Never the Furies of Thebes or Troy, not Athamas dashing Learchus on a rock, not Hecuba barking on the beach over Polydorus, were seen with such fell cruelty as two pale and naked ghosts that gnarling wildly scamper, like swine excluded from the sty. One reaches Capocchio and, fangs in the neck-joint, drags him so his belly rubs the pavement. He of Arezzo, left trembling: that sprite of air is Schicchi; in like mood of random mischief vent he still his spite. The other is wretched Myrrha, who burned for her own sire and, a false shape assuming, so performed the deed; even as Schicchi dared to counterfeit Donati's features, to a feigned testament the seal affixing, that he might gain the lady of the herd.
When those two vanish, Dante sees one in fashion like a lute, had the groin been severed from the fork. Swollen dropsy disproportioning the limbs, the paunch suits not the visage; lips gasp as in hectic drought. Attentively regard Adamo's woe. When living, full supply ne'er lacked me of what most I coveted; one drop of water now, alas, I crave. The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes of Casentino to Arno's stream stand ever in his view, and not in vain: the pictured semblance dries him more than the disease. There is Romena, where I falsified the metal with the Baptist's form imprest, for which on earth I left my body burnt. If I here might see the sorrowing soul of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother, for Branda's spring I would not change the sight. One is even now within, the mad spirits tell. But my limbs are fettered. Were I so light that each hundred years I might move one inch, I had set forth already, though eleven miles it wind. They brought me down; induced by them I stamped the florens with three carats of alloy.
That abject pair upon his right lie smoking like a winter band in a chill stream: the false accuser of the Hebrew youth, and Sinon, that false Greek from Troy. Galled to be so darkly named, one smites the braced paunch till it drums; Adamo smites the face with an arm that seems as hard. Though overweighty limbs have taken the power to move, I have an arm at liberty for such employ. Horse, coin, thirst, Narcissus' mirror: each is an expert on the other's fault. Dante is all fixed to listen when Virgil: now beware; a little more, and I do quarrel with thee. Shame so poignant as remembered yet confounds him. As a man that dreams of harm, wishing it a dream, he wants to excuse himself and all the while excuses him, unweeting. More grievous fault than thine has been, less shame, my master cried, might expiate. Cast all sorrow from thy soul; and if again chance bring thee where like conference is held, think I am ever at thy side. To hear such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds.
