"But I there Still lingered to behold the troop, and saw Thing, such as I may fear without more proof To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, The boon companion, who her strong breastplate Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within, And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, A headless trunk, that even as the rest Of the sad flock paced onward. By the hair It bore the severed member, lantern-wise Pendent in hand, which look'd at us and said, 'Woe's me!' The spirit lighted thus himself; And two there were in one, and one in two. How that may be, he knows who ordereth so. "When at the bridge's foot direct he stood, His arm aloft he reared, thrusting the head Full in our view, that nearer we might hear The words, which thus it utter'd: 'Now behold This grievous torment, thou, who breathing go'st To spy the dead: behold, if any else Be terrible as this. And, that on earth Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John The counsel mischievous. Father and son I set at mutual war. For Absalom And David more did not Ahitophel, Spurring them on maliciously to strife. For parting those so closely knit, my brain Parted, alas! I carry from its source, That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law Of retribution fiercely works in me.'" In the eighth pit are the souls of evil counselors, so completely swathed in flames that their forms cannot be seen. Dante's attention is especially attracted to one of these moving flames, with a double-tipped point, which proves to contain the souls of Diomede and Ulysses, who, as they were together in fraud, are now inseparable in punishment. The story of his last voyage and final shipwreck, told by Ulysses, how in his old age, weary of the monotony of home life and longing to know the secret of the great Western ocean, he set sail with his old companions, is full of imaginative grandeur: