him to escape,

And whom a sudden terror doth unman,

Who, while he looks, delays not his departure;

And I beheld behind us a black devil,

Running along upon the crag, approach.

Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect!

And how he seemed to me in action ruthless,

With open wings and light upon his feet!

His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high,

A sinner did encumber with both haunches,

And he held clutched the sinews of the feet.

From off our bridge, he said: "O Malebranche,

Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita;

Plunge him beneath, for I return for others

Unto that town, which is well furnished with them.

All there are barrators, except Bonturo;

No into Yes for money there is changed."

He hurled him down, and over the hard crag

Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened

In so much hurry to pursue a thief.

The other sank, and rose again face downward;

But the demons, under cover of the bridge,

Cried: "Here the Santo Volto has no place!

Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio;

Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not,

Do not uplift thyself above the pitch."

They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes;

They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered,

That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer."

Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make

Immerse into the middle of the caldron

The meat with hooks, so that it may not float.

Said the good Master to me: "That it be not

Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down

Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen;

And for no outrage that is done to me

Be thou afraid, because these things I know,

For once before was I in such a scuffle."

Then he passed on beyond the bridge's head,

And as upon the sixth bank he arrived,

Need was for him to have a steadfast front.

With the same fury, and the same uproar,

As dogs leap out upon a mendicant,

Who on a sudden begs, where'er he stops,

They issued from beneath the little bridge,

And turned against him all their grappling-irons;

But he cried out: "Be none of you malignant!

Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me,

Let one of you step forward, who may hear me,

And then take counsel as to grappling me."

They all cried out: "Let Malacoda go;"

Whereat one started, and the rest stood still,

And he came to him, saying: "What avails it?"

"Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me

Advanced into this place," my Master said,

"Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence,

Without the will divine, and fate auspicious?

Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed

That I another show this savage road."

Then was his arrogance so humbled in him,

That he let fall his grapnel at his feet,

And to the others said: "Now strike him not."

And unto me my Guide: "O thou, who sittest

Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down,

Securely now return to me again."

Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him;

And all the devils forward thrust themselves,

So that I feared they would not keep their compact.

And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers

Who issued under safeguard from Caprona,

Seeing themselves among so many foes.

Close did I press myself with all my person

Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes

From off their countenance, which was not good.

They lowered their rakes, and "Wilt thou have me hit him,"

They said to one another, "on the rump?"

And answered: "Yes; see that thou nick him with it."

But the same demon who was holding parley

With my Conductor turned him very quickly,

And said: "Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;"

Then said to us: "You can no farther go

Forward upon this crag, because is lying

All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch.

And if it still doth please you to go onward,

Pursue your way along upon this rock;

Near is another crag that yields a path.

Yesterday, five hours later than this hour,

One thousand and two hundred sixty-six

Years were complete, that here the way was broken.

I send in that direction some of mine

To see if any one doth air himself;

Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious.

Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,"

Began he to cry out, "and thou, Cagnazzo;

And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten.

Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo,

And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane,

And Farfarello and mad Rubicante;

Search ye all round about the boiling pitch;

Let these be safe as far as the next crag,

That all unbroken passes o'er the dens."

"O me! what is it, Master, that I see?

Pray let us go," I said, "without an escort,

If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none.

If thou art as observant as thy wont is,

Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth,

And with their brows are threatening woe to us?"

And he to me: "I will not have thee fear;

Let them gnash on, according to their fancy,

Because they do it for those boiling wretches."

Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about;

But first had each one thrust his tongue between

His teeth towards their leader for a signal;

And he had made a trumpet of his rump.

Inferno: Canto XXII

I have erewhile seen horsemen moving camp,

Begin the storming, and their muster make,

And sometimes starting off for their escape;

Vaunt-couriers have I seen upon your land,

O Aretines, and foragers go forth,

Tournaments stricken, and the joustings run,

Sometimes with trumpets and sometimes with bells,

With kettle-drums, and signals of the castles,

And with our own, and with outlandish things,

But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth

Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry,

Nor ship by any sign of land or star.

We went upon our way with the ten demons;

Ah, savage company! but in the church

With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons!

Ever upon the pitch was my intent,

To see the whole condition of that Bolgia,

And of the people who therein were burned.

Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign

To mariners by arching of the back,

That they should counsel take to save their vessel,

Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain,

One of the sinners would display his back,

And in less time conceal it than it lightens.

As on the brink of water in a ditch

The frogs stand only with their muzzles out,

So that they hide their feet and other bulk,

So upon every side the sinners stood;

But ever as Barbariccia near them came,

Thus underneath the boiling they withdrew.

I saw, and still my heart doth shudder at it,

One waiting thus, even as it comes to pass

One frog remains, and down another dives;

And Graffiacan, who most confronted him,

Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch,

And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter.

I knew, before, the names of all of them,

So had I noted them when they were chosen,

And when they called each other, listened how.

"O Rubicante, see that thou do lay

Thy claws upon him, so that thou mayst flay him,"

Cried all together the accursed ones.

And I: "My Master, see to it, if thou canst,

That thou mayst know who is the luckless wight,

Thus come into his adversaries' hands."

Near to the side of him my Leader drew,

Asked of him whence he was; and he replied:

"I in the kingdom of Navarre was born;

My mother placed me servant to a lord,

For she had borne me to a ribald knave,

Destroyer of himself and of his things.

Then I domestic was of good King Thibault;

I set me there to practise barratry,

For which I pay the reckoning in this heat."

And Ciriatto, from whose mouth projected,

On either side, a tusk, as in a boar,

Caused him to feel how one of them could rip.

Among malicious cats the mouse had come;

But Barbariccia clasped him in his arms,

And said: "Stand ye aside, while I enfork him."

And to my Master he turned round his head;

"Ask him again," he said, "if more thou wish

To know from him, before some one destroy him."

The Guide: "Now tell then of the other culprits;

Knowest thou any one who is a Latian,

Under the pitch?" And he: "I separated

Lately from one who was a neighbour to it;

Would that I still were covered up with him,

For I should fear not either claw nor hook!"

And Libicocco: "We have borne too much;"

And with his grapnel seized him by the arm,

So that, by rending, he tore off a tendon.

Eke Draghignazzo wished to pounce upon him

Down at the legs; whence their Decurion

Turned round and round about with evil look.

When they again somewhat were pacified,

Of him, who still was looking at his wound,

Demanded my Conductor without stay:

"Who was that one, from whom a luckless parting

Thou sayest thou hast made, to come ashore?"

And he replied: "It was the Friar Gomita,

He of Gallura, vessel of all fraud,

Who had the enemies of his Lord in hand,

And dealt so with them each exults thereat;

Money he took, and let them smoothly off,

As he says; and in other offices

A barrator was he, not mean but sovereign.

Foregathers with him one Don Michael Zanche

Of Logodoro; and of Sardinia

To gossip never do their tongues feel tired.

O me! see that one, how he grinds his teeth;

Still farther would I speak, but am afraid

Lest he to scratch my itch be making ready."

And the grand Provost, turned to Farfarello,

Who rolled his eyes about as if to strike,

Said: "Stand aside there, thou malicious bird."

"If you desire either to see or hear,"

The terror-stricken recommenced thereon,

"Tuscans or Lombards, I will make them come.

But let the Malebranche cease a little,

So that these may not their revenges fear,

And I, down sitting in this very place,

For one that I am will make seven come,

When I shall whistle, as our custom is

To do whenever one of us comes out."

Cagnazzo at these words his muzzle lifted,

Shaking his head, and said: "Just hear the trick

Which he has thought of, down to throw himself!"

Whence he, who snares in great abundance had,

Responded: "I by far too cunning am,

When I procure for mine a greater sadness."

Alichin held not in, but running counter

Unto the rest, said to him: "If thou dive,

I will not follow thee upon the gallop,

But I will beat my wings above the pitch;

The height be left, and be the bank a shield

To see if thou alone dost countervail us."

O thou who readest, thou shalt hear new sport!

Each to the other side his eyes averted;

He first, who most reluctant was to do it.

The Navarrese selected well his time;

Planted his feet on land, and in a moment

Leaped, and released himself from their design.

