The sea rippled against the mountain, and reeds, the emblems of humility, ever yielding to the wave that swept them, clustered round the shore. Dante and Virgil went down to the margin, and there the living poet bathed away the stains and tears of Hell.
Ere long the waves were skimmed by a light bark, a radiant angel standing in the prow, bearing the souls of the redeemed, who must yet be purified, singing the psalm, 'When Israel came out of Egypt.' Amongst the shades thus borne to the mount of purification was Dante's friend Casella, the singer and musician. How often had his voice lulled all Dante's cares to sleep, and 'quieted all his desires,' and now it seemed as though he were come to bring his troubled heart to peace, to rest him in his utter weariness of body and of soul.
So, at his entreaty, Casella raised his voice, and all the shades gathered entranced around him as he sang a noble canzone composed by Dante himself in years gone by.[59] The sweet sound never ceased to echo in the poet's memory—not even the ineffable harmonies of Paradise drowned those first strains of peace that soothed him after his awful toil.
But Purgatory is no place of rest, and Casella's song was rudely interrupted by the guardian of the place, who cried aloud, 'How now, ye sluggard souls! What negligence and what delay is here? Speed to the mountain! Rid you of the crust that lets not God be manifest to you!' To purge away our sins is not to rest; and no longing for repose must tempt us to delay even for a moment.[60]
Dante draws no flattering picture of the ease of self-purification; Hell itself hardly gives us such a sense of utter weariness as the first ascent of the mount of Purgatory. Virgil is on in front, and Dante cries out, altogether spent, 'Oh, my sweet father, turn thou and behold how I am left alone unless thou stay;' but Virgil still urges him on, and after a time comforts him with the assurance that though the mountain is so hard to scale at first, yet the higher a man climbs the easier the ascent becomes, till at last it is so sweet and easy to him that he rises without effort as a boat drops down the stream: then he may know that the end of his long journey has come, that the weight of sin is cast off, that his soul obeys its own pure nature, and rises unencumbered to its God.[61]
The lower portion of the mountain forms a kind of ante-Purgatory, where the souls in weary exile wait for admission to the purifying pain for which they long. Here those who have delayed their penitence till the end of life atone for their wilful alienation by an equal term of forced delay ere they may enter the blessed suffering of Purgatory. Here those who have lived in contumacy against the Church expiate their offences by a thirty-fold exile in the ante-Purgatory; but as we saw in Hell that Papal absolution will not shield the sinful soul, so we find in Purgatory that the Papal malediction, the thunders of excommunication itself, cannot permanently part the repentant soul from the forgiving God.[62]
When this first exile is at an end, and the lower mountain scaled, the gate of the true Purgatory is reached. Three steps lead up to it, 'the first of marble white, so polished and so smooth that in it man beholds him as he is.' This represents that transparent simplicity and sincerity of purpose that, throwing off all self-delusion, sees itself as it is, and is the first step towards true penitence. 'The second step, darker than purpled black, of rough and calcined stone, all rent through length and breadth,' represents the contrite heart of true affliction for past sin. 'The third and crowning mass methought was porphyry, and flamed like the red blood fresh spouting from the vein.' This is the glowing love which crowns the work of penitence, and gives the earnest of a new and purer life. Above these steps an angel stands to whom Peter gave the keys—the silver key of knowledge and the golden key of authority—bidding him open to the penitent, and err rather towards freedom than towards over-sternness.[63]
Within the gate of Purgatory rise the seven terraces where sin is purged. On the three lower ledges man atones for that perverse and ill-directed love which seeks another's ill—for love of some sort is the one sole motive of all action, good or bad.[64] In the lowest circle the pride that rejoices in its own superiority, and therefore in the inferiority of others, is purged and expiated. 'As to support a ceiling or a roof,' says Dante, 'one sees a figure bracket-wise with knees bent up against it bosom, till the imaged strain begets real misery in him who sees, so I beheld these shades when close I scanned them. True it is that less or greater burdens cramped each one or less or more, yet he whose mien had most of patience, wailing seemed to say, "I can no more!"'[65]
In the second circle the blind sin of envy is expiated. Here the eyelids of the envious are ruthlessly pierced and closed by the stitch of an iron wire, and through the horrid suture gush forth tears of penitence that bathe the sinner's cheeks. 'Here shall my eyes be closed,' says Dante, half in shame at seeing those who saw him not, 'here shall my eyes be closed, though open now—but not for long. Far more I dread the pain of those below; for even now methinks I bend beneath the load.'[66]
In the third circle the passionate wend their way through a blinding, stinging smoke, darker than Hell; but all are one in heart, and join in sweet accord of strain and measure singing the 'Agnus Dei.'