“Who is he, Master, that writhes, quivering more than the others his consorts,” said I, “and whom a ruddier flame is sucking?” And he to me, “If thou wilt that I carry thee down there by that bank which slopes the most,[1] from him thou shalt know of himself and of his wrongs.” And I, “Whatever pleaseth thee even so is good to me. Thou art Lord, and knowest that I part me not from thy will, and thou knowest that which is unspoken.” [1] The whole of the Eighth circle slopes toward the centre, so that the inner wall of each bolgia is lower, and is less sharply inclined than the outer. Then we went upon the fourth dyke, turned, and descended on the left hand, down to the bottom pierced with holes, and narrow. And the good Master set me not down yet from his haunch, till he brought me to the cleft of him who was thus lamenting with his shanks. “O whoe’er thou art, that keepest upside down, sad soul, planted like a stake,” I began to say, “speak, if thou canst.” I was standing like the friar who confesses the perfidious assassin,[1] who, after he is fixed, recalls him, in order to delay his death. [1] Such criminals were not infrequently punished by being set, head downwards, in a hole in which they were buried alive. And he[1] cried out, “Art thou already standing there? Art thou already standing there, Boniface? By several years the record lied to me. Art thou so quickly sated with that having, for which thou didst not fear to seize by guile the beautiful Lady,[2] and then to do her outrage?” [1] This is Nicholas III., pope from 1277 to 1280; he takes Dante to be Boniface VIII., but Boniface was not to die till 1303. Compare what Nicholas says of “the record” with Farinata’s statement, in Canto X, concerning the foresight of the damned. [2] The Church, to which Boniface did outrage in many forms; but worst by his simoniacal practices. Such I became as those that, not comprehending that which is replied to them, stand as if mocked, and know not what to answer.