His words and the mode of the punishment had already read to me the name of this one, wherefore my answer was so full. Suddenly straightening up, he cried, “How didst thou say, ‘he held’? lives he not still? doth not the sweet light strike his eyes?” When he took note of some delay that I made before answering, he fell again supine, and forth appeared no more. But that other magnanimous one, at whose instance I had stayed, changed not aspect, nor moved his neck, nor bent his side. “And if,” he said, continuing his first words, “they have ill learned that art, it torments me more than this bed. But the face of the lady who ruleth here will not be rekindled fifty times ere thou shalt know how much that art weighs. And, so mayest thou return unto the sweet world, tell me wherefore is that people so pitiless against my race in its every law?” Then I to him, “The rout and the great carnage that colored the Arbia red cause such orison to be made in our temple.” After he had, sighing, shaken his head, “In that I was not alone,” he said, “nor surely without cause would I have moved with the rest; but I was alone,—there[1] where it was agreed by every one to lay Florence waste,—he who defended her with open face.” “Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose,” I prayed to him, “loose for me that knot, which here has entangled my judgment. It seems, if I rightly hear, that ye foresee that which time is bringing with him, and as to the present have another way.” “We see,” he said, “like those who have feeble light, the things that are far from us, so much still shineth on us the supreme Leader; when they draw near, or are, our intelligence is all vain, and, if some one report not to us, we know nothing of your human state. Therefore thou canst comprehend that our knowledge will be utterly dead from that moment when the gate of the future shall he closed.” Then, as compunctious for my fault I said, “Now wilt thou therefore tell that fallen one that his son is still conjoined with the living, and if just now I was dumb to answer, make him know that I was so because I was still thinking in that error which you have solved for me.”[2] [1] At Empoli, in 1260, after the defeat of the Florentine Guelphs at Montaperti on the Arbia. [2] Guido Cavalcanti died in August, 1300; his death, being near at hand at the time of Dante’s journey, was not known to his father. And now my Master was calling me back, wherefore I prayed the spirit more hastily that he would tell me who was with him. He said to me, “Here with more than a thousand do I lie; here within is the second Frederick and the Cardinal,[1] and of the others I am silent.” [1] Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, a fierce Ghibelline, who was reported as saying, “If there be a soul I have lost it for the Ghibellines.”