After wandering, as it were, in the forest of a bewildered life, the poet is led through Hell and Purgatory until he stands face to face at last with his own purest and loftiest ideal; and the fierceness of his own self-accusation when thus confronted with Beatrice he expresses under the form of reproaches which he lays upon _her_ lips, but which we must retranslate into the reproachful utterances of his own tortured heart, if we are to retain our gentle thoughts of Beatrice. We need not dwell even for a moment on the gorgeous pageantry with which Dante introduces and surrounds Beatrice. Suffice it to say that she comes in a mystic car, which represents the Church, surrounded by saints and angels. No sooner does Dante see her, although closely veiled, than the might of the old passion sweeps upon him, and like a child that flees in terror to its mother, so does he turn to Virgil with the cry: 'Not one drop of blood but trembles in my veins! I recognise the tokens of the ancient flame.' But Virgil is gone. Dante has no refuge from his own offended and reproachful ideal. As he bursts into lamentations at the loss of Virgil's companionship, Beatrice sternly calls him back: 'Dante! weep not that Virgil has gone from thee. Thou hast a deeper wound for which to weep.' As one who speaks, but holds back words more burning than he utters, so she stood. A clear stream flowed between her and Dante, and as she began to renew her reproaches he cast down his eyes in shame upon the water;--but there he saw himself! The angels sang a plaintive psalm, and Dante knew that they were pleading for him more clearly than if they had used directer words. Then the agony of shame and penitence that Beatrice's reproof had frozen in his bosom, as when the icy north wind freezes the snow amid the forests of the Apennine, was melted by the angels' plea for him as snow by the breezes of the south, and burst from him in a convulsion of sobs and tears.