He weeping cried, "Why dost thou me unhair?
I shall not answer thee, nor let thee find,
Not if my head a thousand times thou tear."
Already in my hand his hair was twined,

And more than one tuft I had rooted out, He howling with his eyelids low declined. "What ails thee, Bocca?" then I heard one shout; "Hast not enough to clatter with thy jaws, But thou must bark? What devil goes about?" "Foul traitor,” said I, "now there is no cause For thee to speak, for I in thy despite Will bring true tidings where thy torment was." "Go, go," he said, "and what thou wilt, recite ;

Yet do not, if thou issue hence, refuse

To tell whose tongue this moment wagged so light.
He here the silver of the Frenchman rues ;

I saw him of Duera, mayst thou tell,

There where to cool themselves the sinners use.

If thou of others there be asked as well,

Beside thee is the Beccarîa here,

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105

110

115

Upon whose throat the sword of Florence fell. 120

Beyond, I think, is Gian del Soldanier,

And Tribaldel, who, under night's dead shade, Undid Faenza's gate, and Gâno's near."

Already had we him behind us laid,

When I saw two within a delve so froze,

That head of one the other's bonnet made.

And like as bread is chewed from hunger's throes,

The upper on the nether plied his jaw,

Just where the nape upon the brain-pan grows.
As Tydeus did of Menalippus gnaw

The temples in his contumely malign,

So turned he skull and so forth down his maw. "O thou that showest, by such a bestial sign,

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130

Thy hate of whom thou eatest, speak,” said I, "What reason hadst thou? on this bond of mine, 135 That if against him thou shalt justly cry,

I, knowing who you are, and all his crime,

May still repay thee in the life on high,

If what I speak with dry not ere its time."

CANTO XXXIII.

THAT sinner raised his mouth from savage fare,
And wiped it by a lock upon the head

Which he had all behind laid waste and bare.

Then, "Thou wouldst have me to renew," he said,

"Desperate anguish, which my heart doth wring

To think of, ere a word be uttered.

Though, if my speech can be a seed, to bring

Foul fame upon the traitor whom I gnaw,
Then hear my weeping with my answering.
I know not who thou art, nor by what law
Thou camest hither, but a Florentine
Thou seem'st in truth, as from thy speech I draw.
Know then, that I have been Count Ugoline,

And this Archbishop Ruggier; mark now well
The reason for this neighborship of mine.

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10

15

How by his wicked counsels it befell

That I, who trusted him, was apprehended
And done to death, I have no need to tell;

But what thou canst not yet have comprehended,
I mean, how cruel was my dying hour,
Hear this and judge, if I have been offended.
A narrow crevice, that is in the tower

To which I have the name of hunger left,

And which must yet be made another's bower,
Had shown to me already through its cleft

More moons than one, when that ill sleep on me
Came, which the cover of the future reft.

This man a chief and leader seemed to be,

Who wolf and wolverets toward that mountain

chased,

Through which the Pisans cannot Lucca see.

30

With hounds in trim, hot-breathed and haggard-faced,

Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranc,

Abreast together in the van were placed.

Within a little space exhausted sank

The father and the young, and sharp fangs fed, 35

As I beheld, upon each cloven flank.

Now when my rest before the dawn had fled,
I heard my children crying in their sleep,
(They were with me,) and asking after bread.
Cruel thou art, if thou from sorrow keep,

At thinking what my heart foreboded here,
And if thou weep not, when art used to weep?
I wept, and now the hour was drawing near

At which our food was brought us commonly,
And each was by his dream involved in fear.
Whenas I heard the turning of the key

Below the horrid tower, mine eyes I throw
Upon my sons, but never word spoke we.
I wept not, so like stone I 'gan to grow,

But they did weep, and little Anselm said,
'Father, what ails thee, that thou starest so?'
Nath❜less I did not weep, nor answer made

That day, nor all the night after the day, Till on the world another sun was shed. Whenas a gleam of light had made its way

Into the doleful dungeon, and I saw

Four faces that my very face portray;