Part 49

“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 him I 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 laments The sin which down below there costs so much.”

Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken Thy 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 finger Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.

So wholly at that time wast thou impeded By 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 place Upon the crag, which the next valley shows Down to the bottom, if there were more light.

When we were now right over the last cloister Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers Could 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 hospitals Of 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 it As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.

We had descended on the furthest bank From the long crag, upon the left hand still, And then more vivid was my power of sight

Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress Of the high Lord, Justice infallible, Punishes forgers, which she here records.

I do not think a sadder sight to see Was 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 valley The spirits languishing in divers heaps.

This on the belly, that upon the back One of the other lay, and others crawling Shifted themselves along the dismal road.

We step by step went onward without speech, Gazing upon and listening to the sick Who 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 currycomb By stable-boy for whom his master waits, Or him who keeps awake unwillingly,

As every one was plying fast the bite Of nails upon himself, for the great rage Of 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 those Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee To 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 descends Down with this living man from cliff to cliff, And I intend to show Hell unto him.”