The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Fifth Trench. Corrupt Politicians
Ere now have I seen cavalry break camp,
start to attack, or be reviewed, and even,
at times, retreat, in order to escape;
scouts have I also seen upon your lands,
O Aretines; raids, too, have I beheld,
and tournaments and tilting-matches fought;
with trumpets now, and now with bells, with drums
and beacon-signals made from fortresses,
with native and with foreign things; but never
have I seen horse, or infantry, or ship,
by sign of either land or sky, set out
with instrument of wind as odd as that.
With the ten demons we were going on;
ah, the fierce company! But in a church
with saints consort, with gluttons at an inn!
Upon the pitch alone was I intent,
that I might see all details of the trench
and of the people who were burned therein.
As dolphins do, when, arching up their backs,
they give the warning which bids mariners
take measures for the safety of their ship;
even so at times, his suffering to relieve,
one of the sinners there displayed his back,
and hid it in less time than lightning takes.
And as in ditches at the water’s edge
frogs stay with nothing but their muzzles out,
and thus conceal their feet and all the rest;
even so on all sides did those sinners stay;
and now that Barbariccia was approaching,
they likewise ’neath the boiling pitch withdrew.
I saw, and still it stirs my heart with horror,
one waiting thus, as oft, while one frog stays,
it happens that another scurries off.
And Graffiacane, who was nearest to him,
hooking his pitch-smeared tresses, pulled him up,
so that an otter he appeared to me.
I knew by now the names of each and all,
I noted them so well when they were chosen,
and, when they called each other, noticed how.
“O Rubicante, see thou set thy claws
upon him so, that thou peel off his skin!”
the accursèd all cried out together then.
And I: “My Teacher, if thou canst, contrive
to learn who that wretch is, who thus
has fallen into his adversaries’ hands.”
My Leader thereupon drew near to him,
and asked him whence he was, and he replied:
“Of Navarre’s kingdom I a native was.
My mother placed me out to serve a lord,
for she had borne me to a rascal knave,
who both himself and what he owned destroyed.
I next in good King Thibaut’s household served,
and there I set myself to practice graft,
for which I pay the reckoning in this heat.”
Here Ciriatto, from whose mouth protruded,
as from a boar’s, a tusk on either side,
caused him to feel how one of them could rip.
Among bad cats the mouse had fallen now;
for Barbariccia clasped him in his arms,
and said: “Stand off, while I am clutching him!”
Then, toward my Teacher having turned his face,
he said: “Ask him again, if more thou…
