Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri (inspirational novels .TXT) 📕

Meanwhile my Leader went on, and I behind him went, already waking reply, and adding, “Within that cavern where I just now was holding my eyes so fixedly, I think that a spirit of my own blood weeps the sin that down there costs so dear.” Then said the Master, “Let not thy thought henceforth reflect on him; attend to other thing, and let him there remain, for I saw him at the foot of the little bridge pointing at thee, and threatening fiercely with his finger, and I heard him called Geri del Bello.[1] Thou wert then so completely engaged on him who of old held Hautefort[2] that thou didst not look that way till he had departed.” “O my Leader,” said I, “the violent death which is not yet avenged for him by any who is sharer in the shame made him indignant, wherefore, as I deem, he went on without speaking to me, and thereby has he made me pity him the more.”

[1] A cousin or uncle of Dante’s father, of whom little is known but what may be inferred from Dante’s words and from the place he assigns him in Hell.

[2] Bertran de Born, lord of Hautefort.

Thus we spake far as the place on the crag which first shows the next valley, if more light were there, quite to the bottom. When we were above the last cloister of Malebolge so that its lay brothers could appear to our sight, divers lamentations pierced me, that had their arrows barbed with pity; wherefore I covered my ears with my hands.

Such pain as there would be if, between July and September, from the hospitals of Valdichiana and of Maremma and of Sardinia[1] the sick should all be in one ditch together, such was there here; and such stench came forth therefrom, as is wont to come from putrescent limbs. We descended upon the last bank of the long crag, ever to the left hand, and then my sight became more vivid down toward the bottom, where the ministress of the High Lord—infallible Justice—punishes the falsifiers whom on earth she registers.

[1] Unhealthy regions, noted for the prevalence of malarial fevers in summer.

I do not think it was a greater sorrow to see the whole people in Egina sick, when the air was so full of pestilence that the animals, even to the little worm, all fell dead (and afterwards the ancient people, according as the poets hold for sure, were restored by seed of ants), than it was to see the spirits languishing in different heaps through that dark valley. This one over the belly, and that over the shoulders of another was lying, and this one, crawling, was shifting himself along the dismal path. Step by step we went without speech, looking at and listening to the sick, who could not lift their persons.

I saw two seated leaning on each other, as pan is leaned against pan to warm, spotted from head to foot with scabs; and never did I see currycomb plied by a boy for whom his lord is waiting nor by one who keeps awake unwillingly, as each often plied the bite of his nails upon himself, because of the great rage of his itching which has no other relief. And the nails dragged down the scab, even as a knife the scales of bream or of other fish that may have them larger.

“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thyself,” began my Leader unto one of them, “and who sometimes makest pincers of them, tell me if any Latian[1] is among those who are here within: so may thy nails suffice thee eternally for this work.” “Latians are we whom here thou seest so defaced, both of us,” replied one weeping, “but thou, who art thou that hast asked of us?” And the Leader said, “I am one that descends with this living man down from ledge to ledge, and I intend to show Hell to him.” Then their mutual support was broken; and trembling each turned to me, together with others that heard him by rebound. The good Master inclined himself wholly toward me, saying, “Say to them what thou wilt;” and I began, since he was willing, “So may memory of you not steal away in the first world from human minds, but may it live under many suns, tell me who ye are, and of what race; let not your disfiguring and loathsome punishment fright you from disclosing yourselves unto me.” “I was from Arezzo,” replied one of them,[2] “and Albero of Siena had me put in the fire; but that for which I died brings me not here. True it is that I said to him, speaking in jest, I knew how to raise myself through the air in flight, and he, who had vain desire and little wit, wished that I should show him the art, and only because I did not make him Daedalus, made me be burned by one[3] that held him as a son; but to the last pit of the ten, for the alchemy that I practiced in the world, Minos, to whom it is not allowed to err, condemned me.” And I said to the Poet, “Now was ever people so vain as the Sienese? surely not so the French by much.” Whereon the other leprous one, who heard me, replied to my words, “Except[4] Stricca who knew how to make moderate expenditure, and Niccolo, who first invented the costly custom of the clove[5] in the garden where such seed takes root; and except the brigade in which Caccia of Asciano wasted his vineyard and his great wood, and the Abbagliato showed his wit. But that thou mayest know who thus seconds thde against the Sienese, so sharpen thine eye toward me that my face may answer well to thee, so shalt thou see that I am the shade of Capocchio, who falsified the metals by alchemy; and thou shouldst recollect, if I descry thee aright, how I was a good ape of nature.”

