INFERNO XXIX
INFERNO XXIX
The many people and their ghastly wounds →
did so intoxicate my eyes
3 that I was moved to linger there and weep.
But Virgil said: ‘What are you staring at? →
Why is your gaze so fixed upon the depths
6 that hold those mournful, mutilated shades?
‘You have not done so at the other pits.
In case you plan to count the sinners one by one, →
9 think: this hollow circles twenty-two miles round.
‘The moon already lies beneath our feet. →
The time we are allotted soon expires →
12 and there is more to see than you see here.’
‘Had you understood,’ I was quick to answer, →
‘the reason for my close inspection,
15 perhaps you would have let me stay there longer.’
All the while my guide was moving on,
with me, intent on my reply, behind him.
18 And then I added: ‘Within that hole
‘where I had fixed my gaze, I do believe I saw
someone of my own blood lament
21 the sin that costs so dear down there.’
Then the master said: ‘Trouble your mind →
no more because of him.
24 Turn it to other things and let him be,
‘for I saw him there below the bridge,
pointing his finger at you, fierce with threats,
27 and I heard him called Geri del Bello.
‘Just then you were so thoroughly engrossed
in him who once was lord of Hautefort
30 you did not glance that way before your kinsman left.’
‘O my leader, the violent death he died, →
for which no vengeance has been taken yet,’
33 I said, ‘by any person partner to his shame,
‘made him indignant. That is why he went away
without addressing me—or so I think—
36 and why he’s made me pity him the more.’
Thus we continued talking till we reached →
the first point on the ridge that could have shown
39 the next pit’s bottom, had there been more light.
When we stood above the final cloister →
of Malebolge and all of its lay brothers
42 became discernible to us,
strange arrows of lament, their shafts,
with pity at their tips, pierced me,
45 so that I pressed my hands against my ears.
If the contagion of every hospital →
in Valdichiana, from July until September,
48 and in the Maremma and Sardegna, were amassed
in one malarial ditch, just such suffering
was in that place. And from it rose
51 the stench of festering limbs.
We came down, always to our left, and reached →
the last bank of the lengthy crag.
54 And then my eyes could have a better view →
into the pit, there where the minister
of God on high, unerring justice, punishes
57 the counterfeiters whom she here records.
I think it could have been no greater sorrow →
to see the people of Aegina stricken,
60 with such corruption in the very air
that every animal, even the smallest worm,
perished, and, later, as the poets hold for certain,
63 these ancient people were restored to life,
hatched from the eggs of ants—
no greater sorrow, than in that somber valley
66 to see those spirits, heaped on one another, languishing.
Some lay upon the bellies or the backs
of others, still others dragged themselves
69 on hands and knees along that gloomy path.
Step by step we went ahead in silence,
looking and listening to the stricken spirits,
72 who could not raise their bodies from the ground.
Two I saw seated, propped against each other →
as pans are propped to warm before the fire,
75 each of them blotched with scabs from head to foot.
And never did I see a stable-boy,
with his master waiting, nor youth whose chore
78 keeps him from sleep, ply his curry-comb
more hurriedly than each one clawed his nails
across his skin because of that mad itch,
81 which knows no other remedy,
and their nails tore off those scabs
as a knife strips scales from bream
84 or other fish with even larger scales.
‘You there, stripping off your coat of mail,’ →
began my leader, addressing one of them,
87 ‘and sometimes making pincers of your fingers,
‘tell us whether, among those gathered here,
any are Italian, so may your nails
90 last you in this task for all eternity.’
‘We whom you see so blasted are Italian,’
answered one of them, through his tears,
93 ‘but who are you, that you inquire of us?’
And my leader: ‘I am one who makes his way
down with this living man from ledge to ledge.
96 And my intention is to show him Hell.’
They stopped propping one another up
and each one, trembling, turned in my direction,
99 as others did who’d overheard those words.
The good master drew up close to me,
saying, ‘Ask them what you will.’
102 And I began, since this had been his wish:
‘So that your memory may not fade away
from minds of men in the world above
105 but live on yet for many suns to come,
‘tell me who you are, and where you hail from.
Do not let your foul and sickening torment
108 keep you from telling me your names.’
And one of them replied: ‘I was of Arezzo. →
Albero of Siena had me burned alive.
111 But what I died for does not bring me here.
‘It is true I said to him in jest:
“I do know how to rise into the air and fly!”
114 And he, who had the will but not the wit,
‘asked me to show him how. And just because
I failed to make him Daedalus, he had me set
117 on fire by one who took him as his son.
‘But Minos, incapable of error,
damned me to the last of these ten ditches
120 for the alchemy I practiced in the world.’
And I said to the poet: ‘Were people ever →
quite so fatuous as are the Sienese?
123 Why, not even the French can match them!’
Whereupon the other leper, hearing me, →
replied: ‘Except, of course for Stricca—
126 he knew how to moderate his spending—
‘and for Niccolò—the first one to devise
a costly use for cloves,
129 there in the garden where such seeds take root—
‘and for that band in whose company
Caccia d’Asciano squandered his vineyards
132 and his fields, and Abbagliato showed his wit.
‘But, to let you know who’s in your camp
against the Sienese, look close at me
135 so that my face itself may answer you.
‘You will see I am the shade of Capocchio, →
who altered metal by means of alchemy.
And, if you are the man I take you for,
139 you will recall how good an ape I was of nature.’