He of the fruit grown in the orchard fell-- And here am I repaid with date for fig.' 120 'Ah!' said I to him, 'art thou dead as well?' 'How now my body fares,' he answered me, 'Up in the world, I have no skill to tell; For Ptolomæa[851] has this quality-- The soul oft plunges hither to its place Ere it has been by Atropos[852] set free. And that more willingly from off my face Thou mayst remove the glassy tears, know, soon As ever any soul of man betrays As I betrayed, the body once his own 130 A demon takes and governs until all The span allotted for his life be run. Into this tank headlong the soul doth fall; And on the earth his body yet may show Whose shade behind me wintry frosts enthral. But thou canst tell, if newly come below: It is Ser Branca d'Oria,[853] and complete Is many a year since he was fettered so.' 'It seems,' I answered, 'that thou wouldst me cheat, For Branca d'Oria never can have died: 140 He sleeps, puts clothes on, swallows drink and meat.' 'Or e'er to the tenacious pitchy tide Which boils in Malebranche's moat had come The shade of Michael Zanche,' he replied, 'That soul had left a devil in its room Within its body; of his kinsmen one[854] Treacherous with him experienced equal doom. But stretch thy hand and be its work begun Of setting free mine eyes.' This did not I. Twas highest courtesy to yield him none.[855] 150 Ah, Genoese,[856] strange to morality! Ye men infected with all sorts of sin! Out of the world 'tis time that ye should die. Here, to Romagna's blackest soul[857] akin, I chanced on one of you; for doing ill His soul o'erwhelmed Cocytus' floods within, Though in the flesh he seems surviving still. NOTE ON THE COUNT UGOLINO.