... Or pur mira
Ch’ è per poco che teco non mi risso![122]
Less broad in its grim playfulness is the taunt which the spendthrift Jacomo da Sant’ Andrea, hunted and breathless, gasps out at his fellow-sufferer: “Lano, at Toppo’s jousts thy legs were not so nimble”—
Lano, sì non furo accorte
Le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo![123]
Exquisite in the irony of its situation is in Inf. xix, in which Dante, in order to find a place for solemn invective against Boniface VIII,[124] and to assign him, while still alive, his place in Hell, makes Nicholas III mistake the Poet’s voice for that of the Pontiff, and exclaim—
Se’ tu già costì ritto,
Se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?
Whereat Dante represents himself as quite non-plussed and unable to grasp the speaker’s meaning!
Nor is the scene itself without a picturesque absurdity that evinces a subtle sense of humour, especially when we remember the over-weening pretensions of Boniface to unearthly dignity. The flaming legs of Simonists kicking to and fro above the surface of the ground wherein the rest of them is buried headforemost; and the neat epigram in which Pope Nicholas describes his plight—