<h2><SPAN name="CantoI.XXVI"></SPAN>Inferno: Canto XXVI</h2>
<p>
Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great,<br/>
That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings,<br/>
And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad!</p>
<p>
Among the thieves five citizens of thine<br/>
Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me,<br/>
And thou thereby to no great honour risest.</p>
<p>
But if when morn is near our dreams are true,<br/>
Feel shalt thou in a little time from now<br/>
What Prato, if none other, craves for thee.</p>
<p>
And if it now were, it were not too soon;<br/>
Would that it were, seeing it needs must be,<br/>
For ’twill aggrieve me more the more I age.</p>
<p>
We went our way, and up along the stairs<br/>
The bourns had made us to descend before,<br/>
Remounted my Conductor and drew me.</p>
<p>
And following the solitary path<br/>
Among the rocks and ridges of the crag,<br/>
The foot without the hand sped not at all.</p>
<p>
Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again,<br/>
When I direct my mind to what I saw,<br/>
And more my genius curb than I am wont,</p>
<p>
That it may run not unless virtue guide it;<br/>
So that if some good star, or better thing,<br/>
Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it.</p>
<p>
As many as the hind (who on the hill<br/>
Rests at the time when he who lights the world<br/>
His countenance keeps least concealed from us,</p>
<p>
While as the fly gives place unto the gnat)<br/>
Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley,<br/>
Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage;</p>
<p>
With flames as manifold resplendent all<br/>
Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware<br/>
As soon as I was where the depth appeared.</p>
<p>
And such as he who with the bears avenged him<br/>
Beheld Elijah’s chariot at departing,<br/>
What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose,</p>
<p>
For with his eye he could not follow it<br/>
So as to see aught else than flame alone,<br/>
Even as a little cloud ascending upward,</p>
<p>
Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment<br/>
Was moving; for not one reveals the theft,<br/>
And every flame a sinner steals away.</p>
<p>
I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see,<br/>
So that, if I had seized not on a rock,<br/>
Down had I fallen without being pushed.</p>
<p>
And the Leader, who beheld me so attent,<br/>
Exclaimed: “Within the fires the spirits are;<br/>
Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns.”</p>
<p>
“My Master,” I replied, “by hearing thee<br/>
I am more sure; but I surmised already<br/>
It might be so, and already wished to ask thee</p>
<p>
Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft<br/>
At top, it seems uprising from the pyre<br/>
Where was Eteocles with his brother placed.”</p>
<p>
He answered me: “Within there are tormented<br/>
Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together<br/>
They unto vengeance run as unto wrath.</p>
<p>
And there within their flame do they lament<br/>
The ambush of the horse, which made the door<br/>
Whence issued forth the Romans’ gentle seed;</p>
<p>
Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead<br/>
Deidamia still deplores Achilles,<br/>
And pain for the Palladium there is borne.”</p>
<p>
“If they within those sparks possess the power<br/>
To speak,” I said, “thee, Master, much I pray,<br/>
And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand,</p>
<p>
That thou make no denial of awaiting<br/>
Until the horned flame shall hither come;<br/>
Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it.”</p>
<p>
And he to me: “Worthy is thy entreaty<br/>
Of much applause, and therefore I accept it;<br/>
But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself.</p>
<p>
Leave me to speak, because I have conceived<br/>
That which thou wishest; for they might disdain<br/>
Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine.”</p>
<p>
When now the flame had come unto that point,<br/>
Where to my Leader it seemed time and place,<br/>
After this fashion did I hear him speak:</p>
<p>
“O ye, who are twofold within one fire,<br/>
If I deserved of you, while I was living,<br/>
If I deserved of you or much or little</p>
<p>
When in the world I wrote the lofty verses,<br/>
Do not move on, but one of you declare<br/>
Whither, being lost, he went away to die.”</p>
<p>
Then of the antique flame the greater horn,<br/>
Murmuring, began to wave itself about<br/>
Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues.</p>
<p>
Thereafterward, the summit to and fro<br/>
Moving as if it were the tongue that spake,<br/>
It uttered forth a voice, and said: “When I</p>
<p>
From Circe had departed, who concealed me<br/>
More than a year there near unto Gaeta,<br/>
Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,</p>
<p>
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence<br/>
For my old father, nor the due affection<br/>
Which joyous should have made Penelope,</p>
<p>
Could overcome within me the desire<br/>
I had to be experienced of the world,<br/>
And of the vice and virtue of mankind;</p>
<p>
But I put forth on the high open sea<br/>
With one sole ship, and that small company<br/>
