awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
of Turnus.[33]
These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here." He then, as
Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
lightened of the third letter.[34]
In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
Elizabeth." "And Cæsar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."[35]
"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
they reached the promised land." "And the tired among the Trojans
preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium."--It was now midnight, and
Dante slept and had a dream.
His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
for what he abandons."
Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who is
this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.[36]
Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
and find the place at which we are to go higher."
It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
comforted."
The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust."
Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
deliverance."
The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
them all.
Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
though yet alive.
"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
old race of kings was worn out.[37] We began by seizing the government
in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom![39]
"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
respondent near me."
The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
gather the words only from those who were near him.
It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
bounds.[41]
The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to
inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
at his master's feet.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome
drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."
The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators
of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of
them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!
I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
howling."[44]
Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]
After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
a lady of the name of Gentucca.
"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]
"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]
"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking
like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]
The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
after the others.
The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
effeminate thirst."[49]
The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
hackney.
"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
path lies hither."
Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
the mountain.
This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy!"[50] Dante was
compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
cried aloud, "I know not a man!"[51] and then recommenced it; after
which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!" And then
again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
their time of trial lasted.
Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
the antennæ of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provençal poet, who, after begging
the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
the pure in heart!" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
followed them.
"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great
light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
ascent is to be gained."
The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
down for the night near two shepherds.
Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
mine."[52]
When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
tried and purified lord over himself.
The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]
Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
of the water, singing and culling flowers.
"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
herself lost the spring-time on earth."
As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
Hellespont.
The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It
was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
kindly words.
Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a
light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
at which it will behove thee to weep." Then assuming a sterner attitude,
and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
here only can man be happy?"
Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had
hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
down his cheeks.
Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
remorse.[55]
"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"
Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
his lips.
"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing?"