to comfort them, offers to
bear back to earth any message they wish to send. It is then that one
of these spirits informs Dante that on earth she was Sapia, a learned
Siennese, who, having rejoiced when her country was defeated, is
obliged to do penance for heartlessness. Marvelling that any one
should wander among them with eyes unclosed, she inquires by what
means Dante has come here, bespeaks his prayers, and implores him to
warn her countrymen not to cherish vain hopes of greatness or to sin
through envy.

_Canto XIV._ The two spirits leaning close together, in their turn
question who Virgil and Dante may be? When they hear mention of Rome
and Florence, they hotly inveigh against the degeneracy of dwellers on
the banks of the Tiber and Arno.

Shortly after leaving this place with his guide, Dante hears the wail:
"Whosoever finds will slay me," a cry followed by a deafening crash.

_Canto XV._ Circling round the mountain, always in the same direction,
Dante notes the sun is about to set, when another dazzling angel
invites them up to the next level,--where anger is punished,--by means
of a stairway less steep than any of the preceding. As they climb, the
angel softly chants "Blessed the merciful" and "Happy thou that
conquer'st," while he brushes aside the second _P ._, and thus
cleanses Dante from envy. But, when Dante craves an explanation of
what he has heard and seen, Virgil assures him that only when the five
remaining "scars" have vanished from his brow, Beatrice herself can
satisfy his curiosity.

On reaching the third level, they find themselves enveloped in a dense
fog, through which Dante dimly beholds the twelve-year-old Christ in
the Temple and overhears his mother chiding him. Next he sees a woman
weeping, and lastly Stephen stoned to death.

_Canto XVI._ Urged by his guide to hasten through this bitter blinding
fog--a symbol of anger which is punished here--Dante stumbles along,
mindful of Virgil's caution, "Look that from me thou part not."
Meanwhile voices on all sides invoke "the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sins of the world." Then, all at once, a voice addresses Dante,
who, prompted by Virgil, inquires where the next stairway may be? His
interlocutor, after bespeaking Dante's prayers, holds forth against
Rome, which, boasting of two suns,--the pope and the emperor,--has
seen the one quench the other. But the arrival of an angel, sent to
guide our travellers to the next level, soon ends th