of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles himself
with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should be
sent down. Always before him stand many of them. They go, in
turn, each to the judgment; they speak, and hear, and then are
whirled below.

"O thou that comest to the woeful inn," said Minos to me, when he
saw me, leaving the act of so great an office, "beware how thou
enterest, and to whom thou trustest thyself; let not the
amplitude of the entrance deceive thee." And my Leader to
him, "Why then dost thou cry out? Hinder not his fated going;
thus is it willed there where is power to do that which is
willed; and ask thou no more."

Now the woeful notes begin to make themselves heard; now am I
come where much lamentation smites me. I had come into a place
mute of all light, that bellows as the sea does in a tempest, if
it be combated by opposing winds. The infernal hurricane that
never rests carries along the spirits in its rapine; whirling and
smiting it molests them. When they arrive before its rushing
blast, here are shrieks, and bewailing, and lamenting; here they
blaspheme the power divine. I understood that to such torment are
condemned the carnal sinners who subject reason to appetite. And
as their wings bear along the starlings in the cold season in a
troop large and full, so that blast the evil spirits; hither,
thither, down, up it carries them; no hope ever comforts them,
not of repose, but even of less pain.

And as the cranes go singing their lays, making in air a long
line of themselves, so saw I come, uttering wails, shades borne