Look, again, upon this fearful picture. Dante and Virgil come to a black and muddy lake in which the passionate tear and smite one another in bestial rage; and all over its surface are bubbles rising up. They come from the cries of the morose and sullen ones 'who are fixed in the slime at the bottom of the lake. They cry: "Gloomy we were in the sweet air that the sun gladdens, bearing in our hearts the smoke of sullenness; now we are gloomy here in the black slime"—such is the strain that gurgles in their throats, but cannot find full utterance.'[49] Who that has seen those bubbles rise upon the lake can ever suffer himself again to cherish sullenness within his heart without feeling at the very instant the rebuke of the 'sweet air that the sun gladdens,' and thinking of that gurgling strain of misery?
Another of the lessons taught by the Inferno is, that no plea, however moving, can avail the sinner, or take away the sinfulness of sin, that no position can place him above punishment, that no authority can shield him from it.
The guilty love of Francesca and Paolo, so strong, so deathless in that it was love, has sunk them to Hell instead of raising them to Heaven in that it was guilty. Stronger to make them one than Hell to sever them, it is powerless to redeem the sin to which it has allied itself, and its tenderness has but swelled the eternal anguish of those whom it still joins together, because it has suffered the sanctuary of life, which love is set to guard, to be polluted and betrayed. Sung in those strains of deathless tenderness and pity where 'tears seem to drop from the very words,' the story of this guilty love reveals the fatalest of all mischoice, and tells us that no passion, however wild in its intensity, however innocent in its beginnings, however unpremeditated in its lawless outburst, however overmastering in its pleas, however loyal to itself in time and in eternity, may dare to raise itself above the laws of God and man, or claim immunity from its wretched consequences for those who are its slaves. How infinite the pity and the waste, how irreparable the loss, when the love that might have been an ornament to Heaven, adds to the unmeasured guilt and anguish of Hell a wail of more piercing sorrow than rings through all its lower depths!
Nor could any height of place claim exemption from the moral law. Dante was a Catholic, and his reverence for the Papal Chair was deep. But against the faithless Popes he cherished a fiery indignation proportioned to his high estimate of the sacred office they abused. In one of the most fearful passages of the Inferno he describes, in terms that gain a terrible significance from one of the forms of criminal execution practised in his day, how he stood by a round hole in one of the circles of Hell, in which Pope Nicholas III. was thrust head foremost—stood like the confessor hearing the assassin's final words, and heard the guilty story of Pope Nicholas.[50]
It is characteristic of Dante that he tells us here, as if quite incidentally, that these holes were about the size of the baptising stands or fonts in the Church of San Giovanni, 'one of which,' says he, 'I broke not many years ago to save one who was drowning in it. Let this suffice to disabuse all men.' Evidently he had been taxed with sacrilege for saving the life of the drowning child at the expense of the sacred vessel, and it can hardly be an accident that he recalls this circumstance in the Hell of the sacrilegious Popes and Churchmen. These men, who had despised their sacred trust and turned it to basest trafficking, were the representatives of that hard system of soulless officialism that would pollute the holiest functions of the Church, while reverencing with superstitious scruple their outward symbols and instruments.
And if the Papal office could not rescue the sinner that held it, neither could the Papal authority shield the sins of others. It is said that Catholics have not the keeping of their own consciences. Dante at least thought they had. In the Hell of fraudulent counsellors, wrapped in a sheet of eternal flame one comes to him and cries, 'Grudge not to stay and speak with me a while. Behold, I grudge it not, although I burn.' It is Guido da Montefeltro, whose fame in council and in war had gone forth to the ends of the earth. All wiles and covert ways he knew, and there had ever been more of the fox than of the lion in him. But when he saw himself arriving at that age when every man should lower sails and gather in his ropes, then did he repent of all that once had pleased him, and girding him with the cord of St. Francis he became a monk. Alas! his penitence would have availed him well but for the Prince of the new Pharisees, Pope Boniface VIII., who was waging war with Christians that should have been his friends, hard by the Lateran. 'He demanded counsel of me,' continues Guido, 'but I kept silence, for his words seemed drunken. Then he said to me, "Let not thy heart misdoubt: henceforth do I absolve thee, but do thou teach me so to act that I may cast Prenestina to the ground. Heaven I can shut and open, as thou knowest." ... Then the weighty arguments impelled me to think silence worse than speech; and so I said, "Father, since thou dost cleanse me from that guilt wherein I now must fall, long promise and performance short will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat." Then when I died St. Francis came for me, but one of the black cherubim said to him: "Do me no wrong, nor take thou him away. He must come down amongst my menials, e'en for the fraudulent advice he gave, since when I have kept close upon his hair. He who repents not cannot be absolved, nor can one will the same thing he repents, the contradiction not permitting it." Ah wretched me! how did I shudder then, for he laid hold of me, and with the cry, "Haply thou knew'st not I was a logician?" bore me to judgment.'[51]
Who can fail to recognise the utter truth of Dante's teaching here? What can stand between a man's own conscience and his duty? Though the very symbol and mouthpiece of the collective wisdom and piety of Christendom should hold the shield of authority before the culprit, yet it cannot ward off the judgment for one single deed done in violation of personal moral conviction. When once we have realised the meaning of this awful passage, how can we ever urge again as an excuse for unfaithfulness to our own consciences, that the assurance of those we loved and reverenced overcame our scruples? Here as everywhere Dante strips sin of every specious and distracting circumstance, and shows it to us where it ought to be—in Hell.
Contrast with the scene we have just looked upon the companion picture from the Purgatory; where Buonconte di Montefeltro tells how he fled on foot from the battle-field of Campaldino, his throat pierced with a mortal wound ensanguining the earth. Where Archiano falls into the Arno there darkness came upon him, and he fell crossing his arms upon his breast and calling on the name of Mary with his last breath. 'Then,' he continues, 'God's angel came and took me, and Hell's angel shrieked, "O thou of Heaven, wherefore dost thou rob me? Thou bear'st with thee the eternal part of him, all for one wretched tear which saves it from me. But with the other part of him I'll deal in other fashion."' Upon which the infuriated demon swells the torrent with rain, sweeps the warrior's body from the bank, dashes away the hateful cross into which its arms are folded, and in impotent rage rolls it along the river bed and buries it in slime so that men never see it more; but the soul is meanwhile saved.[52]