"Then turning, I to them my speech addressed, 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. That kens Thy learn'd instructor 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 Launcelot, How him love thralled. Alone we were, and no Suspicion near us. Oft times by that reading Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue Fled from our altered cheek. But at one point Alone we fell. When of that smile we read, The wished for smile so rapturously kissed By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er From me shall separate, at once my lips All trembling kissed. 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 wailed so sorely, that heart-struck I, through compassion fainting, seemed not far From death, and like a corse fell to the ground." Passing rapidly over circle three, in which the gluttons lie in mire under a pelting storm of hail, snow, and rain, torn to pieces by the three-throated Cerberus; and circle four, where misers and spendthrifts roll great weights against each other and upbraid each the other with his besetting sin; we come to circle five, where in the dark and dismal waters of the Styx the wrathful and the melancholy are plunged. It is singular that Dante makes low spirits or mental depression as much a sin as violence and lack of self-control: "The good instructor spake: 'Now seest thou, son! The souls of those, whom anger overcame. This, too, for certain know, that underneath The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs Into these bubbles make the surface heave,-- As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn. Fixed in the slime, they say: "Sad once were we, In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, Carrying a foul and lazy mist within: Now in these murky settlings are we sad." Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats, But word distinct can utter none.'" As they stand at the foot of a dark tower, a light flashes from its top and another light, far off above the waters, sends back an answer through the murky air. Dante, full of curiosity, turns to Vergil for explanation: