HKB
Whence I to him: “If thou wouldst have me help thee Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not, May I go to the bottom of the ice.”
Then he replied: “I am Friar Alberigo; He am I of the fruit of the bad garden, Who here a date am getting for my fig.”
“O,” said I to him, “now art thou, too, dead?” And he to me: “How may my body fare Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.
Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea, That oftentimes the soul descendeth here Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it.
And, that thou mayest more willingly remove From off my countenance these glassy tears, Know that as soon as any soul betrays
As I have done, his body by a demon Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it, Until his time has wholly been revolved.
Itself down rushes into such a cistern; And still perchance above appears the body Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me.
This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down; It is Ser Branca d’ Oria, and many years Have passed away since he was thus locked up.”
“I think,” said I to him, “thou dost deceive me; For Branca d’ Oria is not dead as yet, And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes.”
“In moat above,” said he, “of Malebranche, There where is boiling the tenacious pitch, As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived,
When this one left a devil in his stead In his own body and one near of kin, Who made together with him the betrayal.
But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith, Open mine eyes;”—and open them I did not, And to be rude to him was courtesy.
Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance With every virtue, full of every vice Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?
For with the vilest spirit of Romagna I found of you one such, who for his deeds In soul already in Cocytus bathes,
And still above in body seems alive!
Inferno: Canto XXXIV
“‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni’ Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,” My Master said, “if thou discernest him.”
As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when Our hemisphere is darkening into night, Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,
Methought that such a building then I saw; And, for the wind, I drew myself behind My Guide, because there was no other shelter.
Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, There where the shades were wholly covered up, And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.
Some prone are lying, others stand erect, This with the head, and that one with the soles; Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.
When in advance so far we had proceeded, That it my Master pleased to show to me The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,
He from before me moved and made me stop, Saying: “Behold Dis, and behold the place Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself.”
How frozen I became and powerless then, Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not, Because all language would be insufficient.
I did not die, and I alive remained not; Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, What I became, being of both deprived.
The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; And better with a giant I compare
Than do the giants with those arms of his; Consider now how great must be that whole, Which unto such a part conforms itself.
Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, And lifted up his brow against his Maker, Well may proceed from him all tribulation.
O, what a marvel it appeared to me, When I beheld three faces on his head! The one in front, and that vermilion was;