By which I never had deserted been.</p>
<p>
Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain,<br/>
Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes,<br/>
And the others which that sea bathes round about.</p>
<p>
I and my company were old and slow<br/>
When at that narrow passage we arrived<br/>
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,</p>
<p>
That man no farther onward should adventure.<br/>
On the right hand behind me left I Seville,<br/>
And on the other already had left Ceuta.</p>
<p>
‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand<br/>
Perils,’ I said, ‘have come unto the West,<br/>
To this so inconsiderable vigil</p>
<p>
Which is remaining of your senses still<br/>
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,<br/>
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.</p>
<p>
Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;<br/>
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,<br/>
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’</p>
<p>
So eager did I render my companions,<br/>
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,<br/>
That then I hardly could have held them back.</p>
<p>
And having turned our stern unto the morning,<br/>
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,<br/>
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.</p>
<p>
Already all the stars of the other pole<br/>
The night beheld, and ours so very low<br/>
It did not rise above the ocean floor.</p>
<p>
Five times rekindled and as many quenched<br/>
Had been the splendour underneath the moon,<br/>
Since we had entered into the deep pass,</p>
<p>
When there appeared to us a mountain, dim<br/>
From distance, and it seemed to me so high<br/>
As I had never any one beheld.</p>
<p>
Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;<br/>
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,<br/>
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.</p>
<p>
Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,<br/>
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,<br/>
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,</p>
<p>
Until the sea above us closed again.”</p>
<h2><SPAN name="CantoI.XXVII"></SPAN>Inferno: Canto XXVII</h2>
<p>
Already was the flame erect and quiet,<br/>
To speak no more, and now departed from us<br/>
With the permission of the gentle Poet;</p>
<p>
When yet another, which behind it came,<br/>
Caused us to turn our eyes upon its top<br/>
By a confused sound that issued from it.</p>
<p>
As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first<br/>
With the lament of him, and that was right,<br/>
Who with his file had modulated it)</p>
<p>
Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted,<br/>
That, notwithstanding it was made of brass,<br/>
Still it appeared with agony transfixed;</p>
<p>
Thus, by not having any way or issue<br/>
At first from out the fire, to its own language<br/>
Converted were the melancholy words.</p>
<p>
But afterwards, when they had gathered way<br/>
Up through the point, giving it that vibration<br/>
The tongue had given them in their passage out,</p>
<p>
We heard it said: “O thou, at whom I aim<br/>
My voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard,<br/>
Saying, ‘Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,’</p>
<p>
Because I come perchance a little late,<br/>
To stay and speak with me let it not irk thee;<br/>
Thou seest it irks not me, and I am burning.</p>
<p>
If thou but lately into this blind world<br/>
Hast fallen down from that sweet Latian land,<br/>
Wherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression,</p>
<p>
Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war,<br/>
For I was from the mountains there between<br/>
Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts.”</p>
<p>
I still was downward bent and listening,<br/>
When my Conductor touched me on the side,<br/>
Saying: “Speak thou: this one a Latian is.”</p>
<p>
And I, who had beforehand my reply<br/>
In readiness, forthwith began to speak:<br/>
“O soul, that down below there art concealed,</p>
<p>
Romagna thine is not and never has been<br/>
Without war in the bosom of its tyrants;<br/>
But open war I none have left there now.</p>
<p>
Ravenna stands as it long years has stood;<br/>
The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding,<br/>
So that she covers Cervia with her vans.</p>
<p>
The city which once made the long resistance,<br/>
And of the French a sanguinary heap,<br/>
Beneath the Green Paws finds itself again;</p>
<p>
Verrucchio’s ancient Mastiff and the new,<br/>
Who made such bad disposal of Montagna,<br/>
Where they are wont make wimbles of their teeth.</p>
<p>
The cities of Lamone and Santerno<br/>
Governs the Lioncel of the white lair,<br/>
Who changes sides ’twixt summer-time and winter;</p>
<p>
And that of which the Savio bathes the flank,<br/>
Even as it lies between the plain and mountain,<br/>
Lives between tyranny and a free state.</p>
<p>
Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art;<br/>
Be not more stubborn than the rest have been,<br/>
So may thy name hold front there in the world.”</p>
<p>
After the fire a little more had roared<br/>
In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved<br/>
This way and that, and then gave forth such breath:</p>
<p>
“If I believed that my reply were made<br/>
To one who to the world would e’er return,<br/>
This flame without more flickering would stand still;</p>
<p>
But inasmuch as never from this depth<br/>
Did any one return, if I hear true,<br/>
Without the fear of infamy I answer,</p>
<p>
I was a man of arms, then Cordelier,<br/>
Believing thus begirt to make amends;<br/>
And truly my belief had been fulfilled</p>
<p>
But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide,<br/>
Who put me back into my former sins;<br/>
And how and wherefore I will have thee hear.</p>
<p>
While I was still the form of bone and pulp<br/>
My mother gave to me, the deeds I did<br/>
Were not those of a lion, but a fox.</p>
<p>
The machinations and the covert ways<br/>
I knew them all, and practised so their craft,<br/>
That to the ends of earth the sound went forth.</p>
<p>
When now unto that portion of mine age<br/>
I saw myself arrived, when each one ought<br/>
To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes,</p>
<p>
That which before had pleased me then displeased me;<br/>
And penitent and confessing I surrendered,<br/>
Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me;</p>
<p>
The Leader of the modern Pharisees<br/>
Having a war near unto Lateran,<br/>
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,</p>
<p>
For each one of his enemies was Christian,<br/>
And none of them had been to conquer Acre,<br/>
Nor merchandising in the Sultan’s land,</p>
<p>
Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders,<br/>
In him regarded, nor in me that cord<br/>
Which used to make those girt with it more meagre;</p>
<p>
But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester<br/>
To cure his leprosy, within Soracte,<br/>
So this one sought me out as an adept</p>
<p>
To cure him of the fever of his pride.<br/>
Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent,<br/>
Because his words appeared inebriate.</p>
<p>
And then he said: ‘Be not thy heart afraid;<br/>
Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me<br/>
How to raze Palestrina to the ground.</p>
<p>
Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock,<br/>
As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two,<br/>
The which my predecessor held not dear.’</p>
<p>
Then urged me on his weighty arguments<br/>
There, where my silence was the worst advice;<br/>
And said I: ‘Father, since thou washest me</p>
<p>
Of that sin into which I now must fall,<br/>
The promise long with the fulfilment short<br/>
Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’</p>
<p>
Francis came afterward, when I was dead,<br/>
For me; but one of the black Cherubim<br/>
Said to him: ‘Take him not; do me no wrong;</p>
<p>
He must come down among my servitors,<br/>
Because he gave the fraudulent advice<br/>
From which time forth I have been at his hair;</p>
<p>
For who repents not cannot be absolved,<br/>
Nor can one both repent and will at once,<br/>
Because of the contradiction which consents not.’</p>
<p>
O miserable me! how I did shudder<br/>
When he seized on me, saying: ‘Peradventure<br/>
Thou didst not think that I was a logician!’</p>
<p>
He bore me unto Minos, who entwined<br/>
Eight times his tail about his stubborn back,<br/>
And after he had bitten it in great rage,</p>
<p>
Said: ‘Of the thievish fire a culprit this;’<br/>
Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost,<br/>
And vested thus in going I bemoan me.”</p>
<p>
When it had thus completed its recital,<br/>
The flame departed uttering lamentations,<br/>
Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn.</p>
<p>
Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor,<br/>
Up o’er the crag above another arch,<br/>
Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee</p>
<p>
By those who, sowing discord, win their burden.</p>
<h2><SPAN name="CantoI.XXVIII"></SPAN>Inferno: Canto XXVIII</h2>
<p>
Who ever could, e’en with untrammelled words,<br/>
Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full<br/>
Which now I saw, by many times narrating?</p>
<p>
Each tongue would for a certainty fall short<br/>
By reason of our speech and memory,<br/>
That have small room to comprehend so much.</p>
<p>
If were again assembled all the people<br/>
Which formerly upon the fateful land<br/>
Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood</p>
<p>
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war<br/>
That of the rings made such illustrious spoils,<br/>
As Livy has recorded, who errs not,</p>
<p>
With those who felt the agony of blows<br/>
By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,<br/>
And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still</p>
<p>
At Ceperano, where a renegade<br/>
Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,<br/>
Where without arms the old Alardo conquered,</p>
<p>
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,<br/>
Should show, it would be nothing to compare<br/>
With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.</p>
<p>
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant<br/>
Was never shattered so, as I saw one<br/>
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.</p>
<p>
