I distinguish aught. Thus far we came;
And thence I saw, within the foss below,
A crowd immersed in ordure, that appear’d
Draff of the human body. There beneath
Searching with eye inquisitive, I mark’d
One with his head so grimed, ’t were hard to deem
If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried:
“Why greedily thus bendest more on me,
Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken?”
“Because, if true my memory,” I replied,
“I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks;
And thou Alessio[126] art, of Lucca sprung.
Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more.”
Then beating on his brain, these words he spake:
“Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk,
Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.”
My leader thus: “A little further stretch
Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note
Of that besotted, sluttish courtesan,
Who there doth rend her with defiled nails,
Now crouching down, now risen on her feet.
Thaïs[127] is this, the harlot, whose false lip
Answer’d her doting paramour that ask’d,
‘Thankest me much!’—‘Say rather, wondrously,’
And, seeing this, here satiate be our view.”
Canto XIX
Argument.—They come to the third gulf, wherein are punished those who have been guilty of simony. These are fixed with the head downward in certain apertures, so that no more of them than the legs appears without, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning flames. Dante is taken down by his guide into the bottom of the gulf; and there finds Pope Nicholas V, whose evil deeds, together with those of other pontiffs, are bitterly reprehended. Virgil then carries him up again to the arch, which affords them a passage over the following gulf.
Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you,
His wretched followers! who the things of God,
Which should be wedded unto goodness, them,
Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute
For gold and silver in adultery.
Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours
Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault
We now had mounted, where the rock impends
Directly o’er the centre of the foss.
Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art,
Which Thou dost manifest in Heaven, in earth,
And in the evil world, how just a meed
Allotting by Thy virtue unto all.
I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides
And in its bottom full of apertures,
All equal in their width, and circular each.
Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d
Than, in Saint John’s fair dome[128] of me beloved,
Those framed to hold the pure baptismal streams,
One of the which I brake, some few years past,
To save a whelming infant: and be this
A seal to undeceive whoever doubts
The motive of my deed. From out the mouth
Of every one emerged a sinner’s feet,
And of the legs high upward as the calf.
The rest beneath was hid. On either foot
The soles were burning; whence the flexile joints
Glanced with such violent motion, as had snapt
Asunder cords or twisted withes. As flame,
Feeding on unctuous matter, glides along
The surface, scarcely touching where it moves;
So here, from heel to point, glided the flames.
“Master! say who is he, than all the rest
Glancing in fiercer agony, on whom
A ruddier flame doth prey?” I thus inquired.
“If thou be willing,” he replied. “that I
Carry thee down, where least the slope bank falls,
He of himself shall tell thee, and his wrongs.”
I then: “As pleases thee, to me is best.
Thou art my lord; and know’st that ne’er I quit
Thy will: what silence hides, that knowest thou.”
Thereat on the fourth pier we came, we turn’d
And on our left descended to the depth,
A narrow strait, and perforated close.
Nor from his side my leader set me down,
Till to his orifice he brought, whose limb
Quivering express’d his pang. “Whoe’er thou art,
Sad spirit! thus reversed, and as a stake
Driven in the soil,”—I in these words began;
“If thou be able, utter forth thy voice.”
There stood I like the friar, that doth shrive
A wretch for murder doom’d, who, e’en when fix’d,
Calleth him back, whence death awhile delays.
He shouted: “Ha! already standest there?
Already standest there, O Boniface![129]
By many a year the writing play’d me false.
So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth,
For which thou fearedst not in guile to take
The lovely lady, and then mangle her?”
I felt as those who, piercing not the drift
Of answer made them, stand as if exposed
In mockery, nor know what to reply;
When Virgil thus admonish’d: “Tell him quick,
‘I am not he, not he whom thou believest.’”
And I, as was enjoin’d me, straight replied.
That heard, the spirit all did wrench his feet,
And, sighing, next in woeful accent spake:
“What then of me requirest? If to know
So much imports thee, who I am, that thou
Hast therefore down the bank descended, learn
That in the mighty mantle I was robed,[130]
And of a she-bear was indeed the son,
So eager to advance my whelps, that there
My having in my purse above I stow’d,
And here myself. Under my head are dragg’d
The