Inferno: Canto XVI

Already I was in a place where the resounding of the water, that fell into the other circle, was heard like the hum which bee-hives make;

when three shades together, running, quitted a troop that passed beneath the rain of the sharp torment.

They came towards us, and each cried: “Stay thee, thou who by thy dress to us appearest to be some one from our perverse country.”

Ah me! what wounds I saw upon their limbs, recent and old, by the flames burnt in. It pains me yet, when I but think thereof.

To their cries my Teacher listened; turned his face toward me, and said: “Now wait: to these courtesy is due;

and were there not the fire, which the nature of the place darts, I should say the haste befitted thee more than them.”

They recommenced, as we stood still, their ancient wail; and when they had reached us, all the three made of themselves a wheel.

As champions, naked and anointed, were wont to do, spying their grasp and vantage, ere they came to blows and thrusts at one another:

thus, wheeling, each directed his visage toward me, so that the neck kept travelling in a direction contrary to the feet.

And one of them began: “If the misery of this loose place, and our [stained] and scorched aspect, bring us and our prayers into contempt,

let our fame incline thy mind to tell us who thou art, that thus securely movest thy living feet through Hell.

He in whose footsteps thou seest me tread, all naked and peeled though he be, was higher in degree than thou believest.

Grandson of the good Gualdrada, his name was Guido Guerra; and in his lifetime he did much with counsel and with sword.

The other, that treads the sand behind me, is Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, whose fame should be grateful up in the world.

And I, who am placed with them in torment, was Jacopo Rusticucci; and certainly, more than aught else, my savage wife injures me.”

Had I been sheltered from the fire, I should have thrown myself amid them below, and I believe my Teacher would have permitted it.

But as I should have burnt and baked myself, fear overcame the good will which made me greedy to embrace them.

Then I began: “Not contempt, but sorrow, your condition fixed within me, so deeply that it will not leave me soon.

when this my Lord spake words to me, by which I felt that such men as you are might be coming.

Of your city am I, and always with affection have I rehearsed and heard your deeds and honoured names.

I leave the gall, and go for the sweet apples promised me by my veracious Guide; but to the centre it behoves me first to fall.”

“So may the soul long animate thy members,” he then replied, “and so thy fame shine after thee;

tell, if courtesy and valour abide within our city as they were wont, or have gone quite out of it?

for Guglielmo Borsiere—who has been short time in pain with us, and yonder goes with our companions—greatly torments us with his words.”

“The upstart people and the sudden gains, O Florence, have engendered in thee pride and excess, so that thou already weepest thereat.”

Thus I cried with face uplifted; and the three, who understood this as an answer, looked at one another as men look when truth is told.

“If otherwhile it costs thee so little to satisfy others,” they all replied, “happy thou, [if] thus [thou] speakest at thy will!

Therefore, if thou escape out of these gloomy regions, and return to see again the beauteous stars; when thou shalt rejoice to say, ‘I was,’

see that thou speak of us to men.” Then they broke their wheel; and, as they fled, their nimble legs seemed wings.

An “Amen” could not have been said so quickly as they vanished: wherefore it pleased my Master to depart.

I followed him; and we had gone but little, when the sound of the water was so near us, that in speaking we should scarce have heard each other.

As that river—which first has a path of its own from Monte Veso toward the east, on the left skirt of the Apennine;

which is called Acquacheta above, ere it descends to its low bed, and is vacant of that name at Forli—

resounds from the mountain, there above San Benedetto, in falling at a descent, where for a thousand there should be refuge:

thus down from a steep bank we found that tainted water re-echoing, so that in little time it would have stunned the ear.

I had a cord girt round me; and with it I thought some time to catch the Leopard of the painted skin.

After I had quite unloosed it from me, as my Guide commanded me, I held it out to him coiled and wound up.

Then he bent himself toward the right side, and threw it, some distance from the edge, down into that steep abyss.

“Surely,” said I within myself, “something new must answer this new signal, which my Master thus follows with his eye.”

Ah! how cautious ought men to be with those who see not only the deed, but with their sense look through into the thoughts!

He said to me: “What I expect will soon come up; and what thy thought dreams of, soon must be discovered to thy view.”

Always to that truth which has an air of falsehood, a man should close his lips, [so far as he is able], for, though blameless, he incurs reproach;

but here keep silent I cannot; and, Reader, I swear to thee, by the notes of this my Comedy—so may they not be void of lasting favour—

that I saw, through that air gross and dark, come swimming upwards, a figure marvellous to every steadfast heart;

like as he returns, who on a time goes down to loose the anchor, which grapples a rock or other thing that in the sea is hid, who spreads the arms and gathers up the feet.