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;<br/>
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack<br/>
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.</p>
<p>
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,<br/>
He looked at me, and opened with his hands<br/>
His bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me;</p>
<p>
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;<br/>
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,<br/>
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;</p>
<p>
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,<br/>
Disseminators of scandal and of schism<br/>
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.</p>
<p>
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us<br/>
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion’s edge<br/>
Putting again each one of all this ream,</p>
<p>
When we have gone around the doleful road;<br/>
By reason that our wounds are closed again<br/>
Ere any one in front of him repass.</p>
<p>
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,<br/>
Perchance to postpone going to the pain<br/>
That is adjudged upon thine accusations?”</p>
<p>
“Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,”<br/>
My Master made reply, “to be tormented;<br/>
But to procure him full experience,</p>
<p>
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him<br/>
Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle;<br/>
And this is true as that I speak to thee.”</p>
<p>
More than a hundred were there when they heard him,<br/>
Who in the moat stood still to look at me,<br/>
Through wonderment oblivious of their torture.</p>
<p>
“Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,<br/>
Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,<br/>
If soon he wish not here to follow me,</p>
<p>
So with provisions, that no stress of snow<br/>
May give the victory to the Novarese,<br/>
Which otherwise to gain would not be easy.”</p>
<p>
After one foot to go away he lifted,<br/>
This word did Mahomet say unto me,<br/>
Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it.</p>
<p>
Another one, who had his throat pierced through,<br/>
And nose cut off close underneath the brows,<br/>
And had no longer but a single ear,</p>
<p>
Staying to look in wonder with the others,<br/>
Before the others did his gullet open,<br/>
Which outwardly was red in every part,</p>
<p>
And said: “O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,<br/>
And whom I once saw up in Latian land,<br/>
Unless too great similitude deceive me,</p>
<p>
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,<br/>
If e’er thou see again the lovely plain<br/>
That from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,</p>
<p>
And make it known to the best two of Fano,<br/>
To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,<br/>
That if foreseeing here be not in vain,</p>
<p>
Cast over from their vessel shall they be,<br/>
And drowned near unto the Cattolica,<br/>
By the betrayal of a tyrant fell.</p>
<p>
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca<br/>
Neptune ne’er yet beheld so great a crime,<br/>
Neither of pirates nor Argolic people.</p>
<p>
That traitor, who sees only with one eye,<br/>
And holds the land, which some one here with me<br/>
Would fain be fasting from the vision of,</p>
<p>
Will make them come unto a parley with him;<br/>
Then will do so, that to Focara’s wind<br/>
They will not stand in need of vow or prayer.”</p>
<p>
And I to him: “Show to me and declare,<br/>
If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,<br/>
Who is this person of the bitter vision.”</p>
<p>
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw<br/>
Of one of his companions, and his mouth<br/>
Oped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not.</p>
<p>
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged<br/>
In Caesar by affirming the forearmed<br/>
Always with detriment allowed delay.”</p>
<p>
O how bewildered unto me appeared,<br/>
With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,<br/>
Curio, who in speaking was so bold!</p>
<p>
And one, who both his hands dissevered had,<br/>
The stumps uplifting through the murky air,<br/>
So that the blood made horrible his face,</p>
<p>
Cried out: “Thou shalt remember Mosca also,<br/>
Who said, alas! ‘A thing done has an end!’<br/>
Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people.”</p>
<p>
“And death unto thy race,” thereto I added;<br/>
Whence he, accumulating woe on woe,<br/>
Departed, like a person sad and crazed.</p>
<p>
But I remained to look upon the crowd;<br/>
And saw a thing which I should be afraid,<br/>
Without some further proof, even to recount,</p>
<p>
If it were not that conscience reassures me,<br/>
That good companion which emboldens man<br/>
Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.</p>
<p>
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,<br/>
A trunk without a head walk in like manner<br/>
As walked the others of the mournful herd.</p>
<p>
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,<br/>
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,<br/>
And that upon us gazed and said: “O me!”</p>
<p>
It of itself made to itself a lamp,<br/>
And they were two in one, and one in two;<br/>
