nt,
having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.[29]

But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans
in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.
It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of
justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same
reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption;
and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of
Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to
the divine will. The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird
mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they
quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced
by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.[30]

Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice,
and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer
there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at
every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been
able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the
planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy
Contemplation.

In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned
over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue
of which was like gold when the sun glisters it, and the height so great
that its top was out of sight; and down the steps of this ladder he saw
coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the
lights of heaven must have been there poured forth; but not a sound was
in the whole splendour. It was spared to the poet for the same reason
that he missed the smile of Beatrice. When they came to a certain step
in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other
careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning
to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without
returning, others returning to the point they left, and others
contenting themselves with flying round about it. One of them came so
near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet
saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit
to tell them who it was.

"Between the two coasts of Italy," said the spirit, "and not far from
thine own country, the stony