The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Tenth Trench. Falsifiers of Metals
The many people and unheard-of wounds
had caused my eyes to be so drunk with tears,
that fain they were to linger there and weep;
but Virgil said: “At what art gazing still?
Why is it that thine eyes still rest down there
among the wretched mutilated shades?
Thou didst not thus when in the other trenches;
consider, then, if thou propose to count them,
that this trench circles two-and-twenty miles,
and that the moon is now beneath our feet;
short is the time allowed us still, and more
there is to see, than what thou seest here.”
“If thou hadst heeded” I thereat replied,
“the reason for my gazing there, thou wouldst,
perhaps, have granted me a longer stay.”
Meantime my Leader on his way was going,
and I behind him moving, as I made
my answer, adding: “In that hollow place,
whereon I kept mine eyes so steadily,
I think a spirit sprung from mine own blood
bewails the fault so dearly paid for there.”
Thereat my Teacher said: “Let not thy thoughts
hereafter break on him; heed other things,
and there let him remain; for at the foot
of that small bridge I saw him point thee out,
and with his finger fiercely threaten thee;
Geri del Bello I then heard him called.
So wholly wast thou then intent on him
who formerly possessed Hautefort, that thou,
till he departed, didst not look beyond.”
“Leader,” said I, “his death by violence,
which is not yet avenged for him by any
who shared the shame, made him indignant; that,
as I believe, was why he went away
without addressing me; he thus has caused me
to pity him the more.” We thus conversed
till we had reached the first place on the crag,
whence, had there been more light, the next ravine
had to its very bottom been revealed.
When we o’er Malebolgë’s final cloister
were situated so, that its lay-brethren
could be perceived by us, uncouth laments,
which had their arrow-heads with pity barbed,
so pierced me through and through, that with my hands
I closed mine ears. Such pain as there would be,
if from the hospitals of Val di Chiana,
Maremma and Sardinia, from July
until September, all diseases came
together in one ditch; such was it here;
and out of it there came a stench, like that
which out of rotting limbs is wont to come.
Adown the last bank of the lengthy crag
we went, as ever to the left; and then
much clearer was my vision toward the bottom,
wherein the servant of the Most High Lord,
Justice infallible, is punishing
the falsifiers she recordeth here.
I do not think it were a sadder sight
to see the whole race in Aegina sick,
when so suffused with poison was the air,
that all the animals, down to the little worm,
fell dead, and when the ancient race of people,
according to what…