[1] Italian.

[2] This is supposed to be one Griffolino, of whom nothing is known but what Dante tells.

[3] The Bishop of Siena.

[4] Ironical; these youths all being members of the company known as the brigata godereccia or spendereccia, the joyous or spendthrift brigade.

[5] The use of rich and expensive spices in cookery.

CANTO XXX. Eighth Circle: tenth pit: falsifiers of all sorts.—Myrrha.—Gianni Schicchi.—Master Adam.—Sinon of Troy.

At the time when Juno was wroth because of Semele against the Theban blood, as she showed more than once, Athamas became so insane, that seeing his wife come laden on either hand with her two sons, cried out, “Spread we the nets, so that I may take the lioness and the young lions at the pass,” and then he stretched out his pitiless talons, taking the one who was named Learchus, and whirled him and struck him on a rock; and she drowned herself with her other burden. And when Fortune turned downward the all-daring loftiness of the Trojans, so that together with the kingdom the king was undone, Hecuba, sad, wretched, and captive, when she saw Polyxena dead, and woeful descried her Polydorus on the sea-bank, frantic, barked like a dog,—to such degree had grief distraught her mind.

But neither the furies of Thebes, nor the Trojan, were ever seen toward any one so cruel, whether in goading beasts or human limbs,[1] as I saw two shades pallid and naked who, biting, were running in the way that a boar does when from the sty he breaks loose. One came at Capocchio, and on the nape of his neck struck his teeth, so that dragging him he made his belly scratch along the solid bottom. And the Aretine,[2] who remained trembling, said to me, “That goblin is Gianni Schicchi, and rabid he goes thus maltreating others.” “Oh,” said I to him, “so may time other not fix his teeth on thee, let it not weary thee to tell who it is ere it start hence.” And he to me, “That is the ancient soul of profligate Myrrha, who became her father’s lover beyond rightful love. She came to sinning with him by falsifying herself in another’s form, even as the other, who goes off there, undertook, in order to gain the lady of the herd,[3] to counterfeit Buoso Donati, making a will and giving to the will due form.”

[1] No mad rages were ever so merciless as those of these furious spirits.

[2] Griffolino.

[3] Buoso Donati had died without making a will, whereupon his nephew suborned Gianni Schicchi to personate the dead man in bed, and to dictate a will in his favor. This Gianni did, but with a clause leaving to himself a favorite mare of Buoso’s, the best in all Tuscany.

And after the two rabid ones upon whom I had kept my eye had disappeared, I turned it to look at the other miscreants. I saw one made in fashion of a lute, had he but only had his groin cut off at the part where man is forked. The heavy hydropsy which, with the humor that it ill digests, so unmates the members that the face corresponds not with the belly, was making him hold his lips open as the hectic does, who for thirst turns one toward his chin, the other upward.

“Oh ye, who are without any punishment, and I know not why, in the dismal world,” said he to us, “look and attend to the misery of Master Adam. Living, I had enough of what I wished, and now, alas! I long for a drop of water. The rivulets that from the green hills of the Casentino descend into the Arno, making their channels cool and soft, stand ever before me, and not in vain; for their image dries me up far more than the disease which strips my face of flesh. The rigid justice that scourges me draws occasion from the place where I sinned to put my sighs the more in flight. There is Romena, where I falsified the alloy stamped with the Baptist,[1] for which on earth I left my body burned. But if here I could see the wretched soul of Guido or of Alessandro, or of their brother,[2] for Fount Branda[3] I would not give the sight. One of them is here within already, if the rating shades who go around speak true. But what does it avail me who have my limbs bound? If I were only yet so light that in a hundred years I could go an inch, I should already have set out along the path, seeking for him among this disfigured folk, although it circles round eleven miles, and is not less than half a mile across. Because of them I am among such a family; they induced me to strike the forms that had full three carats of base metal.” And I to him, “Who are the two poor wretches that are smoking like a wet hand in winter, lying close to your confines on the right?” “Here I found them,” he answered, “when I rained down into this trough, and they have not since given a turn, and I do not believe they will give one to all eternity. One is the false woman that accused Joseph, the other is the false Sinon the Greek, from Troy; because of their sharp fever they throw out such great reek.”

[1] The florin which bore on the obverse the figure of John the Baptist, the protecting saint of Florence.

[2] Counts of Romena.

[3] The noted fountain in Siena, or perhaps one in Romena.

And one of them who took it ill perchance at being named so darkly, with his fist struck