Silent, alone, and without company, we went on, one before, the other behind, as the Minor friars go along the way. My thought was turned by the present brawl upon the fable of Aesop, in which he tells of the frog and the mole; for NOW and THIS INSTANT are not more alike than the one is to the other, if beginning and end are rightly coupled by the attentive mind.[1] And as one thought bursts out from another, so from that then sprang another which made my first fear double. I reflected in this wise: These through us have been flouted, and with such harm and mock as I believe must vex them greatly; if anger to ill-will be added, they will come after us more merciless than the dog upon the leveret which he snaps. [1] “Sed dices forsan, lector,” says Benvenuto da Imola, “nescio per me videre quomodo istae duae fictiones habeant inter se tantam convenientam. Ad quod respondeo, quod passus vere est fortis.” The point seems to be that, the frog having deceitfully brought the mole to trouble and death, the mole declares, “me vindicabit major,” and the eagle swoops down and devours the frog as well as the dead mole. The comparison is not very close except in the matter of anticipated vengeance. Already I was feeling my hair all bristling with fear, and was backwards intent, when I said, “Master, if thou concealest not thyself and me speedily, I am afraid of the Malebranche; we have them already behind us, and I so imagine them that I already feel them.” And he, “If I were of leaded glass,[1] I should not draw thine outward image more quickly to me than thine inward I receive. Even now came thy thoughts among mine, with similar action and with similar look, so that of both one sole design I made. If it be that the right bank lieth so that we can descend into the next pit, we shall escape the imagined chase.” [1] A mirror. Not yet had he finished reporting this design, when I saw them coming with spread wings, not very far off, with will to take us. My Leader on a sudden took me, as a mother who is wakened by the noise, and near her sees the kindled flames, who takes her son and flies, and, having more care of him than of herself, stays not so long as only to put on a shift. And down from the ridge of the hard bank, supine he gave himself to the sloping rock that closes one of the sides of the next pit. Never ran water so swiftly through a duct, to turn the wheel of a land-mill, when it approaches near est to the paddles, as my Master over that border, bearing me along upon his breast, as his own son, and not as his companion. Hardly had his feet reached the bed of the depth below, when they were on the ridge right over us; but here there was no fear, for the high Providence that willed to set them as ministers of the fifth ditch deprived them all of power of departing thence.