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.</p>
<p>
When it was come close to the bridge’s foot,<br/>
It lifted high its arm with all the head,<br/>
To bring more closely unto us its words,</p>
<p>
Which were: “Behold now the sore penalty,<br/>
Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;<br/>
Behold if any be as great as this.</p>
<p>
And so that thou may carry news of me,<br/>
Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same<br/>
Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort.</p>
<p>
I made the father and the son rebellious;<br/>
Achitophel not more with Absalom<br/>
And David did with his accursed goadings.</p>
<p>
Because I parted persons so united,<br/>
Parted do I now bear my brain, alas!<br/>
From its beginning, which is in this trunk.</p>
<p>
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.”</p>
<h2><SPAN name="CantoI.XXIX"></SPAN>Inferno: Canto XXIX</h2>
<p>
The many people and the divers wounds<br/>
These eyes of mine had so inebriated,<br/>
That they were wishful to stand still and weep;</p>
<p>
But said Virgilius: “What dost thou still gaze at?<br/>
Why is thy sight still riveted down there<br/>
Among the mournful, mutilated shades?</p>
<p>
Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge;<br/>
Consider, if to count them thou believest,<br/>
That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds,</p>
<p>
And now the moon is underneath our feet;<br/>
Henceforth the time allotted us is brief,<br/>
And more is to be seen than what thou seest.”</p>
<p>
“If thou hadst,” I made answer thereupon,<br/>
“Attended to the cause for which I looked,<br/>
Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned.”</p>
<p>
Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him<br/>
I went, already making my reply,<br/>
And superadding: “In that cavern where</p>
<p>
I held mine eyes with such attention fixed,<br/>
I think a spirit of my blood laments<br/>
The sin which down below there costs so much.”</p>
<p>
Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken<br/>
Thy thought from this time forward upon him;<br/>
Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain;</p>
<p>
For him I saw below the little bridge,<br/>
Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger<br/>
Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.</p>
<p>
So wholly at that time wast thou impeded<br/>
By him who formerly held Altaforte,<br/>
Thou didst not look that way; so he departed.”</p>
<p>
“O my Conductor, his own violent death,<br/>
Which is not yet avenged for him,” I said,<br/>
“By any who is sharer in the shame,</p>
<p>
Made him disdainful; whence he went away,<br/>
As I imagine, without speaking to me,<br/>
And thereby made me pity him the more.”</p>
<p>
Thus did we speak as far as the first place<br/>
Upon the crag, which the next valley shows<br/>
Down to the bottom, if there were more light.</p>
<p>
When we were now right over the last cloister<br/>
Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers<br/>
Could manifest themselves unto our sight,</p>
<p>
Divers lamentings pierced me through and through,<br/>
Which with compassion had their arrows barbed,<br/>
Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands.</p>
<p>
What pain would be, if from the hospitals<br/>
Of Valdichiana, ’twixt July and September,<br/>
And of Maremma and Sardinia</p>
<p>
All the diseases in one moat were gathered,<br/>
Such was it here, and such a stench came from it<br/>
As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.</p>
<p>
We had descended on the furthest bank<br/>
From the long crag, upon the left hand still,<br/>
And then more vivid was my power of sight</p>
<p>
Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress<br/>
Of the high Lord, Justice infallible,<br/>
Punishes forgers, which she here records.</p>
<p>
I do not think a sadder sight to see<br/>
Was in Aegina the whole people sick,<br/>
(When was the air so full of pestilence,</p>
<p>
The animals, down to the little worm,<br/>
All fell, and afterwards the ancient people,<br/>
According as the poets have affirmed,</p>
<p>
Were from the seed of ants restored again,)<br/>
Than was it to behold through that dark valley<br/>
The spirits languishing in divers heaps.</p>
<p>
This on the belly, that upon the back<br/>
One of the other lay, and others crawling<br/>
Shifted themselves along the dismal road.</p>
<p>
We step by step went onward without speech,<br/>
Gazing upon and listening to the sick<br/>
Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies.</p>
<p>
I saw two sitting leaned against each other,<br/>
As leans in heating platter against platter,<br/>
From head to foot bespotted o’er with scabs;</p>
<p>
And never saw I plied a currycomb<br/>
By stable-boy for whom his master waits,<br/>
Or him who keeps awake unwillingly,</p>
<p>
As every one was plying fast the bite<br/>
Of nails upon himself, for the great rage<br/>
Of itching which no other succour had.</p>
<p>
And the nails downward with them dragged the scab,<br/>
In fashion as a knife the scales of bream,<br/>
Or any other fish that has them largest.</p>
<p>
“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee,”<br/>
Began my Leader unto one of them,<br/>
