The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Fifth Trench. Corrupt Politicians
Speaking of other things my Comedy
cares not to sing, we thus from bridge to bridge
moved on, and, when upon the summit, stopped,
in order to behold the next ravine
of Malebòlgë, and the next vain cries;
and I beheld it wonderfully dark.
And just such sticky pitch as that which boils
in the Venetians’ Arsenal in winter,
for calking up again the unsound ships,
which cannot then be sailed; — instead of which,
as one a new one builds, one plugs the ribs
of that which many voyages has made;
one hammers at the stern, and at the prow another;
one fashions oars, another cordage twists,
while still another mends a jib or mainsail; —
such was the coarse, dense pitch, which, not by fire,
but by an art divine, boiled there below,
and limed the bank on every side. I saw
the pitch, but nothing in it, save the bubbles
the boiling raised, and that the whole of it
kept swelling up, and settling back compressed.
While I was gazing fixedly down yonder,
my Leader cried to me: “Beware, beware!”
and drew me to himself from where I was.
I then turned round, as one who longs to see
the thing which it behooves him to escape,
and who, when by a sudden fear unmanned,
although he sees, delays not his departure;
and I perceived behind us a black devil
come running up along the rocky crag.
Ah, how ferocious in his looks he was,
and in his actions how severe he seemed,
with wings outspread, and light upon his feet!
His shoulder, which was sharp and high, was loaded
with both a sinner’s haunches, whom he held
clutched tightly by the sinews of his feet.
“O Malebranche,” from our bridge he cried,
“here ’s one of Santa Zita’s Ancients! Put him
beneath, for I ’m for more of them returning
to that town which I have well stocked therewith;
there, save Bonturo, every one ’s a grafter;
a ‘No’ for money there becomes a ‘Yes.’”
He hurled him down, and o’er the rugged crag
returned; and never was a mastif loosed
with so much hurry to pursue a thief.
The other sank, and then rose doubled up;
those fiends, though, who were sheltered by the bridge,
cried: “Here the Holy Face availeth not!
One here swims otherwise than in the Serchio!
If, therefore, thou dost not desire our hooks,
protrude not from the surface of the pitch.”
They pricked him then with o’er a hundred prongs,
and said: “Here under cover must thou dance,
that, if thou canst, thou mayst thieve secretly.”
Not otherwise do cooks have scullions plunge
the meat with hooks into the cauldron’s midst,
to hinder it from floating on its surface.
Thereat my kindly Teacher said to me:
“That here thy presence be not known, crouch down
behind a rock, which may avail to screen thee;
and be not thou afraid, for any…
