Chapter 8

The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front, clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into either cheek. Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster grappled with every limb of that pinioned man. The two forms then gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all becomes black. The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming, "Oh, how thou changest, Agnello! See, thou art neither two nor yet one." And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained two countenances in the face. The four arms then became but two, and such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly away.[33]

A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one volume.

And now, let Lucan never speak more of the wretched Sabellus or Nisidius, but listen and be silent; and now, let Ovid be silent, nor speak again of his serpent that was Cadmus, or his fountain that was Arethusa; for, says the Tuscan poet, I envy him not. Never did he change the natures of two creatures face to face, so that each received the form of the other.

With corresponding impulse, the serpent split his train into a fork, while the man drew his legs together into a train; the skin of the serpent grew soft, while the man's hardened; the serpent acquired tresses of hair, the man grew hairless; the claws of the one projected into legs, while the arms of the other withdrew into his shoulders; the face of the serpent, as it rose from the ground, retreated towards the temples, pushing out human ears; that of the man, as he fell to the ground, thrust itself forth into a muzzle, withdrawing at the same time its ears into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent, which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to his crawl, as I have done."

The two then hastened away together, leaving Dante in a state of bewildered amazement, yet not so confused but that he recognised the unchanged one for another of his countrymen, Puccio the Lame. "Joy to thee, Florence!" cried the poet; "not content with having thy name bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell."

The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.

"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire that swathes it."

"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban brothers in it?"

"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses." The sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.

Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures, not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore, thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.

"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect, asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.[34] He was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel, "impossible: therefore wrong me not."

"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon me!" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for agony, and so took its way.

The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the sins of those whom they seduce.

The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels, and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law, Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the divisions in the church were punished in like manner upon all the schismatics in the place. They all walked round the circle, their gashes closing as they went; and on their reaching a certain point, a fiend hewed them open again with a sword. The Arabian prophet, ere he passed on, bade the pilgrims warn Friar Dolcino how he suffered himself to be surprised in his mountain-hold by the starvations of winter-time, if he did not wish speedily to follow him.[35]

Among other mangled wretches, they beheld Piero of Medicina, a sower of dissension, exhibiting to them his face and throat all over wounds; and Curio, compelled to shew his tongue cut out for advising Cæsar to cross the Rubicon; and Mosca de' Lamberti, an adviser of assassination, and one of the authors of the Guelf and Ghibelline miseries, holding up the bleeding stumps of his arms, which dripped on his face. "Remember Mosca," cried he; "remember him, alas! who said, 'A deed done is a thing ended.' A bad saying of mine was that for the Tuscan nation."

"And death to thy family," cried Dante.

The assassin hurried away like a man driven mad with grief upon grief; and Dante now beheld a sight, which, if it were not, he says, for the testimony of a good conscience--that best of friends, which gives a man assurance of himself under the breastplate of a spotless innocence[36]--he should be afraid to relate without further proof. He saw--and while he was writing the account of it he still appeared to see--a headless trunk about to come past him with the others. It held its severed head by the hair, like a lantern; and the head looked up at the two pilgrims, and said, "Woe is me!" The head was, in fact, a lantern to the paths of the trunk; and thus there were two separated things in one, and one in two; and how that could be, he only can tell who ordained it. As the figure came nearer, it lifted the head aloft, that the pilgrims might hear better what it said. "Behold," it said, "behold, thou that walkest living among the dead, and say if there be any punishment like this. I am Bertrand de Born, he that incited John of England to rebel against his father. Father and son I set at variance--closest affections I set at variance--and hence do I bear my brain severed from the body on which it grew. In me behold the work of retribution." [37]

The eyes of Dante were so inebriate with all that diversity of bleeding wounds, that they longed to stay and weep ere his guide proceeded further. Something also struck them on the sudden which added to his desire to stop. But Virgil asked what ailed him, and why he stood gazing still on the wretched multitude. "Thou hast not done so," continued he, "in any other portion of this circle; and the valley is twenty-two miles further about, and the moon already below us. Thou hast more yet to see than thou wottest of, and the time is short."

