And after her words had stopped, not otherwise does molten iron throw out sparks than the circles sparkled. Every scintillation followed its flame,[1] and they were so many that their number, was of more thousands than the doubling of the chess. I heard Hosaimah sung from choir to choir to the fixed Point that holds them, and will forever hold them, at the Ubi[2] in which they have ever been. And she, who saw the dubious thoughts within my mind, said, “The first circles have shown to thee the Seraphim and the Cherubim. Thus swiftly they follow their own bonds,[3] in order to liken themselves to the Point so far as they can, and they can so far as they are exalted to see. Those other loves, which go round about them, are called Thrones of the divine aspect, because they terminated the first triad.[4] And thou shouldst know that all have delight in proportion as their vision penetrates into the True in which every understanding is at rest. Hence may be seen how beatitude is founded on the act which sees, not on that which loves, which follows after. And merit, which grace and good will bring forth, is the measure of this seeing; thus is the progress from grade to grade. [1] The innumerable sparks each moved in accord with the gyration of its flaming circle. The doubling of the chess alludes to the story that the inventor of the game asked, as his reward from the King of Persia, a grain of wheat for the first square of the board, two for the second, and so on to the last or sixty-fourth square. The number reached by this process of duplication extends to twenty figures. [2] The WHERE, the appointed place. [3] The course of their respective circles to which they are bound. [4] “Throni elevantur ad hoc quod Deum familiariter in seipsis recipiant.”—Summa Theol., I, cviii. 6. “The next triad that thus buds in this sempiternal spring which the nightly Aries despoils not,[1] perpetually sing their spring song of Hosannah with three melodies, which sound in the three orders of joy wherewith it is threefold. In this hierarchy are the three Divinities, first Dominations, and then the Virtues; the third order is of Powers. Then, in the two penultimate dances, the Principalities and Archangels circle; the last is wholly of Angelic sports. These orders are all upward gazing, and downward prevail, so that toward God they all are drawn, and they all draw. And Dionysius[2] with such great desire set himself to contemplate these orders, that he named and divided them, as I. But Gregory[3] afterward separated from him; wherefore, so soon as he opened his eyes in this Heaven, he smiled at himself. And if a mortal proffered on earth so much of secret truth, I would not have thee wonder, for he who saw it hereabove[4] disclosed it to him, with much else of the truth of these circles.” [1] At the autumnal equinox, the time of frosts, Aries is the sign in which the night rises. [2] The Areopagite. See Canto X.