Whereat each one was suddenly stung with shame,

But he most who was cause of the defeat;

Therefore he moved, and cried: "Thou art o'ertakern."

But little it availed, for wings could not

Outstrip the fear; the other one went under,

And, flying, upward he his breast directed;

Not otherwise the duck upon a sudden

Dives under, when the falcon is approaching,

And upward he returneth cross and weary.

Infuriate at the mockery, Calcabrina

Flying behind him followed close, desirous

The other should escape, to have a quarrel.

And when the barrator had disappeared,

He turned his talons upon his companion,

And grappled with him right above the moat.

But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk

To clapperclaw him well; and both of them

Fell in the middle of the boiling pond.

A sudden intercessor was the heat;

But ne'ertheless of rising there was naught,

To such degree they had their wings belimed.

Lamenting with the others, Barbariccia

Made four of them fly to the other side

With all their gaffs, and very speedily

This side and that they to their posts descended;

They stretched their hooks towards the pitch-ensnared,

Who were already baked within the crust,

And in this manner busied did we leave them.

Inferno: Canto XXIII

Silent, alone, and without company

We went, the one in front, the other after,

As go the Minor Friars along their way.

Upon the fable of Aesop was directed

My thought, by reason of the present quarrel,

Where he has spoken of the frog and mouse;

For 'mo' and 'issa' are not more alike

Than this one is to that, if well we couple

End and beginning with a steadfast mind.

And even as one thought from another springs,

So afterward from that was born another,

Which the first fear within me double made.

Thus did I ponder: "These on our account

Are laughed to scorn, with injury and scoff

So great, that much I think it must annoy them.

If anger be engrafted on ill-will,

They will come after us more merciless

Than dog upon the leveret which he seizes,"

I felt my hair stand all on end already

With terror, and stood backwardly intent,

When said I: "Master, if thou hidest not

Thyself and me forthwith, of Malebranche

I am in dread; we have them now behind us;

I so imagine them, I already feel them."

And he: "If I were made of leaded glass,

Thine outward image I should not attract

Sooner to me than I imprint the inner.

Just now thy thoughts came in among my own,

With similar attitude and similar face,

So that of both one counsel sole I made.

If peradventure the right bank so slope

That we to the next Bolgia can descend,

We shall escape from the imagined chase."

Not yet he finished rendering such opinion,

When I beheld them come with outstretched wings,

Not far remote, with will to seize upon us.

My Leader on a sudden seized me up,

Even as a mother who by noise is wakened,

And close beside her sees the enkindled flames,

Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop,

Having more care of him than of herself,

So that she clothes her only with a shift;

And downward from the top of the hard bank

Supine he gave him to the pendent rock,

That one side of the other Bolgia walls.

Ne'er ran so swiftly water through a sluice

To turn the wheel of any land-built mill,

When nearest to the paddles it approaches,

As did my Master down along that border,

Bearing me with him on his breast away,

As his own son, and not as a companion.

Hardly the bed of the ravine below

His feet had reached, ere they had reached the hill

Right over us; but he was not afraid;

For the high Providence, which had ordained

To place them ministers of the fifth moat,

The power of thence departing took from all.

A painted people there below we found,

Who went about with footsteps very slow,

Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished.

They had on mantles with the hoods low down

Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut

That in Cologne they for the monks are made.

Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles;

But inwardly all leaden and so heavy

That Frederick used to put them on of straw.

O everlastingly fatiguing mantle!

Again we turned us, still to the left hand

Along with them, intent on their sad plaint;

But owing to the weight, that weary folk

Came on so tardily, that we were new

In company at each motion of the haunch.

Whence I unto my Leader: "See thou find

Some one who may by deed or name be known,

And thus in going move thine eye about."

And one, who understood the Tuscan speech,

Cried to us from behind: "Stay ye your feet,

Ye, who so run athwart the dusky air!

Perhaps thou'lt have from me what thou demandest."

Whereat the Leader turned him, and said: "Wait,

And then according to his pace proceed."

I stopped, and two beheld I show great haste

Of spirit, in their faces, to be with me;

But the burden and the narrow way delayed them.

When they came up, long with an eye askance

They scanned me without uttering a word.

Then to each other turned, and said together:

"He by the action of his throat seems living;

And if they dead are, by what privilege

Go they uncovered by the heavy stole?"

Then said to me: "Tuscan, who to the college

Of miserable hypocrites art come,

Do not disdain to tell us who thou art."

And I to them: "Born was I, and grew up

In the great town on the fair river of Arno,

And with the body am I've always had.

But who are ye, in whom there trickles down

Along your cheeks such grief as I behold?

And what pain is upon you, that so sparkles?"

And one replied to me: "These orange cloaks

Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights

Cause in this way their balances to creak.

Frati Gaudenti were we, and Bolognese;

I Catalano, and he Loderingo

Named, and together taken by thy city,

As the wont is to take one man alone,

For maintenance of its peace; and we were such

That still it is apparent round Gardingo."

"O Friars," began I, "your iniquitous..."

But said no more; for to mine eyes there rushed

One crucified with three stakes on the ground.

When me he saw, he writhed himself all over,

Blowing into his beard with suspirations;

And the Friar Catalan, who noticed this,

Said to me: "This transfixed one, whom thou seest,

Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet

To put one man to torture for the people.

Crosswise and naked is he on the path,

As thou perceivest; and he needs must feel,

Whoever passes, first how much he weighs;

And in like mode his father-in-law is punished

Within this moat, and the others of the council,

Which for the Jews was a malignant seed."

And thereupon I saw Virgilius marvel

O'er him who was extended on the cross

So vilely in eternal banishment.

Then he directed to the Friar this voice:

"Be not displeased, if granted thee, to tell us

If to the right hand any pass slope down

By which we two may issue forth from here,

Without constraining some of the black angels

To come and extricate us from this deep."

Then he made answer: "Nearer than thou hopest

There is a rock, that forth from the great circle

Proceeds, and crosses all the cruel valleys,

Save that at this 'tis broken, and does not bridge it;

You will be able to mount up the ruin,

That sidelong slopes and at the bottom rises."

The Leader stood awhile with head bowed down;

Then said: "The business badly he recounted

Who grapples with his hook the sinners yonder."

And the Friar: "Many of the Devil's vices

Once heard I at Bologna, and among them,

That he's a liar and the father of lies."

Thereat my Leader with great strides went on,

Somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks;

Whence from the heavy-laden I departed

After the prints of his beloved feet.

Inferno: Canto XXIV

In that part of the youthful year wherein

The Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers,

And now the nights draw near to half the day,

What time the hoar-frost copies on the ground

The outward semblance of her sister white,

But little lasts the temper of her pen,

The husbandman, whose forage faileth him,

Rises, and looks, and seeth the champaign

All gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank,

Returns in doors, and up and down laments,

Like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do;

Then he returns and hope revives again,

Seeing the world has changed its countenance

In little time, and takes his shepherd's crook,

And forth the little lambs to pasture drives.

Thus did the Master fill me with alarm,

When I beheld his forehead so disturbed,

And to the ailment came as soon the plaster.

For as we came unto the ruined bridge,

The Leader turned to me with that sweet look

Which at the mountain's foot I first beheld.

His arms he opened, after some advisement

Within himself elected, looking first

Well at the ruin, and laid hold of me.

And even as he who acts and meditates,

For aye it seems that he provides beforehand,

So upward lifting me towards the summit

Of a huge rock, he scanned another crag,

Saying: "To that one grapple afterwards,

But try first if 'tis such that it will hold thee."

This was no way for one clothed with a cloak;

For hardly we, he light, and I pushed upward,

Were able to ascend from jag to jag.

And had it not been, that upon that precinct

Shorter was the ascent than on the other,

He I know not, but I had been dead beat.

But because Malebolge tow'rds the mouth

Of the profoundest well is all inclining,

The structure of each valley doth import

That one bank rises and the other sinks.

Still we arrived at length upon the point

Wherefrom the last stone breaks itself asunder.

The breath was from my lungs so milked away,

When I was up, that I could go no farther,

Nay, I sat down upon my first arrival.

"Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,"

My Master said; "for sitting upon down,

Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame,

Withouten which whoso his life consumes

Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth,

As smoke in air or in the water foam.

And therefore raise thee up, o'ercome the anguish

With spirit that o'ercometh every battle,

If with its heavy body it sink not.

A longer stairway it behoves thee mount;

'Tis not enough from these to have departed;

Let it avail thee, if thou understand me."

Then I uprose, showing myself provided

Better with breath than I did feel myself,

And said: "Go on, for I am strong and bold."

Upward we took our way along the crag,

Which jagged was, and narrow, and difficult,

And more precipitous far than that before.

Speaking I went, not to appear exhausted;

Whereat a voice from the next moat came forth,

Not well adapted to articulate words.

I know not what it said, though o'er the back

I now was of the arch that passes there;

But he seemed moved to anger who was speaking.

I was bent downward, but my living eyes

Could not attain the bottom, for the dark;

Wherefore I: "Master, see that thou arrive

At the next round, and let us descend the wall;

For as from hence I hear and understand not,

So I look down and nothing I distinguish."

"Other response," he said, "I make thee not,

Except the doing; for the modest asking

Ought to be followed by the deed in silence."

We from the bridge descended at its head,

Where it connects itself with the eighth bank,

And then was manifest to me the Bolgia;

And I beheld therein a terrible throng

Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind,

That the remembrance still congeals my blood

Let Libya boast no longer with her sand;

For if Chelydri, Jaculi, and Phareae

She breeds, with Cenchri and with Amphisbaena,

Neither so many plagues nor so malignant

E'er showed she with all Ethiopia,

Nor with whatever on the Red Sea is!

Among this cruel and most dismal throng

People were running naked and affrighted.

Without the hope of hole or heliotrope.

They had their hands with serpents bound behind them;

These riveted upon their reins the tail

And head, and were in front of them entwined.

And lo! at one who was upon our side

There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him

There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders.

Nor 'O' so quickly e'er, nor 'I' was written,

As he took fire, and burned; and ashes wholly

Behoved it that in falling he became.

And when he on the ground was thus destroyed,

The ashes drew together, and of themselves

Into himself they instantly returned.

Even thus by the great sages 'tis confessed

The phoenix dies, and then is born again,

When it approaches its five-hundredth year;

On herb or grain it feeds not in its life,

But only on tears of incense and amomum,

And nard and myrrh are its last winding-sheet.

And as he is who falls, and knows not how,

By force of demons who to earth down drag him,

Or other oppilation that binds man,

When he arises and around him looks,

Wholly bewildered by the mighty anguish

Which he has suffered, and in looking sighs;

Such was that sinner after he had risen.

Justice of God! O how severe it is,

That blows like these in vengeance poureth down!

The Guide thereafter asked him who he was;

Whence he replied: "I rained from Tuscany

A short time since into this cruel gorge.

A bestial life, and not a human, pleased me,

Even as the mule I was; I'm Vanni Fucci,

Beast, and Pistoia was my worthy den."

And I unto the Guide: "Tell him to stir not,

And ask what crime has thrust him here below,

For once a man of blood and wrath I saw him."

And the sinner, who had heard, dissembled not,

But unto me directed mind and face,

And with a melancholy shame was painted.

Then said: "It pains me more that thou hast caught me

Amid this misery where thou seest me,

Than when I from the other life was taken.

What thou demandest I cannot deny;

So low am I put down because I robbed

The sacristy of the fair ornaments,

And falsely once 'twas laid upon another;

But that thou mayst not such a sight enjoy,

If thou shalt e'er be out of the dark places,

Thine ears to my announcement ope and hear:

Pistoia first of Neri groweth meagre;

Then Florence doth renew her men and manners;

Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra,

Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round,

And with impetuous and bitter tempest

Over Campo Picen shall be the battle;

When it shall suddenly rend the mist asunder,

So that each Bianco shall thereby be smitten.

And this I've said that it may give thee pain."

Inferno: Canto XXV

At the conclusion of his words, the thief

Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs,

Crying: "Take that, God, for at thee I aim them."

From that time forth the serpents were my friends;

For one entwined itself about his neck

As if it said: "I will not thou speak more;"

And round his arms another, and rebound him,

Clinching itself together so in front,

That with them he could not a motion make.

Pistoia, ah, Pistoia! why resolve not

To burn thyself to ashes and so perish,

Since in ill-doing thou thy seed excellest?

Through all the sombre circles of this Hell,

Spirit I saw not against God so proud,

Not he who fell at Thebes down from the walls!

He fled away, and spake no further word;

And I beheld a Centaur full of rage

Come crying out: "Where is, where is the scoffer?"

I do not think Maremma has so many

Serpents as he had all along his back,

As far as where our countenance begins.

Upon the shoulders, just behind the nape,

With wings wide open was a dragon lying,

And he sets fire to all that he encounters.

My Master said: "That one is Cacus, who

Beneath the rock upon Mount Aventine

Created oftentimes a lake of blood.

He goes not on the same road with his brothers,

By reason of the fraudulent theft he made

Of the great herd, which he had near to him;

Whereat his tortuous actions ceased beneath

The mace of Hercules, who peradventure

Gave him a hundred, and he felt not ten."

While he was speaking thus, he had passed by,

And spirits three had underneath us come,

Of which nor I aware was, nor my Leader,

Until what time they shouted: "Who are you?"

On which account our story made a halt,

And then we were intent on them alone.

I did not know them; but it came to pass,

As it is wont to happen by some chance,

That one to name the other was compelled,

Exclaiming: "Where can Cianfa have remained?"

Whence I, so that the Leader might attend,

Upward from chin to nose my finger laid.

If thou art, Reader, slow now to believe

What I shall say, it will no marvel be,

For I who saw it hardly can admit it.

As I was holding raised on them my brows,

Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth

In front of one, and fastens wholly on him.

With middle feet it bound him round the paunch,

And with the forward ones his arms it seized;

Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other;

The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs,

And put its tail through in between the two,

And up behind along the reins outspread it.

Ivy was never fastened by its barbs

Unto a tree so, as this horrible reptile

Upon the other's limbs entwined its own.

Then they stuck close, as if of heated wax

They had been made, and intermixed their colour;

Nor one nor other seemed now what he was;

E'en as proceedeth on before the flame

Upward along the paper a brown colour,

Which is not black as yet, and the white dies.

The other two looked on, and each of them

Cried out: "O me, Agnello, how thou changest!

Behold, thou now art neither two nor one."

Already the two heads had one become,

When there appeared to us two figures mingled

Into one face, wherein the two were lost.

Of the four lists were fashioned the two arms,

The thighs and legs, the belly and the chest

Members became that never yet were seen.

Every original aspect there was cancelled;

Two and yet none did the perverted image

Appear, and such departed with slow pace.

Even as a lizard, under the great scourge

Of days canicular, exchanging hedge,

Lightning appeareth if the road it cross;

Thus did appear, coming towards the bellies

Of the two others, a small fiery serpent,

Livid and black as is a peppercorn.

And in that part whereat is first received

Our aliment, it one of them transfixed;

Then downward fell in front of him extended.

The one transfixed looked at it, but said naught;

Nay, rather with feet motionless he yawned,

Just as if sleep or fever had assailed him.

He at the serpent gazed, and it at him;

One through the wound, the other through the mouth

Smoked violently, and the smoke commingled.

Henceforth be silent Lucan, where he mentions

Wretched Sabellus and Nassidius,

And wait to hear what now shall be shot forth.

Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa;

For if him to a snake, her to fountain,

Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not;

Because two natures never front to front

Has he transmuted, so that both the forms

To interchange their matter ready were.

Together they responded in such wise,

That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail,

And eke the wounded drew his feet together.

The legs together with the thighs themselves

Adhered so, that in little time the juncture

No sign whatever made that was apparent.

He with the cloven tail assumed the figure

The other one was losing, and his skin

Became elastic, and the other's hard.

I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits,

And both feet of the reptile, that were short,

Lengthen as much as those contracted were.

Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted,

Became the member that a man conceals,

And of his own the wretch had two created.

