Plutus screams in a hoarse alarm: Ah me, O Satan, Satan. Virgil tells Dante that power in this fiend is none to hinder the descent. Then he cries Peace, and names him a cursed wolf whose fury should prey inward and consume itself. The traveller does not pass without cause. It is willed on high. As sails full spread drop collapsed if the mast splits, so the cruel fiend drops to the ground.
They descend to the fourth steep ledge. Souls roll weights by main force of their breasts, clash at the opposite point, and shout why hold so fast, why cast away. The shorn heads made no use of spending. The hairy cowls are churchmen, popes and cardinals, over whom avarice practised its excess. Dante hopes to know faces the blot had made vile. He cannot. The life that made them vile now makes them dark. Forever they shall meet in this rude shock: clenched grasp against close-shaven locks. Ill they gave, and ill they kept. Not all the gold beneath the moon could buy these toil-worn souls a moment's rest. Dante asks what Fortune is, that the world so rails against. Virgil says she is a minister of God, changing empty goods from race to race by decrees concealed as in the grass. She is blessed, and for that recks not. They cannot tarry. Each star that mounted at their entrance is falling now.
They cross to a well that boils into a foss of inky water, the lake named Stygian at the foot of grey withered cliffs. In the marsh a miry tribe strike with hands, head, breast, and feet, and cut each other with their fangs: the souls whom anger overcame. Underneath, a multitude whose sighs heave the surface gurgle that they were sad once in the sweet air, carrying a foul and lazy mist within, and now are sad in these murky settlings. They cannot utter a distinct word. Dante and Virgil walk the bank with eyes down, and do not stop until they come to a tower's low base.
Coming Up in Chapter 8
Before they reach the turret's base, two cressets hang on its height, and a far light answers. A small bark cuts the marsh. The ferryman thinks Dante is another fell spirit come to stay, and cries aloud across the slimy pool.