“And makest of them pincers now and then,</p>
<p>
Tell me if any Latian is with those<br/>
Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee<br/>
To all eternity unto this work.”</p>
<p>
“Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest,<br/>
Both of us here,” one weeping made reply;<br/>
“But who art thou, that questionest about us?”</p>
<p>
And said the Guide: “One am I who descends<br/>
Down with this living man from cliff to cliff,<br/>
And I intend to show Hell unto him.”</p>
<p>
Then broken was their mutual support,<br/>
And trembling each one turned himself to me,<br/>
With others who had heard him by rebound.</p>
<p>
Wholly to me did the good Master gather,<br/>
Saying: “Say unto them whate’er thou wishest.”<br/>
And I began, since he would have it so:</p>
<p>
“So may your memory not steal away<br/>
In the first world from out the minds of men,<br/>
But so may it survive ’neath many suns,</p>
<p>
Say to me who ye are, and of what people;<br/>
Let not your foul and loathsome punishment<br/>
Make you afraid to show yourselves to me.”</p>
<p>
“I of Arezzo was,” one made reply,<br/>
“And Albert of Siena had me burned;<br/>
But what I died for does not bring me here.</p>
<p>
’Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest,<br/>
That I could rise by flight into the air,<br/>
And he who had conceit, but little wit,</p>
<p>
Would have me show to him the art; and only<br/>
Because no Daedalus I made him, made me<br/>
Be burned by one who held him as his son.</p>
<p>
But unto the last Bolgia of the ten,<br/>
For alchemy, which in the world I practised,<br/>
Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned.”</p>
<p>
And to the Poet said I: “Now was ever<br/>
So vain a people as the Sienese?<br/>
Not for a certainty the French by far.”</p>
<p>
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,<br/>
Replied unto my speech: “Taking out Stricca,<br/>
Who knew the art of moderate expenses,</p>
<p>
And Niccolo, who the luxurious use<br/>
Of cloves discovered earliest of all<br/>
Within that garden where such seed takes root;</p>
<p>
And taking out the band, among whom squandered<br/>
Caccia d’Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,<br/>
And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered!</p>
<p>
But, that thou know who thus doth second thee<br/>
Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye<br/>
Tow’rds me, so that my face well answer thee,</p>
<p>
And thou shalt see I am Capocchio’s shade,<br/>
Who metals falsified by alchemy;<br/>
Thou must remember, if I well descry thee,</p>
<p>
How I a skilful ape of nature was.”</p>
<h2><SPAN name="CantoI.XXX"></SPAN>Inferno: Canto XXX</h2>
<p>
’Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,<br/>
For Semele, against the Theban blood,<br/>
As she already more than once had shown,</p>
<p>
So reft of reason Athamas became,<br/>
That, seeing his own wife with children twain<br/>
Walking encumbered upon either hand,</p>
<p>
He cried: “Spread out the nets, that I may take<br/>
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;”<br/>
And then extended his unpitying claws,</p>
<p>
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,<br/>
And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;<br/>
And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;—</p>
<p>
And at the time when fortune downward hurled<br/>
The Trojan’s arrogance, that all things dared,<br/>
So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,</p>
<p>
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,<br/>
When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,<br/>
And of her Polydorus on the shore</p>
<p>
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,<br/>
Out of her senses like a dog she barked,<br/>
So much the anguish had her mind distorted;</p>
<p>
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan<br/>
Were ever seen in any one so cruel<br/>
In goading beasts, and much more human members,</p>
<p>
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,<br/>
Who, biting, in the manner ran along<br/>
That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.</p>
<p>
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape<br/>
Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging<br/>
It made his belly grate the solid bottom.</p>
<p>
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,<br/>
Said to me: “That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,<br/>
And raving goes thus harrying other people.”</p>
<p>
“O,” said I to him, “so may not the other<br/>
Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee<br/>
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence.”</p>
<p>
And he to me: “That is the ancient ghost<br/>
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became<br/>
Beyond all rightful love her father’s lover.</p>
<p>
She came to sin with him after this manner,<br/>
By counterfeiting of another’s form;<br/>
As he who goeth yonder undertook,</p>
<p>
That he might gain the lady of the herd,<br/>
To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,<br/>
Making a will and giving it due form.”</p>
<p>
And after the two maniacs had passed<br/>
On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back<br/>
To look upon the other evil-born.</p>
<p>
