Thus we passed along with slow steps through the foul mixture of the shades and of the rain, touching a little on the future life. Wherefore I said, “Master, these torments will they increase after the great sentence, or will they become less, or will they be just as burning?” And he to me, “Return to thy science, which declares that the more perfect a thing is the more it feels the good, and so the pain. Though this accursed people never can attain to true perfection, it expects thereafter to be more than now.”
We took a circling course along that road, speaking far more than I repeat; and came to the point where the descent is. Here we found Pluto,[1] the great enemy.
[1] Pluto appears here not as Hades, the god of the lower world, but in his character as the giver of wealth.
CANTO VII.
The Fourth Circle, that of the Avaricious and the Prodigal.—Pluto.—Fortune.—The Styx.—The Fifth Circle, that of the Wrathful and the Sullen.
“Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe,”—began Pluto with his clucking voice. And that gentle Sage, who knew everything, said to comfort me, “Let not thy fear hurt thee; for whatso power he have shall not take from thee the descent of this rock.” Then he turned to that swollen lip and said, “Be silent, accursed wolf! inwardly consume thyself with thine own rage: not without cause is this going to the abyss; it is willed on high, there where Michael did vengeance on the proud adultery.”[1] As sails swollen by the wind fall in a heap when the mast snaps, so fell to earth the cruel beast.
[1] Adultery, in the sense of infidelity to God.
Thus we descended into the fourth hollow, taking more of the woeful bank that gathers in the evil of the whole universe. Ah, Justice of God! Who heapeth up so many new travails and penalties as I saw? And why doth our sin so waste us? As doth the wave, yonder upon Charybdis, which is broken on that which it encounters, so it behoves that here the people counterdance.
Here saw I people more than elsewhere many, and from one side and the other with great howls rolling weights by force of chest. They struck against each other, and then just there each turned, rolling backward, crying, “Why keepest thou?” and “Why flingest thou away?” Thus they turned through the dark circle on either hand to the opposite point, still crying out their opprobrious verse; then each, when he had come through his half circle, wheeled round to the other joust.
And I, who had my heart well-nigh pierced through, said, “My Master, now declare to me what folk is this, and if all these tonsured ones on our left were clerks.”