nearer, Dante, who saw it was a messenger from heaven, looked anxiously
at Virgil. Virgil motioned him to be silent and bow down.

The angel, with a face full of scorn, as soon as he arrived at the gate,
touched it with a wand that he had in his hand, and it flew open.

"Outcasts of heaven," said he; "despicable race! whence this fantastical
arrogance? Do ye forget that your torments are laid oil thicker every
time ye kick against the Fates? Do ye forget how your Cerberus was bound
and chained till he lost the hair off his neck like a common dog?"

So saying he turned swiftly and departed the way he came, not addressing
a word to the travellers. His countenance had suddenly a look of some
other business, totally different from the one he had terminated.

The companions passed in, and beheld a place full of tombs red-hot. It
was the region of Arch heretics and their followers. Dante and his guide
passed round betwixt the walls and the sepulchres as in a churchyard,
and came to the quarter which held Epicurus and his sect, who denied the
existence of spirit apart from matter. The lids of the tombs remaining
unclosed till the day of judgment, the soul of a noble Florentine,
Farinata degli Uberti, hearing Dante speak, addressed him as a
countryman, asking him to stop.[20] Dante, alarmed, beheld him rise half
out of his sepulchre, looking as lofty as if he scorned hell itself.
Finding who Dante was, he boasted of having three times expelled the
Guelphs. "Perhaps so," said the poet; "but they came back again each
time; an art which their enemies have not yet acquired."

A visage then appeared from out another tomb, looking eagerly, as if it
expected to see some one else. Being disappointed, the tears came into
its eyes, and the sufferer said, "If it is thy genius that conducts thee
hither, where is my son, and why is he not with thee?"

"It is not my genius that conducts me," said Dante, "but that of one,
whom perhaps thy son held in contempt."

"How sayest thou?" cried the shade;--"_held_ in contempt? He is dead
then? He beholds no longer the sweet light?" And with these words
he dropped into his tomb, and was seen no more. It was Cavalcante
Cavalcanti, the father of the poet's friend, Guido.[21]

The shade of Farinata, who had meantime been looking on, now replied to
the taunt of Dante, prophesying that he should soon have good reason to
know that the art he spoke of _had_ been acquired; upon which Dante,
speaking