Vêtu de lin plus blanc qu'un encensoir qui fume,
Il avait, spectre blême aux idoles pareil,
Les baisers de la foule empreints sur son orteil,
Dans sa droite un bâton comme l'antique archonte,
Sur son front la tiare, et dans ses yeux la honte.
De son cou descendait un long manteau doré,
Et dans son poignet gauche il tenait, effaré,
Comme un voleur surpris par celui qu'il dérobe,
Des clefs qu'il essayait de cacher sous sa robe.
Il était effrayant à force de terreur.
Quand surgit ce vieillard, on vit dans la lueur
L'ombre et le mouvement de quelqu'un qui se penche.
À l'apparition de cette robe blanche,
Au plus noir de l'abîme un tonnerre gronda.
Then from all points of the immeasurable spaces, from the womb of the cloud and the edge of the pit, is witness given against Pope Pius IX. by the tyrants and the victims, mothers and children and old men, the judges and the judged, the murderers mingling with the murdered, great and small, obscure and famous.
Tous ceux que j'avais vus passer dans les ténèbres,
Avançant leur front triste, ouvrant leur œil terni,
Fourmillement affreux qui peuplait l'infini,
Tous ces spectres, vivant, parlant, riant naguère,
Martyrs, bourreaux, et gens du peuple et gens de guerre,
Regardant l'homme blanc d'épouvante ébloui,
Elevèrent la main et crièrent: C'est lui.
Et pendant qu'ils criaient, sa robe devint rouge.
Au fond du gouffre où rien ne tressaille et ne bouge
Un écho répéta:—C'est lui!—Les sombres rois
Dirent:—C'est lui! c'est lui! c'est lui! voilà sa croix!
Les clefs du paradis sont dans ses mains fatales.—
Et l'homme-loup, debout sur les cadavres pâles
Dont le sang tiède encor tombait dans l'infini,
Cria d'une voix rauque et sourde:—Il m'a béni!
A judgment less terrible than what follows is that by which Dante long ago made fast the gates of hell upon Nicholas and Boniface and Clement with one stroke of his inevitable hand. The ghastly agony of the condemned is given with all the bitterest realism of the great elder anti-papist who sent so many vicars of Christ to everlasting torment for less offenses than those of Mastai-Ferretti.
Lui se tourna vers l'ange en frissonnant,
Et je vis le spectacle horrible et surprenant
D'un homme qui vieillit pendant qu'on le regarde.
L'agonie éteignit sa prunelle hagarde,
Sa bouche bégaya, son jarret se rompit,
Ses cheveux blanchissaient sur son front décrépit,
Ses tempes se ridaient comme si les années
S'étaient subitement sur sa face acharnées,
Ses yeux pleuraient, ses dents claquaient comme au gibet
Les genoux d'un squelette, et sa peau se plombait,
Et, stupide, il baissait, à chaque instant plus pâle,
Sa tête qu'écrasait la tiare papale.
From the sentence passed upon him after the avowal extorted by the angel of doom that he has none in the world above him but God alone on whom to cast the responsibility of his works, not a word may be taken away for the purpose of quotation, as not a word could have been added to it by Dante or by Ezekiel himself. But about the eternity of his damnation there is not, happily for the human conscience, any manner of doubt possible; it must endure as long as the poem which proclaims it: in other words, as long as the immortality of poetry itself.
This great and terrible poem, the very crown or coping-stone of all the Châtiments, has a certain affinity with two others in which the poet's yearning after justice and mercy has borne his passionate imagination as high and far as here. In Sultan Mourad his immeasurable and incomparable depth of pity and charity seems well nigh to have swallowed up all sense of necessary retribution: it is perhaps because the portentous array of crimes enumerated is remote in time and place from all experience of ours that conscience can allow the tenderness and sublimity of its inspiration to justify the moral and ratify the sentence of the poem:—
Viens! tu fus bon un jour, sois à jamais heureux.
Entre, transfiguré! tes crimes ténébreux,
Ô roi, derrière toi s'effacent dans les gloires;
Tourne la tête, et vois blanchir tes ailes noires.
But in the crowning song of all the great three cycles every need and every instinct of the spirit may find the perfect exaltation of content. The vast and profound sense of ultimate and inevitable equity which animates every line of it is as firm and clear as the solid and massive splendor of its articulate expression. The date of it is outside and beyond the lapse of the centuries of time; but the rule of the law of righteousness is there more evident and indisputable than ever during the flight of these. Hardly in the Hebrew prophecies is such distinct and vivid sublimity, as of actual and all but palpable vision, so thoroughly impregnated with moral and spiritual emotion. Not a verse of all that strike root into the memory forever but is great alike by imagination and by faith. In such a single line as this—
Que qui n'entendit pas le remords l'entendrait—