and cloudy, so that though I fixed my sight on the bottom I did
not discern anything there.

"Now we descend down here into the blind world," began the Poet
all deadly pale, "I will be first, and thou shalt be second."

And I, who had observed his color, said, "How shall I come, if
thou fearest, who art wont to be a comfort to my doubting?" And
he to me, "The anguish of the folk who are down here depicts upon
my face that pity which thou takest for fear. Let us go on, for
the long way urges us."

So he set forth, and so he made me enter within the first circle
that girds the abyss. Here, so far as could be heard, there was
no plaint but that of sighs which made the eternal air to
tremble: this came of the woe without torments felt by the
crowds, which were many and great, of infants and of women and of
men.

The good Master to me, "Thou dost not ask what spirits are these
that thou seest. Now I would have thee know, before thou goest
farther, that they sinned not; and if they have merits it
sufficeth not, because they had not baptism, which is part of the
faith that thou believest; and if they were before Christianity,
they did not duly worship God: and of such as these am I myself.
Through such defects, and not through other guilt, are we lost,
and only so far harmed that without hope we live in desire."

Great woe seized me at my heart when I heard him, because I knew
that people of much worth were suspended in that limbo. "Tell me,