thee, Florence!" cried the poet; "not content with having thy name
bruited over land and sea, it flourishes throughout hell."

The pilgrims now quitted the seventh, and looked down from its barrier
into the eighth gulf, where they saw innumerable flames, distinct from
one another, flickering all over the place like fire-flies.

"In those flames," said Virgil, "are souls, each tormented with the fire
that swathes it."

"I observe one," said Dante, "divided at the summit. Are the Theban
brothers in it?"

"No," replied Virgil; "in that flame are Diomed and Ulysses." The
sinners punished in this gulf were Evil Counsellors; and those two were
the advisers of the stratagem of the Trojan horse.

Virgil addressed Ulysses, who told him the conclusion of his adventures,
not to be found in books: how he tired of an idle life, and sailed forth
again into the wide ocean; and how he sailed so far that he came into a
region of new stars, and in sight of a mountain, the loftiest he ever
saw; when, unfortunately, a hurricane fell upon them from the shore,
thrice whirled their vessel round, then dashed the stern up in air and
the prow under water, and sent the billows over their heads.

"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di
Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect,
asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how
he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at
once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes.[34] He
was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St. Francis, who came on
purpose to fetch him, when a black angel met them, and demanded his
absolved, indeed, but unrepented victim. "To repent evil, and to will
to do it, at one and the same time, are," said the dreadful angel,
"impossible: therefore wrong me not."

"Oh, how I shook," said the unhappy Guido, "when he laid his hands upon
me!" And with these words the flame writhed and beat itself about for
agony, and so took its way.

The pilgrims crossed over to the banks of the ninth gulf, where the
Sowers of Scandal, the Schismatics, Heretics, and Founders of False
Religions, underwent the penalties of such as load themselves with the
sins of those whom they seduce.

The first sight they beheld was Mahomet, tearing open his own bowels,
and calling out to them to mark him. Before him walked his son-in-law,
Ali, weeping, and cloven to the chin; and the