While both of them the exhalation veils

With a new colour, and engenders hair

On one of them and depilates the other,

The one uprose and down the other fell,

Though turning not away their impious lamps,

Underneath which each one his muzzle changed.

He who was standing drew it tow'rds the temples,

And from excess of matter, which came thither,

Issued the ears from out the hollow cheeks;

What did not backward run and was retained

Of that excess made to the face a nose,

And the lips thickened far as was befitting.

He who lay prostrate thrusts his muzzle forward,

And backward draws the ears into his head,

In the same manner as the snail its horns;

And so the tongue, which was entire and apt

For speech before, is cleft, and the bi-forked

In the other closes up, and the smoke ceases.

The soul, which to a reptile had been changed,

Along the valley hissing takes to flight,

And after him the other speaking sputters.

Then did he turn upon him his new shoulders,

And said to the other: "I'll have Buoso run,

Crawling as I have done, along this road."

In this way I beheld the seventh ballast

Shift and reshift, and here be my excuse

The novelty, if aught my pen transgress.

And notwithstanding that mine eyes might be

Somewhat bewildered, and my mind dismayed,

They could not flee away so secretly

But that I plainly saw Puccio Sciancato;

And he it was who sole of three companions,

Which came in the beginning, was not changed;

The other was he whom thou, Gaville, weepest.

Inferno: Canto XXVI

Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great,

That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings,

And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad!

Among the thieves five citizens of thine

Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me,

And thou thereby to no great honour risest.

But if when morn is near our dreams are true,

Feel shalt thou in a little time from now

What Prato, if none other, craves for thee.

And if it now were, it were not too soon;

Would that it were, seeing it needs must be,

For 'twill aggrieve me more the more I age.

We went our way, and up along the stairs

The bourns had made us to descend before,

Remounted my Conductor and drew me.

And following the solitary path

Among the rocks and ridges of the crag,

The foot without the hand sped not at all.

Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again,

When I direct my mind to what I saw,

And more my genius curb than I am wont,

That it may run not unless virtue guide it;

So that if some good star, or better thing,

Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it.

As many as the hind (who on the hill

Rests at the time when he who lights the world

His countenance keeps least concealed from us,

While as the fly gives place unto the gnat)

Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley,

Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage;

With flames as manifold resplendent all

Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware

As soon as I was where the depth appeared.

And such as he who with the bears avenged him

Beheld Elijah's chariot at departing,

What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose,

For with his eye he could not follow it

So as to see aught else than flame alone,

Even as a little cloud ascending upward,

Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment

Was moving; for not one reveals the theft,

And every flame a sinner steals away.

I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see,

So that, if I had seized not on a rock,

Down had I fallen without being pushed.

And the Leader, who beheld me so attent,

Exclaimed: "Within the fires the spirits are;

Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns."

"My Master," I replied, "by hearing thee

I am more sure; but I surmised already

It might be so, and already wished to ask thee

Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft

At top, it seems uprising from the pyre

Where was Eteocles with his brother placed."

He answered me: "Within there are tormented

Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together

They unto vengeance run as unto wrath.

And there within their flame do they lament

The ambush of the horse, which made the door

Whence issued forth the Romans' gentle seed;

Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead

Deidamia still deplores Achilles,

And pain for the Palladium there is borne."

"If they within those sparks possess the power

To speak," I said, "thee, Master, much I pray,

And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand,

That thou make no denial of awaiting

Until the horned flame shall hither come;

Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it."

And he to me: "Worthy is thy entreaty

Of much applause, and therefore I accept it;

But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself.

Leave me to speak, because I have conceived

That which thou wishest; for they might disdain

Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine."

When now the flame had come unto that point,

Where to my Leader it seemed time and place,

After this fashion did I hear him speak:

"O ye, who are twofold within one fire,

If I deserved of you, while I was living,

If I deserved of you or much or little

When in the world I wrote the lofty verses,

Do not move on, but one of you declare

Whither, being lost, he went away to die."

Then of the antique flame the greater horn,

Murmuring, began to wave itself about

Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues.

Thereafterward, the summit to and fro

Moving as if it were the tongue that spake,

It uttered forth a voice, and said: "When I

From Circe had departed, who concealed me

More than a year there near unto Gaeta,

Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,

Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence

For my old father, nor the due affection

Which joyous should have made Penelope,

Could overcome within me the desire

I had to be experienced of the world,

And of the vice and virtue of mankind;

But I put forth on the high open sea

With one sole ship, and that small company

By which I never had deserted been.

Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain,

Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes,

And the others which that sea bathes round about.

I and my company were old and slow

When at that narrow passage we arrived

Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,

That man no farther onward should adventure.

On the right hand behind me left I Seville,

And on the other already had left Ceuta.

'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand

Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,

To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still

Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,

Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;

Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,

But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,

With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,

That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,

We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,

Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole

The night beheld, and ours so very low

It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched

Had been the splendour underneath the moon,

Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim

From distance, and it seemed to me so high

As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;

For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,

And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,

At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,

And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

Inferno: Canto XXVII

Already was the flame erect and quiet,

To speak no more, and now departed from us

With the permission of the gentle Poet;

When yet another, which behind it came,

Caused us to turn our eyes upon its top

By a confused sound that issued from it.

As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first

With the lament of him, and that was right,

Who with his file had modulated it)

Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted,

That, notwithstanding it was made of brass,

Still it appeared with agony transfixed;

Thus, by not having any way or issue

At first from out the fire, to its own language

Converted were the melancholy words.

But afterwards, when they had gathered way

Up through the point, giving it that vibration

The tongue had given them in their passage out,

We heard it said: "O thou, at whom I aim

My voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard,

Saying, 'Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,'

Because I come perchance a little late,

To stay and speak with me let it not irk thee;

Thou seest it irks not me, and I am burning.

If thou but lately into this blind world

Hast fallen down from that sweet Latian land,

Wherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression,

Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war,

For I was from the mountains there between

Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts."

I still was downward bent and listening,

When my Conductor touched me on the side,

Saying: "Speak thou: this one a Latian is."

And I, who had beforehand my reply

In readiness, forthwith began to speak:

"O soul, that down below there art concealed,

Romagna thine is not and never has been

Without war in the bosom of its tyrants;

But open war I none have left there now.

Ravenna stands as it long years has stood;

The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding,

So that she covers Cervia with her vans.

The city which once made the long resistance,

And of the French a sanguinary heap,

Beneath the Green Paws finds itself again;

Verrucchio's ancient Mastiff and the new,

Who made such bad disposal of Montagna,

Where they are wont make wimbles of their teeth.

The cities of Lamone and Santerno

Governs the Lioncel of the white lair,

Who changes sides 'twixt summer-time and winter;

And that of which the Savio bathes the flank,

Even as it lies between the plain and mountain,

Lives between tyranny and a free state.

Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art;

Be not more stubborn than the rest have been,

So may thy name hold front there in the world."

After the fire a little more had roared

In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved

This way and that, and then gave forth such breath:

"If I believed that my reply were made

To one who to the world would e'er return,

This flame without more flickering would stand still;

But inasmuch as never from this depth

Did any one return, if I hear true,

Without the fear of infamy I answer,

I was a man of arms, then Cordelier,

Believing thus begirt to make amends;

And truly my belief had been fulfilled

But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide,

Who put me back into my former sins;

And how and wherefore I will have thee hear.

While I was still the form of bone and pulp

My mother gave to me, the deeds I did

Were not those of a lion, but a fox.

The machinations and the covert ways

I knew them all, and practised so their craft,

That to the ends of earth the sound went forth.

When now unto that portion of mine age

I saw myself arrived, when each one ought

To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes,

That which before had pleased me then displeased me;

And penitent and confessing I surrendered,

Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me;

The Leader of the modern Pharisees

Having a war near unto Lateran,

And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,

For each one of his enemies was Christian,

And none of them had been to conquer Acre,

Nor merchandising in the Sultan's land,

Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders,

In him regarded, nor in me that cord

Which used to make those girt with it more meagre;

But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester

To cure his leprosy, within Soracte,

So this one sought me out as an adept

To cure him of the fever of his pride.

Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent,

Because his words appeared inebriate.

And then he said: 'Be not thy heart afraid;

Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me

How to raze Palestrina to the ground.

Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock,

As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two,

The which my predecessor held not dear.'

Then urged me on his weighty arguments

There, where my silence was the worst advice;

And said I: 'Father, since thou washest me

Of that sin into which I now must fall,

The promise long with the fulfilment short

Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.'

Francis came afterward, when I was dead,

For me; but one of the black Cherubim

Said to him: 'Take him not; do me no wrong;

He must come down among my servitors,

Because he gave the fraudulent advice

From which time forth I have been at his hair;

For who repents not cannot be absolved,

Nor can one both repent and will at once,

Because of the contradiction which consents not.'

O miserable me! how I did shudder

When he seized on me, saying: 'Peradventure

Thou didst not think that I was a logician!'

He bore me unto Minos, who entwined

Eight times his tail about his stubborn back,

And after he had bitten it in great rage,

Said: 'Of the thievish fire a culprit this;'

Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost,

And vested thus in going I bemoan me."

When it had thus completed its recital,

The flame departed uttering lamentations,

Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn.

Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor,

Up o'er the crag above another arch,

Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee

By those who, sowing discord, win their burden.

Inferno: Canto XXVIII

Who ever could, e'en with untrammelled words,

Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full

Which now I saw, by many times narrating?

Each tongue would for a certainty fall short

By reason of our speech and memory,

That have small room to comprehend so much.

If were again assembled all the people

Which formerly upon the fateful land

Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood

Shed by the Romans and the lingering war

That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,

As Livy has recorded, who errs not,

With those who felt the agony of blows

By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,

And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still

At Ceperano, where a renegade

Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,

Where without arms the old Alardo conquered,

And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,

Should show, it would be nothing to compare

With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.

A cask by losing centre-piece or cant

Was never shattered so, as I saw one

Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.

Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;

His heart was visible, and the dismal sack

That maketh excrement of what is eaten.

While I was all absorbed in seeing him,

He looked at me, and opened with his hands

His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;

How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;

In front of me doth Ali weeping go,

Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;

And all the others whom thou here beholdest,

Disseminators of scandal and of schism

While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.

A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us

Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge

Putting again each one of all this ream,

When we have gone around the doleful road;

By reason that our wounds are closed again

Ere any one in front of him repass.

But who art thou, that musest on the crag,

Perchance to postpone going to the pain

That is adjudged upon thine accusations?"

"Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,"

My Master made reply, "to be tormented;

But to procure him full experience,

Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him

Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle;

And this is true as that I speak to thee."

More than a hundred were there when they heard him,

Who in the moat stood still to look at me,

Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.

"Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,

Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,

If soon he wish not here to follow me,

So with provisions, that no stress of snow

May give the victory to the Novarese,

Which otherwise to gain would not be easy."

After one foot to go away he lifted,

This word did Mahomet say unto me,

Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.

Another one, who had his throat pierced through,

And nose cut off close underneath the brows,

And had no longer but a single ear,

Staying to look in wonder with the others,

Before the others did his gullet open,

Which outwardly was red in every part,

And said: "O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,

And whom I once saw up in Latian land,

Unless too great similitude deceive me,

Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,

If e'er thou see again the lovely plain

That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,

And make it known to the best two of Fano,

To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,

That if foreseeing here be not in vain,

Cast over from their vessel shall they be,

And drowned near unto the Cattolica,

By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.

Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca

Neptune ne'er yet beheld so great a crime,

Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.

That traitor, who sees only with one eye,

And holds the land, which some one here with me

Would fain be fasting from the vision of,

Will make them come unto a parley with him;

Then will do so, that to Focara's wind

They will not stand in need of vow or prayer."

And I to him: "Show to me and declare,

If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,

Who is this person of the bitter vision."

Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw

Of one of his companions, and his mouth

Oped, crying: "This is he, and he speaks not.

This one, being banished, every doubt submerged

In Caesar by affirming the forearmed

Always with detriment allowed delay."

O how bewildered unto me appeared,

With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,

Curio, who in speaking was so bold!

And one, who both his hands dissevered had,

The stumps uplifting through the murky air,

So that the blood made horrible his face,

Cried out: "Thou shalt remember Mosca also,

Who said, alas! 'A thing done has an end!'

Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people."

"And death unto thy race," thereto I added;

Whence he, accumulating woe on woe,

Departed, like a person sad and crazed.

But I remained to look upon the crowd;

And saw a thing which I should be afraid,

Without some further proof, even to recount,

If it were not that conscience reassures me,

That good companion which emboldens man

Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.

I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,

A trunk without a head walk in like manner

As walked the others of the mournful herd.

And by the hair it held the head dissevered,

Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,

And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!"

It of itself made to itself a lamp,

And they were two in one, and one in two;

How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.

When it was come close to the bridge's foot,

It lifted high its arm with all the head,

To bring more closely unto us its words,

Which were: "Behold now the sore penalty,

Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;

Behold if any be as great as this.

And so that thou may carry news of me,

Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same

Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.

I made the father and the son rebellious;

Achitophel not more with Absalom

And David did with his accursed goadings.

Because I parted persons so united,

Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!

From its beginning, which is in this trunk.

Thus is observed in me the counterpoise."

Inferno: Canto XXIX

The many people and the divers wounds

These eyes of mine had so inebriated,

That they were wishful to stand still and weep;

But said Virgilius: "What dost thou still gaze at?

Why is thy sight still riveted down there

Among the mournful, mutilated shades?

Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge;

Consider, if to count them thou believest,

That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds,

And now the moon is underneath our feet;

Henceforth the time allotted us is brief,

And more is to be seen than what thou seest."

"If thou hadst," I made answer thereupon,

"Attended to the cause for which I looked,

Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned."

Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him

I went, already making my reply,

And superadding: "In that cavern where

I held mine eyes with such attention fixed,

I think a spirit of my blood laments

The sin which down below there costs so much."

Then said the Master: "Be no longer broken

Thy thought from this time forward upon him;

Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain;

For him I saw below the little bridge,

Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger

Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.

So wholly at that time wast thou impeded

By him who formerly held Altaforte,

Thou didst not look that way; so he departed."

"O my Conductor, his own violent death,

Which is not yet avenged for him," I said,

"By any who is sharer in the shame,

Made him disdainful; whence he went away,

As I imagine, without speaking to me,

And thereby made me pity him the more."

Thus did we speak as far as the first place

Upon the crag, which the next valley shows

Down to the bottom, if there were more light.

When we were now right over the last cloister

Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers

Could manifest themselves unto our sight,

Divers lamentings pierced me through and through,

Which with compassion had their arrows barbed,

Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands.

What pain would be, if from the hospitals

Of Valdichiana, 'twixt July and September,

And of Maremma and Sardinia

All the diseases in one moat were gathered,

Such was it here, and such a stench came from it

As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.

We had descended on the furthest bank

From the long crag, upon the left hand still,

And then more vivid was my power of sight

Down tow'rds the bottom, where the ministress

Of the high Lord, Justice infallible,

Punishes forgers, which she here records.

I do not think a sadder sight to see

Was in Aegina the whole people sick,

(When was the air so full of pestilence,

The animals, down to the little worm,

All fell, and afterwards the ancient people,

According as the poets have affirmed,

Were from the seed of ants restored again,)

Than was it to behold through that dark valley

The spirits languishing in divers heaps.

This on the belly, that upon the back

One of the other lay, and others crawling

Shifted themselves along the dismal road.

We step by step went onward without speech,

Gazing upon and listening to the sick

Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies.

I saw two sitting leaned against each other,

As leans in heating platter against platter,

From head to foot bespotted o'er with scabs;

And never saw I plied a currycomb

By stable-boy for whom his master waits,

Or him who keeps awake unwillingly,

As every one was plying fast the bite

Of nails upon himself, for the great rage

Of itching which no other succour had.

And the nails downward with them dragged the scab,

In fashion as a knife the scales of bream,

Or any other fish that has them largest.

"O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee,"

Began my Leader unto one of them,

"And makest of them pincers now and then,

Tell me if any Latian is with those

Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee

To all eternity unto this work."

"Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest,

Both of us here," one weeping made reply;

"But who art thou, that questionest about us?"

And said the Guide: "One am I who descends

Down with this living man from cliff to cliff,

And I intend to show Hell unto him."

Then broken was their mutual support,

And trembling each one turned himself to me,

With others who had heard him by rebound.

Wholly to me did the good Master gather,

Saying: "Say unto them whate'er thou wishest."

And I began, since he would have it so:

"So may your memory not steal away

In the first world from out the minds of men,

But so may it survive 'neath many suns,

Say to me who ye are, and of what people;

Let not your foul and loathsome punishment

Make you afraid to show yourselves to me."

"I of Arezzo was," one made reply,

"And Albert of Siena had me burned;

But what I died for does not bring me here.

'Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest,

That I could rise by flight into the air,

And he who had conceit, but little wit,

Would have me show to him the art; and only

Because no Daedalus I made him, made me

Be burned by one who held him as his son.

But unto the last Bolgia of the ten,

For alchemy, which in the world I practised,

Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned."

And to the Poet said I: "Now was ever

So vain a people as the Sienese?

Not for a certainty the French by far."

Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,

Replied unto my speech: "Taking out Stricca,

Who knew the art of moderate expenses,

And Niccolo, who the luxurious use

Of cloves discovered earliest of all

Within that garden where such seed takes root;

And taking out the band, among whom squandered

Caccia d'Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,

And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered!

But, that thou know who thus doth second thee

Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye

Tow'rds me, so that my face well answer thee,

And thou shalt see I am Capocchio's shade,

Who metals falsified by alchemy;

Thou must remember, if I well descry thee,

How I a skilful ape of nature was."

Inferno: Canto XXX

'Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,

For Semele, against the Theban blood,

As she already more than once had shown,

So reft of reason Athamas became,

That, seeing his own wife with children twain

Walking encumbered upon either hand,

He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take

The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;"

And then extended his unpitying claws,

Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,

And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;

And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;--

And at the time when fortune downward hurled

The Trojan's arrogance, that all things dared,

So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,

Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,

When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,

And of her Polydorus on the shore

Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,

Out of her senses like a dog she barked,

So much the anguish had her mind distorted;

But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan

Were ever seen in any one so cruel

In goading beasts, and much more human members,

As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,

Who, biting, in the manner ran along

That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.

One to Capocchio came, and by the nape

Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging

It made his belly grate the solid bottom.

And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,

Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,

And raving goes thus harrying other people."

"O," said I to him, "so may not the other

Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee

To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence."

And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost

Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became

Beyond all rightful love her father's lover.

She came to sin with him after this manner,

By counterfeiting of another's form;

As he who goeth yonder undertook,

That he might gain the lady of the herd,

To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,

Making a will and giving it due form."

And after the two maniacs had passed

On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back

To look upon the other evil-born.

I saw one made in fashion of a lute,

If he had only had the groin cut off

Just at the point at which a man is forked.

The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions

The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,

That the face corresponds not to the belly,

Compelled him so to hold his lips apart

As does the hectic, who because of thirst

One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns.

"O ye, who without any torment are,

And why I know not, in the world of woe,"

He said to us, "behold, and be attentive

Unto the misery of Master Adam;

I had while living much of what I wished,

And now, alas! a drop of water crave.

The rivulets, that from the verdant hills

Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,

Making their channels to be cold and moist,

Ever before me stand, and not in vain;

For far more doth their image dry me up

Than the disease which strips my face of flesh.

The rigid justice that chastises me

Draweth occasion from the place in which

I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.

There is Romena, where I counterfeited

The currency imprinted with the Baptist,

For which I left my body burned above.

But if I here could see the tristful soul

Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,

For Branda's fount I would not give the sight.

One is within already, if the raving

Shades that are going round about speak truth;

But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?

If I were only still so light, that in

A hundred years I could advance one inch,

I had already started on the way,

Seeking him out among this squalid folk,

Although the circuit be eleven miles,

And be not less than half a mile across.

For them am I in such a family;

They did induce me into coining florins,

Which had three carats of impurity."

And I to him: "Who are the two poor wretches

That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,

Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?"

"I found them here," replied he, "when I rained

Into this chasm, and since they have not turned,

Nor do I think they will for evermore.

One the false woman is who accused Joseph,

The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;

From acute fever they send forth such reek."

And one of them, who felt himself annoyed

At being, peradventure, named so darkly,

Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.

It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;

And Master Adam smote him in the face,

With arm that did not seem to be less hard,

Saying to him: "Although be taken from me

All motion, for my limbs that heavy are,

I have an arm unfettered for such need."

Whereat he answer made: "When thou didst go

Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:

But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining."

The dropsical: "Thou sayest true in that;

But thou wast not so true a witness there,

Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy."

"If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,"

Said Sinon; "and for one fault I am here,

And thou for more than any other demon."

"Remember, perjurer, about the horse,"

He made reply who had the swollen belly,

"And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it."

"Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks

Thy tongue," the Greek said, "and the putrid water

That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes."

Then the false-coiner: "So is gaping wide

Thy mouth for speaking evil, as 'tis wont;

Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me

Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,

And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus

Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee."

In listening to them was I wholly fixed,

When said the Master to me: "Now just look,

For little wants it that I quarrel with thee."

When him I heard in anger speak to me,

I turned me round towards him with such shame

That still it eddies through my memory.

And as he is who dreams of his own harm,

Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream,

So that he craves what is, as if it were not;

Such I became, not having power to speak,

For to excuse myself I wished, and still

Excused myself, and did not think I did it.

"Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,"

The Master said, "than this of thine has been;

Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness,

And make account that I am aye beside thee,

If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee

Where there are people in a like dispute;

For a base wish it is to wish to hear it."

Inferno: Canto XXXI

One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me,

So that it tinged the one cheek and the other,

And then held out to me the medicine;

Thus do I hear that once Achilles' spear,

His and his father's, used to be the cause

First of a sad and then a gracious boon.

We turned our backs upon the wretched valley,

Upon the bank that girds it round about,

Going across it without any speech.

There it was less than night, and less than day,

So that my sight went little in advance;

But I could hear the blare of a loud horn,

So loud it would have made each thunder faint,

Which, counter to it following its way,

Mine eyes directed wholly to one place.

After the dolorous discomfiture

When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost,

So terribly Orlando sounded not.

Short while my head turned thitherward I held

When many lofty towers I seemed to see,

Whereat I: "Master, say, what town is this?"

And he to me: "Because thou peerest forth

Athwart the darkness at too great a distance,

It happens that thou errest in thy fancy.

Well shalt thou see, if thou arrivest there,

How much the sense deceives itself by distance;

Therefore a little faster spur thee on."

Then tenderly he took me by the hand,

And said: "Before we farther have advanced,

That the reality may seem to thee

Less strange, know that these are not towers, but giants,

And they are in the well, around the bank,

From navel downward, one and all of them."

As, when the fog is vanishing away,

Little by little doth the sight refigure

Whate'er the mist that crowds the air conceals,

So, piercing through the dense and darksome air,

More and more near approaching tow'rd the verge,

My error fled, and fear came over me;

Because as on its circular parapets

Montereggione crowns itself with towers,

E'en thus the margin which surrounds the well

With one half of their bodies turreted

The horrible giants, whom Jove menaces

E'en now from out the heavens when he thunders.

And I of one already saw the face,

Shoulders, and breast, and great part of the belly,

And down along his sides both of the arms.

Certainly Nature, when she left the making

Of animals like these, did well indeed,

By taking such executors from Mars;

And if of elephants and whales she doth not

Repent her, whosoever looketh subtly

More just and more discreet will hold her for it;

For where the argument of intellect

Is added unto evil will and power,

No rampart can the people make against it.

His face appeared to me as long and large

As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter's,

And in proportion were the other bones;

So that the margin, which an apron was

Down from the middle, showed so much of him

Above it, that to reach up to his hair

Three Frieslanders in vain had vaunted them;

For I beheld thirty great palms of him

Down from the place where man his mantle buckles.

