A DELIVERER ANNOUNCED.--But to the mournful psalm that the maidens around her raise, _Deus venerunt gentes_, Beatrice answers in words of hope; “a little while,” and the spiritual guide shall rise again from the black tomb of Avignon. And, as they move on, she utters to Dante a further prophecy (_Purg._ xxxiii.). “The vessel that the serpent broke was and is not,” so completely has corruption and simony degraded the chariot of the Bride of Christ. But vengeance shall fall upon the guilty parties, and the eagle shall not for ever be without an heir; for already a favourable disposition of the stars is at hand, under which a messenger of God shall come, who shall slay the harlot and the giant. It is probably the same event as the coming of the _Veltro_. Dante is to repeat her words “to those that live the life which is a running to death,” and not to conceal what he has seen of the tree. Apparently (_Purg._ xxxiii. 58-72) he is to make manifest that the Empire is of divine origin, and to recognise that the precept given by God to our first parents corresponds now with the duty and obedience man owes to the Empire. The law under which Adam lived was the prohibition to eat of the tree; the law under which his descendants, the commonwealth of the human race, live is the Empire. As Parodi puts it, it is not a new sense superimposed upon the first; “it is simply the same single meaning, the historical circumstances alone appearing changed.” The sin of Adam is repeated when the Empire is usurped of its rights or its authority attacked, for God created it holy for the purpose of leading man to temporal felicity--the goal, here and now, of the human race.[36] LETHE AND EUNOË.--At noon they come to where the rivers of Lethe and Eunoë issue from one mystical fountain, the fountain of the grace of God. Here Beatrice refers Dante to Matelda, who leads him and Statius to drink of Eunoë, which quickens dead virtue and restores memory of every good deed in those who have first been bathed in Lethe, which takes away the memory of sin. According to St. Thomas Aquinas (_Summa_, iii. 89, 5), works done in charity, although in a sense dead through sin, are brought to life through penance. Through repentance they regain their efficacy of leading him who did them into eternal life. Therefore Dante writes: “I returned from the most holy stream, remade even as young trees renewed with new foliage, pure and disposed to ascend to the stars.” 4. _The “Paradiso”_