After I had heard my Teacher name the dames of eld and the cavaliers, pity overcame me, and I was well nigh bewildered. I began, “Poet, willingly would I speak with those two that go together, and seem to be so light upon the wind.” And he to me, “Thou shalt see when they shall be nearer to us, and do thou then pray them by that love which leads them, and they will come.” Soon as the wind sways them toward us I lifted my voice, “O weary souls, come speak to us, if One forbid it not.”
As doves, called by desire, with wings open and steady, fly through the air to their sweet nest, borne by their will, these issued from the troop where Dido is, coming to us through the malign air, so strong was the compassionate cry.
“O living creature, gracious and benign, that goest through the lurid air visiting us who stained the world blood-red,—if the King of the universe were a friend we would pray Him for thy peace, since thou hast pity on our perverse ill. Of what it pleaseth thee to hear, and what to speak, we will hear and we will speak to you, while the wind, as now, is hushed for us. The city where I was born sits upon the sea-shore, where the Po, with its followers, descends to have peace. Love, that on gentle heart quickly lays hold, seized him for the fair person that was taken from me, and the mode still hurts me. Love, which absolves no loved one from loving, seized me for the pleasing of him so strongly that, as thou seest, it does not even now abandon me. Love brought us to one death. Caina awaits him who quenched our life.” These words were borne to us from them.
Soon as I had heard those injured souls I bowed my face, and held it down, until the Poet said to me, “What art thou thinking?” When I replied, I began, “Alas! how many sweet thoughts, how great desire, led these unto the woeful pass.” Then I turned me again to them, and I spoke, and began, “Francesca, thy torments make me sad and piteous to weeping. But tell me, at the time of the sweet sighs by what and how did love concede to you to know the dubious desires?” And she to me, “There is no greater woe than in misery to remember the happy time, and that thy Teacher knows. But if to know the first root of our love thou hast so great a longing, I will do like one who weeps and tells.
“We were reading one day, for delight, of Lancelot, how love constrained him. We were alone and without any suspicion. Many times that reading made us lift our eyes, and took the color from our faces, but only one point was that which overcame us. When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed by such a lover, this one, who never from me shall be divided, kissed my mouth all trembling. Galahaut was the book, and he who wrote it. That day we read in it no farther.”[1]
[1] In the Romance, it was Galahaut that prevailed on Guinevere to give a kiss to Lancelot.
While one spirit said this the other was weeping so that through pity I swooned, as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead body falls.
CANTO VI.
The Third Circle, that of the Gluttonous.—Cerberus.—Ciacco.
When the mind returned, which closed itself before the pity of these two kinsfolk, that had all confounded me with sadness, new torments and new tormented souls I see around me wherever I move, and howsoever I turn, and wherever I gaze.