"Raphael mai amech izabi almi,"

Began to clamour the ferocious mouth,

To which were not befitting sweeter psalms.

And unto him my Guide: "Soul idiotic,

Keep to thy horn, and vent thyself with that,

When wrath or other passion touches thee.

Search round thy neck, and thou wilt find the belt

Which keeps it fastened, O bewildered soul,

And see it, where it bars thy mighty breast."

Then said to me: "He doth himself accuse;

This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought

One language in the world is not still used.

Here let us leave him and not speak in vain;

For even such to him is every language

As his to others, which to none is known."

Therefore a longer journey did we make,

Turned to the left, and a crossbow-shot oft

We found another far more fierce and large.

In binding him, who might the master be

I cannot say; but he had pinioned close

Behind the right arm, and in front the other,

With chains, that held him so begirt about

From the neck down, that on the part uncovered

It wound itself as far as the fifth gyre.

"This proud one wished to make experiment

Of his own power against the Supreme Jove,"

My Leader said, "whence he has such a guerdon.

Ephialtes is his name; he showed great prowess.

What time the giants terrified the gods;

The arms he wielded never more he moves."

And I to him: "If possible, I should wish

That of the measureless Briareus

These eyes of mine might have experience."

Whence he replied: "Thou shalt behold Antaeus

Close by here, who can speak and is unbound,

Who at the bottom of all crime shall place us.

Much farther yon is he whom thou wouldst see,

And he is bound, and fashioned like to this one,

Save that he seems in aspect more ferocious."

There never was an earthquake of such might

That it could shake a tower so violently,

As Ephialtes suddenly shook himself.

Then was I more afraid of death than ever,

For nothing more was needful than the fear,

If I had not beheld the manacles.

Then we proceeded farther in advance,

And to Antaeus came, who, full five ells

Without the head, forth issued from the cavern.

"O thou, who in the valley fortunate,

Which Scipio the heir of glory made,

When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts,

Once brought'st a thousand lions for thy prey,

And who, hadst thou been at the mighty war

Among thy brothers, some it seems still think

The sons of Earth the victory would have gained:

Place us below, nor be disdainful of it,

There where the cold doth lock Cocytus up.

Make us not go to Tityus nor Typhoeus;

This one can give of that which here is longed for;

Therefore stoop down, and do not curl thy lip.

Still in the world can he restore thy fame;

Because he lives, and still expects long life,

If to itself Grace call him not untimely."

So said the Master; and in haste the other

His hands extended and took up my Guide,--

Hands whose great pressure Hercules once felt.

Virgilius, when he felt himself embraced,

Said unto me: "Draw nigh, that I may take thee;"

Then of himself and me one bundle made.

As seems the Carisenda, to behold

Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud

Above it so that opposite it hangs;

Such did Antaeus seem to me, who stood

Watching to see him stoop, and then it was

I could have wished to go some other way.

But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up

Judas with Lucifer, he put us down;

Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay,

But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose.

Inferno: Canto XXXII

If I had rhymes both rough and stridulous,

As were appropriate to the dismal hole

Down upon which thrust all the other rocks,

I would press out the juice of my conception

More fully; but because I have them not,

Not without fear I bring myself to speak;

For 'tis no enterprise to take in jest,

To sketch the bottom of all the universe,

Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo.

But may those Ladies help this verse of mine,

Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes,

That from the fact the word be not diverse.

O rabble ill-begotten above all,

Who're in the place to speak of which is hard,

'Twere better ye had here been sheep or goats!

When we were down within the darksome well,

Beneath the giant's feet, but lower far,

And I was scanning still the lofty wall,

I heard it said to me: "Look how thou steppest!

Take heed thou do not trample with thy feet

The heads of the tired, miserable brothers!"

Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me

And underfoot a lake, that from the frost

The semblance had of glass, and not of water.

So thick a veil ne'er made upon its current

In winter-time Danube in Austria,

Nor there beneath the frigid sky the Don,

As there was here; so that if Tambernich

Had fallen upon it, or Pietrapana,

E'en at the edge 'twould not have given a creak.

And as to croak the frog doth place himself

With muzzle out of water,--when is dreaming

Of gleaning oftentimes the peasant-girl,--

Livid, as far down as where shame appears,

Were the disconsolate shades within the ice,

Setting their teeth unto the note of storks.

Each one his countenance held downward bent;

From mouth the cold, from eyes the doleful heart

Among them witness of itself procures.

When round about me somewhat I had looked,

I downward turned me, and saw two so close,

The hair upon their heads together mingled.

"Ye who so strain your breasts together, tell me,"

I said, "who are you;" and they bent their necks,

And when to me their faces they had lifted,

Their eyes, which first were only moist within,

Gushed o'er the eyelids, and the frost congealed

The tears between, and locked them up again.

Clamp never bound together wood with wood

So strongly; whereat they, like two he-goats,

Butted together, so much wrath o'ercame them.

And one, who had by reason of the cold

Lost both his ears, still with his visage downward,

Said: "Why dost thou so mirror thyself in us?

If thou desire to know who these two are,

The valley whence Bisenzio descends

Belonged to them and to their father Albert.

They from one body came, and all Caina

Thou shalt search through, and shalt not find a shade

More worthy to be fixed in gelatine;

Not he in whom were broken breast and shadow

At one and the same blow by Arthur's hand;

Focaccia not; not he who me encumbers

So with his head I see no farther forward,

And bore the name of Sassol Mascheroni;

Well knowest thou who he was, if thou art Tuscan.

And that thou put me not to further speech,

Know that I Camicion de' Pazzi was,

And wait Carlino to exonerate me."

Then I beheld a thousand faces, made

Purple with cold; whence o'er me comes a shudder,

And evermore will come, at frozen ponds.

And while we were advancing tow'rds the middle,

Where everything of weight unites together,

And I was shivering in the eternal shade,

Whether 'twere will, or destiny, or chance,

I know not; but in walking 'mong the heads

I struck my foot hard in the face of one.

Weeping he growled: "Why dost thou trample me?

Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance

of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?"

And I: "My Master, now wait here for me,

That I through him may issue from a doubt;

Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish."

The Leader stopped; and to that one I said

Who was blaspheming vehemently still:

"Who art thou, that thus reprehendest others?"

"Now who art thou, that goest through Antenora

Smiting," replied he, "other people's cheeks,

So that, if thou wert living, 'twere too much?"

"Living I am, and dear to thee it may be,"

Was my response, "if thou demandest fame,

That 'mid the other notes thy name I place."

And he to me: "For the reverse I long;

Take thyself hence, and give me no more trouble;

For ill thou knowest to flatter in this hollow."

Then by the scalp behind I seized upon him,

And said: "It must needs be thou name thyself,

Or not a hair remain upon thee here."

Whence he to me: "Though thou strip off my hair,

I will not tell thee who I am, nor show thee,

If on my head a thousand times thou fall."

I had his hair in hand already twisted,

And more than one shock of it had pulled out,

He barking, with his eyes held firmly down,

When cried another: "What doth ail thee, Bocca?

Is't not enough to clatter with thy jaws,

But thou must bark? what devil touches thee?"

"Now," said I, "I care not to have thee speak,

Accursed traitor; for unto thy shame

I will report of thee veracious news."

"Begone," replied he, "and tell what thou wilt,

But be not silent, if thou issue hence,

Of him who had just now his tongue so prompt;

He weepeth here the silver of the French;

'I saw,' thus canst thou phrase it, 'him of Duera

There where the sinners stand out in the cold.'

If thou shouldst questioned be who else was there,

Thou hast beside thee him of Beccaria,

Of whom the gorget Florence slit asunder;

Gianni del Soldanier, I think, may be

Yonder with Ganellon, and Tebaldello

Who oped Faenza when the people slep."

Already we had gone away from him,

When I beheld two frozen in one hole,

So that one head a hood was to the other;

And even as bread through hunger is devoured,

The uppermost on the other set his teeth,

There where the brain is to the nape united.

Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed

The temples of Menalippus in disdain,

Than that one did the skull and the other things.

