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 meWould fain be fasting from the vision of,
Will make them come unto a parley with him;Then will do so, that to Focara’s windThey 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 jawOf one of his companions, and his mouthOped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not.
This one, being banished, every doubt submergedIn Caesar by affirming the forearmedAlways 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 manBeneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,A trunk without a head walk in like mannerAs 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 sameWho gave to the Young King the evil comfort.
I made the father and the son rebellious;Achitophel not more with AbsalomAnd 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 woundsThese 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 thereAmong 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 himI 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 lamentsThe sin which down below there costs so much.”
Then said the Master: “Be no longer brokenThy 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 fingerFiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.
So wholly at that time wast thou impededBy 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 placeUpon the crag, which the next valley showsDown to the bottom, if there were more light.
When we were now right over the last cloisterOf Malebolge, so that its lay-brothersCould 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 hospitalsOf 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 itAs from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.
We had descended on the furthest bankFrom the long crag, upon the left hand still,And then more vivid was my power of sight
Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministressOf the high Lord, Justice infallible,Punishes forgers, which she here records.
I do not think a sadder sight to seeWas 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 valleyThe spirits languishing in divers heaps.
This on the belly, that upon the backOne of the other lay, and others crawlingShifted themselves along the dismal road.
We step by step went onward without speech,Gazing upon and listening to the sickWho 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 currycombBy stable-boy for whom his master waits,Or him who keeps awake unwillingly,
As every one was plying fast the biteOf nails upon himself, for the great rageOf 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 thoseWho are herein; so may thy nails suffice theeTo 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 descendsDown 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 awayIn 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 punishmentMake 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 onlyBecause no Daedalus I made him, made meBe 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 everSo 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 useOf cloves discovered earliest of allWithin that garden where such seed takes root;
And taking out the band, among whom squanderedCaccia d’Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered!
But, that thou know who thus doth second theeAgainst the Sienese, make sharp thine eyeTow’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 twainWalking encumbered upon either hand,
He cried: “Spread out the nets, that I may takeThe 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 hurledThe 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 TrojanWere ever seen in any one so cruelIn goading beasts, and much more human members,
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,Who, biting, in the manner ran alongThat a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.