led by desire, with wings open and steady, fly through the
air to their sweet nest, borne by their will, these issued from the
troop where Dido is, coming to us through the malign air, so strong was
the compassionate cry:--

"O living creature, gracious and benign, that goest through the lurid
air visiting us who stained the world blood-red,--if the King of the
universe were a friend we would pray him for thy peace, since thou hast
pity on our perverse ill. Of what it pleases thee to hear, and what to
speak, we will hear and we will speak to you, while the wind, as now, is
hushed for us. The city where I was born sits upon the sea-shore, where
the Po, with his followers, descends to have peace. Love, that on
gentle heart quickly lays hold, seized him for the fair person that was
taken from me, and the mode still hurts me. Love, which absolves no
loved one from loving, seized me for the pleasing of him so strongly
that, as thou seest, it does not even now abandon me. Love brought us to
one death. Caina waits him who quenched our life." These words were
borne to us from them.

Soon as I had heard those injured souls I bowed my face, and held it
down, until the Poet said to me, "What art thou thinking?" When I
replied, I began:--"Alas! how many sweet thoughts, how great desire, led
these unto the woful pass." Then I turned me again to them, and I spoke,
and began, "Francesca, thy torments make me sad and piteous to weeping.
But tell me, at the time of the sweet sighs by what and how did love
concede to you to know the dubious desires?" And she to me, "There is no
greater woe than in misery to remember the happy time, and that thy
Teacher knows. But if to know the first root of our love thou hast so
great a longing, I will do like one who weeps and tells.

"We were reading one day, for delight, of Lancelot, how love constrained
him. We were alone and without any suspicion. Many times that reading
made us lift our eyes, and took the color from our faces, but only one
point was that which overcame us. When we read of the longed-for smile
being kissed by such a lover, this one, who never from me shall be
divided, kissed my mouth all trembling. Galahaut[15] was the book, and
he who wrote it. That day we read in it no farther."

While one spirit said this, the other was weeping so that through pity I
swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead body falls.

PURGATORY

CANTO XXVII

THE FINAL PURGATION