8 I stopped, and saw two show great haste of mind, by their look, to be with me, 84 but their load and the narrow way retarded them. When they had come up, awhile, with eye askance, they gazed at me without speaking a word; 87 then they turned to one another, and said one to the other: “This one seems alive by the action of his throat; and if they are dead, by what privilege 90 do they go uncovered by the heavy stole?” Then they said to me: “O Tuscan, who to the college of the wretched hypocrites art come, 93 hold it not in disdain to tell who thou art.” And I to them: “I was born and grew up on the fair river of Arno, at the great town, 96 and I am in the body that I have always had. But who are ye, from whom such woe distils, as I see, down along your cheeks? 99 and what penalty is it that so glitters on you?” And one of them replied to me: “The orange hoods are of lead so thick that the weights 102 thus make their scales to creak. Jovial Friars were we, and Bolognese; I named Catalano and he Loderingo, 105 and together taken by thy city, as one man alone is usually chosen, in order to preserve its peace: and we were such 108 as still is apparent round about the Gardingo.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTIyMjQzNA==