12 Thou shouldst know him if thou comest down but now; he is Ser Branca d’ Oria, and many years 138 have passed since he was thus shut up.” “I believe,” said I to him, “that thou art deceiving me; for Branca d’ Oria is not yet dead, 141 and he eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes.” “In the ditch of the Malebranche above,” he said, “there where the sticky pitch is boiling, 144 Michel Zanche had not yet arrived, when this one left a devil in his stead in his own body, and in that of one of his next kin, 147 who committed the treachery together with him. But now stretch hither thy hand; open my eyes for me.” And I did not open them for him, 150 and to be churlish to him was courtesy. Ah Genoese! men strange to all morality and full of all corruption, 153 why are ye not scattered from the world? For with the worst spirit of Romagna I found one of you, such that for his deeds 156 he is already in soul bathed in Cocytus, and in body he appears still alive on earth.
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