Having thus spoken, old Hilary wished me the peace of a holy night and went away with Brother Jacinth. I resumed the delightful study of my poet. Book in hand, I meditated upon the way in which those whom Love destroys with its cruel malady wander through the secret paths in the depth of the myrtle forest, and, as I meditated, the quivering reflections of the stars came and mingled with those of the leafless eglantines in the waters of the cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found myself far from my native land at the bottom of a valley bordered by cypress trees. Then a woman of wild beauty, trailing long garments behind her, approached me. She placed her left hand on my shoulder, and, pointing her right arm to an oak with thick foliage: “Look!” said she to me. Immediately I recognised the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of Avernus, and I discerned the fair Proserpine’s beautiful golden twig amongst the tufted boughs of the tree to which her finger pointed. “O prophetic Virgin,” I exclaimed, “thou hast comprehended my desire and thou hast satisfied it in this way. Thou hast revealed to me the tree that bears the shining twig without which none can enter alive into the dwelling-place of the dead. And in truth, eagerly did I long to converse with the shade of Virgil.”