Dante, excusing himself for the delay, and proceeding to follow his leader, said he thought he had seen, in the cavern at which he was gazing so hard, a spirit that was one of his own family--and it was so. It was the soul of Geri del Bello, a cousin of the poet's. Virgil said that he had observed him, while Dante was occupied with Bertrand de Born, pointing at his kinsman in a threatening manner. "Waste not a thought on him," concluded the Roman, "but leave him as he is." "O honoured guide!" said Dante, "he died a violent death, which his kinsmen have not yet avenged; and hence it is that he disdained to speak to me; and I must needs feel for him the more on that account." [38]

They came now to the last partition of the circle of Evil-budget, and their ears were assailed with such a burst of sharp wailings, that Dante was fain to close his with his hands. The misery there, accompanied by a horrible odour, was as if all the hospitals in the sultry marshes of Valdichiana had brought their maladies together into one infernal ditch. It was the place of punishment for pretended Alchemists, Coiners, Personators of other people, False Accusers, and Impostors of all such descriptions. They lay on one another in heaps, or attempted to crawl about--some itching madly with leprosies--some swollen and gasping with dropsies--some wetly reeking, like hands washed in winter-time. One was an alchemist of Sienna, a nation vainer than the French; another a Florentine, who tricked a man into making a wrong will; another, Sinon of Troy; another, Myrrha; another, the wife of Potiphar. Their miseries did not hinder them from giving one another malignant blows; and Dante was listening eagerly to an abusive conversation between Sinon and a Brescian coiner, when Virgil rebuked him for the disgraceful condescension, and said it was a pleasure fit only for vulgar minds.[39]

The blushing poet felt the reproof so deeply, that he could not speak for shame, though he manifested by his demeanour that he longed to do so, and thus obtained the pardon he despaired of. He says he felt like a man that, during an unhappy dream, wishes himself dreaming while he is so, and does not know it. Virgil understood his emotion, and, as Achilles did with his spear, healed the wound with the tongue that inflicted it.

A silence now ensued between the companions; for they had quitted Evil-budget, and arrived at the ninth great circle of hell, on the mound of which they passed along, looking quietly and steadily before them. Daylight had given place to twilight; and Dante was advancing his head a little, and endeavouring to discern objects in the distance, when his whole attention was called to one particular spot, by a blast of a horn so loud, that a thunder clap was a whisper in comparison. Orlando himself blew no such terrific blast, after the dolorous rout, when Charlemagne was defeated in his holy enterprise.[40] The poet raised his head, thinking he perceived a multitude of lofty towers. He asked Virgil to what region they belonged; but Virgil said, "Those are no towers: they are giants, standing each up to his middle in the pit that goes round this circle." Dante looked harder; and as objects clear up by little and little in the departing mist, he saw, with alarm, the tremendous giants that warred against Jove, standing half in and half out of the pit, like the towers that crowned the citadel of Monteseggione. The one whom he saw plainest, and who stood with his arms hanging down on each side, appeared to him to have a face as huge as the pinnacle of St. Peter's, and limbs throughout in proportion. The monster, as the pilgrims were going by, opened his dreadful mouth, fit for no sweeter psalmody, and called after them, in the words of some unknown tongue, _Rafel, maee amech zabee almee_.[41] "Dull wretch!" exclaimed Virgil, "keep to thine horn, and so vent better whatsoever frenzy or other passion stuff thee. Feel the chain round thy throat, thou confusion! See, what a clenching hoop is about thy gorge!" Then he said to Dante, "His howl is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he through whose evil ambition it was that mankind ceased to speak one language. Pass him, and say nothing; for every other tongue is to him, as his is to thee."

The companions went on for about the length of a sling's throw, when they passed the second giant, who was much fiercer and linger than Nimrod. He was fettered round and round with chains, that fixed one arm before him and the other behind him--Ephialtes his name, the same that would needs make trial of his strength against Jove himself. The hands which he then wielded were now motionless, but he shook with passion; and Dante thought he should have died for terror, the effect on the ground about him was so fearful. It surpassed that of a tower shaken by an earthquake. The poet expressed a wish to look at Briareus, but he was too far off. He saw, however, Antæus, who, not having fought against heaven, was neither tongue-confounded nor shackled; and Virgil requested the "taker of a thousand lions," by the fame which the living poet had it in his power to give him, to bear the travellers in his arms down the steep descent into this deeper portion of hell, which was the region of tormenting cold. Antmus, stooping, like the leaning tower of Bologna, to take them up, gathered them in his arms, and, depositing them in the gulf below, raised himself to depart like the mast of a ship.[42]

Had I hoarse and rugged words equal to my subject, says the poet, I would now make them fuller of expression, to suit the rocky horror of this hole of anguish; but I have not, and therefore approach it with fear, since it is no jesting enterprise to describe the depths of the universe, nor fit for a tongue that babbles of father and mother.[43] Let such of the Muses assist me as turned the words of Amphion into Theban walls; so shall the speech be not too far different from the matter.

Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a place so hard to speak of--better had ye been sheep or goats.

The poet was beginning to walk with his guide along the place in which the giant had set them down, and was still looking up at the height from which he had descended, when a voice close to him said, "Have a care where thou treadest. Hurt not with thy feet the heads of thy unhappy brethren."

Dante looked down and before him, and saw that he was walking on a lake of ice, in which were Murderous Traitors up to their chins, their teeth chattering, their faces held down, their eyes locked up frozen with tears. Dante saw two at his feet so closely stuck together, that the very hairs of their heads were mingled. He asked them who they were, and as they lifted up their heads for astonishment, and felt the cold doubly congeal them, they dashed their heads against one another for hate and fury. They were two brothers who had murdered each other.[44] Near them were other Tuscans, one of whom the cold had deprived of his ears; and thousands more were seen grinning like dogs, for the pain.

Dante, as he went along, _kicked_ the face of one of them, whether by chance, or fate, or _will_,[45] he could not say. The sufferer burst into tears, and cried out, "Wherefore dost thou torment me? Art thou come to revenge the defeat at Montaperto?" The pilgrim at this question felt eager to know who he was; but the unhappy wretch would not tell. His countryman seized him by the hair to force him; but still he said he would not tell, were he to be scalped a thousand times. Dante, upon this, began plucking up his hairs by the roots, the man _barking_,[46] with his eyes squeezed up, at every pull; when another soul exclaimed, "Why, Bocca, what the devil ails thee? Must thou needs bark for cold as well as chatter?" [47]

"Now, accursed traitor, betrayer of thy country's standard," said Dante, "be dumb if thou wilt; for I shall tell thy name to the world."

"Tell and begone!" said Bocca; "but carry the name of this babbler with thee; 'tis Buoso, who left the pass open to the enemy between Piedmont and Parma; and near him is the traitor for the pope, Beccaria; and Ganellone, who betrayed Charlemagne; and Tribaldello, who opened Faenza to the enemy at night-time."

The pilgrims went on, and beheld two other spirits so closely locked up together in one hole of the ice, that the head of one was right over the other's, like a cowl; and Dante, to his horror, saw that the upper head was devouring the lower with all the eagerness of a man who is famished. The poet asked what could possibly make him skew a hate so brutal; adding, that if there were any ground for it, he would tell the story to the world.[48]

The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wiping his jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since it will produce this wretch his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see me speak and weep at the same time. How thou tamest hither I know not; but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine.

"Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and this man was Ruggieri the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there is no need to relate; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a death I underwent, bear; and then judge if he has offended me.

"I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which has since been called from me the Tower of Famine; and many a new moon had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a dream that foreshadowed to me what was coming. Methought that this man headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred; and in a little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the wolf's children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed to feel? We were now all awake; and the time was at hand when they brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At that moment I heard the key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me. But my little Anselm said, 'Father, why do you look so? Is any thing the matter?' Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor the night that followed. In the morning a ray of light fell upon us through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on the floor, and said, 'Father, we should be less miserable if you would eat our own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I sat still, in order not to make them unhappier: and that day and the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth day, Gaddo stretched himself at my feet, and said, 'Father, why won't you help me?' and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind; and three days I kept calling on them by name, though they were dead; till famine did for me what grief had been unable to do."

With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head, seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against the skull as a dog does with a bone.

O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy neighbours are so slow to punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did, betray thy castles to the enemy? his children had not betrayed them; nor ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their innocence; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second Thebes.[49]

The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them from shedding more; for their eyes were encrusted with the first they shed, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced back the others into an accumulation of anguish. One of the sufferers begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so, provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar Alberigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to slay them.

"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no longer, then, among the living?"

"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar; "for the moment any one commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon, who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years." [50]

"Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria is still alive; he eats, drinks, and sleeps, like any other man."

"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the soul of the man he slew had not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes."

Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy fit for such a wretch.[51]

O ye Genoese! he exclaims,--men that are perversity all over, and full of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of the earth? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!

"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced: "behold the banners of the King of Hell."

Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable sharpness came from it.

The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety of attitudes, motionless; some upright, some downward, some bent double, head to foot.

At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for all fair seeming.[52] This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms at a distance like a windmill.

"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself in front of Dante to re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though conscious; as if he himself had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.