to us, making themselves happy from care to care.[6]

[1] To form an idea of the brightness of the two circles of
spirits, let the reader imagine fifteen of the brightest separate
stars, joined with the seven stars of the Great Bear, and with
the two brightest of the Lesser Bear, to form two constellations
like Ariadne's Crown, and to revolve one within the other, one
following the movement of the other.

[2] Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, which never sets.

[3] The Lesser Bear may be imagined as having the shape of a
horn, of which the small end is near the pole of the heavens
around which the Primum Mobile revolves.

[4] When Ariadne died of grief because of her desertion by
Theseus, her garland was changed into the constellation known as
Ariadne's Crown.

[5] The Chiana is one of the most sluggish of the streams of
Tuscany.

[6] Rejoicing in the change from dance and song to tranquillity
for the sake of giving satisfaction to Dante.


Then the light in which the marvellous life of the poor man of
God had been narrated to me broke the silence among those
concordant deities, and said, "Since one straw is threshed, since
its