tyrants who gave themselves to blood and pillage. Here they weep
their pitiless offenses: here is Alexander, and cruel Dionysius
who caused Sicily to have woeful years. And that front which hath
such black hair is Azzolino, and that other who is blond is
Opizzo of Esti, who in truth was slain by his stepson up there in
the world."

Then I turned me to the Poet, and he said, "Let him now be
first, and I second." A little further on the Centaur stopped
above some folk who far as the throat were seen to issue from
that boiling stream. He showed to us at one side a solitary
shade, and said, "He cleft, in the bosom of God, the heart that
still is honored on the Thames."[1] Then I saw folk, who out of
the stream held their head, and even all their chest; and of
these I recognized many. Thus ever more and more shallow became
that blood, until it cooked only the feet: and here was our
passage of the foss.

[1] In 1271, Prince Henry, son of Richard of Cornwall, was
stabbed during the mass, in a church at Viterbo, by Guy of
Montfort, to avenge the death of his father, Simon, Earl of
Leicester, in 1261. The heart of the young Prince was placed in a
golden cup, as Villani (vii. 39) reports, on a column, at the
head of a bridge in London.


"Even as on this side, thou seest that the boiling stream ever
diminishes," said the Centaur, "I would have thee believe that on
this other its bed sinks more and more, until it comes round
again where it behoves that tyranny should groan. The divine