‘I saw indeed a lady most fair. In a pleasant grove lay the form of a man who had but then parted from earth. When he had awakened, he walked through the grove and there met him this most beautiful maiden. To her he said, ‘Who art thou, so fair beyond all whom I have seen in the land of the living?’ To him she replied, ‘O youth, I am thy actions.’ Can this be thy lady Beatrice?
‘But sawest thou no hell? no dire punishments?
‘Alas! sad scenes I witnessed, sufferers whose hell was that their darkness was amid the abodes of splendour. Amid all that glow one newly risen from earth walked shivering with cold, and there walked ever by his side a hideous hag. On her he turned and said, ‘Who art thou, that ever movest beside me, thou that art monstrous beyond all that I have seen on earth?’ To him she replied, ‘Man, I am thy actions.’
‘But who were those glorious ones thou sawest in Paradise?
‘Some of their names I did indeed learn—Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Confucius, Christ.
‘What do I hear! knowest thou that none of these save that last holy one—whom methinks thou namest too lightly among men—were baptized? Those have these eyes sorrowfully beheld in pain through the mysterious justice of God.
‘Thinkest thou, then, thy own compassion deeper than the mercy of Ormuzd? But, ah! now indeed I do remember. As I conversed with the sages I had named, they related to me this strange event. By guidance of one of their number, Virgil by name, there had come among them from the earth a most powerful magician. He bore the name of Dante. By mighty spells this being had cast them all into a sad circle which he called Limbo, over whose gate he wrote, though with eyes full of tears, ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here!’ Thus were they in great sorrow and dismay. But, presently, as this strange Dante was about to pass on, so they related, he looked upon the face of one among them so pure and noble that though he had styled him ‘pagan,’ he could not bear to abandon him there. This was Cato of Utica. Him this Dante led to the door, and gave him liberty on condition that he would be warder of his unbaptized brethren, and by no means let any of them escape. No sooner, however, was this done than this magician beheld others who moved his reverence,—among them Trajan and Ripheus,—and overcome by an impulse of love, he opened a window in the side of Limbo, bidding them emerge into light. He then waved his christian wand to close up this aperture, and passed away, supposing that he had done so; but the limit of that magician’s power had been reached, the window was but veiled, and after he had gone all these unbaptized ones passed out by that way, and reascended to the glory they had enjoyed before this Dante had brought his alien sorceries to bear upon them for a brief space.
‘Can this be true? Is it indeed so that all the sages and poets of the world are now in equal rank whether or not they have been sealed as members of Christ?
‘Brother, thy brow is overcast. What! can one so pure and high of nature as thou desire that the gentle Christ, whom I saw embracing the sages and prophets of other ages, should turn upon them with hatred and bind them in gloom and pain like this Dante?’
Thereupon, with a flood of tears, Dante fell at the feet of Arda Viráf, and kissed the hem of his skirt. ‘Purer is thy vision, O pilgrim, than mine,’ he said. ‘I fear that I have but borne with me to the invisible world the small prejudices of my little Church, which hath taught me to limit the Love which I now see to be boundless. Thou who hast learned from thy Zoroaster that the meaning of God is the end of all evil, a universe climbing to its flower in joy, deign to take the hand of thy servant and make him worthy to be thy friend,—with thee henceforth to abandon the poor formulas which ignorance substitutes for virtue, and ascend to the beautiful summits thou has visited by the stairway of good thoughts, good words, good deeds.’