Most touching too are the entreaties of the souls in Purgatory for the prayers of those on earth, or their confession that they have already been lifted up by them. 'Tell my Giovanna to cry for me where the innocent are heard,' says Nino to Dante;[72] and when the poet meets his friend Forese, who had been dead but five years, in the highest circle but one of Purgatory, whereas he would have expected him still to be in exile at the mountain's base, he asks him to explain the reason why he is there, and Forese answers, 'It is my Nella's broken sobs that have brought me so soon to drink the sweet wormwood of torment. Her devout prayers and sighs have drawn me from the place of lingering, and freed me from the lower circles. My little widow, whom I greatly loved, is all the dearer and more pleasing to God because her goodness stands alone amid surrounding vice.'[73] Surely it is a deep and holy truth, under whatever varying forms succeeding ages may embody it, that the faithful love of a pure soul does more than any other earthly power to hasten the passage of the penitent through Purgatory. When under the load of self-reproach and shame that weighs down our souls, we dare not look up to Heaven, dare not look into our own hearts, dare not meet God, then the faithful love of a pure soul can raise us up and teach us not to despair of ourselves, can lift us on the wings of its prayer, can waft us on the breath of its sobs, swiftly through the purifying anguish into the blissful presence of God. * * * * * A feature of special beauty in the Purgatory is formed by the allegorical or typical sculptures on the wall and floor of some of the terraces, by the voices of warning or encouragement that sweep round the mountain, and by the visions that from time to time visit the poet himself. Let one of these visions suffice. Dante is about to enter the circles in which the inordinate love of earthly things, with all vain and vicious indulgence, is punished. 'In dream there came to me,' he says, 'a woman with a stuttering tongue, and with distorted eyes, all twisted on her feet, maimed in her hands, and sallow in her hue. I gazed at her, and as the sun comforts the chilled limbs by the night oppressed, so did my look give ease unto her speech, and straightway righted her in every limb, and with love's colours touched her haggard face. And when her speech was liberated thus, she sang so sweetly it were dire pain to wrest attention from her. "I," she sang, "am that sweet siren who lead astray the sailors in mid sea, so full am I of sweetness to the ear. 'Twas I that drew Ulysses from his way with longing for my song; and he on whom the custom of my voice has grown, full rarely leaves me, so do I content him."' In the end this false siren is exposed in all her foulness, and Dante turns from her in loathing.[74]