"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."
Then broken was their mutual support,

And trembling each one turned himself to me,
With others who had heard him by rebound.
Wholly to me did the good Master gather,

Saying: "Say unto them whate'er thou wishest."

And I began, since he would have it so :

"So may your memory not steal away

In the first world from out the minds of men,

But so may it survive 'neath many suns,

Say to me who ye are, and of what people;

Let not your foul and loathsome punishment
Make you afraid to show yourselves to me."

"I of Arezzo was," one made reply,

"And Albert of Siena had me burned;

But what I died for does not bring me here.

'Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest,

That I could rise by flight into the air,

And he who had conceit, but little wit,

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Would have me show to him the art; and only
Because no Dædalus I made him, made me
Be burned by one who held him as his son.
But unto the last Bolgia of the ten,

For alchemy, which in the world I practised,
Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned."
And to the Poet said I: "Now was ever

So vain a people as the Sienese?

Not for a certainty the French by far.”
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,

Replied unto my speech: "Taking out Stricca,
Who knew the art of moderate expenses,

And Niccolò, who the luxurious use

Of cloves discovered earliest of all

Within that garden where such seed takes root; And taking out the band, among whom squandered

Caccia d'Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered! But, that thou know who thus doth second thee Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye Tow'rds me, so that my face well answer thee,

And thou shalt see I am Capocchio's shade,

Who metals falsified by alchemy;

Thou must remember, if I well descry thee,

How I a skilful ape of nature was."

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CANTO XXX.

WAS at the time when Juno was enraged,

TW

For Semele, against the Theban blood,

As she already more than once had shown,

So reft of reason Athamas became,

That, seeing his own wife with children twain
Walking encumbered upon either hand,

He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage ";
And then extended his unpitying claws,

Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,

And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock; And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself; And at the time when fortune downward hurled

The Trojans' arrogance, that all things dared,

So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,

Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,

When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,

And of her Polydorus on the shore

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Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,

Out of her senses like a dog she barked,

So much the anguish had her mind distorted;

But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan

Were ever seen in any one so cruel

In goading beasts, and much more human members,

As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,

Who, biting, in the manner ran along

That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.

One to Capocchio came, and by the nape

Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging

It made his belly grate the solid bottom.
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,

Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,
And raving goes thus harrying other people."

"O," said I to him, "so may not the other

Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence."
And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became
Beyond all rightful love her father's lover.
She came to sin with him after this manner,
By counterfeiting of another's form;
As he who goeth yonder undertook,

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That he might gain the lady of the herd,

To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,
Making a will and giving it due form."
And after the two maniacs had passed

On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back
To look upon the other evil-born.

I saw one made in fashion of a lute,

If he had only had the groin cut off

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Just at the point at which a man is forked.

The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions

The limbs with humors, which it ill concocts,

That the face corresponds not to the belly,

Compelled him so to hold his lips apart

"O

As does the hectic, who because of thirst

One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns.

ye, who without any torment are,

And why I know not, in the world of woe,"

He said to us, "behold, and be attentive

Unto the misery of Master Adam ;

I had while living much of what I wished,

And now, alas! a drop of water crave.

The rivulets, that from the verdant hills

Of Cassentin descend down into Arno,
Making their channels to be cold and moist,

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