When he has spoken, the sinner raised his hands pointed in mockery, and cried: Take them, God; I level them at thee. From that day forth the serpents were Dante's friends. One rolling round his neck said, as it were, Be silent, tongue. Another riveted his arms so close they could not move. Pistoia, why dost doubt to turn thee into ashes, since in evil act thou hast outdone thy seed? Dante did not mark, through all the abyss, a spirit that swelled so proudly against his God, not him who headlong fell from Thebes. Fucci fled, nor uttered more. After him came a centaur full of fury, shouting where is the caitiff. Serpents swarm on his haunch to where the human face begins. A dragon on his shoulders breathes fire. Virgil: Cacus is this, who under Aventine spread a lake of blood, parted from his brethren for the fraudful theft of the great herd, and ended under the mace of Alcides.
The centaur sped away. Three spirits come under them: say who are ye? One has need to name another. Where doth Cianfa lurk? Dante lifts a finger to his lips so Virgil will attend. If, reader, thou be not apt to credit what I tell, no marvel; I scarce allow the witness of mine eyes. A serpent with six feet springs on one of them, ivy on a doddered oak: midmost on the belly, fangs in the cheeks, tail curled behind. As burning wax they melt, mingling hues, that which was either now seen no more. Up shrinking paper a brown tint glides, and the clean white expires. The other two cry: Ah, how dost thou change, Agnello. Thou art nor double now, nor only one. Two heads become one. Of former shape all trace vanishes. Two yet neither seems that image miscreate, and so it passes on with tardy steps.
A lizard-flash of adder, dark as a pepper-grain, transpierces another where life is first nourished, then falls stretched out. The pierced spirit yawns, motionless. He eyes the serpent, and the serpent him. Smoke from the wound and from the mouth joins in one column. Lucan and Ovid may sit mute: never face to face did they sing two natures ready to assume each other's substance. Train splits to a fork; legs compact; pile grows on one and peels from the other. One upright rose, and prone the other fell. Lamps not yet shifted, features changing beneath: ears, nose, slug-horns, a tongue that severs while a fork unites. The smoke is laid. The brute glides off hissing; the other, newly talking, sputters, turns his new-grown shoulders, and says: along this path crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now. So Dante saw the unsteady ballast of the seventh hold fluctuate. Confusion hung over his eyes. Yet they escaped not so covertly. He marked Sciancato: he alone of the three first that came changed not. The other's fate, Gaville, still dost rue.