I saw one made in fashion of a lute,<br/>
If he had only had the groin cut off<br/>
Just at the point at which a man is forked.</p>
<p>
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions<br/>
The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,<br/>
That the face corresponds not to the belly,</p>
<p>
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart<br/>
As does the hectic, who because of thirst<br/>
One tow’rds the chin, the other upward turns.</p>
<p>
“O ye, who without any torment are,<br/>
And why I know not, in the world of woe,”<br/>
He said to us, “behold, and be attentive</p>
<p>
Unto the misery of Master Adam;<br/>
I had while living much of what I wished,<br/>
And now, alas! a drop of water crave.</p>
<p>
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills<br/>
Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,<br/>
Making their channels to be cold and moist,</p>
<p>
Ever before me stand, and not in vain;<br/>
For far more doth their image dry me up<br/>
Than the disease which strips my face of flesh.</p>
<p>
The rigid justice that chastises me<br/>
Draweth occasion from the place in which<br/>
I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.</p>
<p>
There is Romena, where I counterfeited<br/>
The currency imprinted with the Baptist,<br/>
For which I left my body burned above.</p>
<p>
But if I here could see the tristful soul<br/>
Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,<br/>
For Branda’s fount I would not give the sight.</p>
<p>
One is within already, if the raving<br/>
Shades that are going round about speak truth;<br/>
But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?</p>
<p>
If I were only still so light, that in<br/>
A hundred years I could advance one inch,<br/>
I had already started on the way,</p>
<p>
Seeking him out among this squalid folk,<br/>
Although the circuit be eleven miles,<br/>
And be not less than half a mile across.</p>
<p>
For them am I in such a family;<br/>
They did induce me into coining florins,<br/>
Which had three carats of impurity.”</p>
<p>
And I to him: “Who are the two poor wretches<br/>
That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,<br/>
Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?”</p>
<p>
“I found them here,” replied he, “when I rained<br/>
Into this chasm, and since they have not turned,<br/>
Nor do I think they will for evermore.</p>
<p>
One the false woman is who accused Joseph,<br/>
The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;<br/>
From acute fever they send forth such reek.”</p>
<p>
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed<br/>
At being, peradventure, named so darkly,<br/>
Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.</p>
<p>
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;<br/>
And Master Adam smote him in the face,<br/>
With arm that did not seem to be less hard,</p>
<p>
Saying to him: “Although be taken from me<br/>
All motion, for my limbs that heavy are,<br/>
I have an arm unfettered for such need.”</p>
<p>
Whereat he answer made: “When thou didst go<br/>
Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:<br/>
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining.”</p>
<p>
The dropsical: “Thou sayest true in that;<br/>
But thou wast not so true a witness there,<br/>
Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy.”</p>
<p>
“If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,”<br/>
Said Sinon; “and for one fault I am here,<br/>
And thou for more than any other demon.”</p>
<p>
“Remember, perjurer, about the horse,”<br/>
He made reply who had the swollen belly,<br/>
“And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it.”</p>
<p>
“Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks<br/>
Thy tongue,” the Greek said, “and the putrid water<br/>
That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes.”</p>
<p>
Then the false-coiner: “So is gaping wide<br/>
Thy mouth for speaking evil, as ’tis wont;<br/>
Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me</p>
<p>
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,<br/>
And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus<br/>
Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee.”</p>
<p>
In listening to them was I wholly fixed,<br/>
When said the Master to me: “Now just look,<br/>
For little wants it that I quarrel with thee.”</p>
<p>
When him I heard in anger speak to me,<br/>
I turned me round towards him with such shame<br/>
That still it eddies through my memory.</p>
<p>
And as he is who dreams of his own harm,<br/>
Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream,<br/>
So that he craves what is, as if it were not;</p>
<p>
Such I became, not having power to speak,<br/>
For to excuse myself I wished, and still<br/>
Excused myself, and did not think I did it.</p>
<p>
“Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,”<br/>
The Master said, “than this of thine has been;<br/>
Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness,</p>
<p>
And make account that I am aye beside thee,<br/>
If e’er it come to pass that fortune bring thee<br/>
Where there are people in a like dispute;</p>
<p>
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.”</p>
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