[8] Others may be greater, but none more humiliating.
I had knelt down and wished to speak; but when I began, and he became aware, only by listening, of my reverence, “What cause,” said he, “hath bent thee thus downward?” And I to him, “Because of your dignity my conscience stung me for standing.” “Straighten thy legs, and lift thee up, brother,” he replied; “err not, fellow servant of one power am I with thee and with the rest.[1] If ever thou hast understood that holy gospel sound which says neque nubent,[2] thou mayst well see why I speak thus. Now go thy way. I will not that thou longer stop; for thy stay hinders my weeping, with which I ripen that which thou hast said. A grandchild I have on earth who is named Alagia,[3] good in herself, if only our house make her not wicked by example; and she alone remains to me yonder.”[4]
[1] And I fell at His feet to worship him. And He said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant.”—Revelation xix. 10.
[2] They neither marry.”—Matthew, xxii. 80. The distinctions of earths do not exist in the spiritual world.
[3] Alagia was the wife of the Marquis Moroello Malaspina. See the close of Canto VIII. Dante had probably seen her in 1306, when he was a guest of the house, in the Lunigiana.
[4] Not that she was his only living relative, but the only one whose prayers, coming from a good heart, would avail him.
CANTO XX.
Fifth Ledge: the Avaricious.—The Spirits celebrate examples of Poverty and Bounty.—Hugh Capet.—His discourse on his descendants.—Trembling of the Mountain.
Against a better will the will fights ill: wherefore against my own pleasure, in order to please him, I drew from the water the sponge not full.
I moved on, and my Leader moved on through the space vacant only alongside of the rock, as upon a wall one goes close to the battlements. For on the other side the people, that through their eyes are pouring drop by drop the evil that possesses all the world, approach too near the edge.[1]