"O thou, who showest by such bestial sign

Thy hatred against him whom thou art eating,

Tell me the wherefore," said I, "with this compact,

That if thou rightfully of him complain,

In knowing who ye are, and his transgression,

I in the world above repay thee for it,

If that wherewith I speak be not dried up."

Inferno: Canto XXXIII

His mouth uplifted from his grim repast,

That sinner, wiping it upon the hair

Of the same head that he behind had wasted.

Then he began: "Thou wilt that I renew

The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already

To think of only, ere I speak of it;

But if my words be seed that may bear fruit

Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw,

Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.

I know not who thou art, nor by what mode

Thou hast come down here; but a Florentine

Thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee.

Thou hast to know I was Count Ugolino,

And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop;

Now I will tell thee why I am such a neighbour.

That, by effect of his malicious thoughts,

Trusting in him I was made prisoner,

And after put to death, I need not say;

But ne'ertheless what thou canst not have heard,

That is to say, how cruel was my death,

Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me.

A narrow perforation in the mew,

Which bears because of me the title of Famine,

And in which others still must be locked up,

Had shown me through its opening many moons

Already, when I dreamed the evil dream

Which of the future rent for me the veil.

This one appeared to me as lord and master,

Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain

For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see.

With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained,

Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi

He had sent out before him to the front.

After brief course seemed unto me forespent

The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes

It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open.

When I before the morrow was awake,

Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons

Who with me were, and asking after bread.

Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not,

Thinking of what my heart foreboded me,

And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?

They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh

At which our food used to be brought to us,

And through his dream was each one apprehensive;

And I heard locking up the under door

Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word

I gazed into the faces of my sons.

I wept not, I within so turned to stone;

They wept; and darling little Anselm mine

Said: 'Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?'

Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made

All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter,

Until another sun rose on the world.

As now a little glimmer made its way

Into the dolorous prison, and I saw

Upon four faces my own very aspect,

Both of my hands in agony I bit;

And, thinking that I did it from desire

Of eating, on a sudden they uprose,

And said they: 'Father, much less pain 'twill give us

If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us

With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.'

I calmed me then, not to make them more sad.

That day we all were silent, and the next.

Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?

When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo

Threw himself down outstretched before my feet,

Saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?'

And there he died; and, as thou seest me,

I saw the three fall, one by one, between

The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,

Already blind, to groping over each,

And three days called them after they were dead;

Then hunger did what sorrow could not do."

When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,

The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,

Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong.

Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people

Of the fair land there where the 'Si' doth sound,

Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are,

Let the Capraia and Gorgona move,

And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno

That every person in thee it may drown!

For if Count Ugolino had the fame

Of having in thy castles thee betrayed,

Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons.

Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes!

Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata,

And the other two my song doth name above!

We passed still farther onward, where the ice

Another people ruggedly enswathes,

Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.

Weeping itself there does not let them weep,

And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes

Turns itself inward to increase the anguish;

Because the earliest tears a cluster form,

And, in the manner of a crystal visor,

Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full.

And notwithstanding that, as in a callus,

Because of cold all sensibility

Its station had abandoned in my face,

Still it appeared to me I felt some wind;

Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion?

Is not below here every vapour quenched?"

Whence he to me: "Full soon shalt thou be where

Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this,

Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast."

And one of the wretches of the frozen crust

Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless

That the last post is given unto you,

Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I

May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart

A little, e'er the weeping recongeal."

Whence I to him: "If thou wouldst have me help thee

Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not,

May I go to the bottom of the ice."

Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo;

He am I of the fruit of the bad garden,

Who here a date am getting for my fig."

"O," said I to him, "now art thou, too, dead?"

And he to me: "How may my body fare

Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.

Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea,

That oftentimes the soul descendeth here

Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it.

And, that thou mayest more willingly remove

From off my countenance these glassy tears,

Know that as soon as any soul betrays

As I have done, his body by a demon

Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it,

Until his time has wholly been revolved.

Itself down rushes into such a cistern;

And still perchance above appears the body

Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me.

This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down;

It is Ser Branca d' Oria, and many years

Have passed away since he was thus locked up."

"I think," said I to him, "thou dost deceive me;

For Branca d' Oria is not dead as yet,

And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes."

"In moat above," said he, "of Malebranche,

There where is boiling the tenacious pitch,

As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived,

When this one left a devil in his stead

In his own body and one near of kin,

Who made together with him the betrayal.

But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith,

Open mine eyes;"--and open them I did not,

And to be rude to him was courtesy.

Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance

With every virtue, full of every vice

Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?

For with the vilest spirit of Romagna

I found of you one such, who for his deeds

In soul already in Cocytus bathes,

And still above in body seems alive!

Inferno: Canto XXXIV

"'Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni'

Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,"

My Master said, "if thou discernest him."

As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when

Our hemisphere is darkening into night,

Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,

Methought that such a building then I saw;

And, for the wind, I drew myself behind

My Guide, because there was no other shelter.

Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it,

There where the shades were wholly covered up,

And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

Some prone are lying, others stand erect,

This with the head, and that one with the soles;

Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.

When in advance so far we had proceeded,

That it my Master pleased to show to me

The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,

He from before me moved and made me stop,

Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place

Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."

How frozen I became and powerless then,

Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,

Because all language would be insufficient.

I did not die, and I alive remained not;

Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit,

What I became, being of both deprived.

The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous

From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;

And better with a giant I compare

Than do the giants with those arms of his;

Consider now how great must be that whole,

Which unto such a part conforms itself.

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,

And lifted up his brow against his Maker,

Well may proceed from him all tribulation.

O, what a marvel it appeared to me,

When I beheld three faces on his head!

The one in front, and that vermilion was;

Two were the others, that were joined with this

Above the middle part of either shoulder,

And they were joined together at the crest;

And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow;

The left was such to look upon as those

Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.

Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,

Such as befitting were so great a bird;

Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

No feathers had they, but as of a bat

Their fashion was; and he was waving them,

So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.

Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.

With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins

Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.

At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching

A sinner, in the manner of a brake,

So that he three of them tormented thus.

To him in front the biting was as naught

Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine

Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.

"That soul up there which has the greatest pain,"

The Master said, "is Judas Iscariot;

With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,

The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;

See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.

And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.

But night is reascending, and 'tis time

That we depart, for we have seen the whole."

As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck,

And he the vantage seized of time and place,

And when the wings were opened wide apart,

He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides;

From fell to fell descended downward then

Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

When we were come to where the thigh revolves

Exactly on the thickness of the haunch,

The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath,

Turned round his head where he had had his legs,

And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts,

So that to Hell I thought we were returning.

"Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,"

The Master said, panting as one fatigued,

"Must we perforce depart from so much evil."

Then through the opening of a rock he issued,

And down upon the margin seated me;

Then tow'rds me he outstretched his wary step.

I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see

Lucifer in the same way I had left him;

And I beheld him upward hold his legs.

And if I then became disquieted,

Let stolid people think who do not see

What the point is beyond which I had passed.

"Rise up," the Master said, "upon thy feet;

The way is long, and difficult the road,

And now the sun to middle-tierce returns."

It was not any palace corridor

There where we were, but dungeon natural,

With floor uneven and unease of light.

"Ere from the abyss I tear myself away,

My Master," said I when I had arisen,

"To draw me from an error speak a little;

Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed

Thus upside down? and how in such short time

From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?"

And he to me: "Thou still imaginest

Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped

The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world.

That side thou wast, so long as I descended;

When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point

To which things heavy draw from every side,

And now beneath the hemisphere art come

Opposite that which overhangs the vast

Dry-land, and 'neath whose cope was put to death

The Man who without sin was born and lived.

Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere

Which makes the other face of the Judecca.

Here it is morn when it is evening there;

And he who with his hair a stairway made us

Still fixed remaineth as he was before.

Upon this side he fell down out of heaven;

And all the land, that whilom here emerged,

For fear of him made of the sea a veil,

And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure

To flee from him, what on this side appears

Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled."

A place there is below, from Beelzebub

As far receding as the tomb extends,

Which not by sight is known, but by the sound

Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth

Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed

With course that winds about and slightly falls.

The Guide and I into that hidden road

Now entered, to return to the bright world;

And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second,

Till I beheld through a round aperture

Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.