He suffered from, and stares with sighs profound: So was the sinner, when arisen, seen. Justice of God, how are thy terrors piled, Showering in vengeance blows thus big with teen! 120 My Guide then asked of him how he was styled. Whereon he said: 'From Tuscany I rained, Not long ago, into this gullet wild. From bestial life, not human, joy I gained, Mule that I was; me, Vanni Fucci,[644] brute, Pistoia, fitting den, in life contained.' I to my Guide: 'Bid him not budge a foot, And ask[645] what crime has plunged him here below. In rage and blood I knew him dissolute.' The sinner heard, nor insincere did show, 130 But towards me turned his face and eke his mind, With spiteful shame his features all aglow; Then said: 'It pains me more thou shouldst me find And catch me steeped in all this misery, Than when the other life I left behind. What thou demandest I can not deny: I'm plunged[646] thus low because the thief I played Within the fairly furnished sacristy; And falsely to another's charge 'twas laid. Lest thou shouldst joy[647] such sight has met thy view If e'er these dreary regions thou evade, 141 Give ear and hearken to my utterance true: The Neri first out of Pistoia fail, Her laws and parties Florence shapes anew; Mars draws a vapour out of Magra's vale, Which black and threatening clouds accompany: Then bursting in a tempest terrible Upon Piceno shall the war run high; The mist by it shall suddenly be rent, And every Bianco[648] smitten be thereby: 150 And I have told thee that thou mayst lament.' FOOTNOTES: [630] _Aquarius_: The sun is in the constellation of Aquarius from the end of January till the end of February; and already, say in the middle of February, the day is nearly as long as the night. [631] _Where I ailed, etc._: As the peasant is in despair at seeing the earth white with what he thinks is snow, so was Dante at the signs of trouble on Virgil's face. He has mistaken anger at the cheat for perplexity as to how they are to escape from the Bolgia; and his Master's smile is grateful and reassuring to him as the spectacle of the green earth to the despairing shepherd. [632] _The broken bridge_: They are about to escape from the bottom of the Sixth Bolgia by climbing the wall between it and the Seventh, at the point where the confused fragments of the bridge Friar Catalano told them of (_Inf._ xxiii. 133) lie piled up against the wall, and yield something of a practicable way. [633] _The heavy cowled_: He finds his illustration on the spot, his mind being still full of the grievously burdened hypocrites.