In the second circle, where carnal sinners are punished, Dante sees, among others, Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris. The poet's attention is suddenly attracted by two spirits, who prove to be Francesca da Rimini and her lover, Paolo, murdered by her husband when Dante was twenty-four years old. The scandal of their illicit love and the penalty they paid by their lives must have been so generally known that Dante, though attached to her family by the memory of hospitality received from her nephew, Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of Ravenna, is dominated by the necessity of declaring in Francesca and Paolo the operation of the unalterable law which rules the terrible consequences of crime unforgiven by Heaven. Was it gratitude for kindness extended to him, an exile, by the Lord of Ravenna, or was it the memory of association with the brother of Francesca, at the battle of Campaldino, that led our poet to treat the whole episode of the fatal liaison with such tender sympathy for the unfortunate lady that he hoped to rehabilitate her memory? In any event, the poet represents himself as gracious and benign when addressing Francesca, and she, moved by his friendly attitude, tells the story of her intrigue, in lines justly regarded as the most beautiful ever written in verse. The reader will not fail to observe that the fatal denouement is only hinted, not told--the line, "that day we read no more," making what is admitted to be the finest ellipsis in all the literature of the world. "Then turning, I to them, my speech address'd And thus began: 'Francesca! Your sad fate Even to tears my grief and pity moves. But tell me, in the time of your sweet sighs, By what and how Love granted that ye knew Your yet uncertain wishes.' She replied: 'No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when misery is at hand. Yet so eagerly If thou art bent to know the primal root From whence our love gat being, I will do As one who weeps and tells his tale. One day For our delight, we read of Lancelot, How him love thrall'd. Alone we were, and no Suspicion near us. Oft times by that reading Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue Fled from our alter'd cheek. But at one point Alone we fell. When of that smile, we read, The wish'd smile so rapturously kiss'd By one so deep in love, then he who ne'er From me shall separate, at once my lips All trembling kiss'd. The book and writer both Were love's purveyors. In its leaves that day We read no more.' While thus one spirit spake, The other wail'd so sorely, that heart-struck I through compassion fainting, seem'd not far From death, and like a corse fell to the ground." In the next circle where, with faces to the ground, the gluttons suffer in a ceaseles storm, the shade of Ciacco, the Florentine, sits up as he recognizes a fellow-citizen: