r vows
Have been neglected and in some part void.'
Whence I to her: 'In your miraculous aspects
There shines I know not what of the divine,
Which doth transform you from our first conceptions.
Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance;
But what thou tellest me now aids me so,
That the refiguring is easier to me.'"
(III, 37.)

Dante, you recall, had found the souls in Purgatory contented with their
lot, though they were enduring great suffering; in Heaven he is eager to
learn in the very beginning whether the Elect are satisfied with the
decree which awards to them happiness in unequal measure. So he asks
Piccarda whether she and the other spirits in this lowest sphere are not
eager for a higher place. The answer is one of the most touching and
beautiful passages in the poem, summing up in language of radiant
gladness the law of Heaven that in "God's will is our peace," words
which Gladstone says "appear to have an unexpressible majesty of truth
about them, to be almost as if they were spoken from the very mouth of
God."

"'But tell me, ye who in this place are happy,
Are you desirous of a higher place,
To see more or to make yourselves more friends?'
First, with those other shades, she smiled a little;
Thereafter answered me so full of gladness,
She seemed to burn in the first fire of love:
'Brother, our will is quieted by virtue
Of charity, that makes us wish alone
For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more.
If to be more exalted we aspired,
Discordant would our aspirations be
Unto the will of Him who here secludes us;
Which thou-shalt see finds no place in these circles,
If being in charity is needful here,
And if thou lookest well into its nature;
Nay 'tis essential to this blest existence
To keep itself within the will divine,
Whereby our very wishes are made one;
So that, as we are station above station
Throughout this realm, to all the realm 'tis pleasing,
As to the King, who makes His will our will.
And His will is our peace; this is the sea
To which is moving onward whatsoever
It doth create, and all that nature makes.'
Then it was clear to me how everywhere
In Heaven is Paradise, although the grace
Of good supreme there rain not in one measure."
(III, 64.)

Piccarda then tells the moving story of her life, how as a girl she
entered the order of St. Clare, only to be torn from the nunnery and
given into