[749] _The scab, etc._: As if by an infernal alchemy the matter of the shadowy bodies of these sinners is changed into one loathsome form or another. [750] _To all eternity_: This may seem a stroke of sarcasm, but is not. Himself a shade, Virgil cannot, like Dante, promise to refresh the memory of the shades on earth, and can only wish for them some slight alleviation of their suffering. [751] _An Aretine_: Called Griffolino, and burned at Florence or Siena on a charge of heresy. Albert of Siena is said to have been a relative, some say the natural son, of the Bishop of Siena. A man of the name figures as hero in some of Sacchetti's novels, always in a ridiculous light. There seems to be no authentic testimony regarding the incident in the text. [752] _Dædalus_: Who escaped on wings of his invention from the Cretan Labyrinth he had made and lost himself in. [753] _The Sienese_: The comparison of these to the French would have the more cogency as Siena boasted of having been founded by the Gauls. 'That vain people,' says Dante of the Sienese in the _Purgatory_ (xiii. 151). Among their neighbours they still bear the reputation of light-headedness; also, it ought to be added, of great urbanity. [754] _The Stricca_: The exception in his favour is ironical, as is that of all the others mentioned. [755] _Nicholas_: 'The lavish custom of the clove' which he invented is variously described. I have chosen the version which makes it consist of stuffing pheasants with cloves, then very costly. [756] _The club_: The commentators tell that the two young Sienese nobles above mentioned were members of a society formed for the purpose of living luxuriously together. Twelve of them contributed a fund of above two hundred thousand gold florins; they built a great palace and furnished it magnificently, and launched out into every other sort of extravagance with such assiduity that in a few months their capital was gone. As that amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds of our money, equal in those days to a million or two, the story must be held to savour of romance. That Dante refers to a prodigal's club that actually existed some time before he wrote we cannot doubt. But it seems uncertain, to say the least, whether the sonnets addressed by the Tuscan poet Folgore da Gemignano to a jovial crew in Siena can be taken as having been inspired by the club Dante speaks of. A translation of them is given by Mr. Rossetti in his _Circle of Dante_. (See Mr. Symonds's _Renaissance_, vol. iv. page 54, _note_, for doubts as to the date of Folgore.)--_Caccia d' Ascian_: Whose short and merry club life cost him his estates near Siena. [757] _The Abbagliato_: Nothing is known, though a great deal is guessed, about this member of the club. It is enough to know that, having a scant supply of wit, he spent it freely.