She has not even hope to fall back on as a mitigation of her endless torments. Of her offences against his ideal of woman he says:
A vizio di lussuria fu si rotta,
Che libito fe lecito in sua legge,
Per torre il biasmo in che era condotta.
She was so steeped in wickedness that she promulgated laws permitting others to act as she herself did, in order to annul the stigma that would otherwise have been attached to her. He is a little hard and unjust to Dido, whom Virgil treats with such exquisite tenderness, in naming her along with “lustful Cleopatra” in the same passage. To Helen he is more indulgent, in words at least, content with saying that she was the guilty cause of dire events, “per cui tanto reo tempo si volse”; but she does not escape endless expiation. Some of my readers will remember how much more damning of her conduct is Virgil in the Sixth Book of the Æneid, where Priam represents her as giving the signal to the Greeks to enter Troy, and having concealed his sword, that he may fall a helpless victim to the vengeance of Paris, whom the fair wanton wished to propitiate in the hour of her lord’s triumph.
But what is Dante’s attitude towards Francesca da Rimini, in the most beautiful passage, it seems to me, in the whole range of narrative Poetry? Many, I am sure, know it by heart, and have thereby fortified themselves against the modern less-refined treatment of it even by men aspiring to be regarded as poets. Often as one has repeated it to oneself, one has never felt that Dante had for Francesca any harsher feeling than sympathetic compassion. He casts around her the halo of the purest sentiment; he brings music of matchless verbal sweetness to the description of the hour, the place, the circumstances of her disinterested and unselfish surrender. The very lines in which he leads up to her pathetic story, lines in which his feeling concerning frail and hapless love seems to be purposely expressed in general and wide-embracing language, are in themselves significant to those who observe their meaning. He says that when he heard Virgil name the numerous knights and fair dames who were suffering from having subordinated prudence to impulse, he only felt troubled for them and bewildered.
Pietà mi vinse, e fu quasi smarrito.
The first thing he notices in Francesca and her lover is their buoyancy in the air, as though they were the finest and most tenuous of spirits; and when he says to Virgil that he would fain have speech with them, the reply is that he has only to appeal to them by the love that still moves them, and they will draw nigh to him. Then follows that lovely simile of doves floating to call, and Francesca’s recognition of Dante with the words:
O animal grazioso e benigno!
who is sure to have pity on her hapless doom. When Francesca pauses in her narrative, and Dante bows his head for sorrow, Virgil shows what is his own feeling by the brief question addressed to Dante, “What think you?” Dante replies in a voice broken by emotion:
... O lasso,
Quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
Menò costoro al doloroso passo!
and, turning to Francesca, he says that her fate fills his eyes with tears and his heart with anguish. Encouraged by the poet’s sympathy, she tells him what happened, “al tempo de’ dolci sospiri,” in the season of sweet sighs, in itself a preliminary and melodious appeal for indulgence, and that he must be patient with her if she tells her tale, sobbing as she speaks. Torn between sweet remembrance and regret, she cannot refrain from recalling