“O Marco mine,” said I, “thou reasonest well; and now I discern why the sons of Levi were excluded from the heritage;[1] but what Gherardo is that, who, thou sayest, remains for sample of the extinct folk, in reproach of the barbarous age?” “Either thy speech deceives me, or it is making trial of me,” he replied to me, “in that, speaking Tuscan to me, it seems that of the good Gherardo thou knowest naught. By other added name I know him not, unless I should take it from his daughter Gaia.[2] May God be with you! for further I come not with you. Behold the brightness which rays already glimmering through the smoke, and it behoves me to depart—the Angel is there—ere I appear to him.”[3] So he turned, and would not hear me more.
[1] “The Lord separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister unto him, and to bless in his name, unto this day. Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance.”—Deuteronomy, x. 8-9.
[2] Famed for her virtues, says Buti; for her vices, say the Ottimo and Benvenuto.
[3] His time of purgation is not yet finished; not yet is he ready to meet the Angel of the Pass.
CANTO XVII.
Third Ledge the Wrathful.—Issue from the Smoke.—Vision of examples of Anger.—Ascent to the Fourth Ledge, where Sloth is purged.—Second Nightfall.—Virgil explains how Love is the root of Virtue and of Sin.
Recall to mind, reader, if ever on the alps a cloud closed round thee, through which thou couldst not see otherwise than the mole through its skin, how, when the humid and dense vapors begin to dissipate, the ball of the sun enters feebly through them: and thy imagination will easily come to see, how at first I saw again the sun, which was already at its setting. So, matching mine to the trusty steps of my Master, I issued forth from such a cloud to rays already dead on the low shores.
O power imaginative, that dost sometimes so steal us from outward things that a man heeds it not, although around him a thousand trumpets sound, who moveth thee if the sense afford thee naught? A light, that in the heavens is formed, moveth thee by itself, or by a will that downward guides it?
[1] If the imagination is not stirred by some object of sense, it is moved by the influence of the stars, or directly by the Divine will.
In my imagination appeared the impress of the impiety of her[1] who changed her form into the bird that most delights in singing. And here was my mind so shut up within itself that from without came nothing which then might he received by it. Then rained down within my high fantasy, one crucified,[2] scornful and fierce in his look, and thus was dying. Around him were the great Ahasuerus, Esther his wife, and the just Mordecai, who was in speech and action so blameless. And when this imagination burst of itself, like a bubble for which the water fails, beneath which it was made, there rose in my vision a maiden,[3] weeping bitterly, and she was saying, “O queen, wherefore through anger hast thou willed to be naught? Thou hast killed thyself in order not to lose Lavinia: now thou hast lost me: I am she who mourns, mother, at thine, before another’s ruin.