The only man who ever beheld a wheel more splendid was the poet who, a
lady leading him, entered clothed in flesh into Holy Paradise. The rose
was of living light, and seemed alive itself, every age and every
condition, in an eager crowd, formed the nave and spokes and felloe.
They were clad each according to his estate, and it was easy to
recognize Pope and Emperor, Kings and Queens, Bishops, Barons, Knights,
ladies, esquires, clerks, burghers, merchants, attorneys, apothecaries,
labourers, ruffians, Moors and Jews. Moreover, seeing all that live on
this earth were shown on the wheel, Satyrs and Cyclopes were there, and
Pygmies and Centaurs such as Africa nurses in her burning deserts, and
the men Marco Polo the traveller found, who are born without heads and
with a face below their navel.

And from betwixt the lips of each there issued a scroll, bearing a
device. Now each device was of a hue which did not appear in any other,
and in all the incalculable multitude of devices, no two could have been
discovered of the same appearance. Some were dyed purple, others painted
with the bright colours of the sky and sea, or the shining of the stars,
yet others green as grass. Many were exceeding pale, many again
exceeding dark and sombre, the whole so ordered that the eye found in
these devices every one of the colours that paint the universe.

The holy man Giovanni began to decipher them, by this means making
himself acquainted with the divers thoughts of divers men. And after
reading on a good while, he perceived that these devices were as much
diversified in the sense of the words as in the hues of the letters, and
that the sentences differed one from the other in such sort that there
was never a single one did not flatly contradict every other.

But at the same time he noted that this contradiction which existed in