"Then answered he: 'That now I wander reaping The bitter sweat of all this punishment My Nella gained for me, her vigil keeping In prayer devout and infinite lament. Thus, here, beyond that shore of waiting sent, I landed, from the lower circles freed. And that more dear to God omnipotent Lives on my little widow, is the meed Of the lone life she spends in many a saintly deed.'" (XXXIII, 85.) Before ascending to the seventh and last terrace Dante describes how the angel of abstinence removed the sixth P. "And as the harbinger of early dawn, The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers, So did I feel a breeze strike in the midst My front, and felt the moving of the plumes That breathed around an odor of ambrosia; And heard it said; Blessed are they whom grace So much illumines that the love of taste Excites not in their breasts too great desire, Hungering at all times so far as is just." (XXIV, 145.) And now our penitent as he reaches the seventh terrace, where sins against the virtue of purity are expiated, enters upon the last stage of his purification. Here the spirits pass and repass through the midst of intensely hot flames, proclaiming examples of chastity. It is worthy of note that this terrace is the only place in Dante's Purgatory where fire is the punitive agent--a conception of our poet all the more remarkable because it runs counter to the view commonly held by the churchmen in the West, including St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, who teach that fire is the cleansing element of all Purgatory. That indeed is only a theological opinion. The Church itself, as the Greeks were assured at the Council of Florence, has never put forth any dogmatic decree on the subject. Bidden by the angel to enter the fire, Dante draws back paralysed with fear. Scenes of burning at the stake come with horror to his mind. He probably recalls also that Florence had condemned him to be burned alive. So, for the first time in Purgatory he recoils at the penance he must perform. Impassionately Virgil exhorts him. The stubborn pupil yields only at the utterance of Beatrice's name. For love of her he will endure the flame.