| 1 |
At the end of his words the thief raised his hands with both the figs, crying: “Take them, God, I’m aiming at you!” |
| 4 |
From then on snakes have been my friends, because one of them wrapped itself around his neck, as if to say “I won’t let him say more,” |
| 7 |
and another around his arms, and bound them up, tying itself so tight in front that he could not budge. |
| 10 |
Ah, Pistoia, Pistoia, why do you not decree your incineration, so that you may not endure, since you surpass your sowers in doing ill? |
| 13 |
Through all the dark circles of Hell I saw no spirit so proud against God, not him who fell from the wall at Thebes. |
| 16 |
He fled without saying another word; and I saw a centaur, full of rage, come crying: “Where is he, where is he, the unripe one?” |
| 19 |
I do not think Maremma has as many water snakes as he had on his back from the rump to where our shape begins. |
| 22 |
On his shoulders, behind his nape, lay a dragon spreading its wings; it sets fire to any they meet. |
| 25 |
My master said: “That is Cacus, who beneath the rocks of Mount Aventine many times made a lake of blood. |
| 28 |
He does not follow the same path as his brothers, because he fraudulently stole the great herd he found close by; |
| 31 |
therefore his cross-eyed deeds ended under Hercules’ club, which perhaps gave him a hundred, but he did not feel ten of them.” |
| 34 |
As he was speaking, the centaur went by and three spirits came below us, whom neither I nor my leader perceived |
| 37 |
until they cried: “Who are you?” For this reason our talk ceased, and they alone claimed our attention. |
| 40 |
I did not know them; but it happened, as it often does by some chance, that one of them had to name another, |
| 43 |
saying: “Where has Cianfa stayed?” Therefore I, so that my leader should pay attention, stretched my finger from chin to nose. |
| 46 |
If now, reader, you are slow to believe what I say, that will be no marvel, for I, who saw it, hardly allow it. |
| 49 |
As I was raising my brows toward them, a serpent with six feet threw itself on one of them and embraced him closely. |
| 52 |
Its middle feet it wrapped around his waist, with its forefeet it seized his arms; then it pierced both his cheeks with its fangs; |
| 55 |
its hind feet it spread along his thighs, and put its tail between them, extending it up along his loins: |
| 58 |
ivy never took root on a tree so tightly as the horrible beast grew vinelike around the other’s limbs. |
| 61 |
After they had adhered to each other like hot wax and had mixed their colors, neither seemed what it had been: |
| 64 |
as, when paper burns, a dark color moves up it preceding the flame; it is not yet black, but the white is dying. |
| 67 |
The other two were staring at him, and each cried: “Oh me, Agnel, how you are changing! See, already you are neither two nor one.” |
| 70 |
Already the two heads had become one, so that two sets of features seemed mingled in one face, where two heads were lost. |
| 73 |
The arms became two strips from four; the thighs and the legs and the belly and the chest became members never before seen. |
| 76 |
Every former appearance there was shattered; two and none the perverse image seemed, and off it moved with slow steps. |
| 79 |
As the lizard, changing hedges under the great scourge of the dog days, seems lightning as it crosses the road: |
| 82 |
so seemed an inflamed little serpent, livid and black like a grain of pepper, coming toward the bellies of the other two; |
| 85 |
and one of them it pierced in the place where our first nourishment is taken; then it fell stretched out before him. |
| 88 |
The one transfixed gazed at it but said nothing; rather, standing still, he yawned as if sleep or fever assailed him. |
| 91 |
He was gazing at the serpent, and the serpent at him; one through his wound and the other through its mouth was sending forth smoke, and the smoke met. |
| 94 |
Let Lucan now be silent, where he touches on miserable Sabellus and Nasidius, and let him listen to what the bow now looses. |
| 97 |
About Cadmus and Arethusa let Ovid be silent, for if in his poetry he converts him into a serpent and her into a fountain, I do not envy him, |
| 100 |
for never two natures face to face did he transmute so that both forms were ready to exchange their matter. |
| 103 |
They answered each other according to this rule: that the serpent split its tail in two, and the wounded one drew his soles together. |
| 106 |
His legs and thighs so adhered that soon the joining left no mark that could be seen. |
| 109 |
The cleft tail took the shape the other was losing, and its skin softened, but over there it hardened. |
| 112 |
I saw both his arms withdraw into the armpits, and the beast’s two feet, which were short, lengthen as much as the other’s were shortening. |
| 115 |
Then the hind feet, twisted together, became the member which a man hides, and the other wretch out of his had extended two feet. |
| 118 |
While the smoke veils both of them with a new color, generating hair on one side, and peeling it off on the other, |
| 121 |
one stood up and the other fell down, but they did not turn aside their pitiless lanterns, under whose gaze each was changing his snout. |
| 124 |
He who was erect drew his in toward the temples, and of the excess matter made ears that came out over narrow cheeks; |
| 127 |
what of that excess did not go to the rear became a nose for the face and filled out the cheeks as much as was fitting. |
| 130 |
He who was lying down, extends his snout forward and withdraws his ears into his head as the snail does its horns; |
| 133 |
and his tongue, which had previously been whole and ready to speak, is split, and the other’s forked one is joined; and the smoke stops. |
| 136 |
The soul who had become a beast fled hissing through the valley, and the other spits as he speaks after him. |
| 139 |
Then he turned his new back on him and said to the other: “I want Buoso to run, as I have, on all sixes along this path.” |
| 142 |
Thus I saw the seventh cargo change and change again; and here let the novelty excuse me if my pen ever falters. |
| 145 |
And although my eyes were somewhat confused and my spirit robbed of power, the souls could not flee so secretly |
