At last Beatrice commanded him to look up. The wind uproots the oak tree with less resistance than Dante felt ere he could turn his downcast face to hers; but when he saw her, transcending her former self more than her former self transcended others, his agony of self-reproach and penitence was more than he could bear, and he fell senseless to the ground.[76]
When he awoke he was already plunged in the waters of Lethe, which with the companion stream of Eunoë would wash from his memory the shame and misery of past unfaithfulness, would enable him, no longer crushed by self-reproach, to ascend with the divine wisdom and purity of his own ideal into the higher realms.
And here the Purgatory ends, the Paradise begins.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] Purgatorio, i. 1-6.
[55] Purgatorio, xix. 76, 77.
[56] Ibid. v. 55-57.
[57] Purgatorio, xxvi. 13-15, 81; xxvii. 49-51.
[58] Purgatorio, xii. 112, 113.
[59] Canzone xv. 'Amor, che nella mente.' See also Convito, trat. iii.