They descended next to the second circle, where Minos, the judge of those below, is enthroned. Here the luxurious are punished. The poet here met with Francesca of Rimini and Paul, her friend. He completely recovered the use of his senses, and passed through the third circle, where the gourmands are punished. In the fourth he found Plutus, who guards it. Here are tormented the prodigal and the avaricious. In the fifth are punished those who yield to anger. Dante and Virgil there saw a bark approaching, conducted by Phlegias; they entered it, crossed a river, and arrived thus at the base of the red-hot iron walls of the infernal town of Dite. The demons that guarded the gates refused them admittance, but an angel opened them, and the two travellers there saw the heretics that were enclosed in tombs surrounded by flames. The travellers then visited the circles of violence, fraud, and usury, when they came to a river of blood guarded by a troop of centaurs; suddenly they saw coming to them Geryon, who represents fraud, and this beast took them behind him to carry them across the rest of the infernal space. [Illustration: FIG. 52.--DANTE'S INFERNAL REGIONS.] The eighth circle was divided into ten valleys, comprising: the flatterers; the simoniacal; the astrologers; the sorcerers; the false judges; the hypocrites who walked about clothed with heavy leaden garments; the thieves, eternally stung by venomous serpents; the heresiarchs; the charlatans, and the forgers. At last the poets descended into the ninth circle, divided into four regions, where are punished four kinds of traitors. Here is recounted the admirable episode of Count Ugolin. In the last region, called the region of Judas, LUCIFER is enchained. There is the centre of the earth, and Dante, hearing the noise of a little brook, reascended to the other hemisphere, on the surface of which he found, surrounded by the Southern Ocean, the mountain of Purgatory. Such was the famous _Inferno_ of Dante. Not only was the geography of the infernal regions attempted in the middle ages, but even their size. Dexelius calculated that the number of the damned was a hundred millions, and that their abode need not measure more than one German mile in every direction. Cyrano of Bergerac amusingly said that it was the damned that kept turning the earth, by hanging on the ceiling like bats, and trying to get away.