guided by an angel, bearing souls to Purgatory.--Their
landing.--Casella and his song.--Cato hurries the souls to the
mountain.


Now had the sun reached the horizon whose meridian circle covers
Jerusalem with its highest point; and the night which circles
opposite to it was issuing forth from Ganges with the Scales that
fall from her hand when she exceeds;[1] so that where I was the
white and red cheeks of the beautiful Aurora by too much age were
becoming orange.

[1] Purgatory and Jerusalem are antipodal, and in one direction
the Ganges or India was arbitrarily assumed to be their common
horizon. The night is here taken as the point of the Heavens
opposite the sun, and the sun being in Aries, the night is in
Libra. When night exceeds, that is, at the autumnal equinox, when
the night becomes longer than the day, the Scales may be said to
drop from her hand, since the sun enters Libra.


We were still alongside the sea, like folk who are thinking of
their road, who go in heart and linger in body; and lo! as, at
approach of the morning, through the dense vapors Mars glows
ruddy, down in the west above the ocean floor, such appeared to
me,--so may I again behold it!--a light along the sea coming so
swiftly that no flight equals its motion. From which when I had a
little withdrawn my eye to ask my Leader, again I saw it,
brighter become and larger. Then on each side of it appeared to
me a something, I know not what, white, and beneath, little by