Canto XXIX. Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. Griffolino d' Arezzo and Capocchino.

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      The many people and the divers wounds

       These eyes of mine had so inebriated,

       That they were wishful to stand still and weep;

      But said Virgilius: "What dost thou still gaze at?

       Why is thy sight still riveted down there

       Among the mournful, mutilated shades?

      Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge;

       Consider, if to count them thou believest,

       That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds,

      And now the moon is underneath our feet;

       Henceforth the time allotted us is brief,

       And more is to be seen than what thou seest."

      "If thou hadst," I made answer thereupon,

       "Attended to the cause for which I looked,

       Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned."

      Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him

       I went, already making my reply,

       And superadding: "In that cavern where

      I held mine eyes with such attention fixed,

       I think a spirit of my blood laments

       The sin which down below there costs so much."

      Then said the Master: "Be no longer broken

       Thy thought from this time forward upon him;

       Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain;

      For him I saw below the little bridge,

       Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger

       Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.

      So wholly at that time wast thou impeded

       By him who formerly held Altaforte,

       Thou didst not look that way; so he departed."

      "O my Conductor, his own violent death,

       Which is not yet avenged for him," I said,

       "By any who is sharer in the shame,

      Made him disdainful; whence he went away,

       As I imagine, without speaking to me,

       And thereby made me pity him the more."

      Thus did we speak as far as the first place

       Upon the crag, which the next valley shows

       Down to the bottom, if there were more light.

      When we were now right over the last cloister

       Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers

       Could manifest themselves unto our sight,

      Divers lamentings pierced me through and through,

       Which with compassion had their arrows barbed,

       Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands.

      What pain would be, if from the hospitals

       Of Valdichiana, 'twixt July and September,

       And of Maremma and Sardinia

      All the diseases in one moat were gathered,

       Such was it here, and such a stench came from it

       As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.

      We had descended on the furthest bank

       From the long crag, upon the left hand still,

       And then more vivid was my power of sight

      Down tow'rds the bottom, where the ministress

       Of the high Lord, Justice infallible,

       Punishes forgers, which she here records.

      I do not think a sadder sight to see

       Was in Aegina the whole people sick,

       (When was the air so full of pestilence,

      The animals, down to the little worm,

       All fell, and afterwards the ancient people,

       According as the poets have affirmed,

      Were from the seed of ants restored again,)

       Than was it to behold through that dark valley

       The spirits languishing in divers heaps.

      This on the belly, that upon the back

       One of the other lay, and others crawling

       Shifted themselves along the dismal road.

      We