[739] _Geri del Bello_: One of the Alighieri, a full cousin of Dante's father. He was guilty of encouraging dissension, say the commentators; which is to be clearly inferred from the place assigned him in Inferno: but they do not agree as to how he met his death, nor do they mention the date of it. 'Not avenged till thirty years after,' says Landino; but does not say if this was after his death or the time at which Dante writes. [740] _Hautefort_: Bertrand de Born's castle in Gascony. [741] _My ruth_: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns the _vendetta_ by the words put into Virgil's mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry. [742] _With but clearer light_: They have crossed the rampart dividing the Ninth Bolgia from the Tenth, of which they would now command a view, were it not so dark. [743] _The Brotherhood_: The word used properly describes the Lay Brothers of a monastery. Philalethes suggests that Dante may regard the devils as the true monks of the monastery of Malebolge. The simile involves no contempt for the monastic life, but is naturally used with reference to those who live secluded and under a fixed rule. He elsewhere speaks of the College of the Hypocrites (_Inf._ xxiii. 91) and of Paradise as the Cloister where Christ is Abbot (_Purg._ xxvi.129). [744] _Valdichiana_: The district lying between Arezzo and Chiusi; in Dante's time a hotbed of malaria, but now, owing to drainage works promoted by the enlightened Tuscan minister Fossombroni (1823), one of the most fertile and healthy regions of Italy. [745] _Sardinia_: Had in the middle ages an evil reputation for its fever-stricken air. The Maremma has been already mentioned (_Inf._ xxv.19). In Dante's time it was almost unpeopled. [746] _The long ridge_: One of the ribs of rock which, like the spokes of a wheel, ran from the periphery to the centre of Malebolge, rising into arches as they crossed each successive Bolgia. The utmost brink is the inner bank of the Tenth and last Bolgia. To the edge of this moat they descend, bearing as usual to the left hand. [747] _Doomed on earth, etc._: 'Whom she here registers.' While they are still on earth their doom is fixed by Divine justice. [748] _Ægina_: The description is taken from Ovid (_Metam._ vii.).