Through a narrow gap they begin the ascent, which is so hard at the outset, but grows ever lighter as man ascends. Among the negligent through indolence, Belacqua seems as lazy as upon earth (_Purg._ iv.); but his laziness is now its own punishment. At midday Virgil’s swift rebuke (_Purg._ v. 10-15) cures his pupil of one fatal obstacle to following philosophy in the search of moral and intellectual liberty--human respect. Among those cut off by violent deaths is Buonconte da Montefeltro, the story of whose fate, Canto v., is in designed contrast with the soul’s tragedy that came from his father’s lips out of the torturing flames of Malebolge (_Inf._ xxvii.). The _lacrimetta_ of the dying knight--the “little tear” that saved his eternal part from the fiend (_Purg._ v. 107)--has become one of the priceless pearls in the treasury of the world’s poetry. All these souls ask for remembrance in prayer, that their delay may be shortened, and Virgil’s explanation centers upon the power of love to reach for expiation from beyond the grave (vi. 37-39). In these earlier cantos of the _Purgatorio_, there are constant traces of the deep impression made upon Dante by the story of Palinurus, the pilot of Aeneas, in Books v. and vi. of the _Aeneid_. THE VALLEY OF THE PRINCES.--They come to the solitary and lion-like soul of Sordello, whose loving greeting to his Mantuan countryman gives occasion to Dante’s superb and famous outburst of Italian patriotism: _Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello_ (_Purg._ vi. 76 _et seq._); which shows a striking correspondence with the great passage where Lucan laments the overthrow of Roman liberty at Pharsalia (_Phars._ vii. 440 _et seq._). The part of Sordello is very similar to that of Musaeus in the _Aeneid_, Book vi.; he leads Virgil and Dante to the Valley of the Princes, which corresponds to Elysium, the verdant vale where Aeneas met Anchises. Dante probably reconstructed the troubadour’s personality from his own famous poem on the death of Blacatz, a Provençal hero of the thirteenth century, in which he upbraids and derides the kings and princes of Christendom, beginning with Frederick II., and ends with a proud assertion that he will speak the whole truth in spite of the powerful barons whom he may offend. So here, in the Valley of the Princes, where those are detained who neglected some peculiarly lofty mission, or postponed their spiritual welfare to worldly and political care, Sordello, beginning with the Emperor-elect, Rudolph of Hapsburg (_Purg._ vii. 94), points out the descendants or successors of those whom he had rebuked in the other life. Here, singing together to the Queen of Mercy, the deadliest foes sit side by side, consoling each other; Rudolph of Hapsburg with Ottocar of Bohemia, Charles of Anjou with Peter of Aragon; a motive found previously in the vision of Tundal, where, however, the kings are naturally Irish. On Henry of England Sordello had been more severe when he lived. After sunset, in