Part 55

Then I beheld a thousand faces, made Purple with cold; whence o’er me comes a shudder, And evermore will come, at frozen ponds.

And while we were advancing tow’rds the middle, Where everything of weight unites together, And I was shivering in the eternal shade,

Whether ’twere will, or destiny, or chance, I know not; but in walking ’mong the heads I struck my foot hard in the face of one.

Weeping he growled: “Why dost thou trample me? Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?”

And I: “My Master, now wait here for me, That I through him may issue from a doubt; Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish.”

The Leader stopped; and to that one I said Who was blaspheming vehemently still: “Who art thou, that thus reprehendest others?”

“Now who art thou, that goest through Antenora Smiting,” replied he, “other people’s cheeks, So that, if thou wert living, ’twere too much?”

“Living I am, and dear to thee it may be,” Was my response, “if thou demandest fame, That ’mid the other notes thy name I place.”

And he to me: “For the reverse I long; Take thyself hence, and give me no more trouble; For ill thou knowest to flatter in this hollow.”

Then by the scalp behind I seized upon him, And said: “It must needs be thou name thyself, Or not a hair remain upon thee here.”

Whence he to me: “Though thou strip off my hair, I will not tell thee who I am, nor show thee, If on my head a thousand times thou fall.”

I had his hair in hand already twisted, And more than one shock of it had pulled out, He barking, with his eyes held firmly down,

When cried another: “What doth ail thee, Bocca? Is’t not enough to clatter with thy jaws, But thou must bark? what devil touches thee?”

“Now,” said I, “I care not to have thee speak, Accursed traitor; for unto thy shame I will report of thee veracious news.”

“Begone,” replied he, “and tell what thou wilt, But be not silent, if thou issue hence, Of him who had just now his tongue so prompt;

He weepeth here the silver of the French; ‘I saw,’ thus canst thou phrase it, ‘him of Duera There where the sinners stand out in the cold.’

If thou shouldst questioned be who else was there, Thou hast beside thee him of Beccaria, Of whom the gorget Florence slit asunder;

Gianni del Soldanier, I think, may be Yonder with Ganellon, and Tebaldello Who oped Faenza when the people slep.”

Already we had gone away from him, When I beheld two frozen in one hole, So that one head a hood was to the other;

And even as bread through hunger is devoured, The uppermost on the other set his teeth, There where the brain is to the nape united.

Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed The temples of Menalippus in disdain, Than that one did the skull and the other things.

“O thou, who showest by such bestial sign Thy hatred against him whom thou art eating, Tell me the wherefore,” said I, “with this compact,

That if thou rightfully of him complain, In knowing who ye are, and his transgression, I in the world above repay thee for it,

If that wherewith I speak be not dried up.”

Inferno: Canto XXXIII

His mouth uplifted from his grim repast, That sinner, wiping it upon the hair Of the same head that he behind had wasted.

Then he began: “Thou wilt that I renew The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already To think of only, ere I speak of it;

But if my words be seed that may bear fruit Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw, Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together.