2 Against a better will the will fights ill: wherefore against my own pleasure, in order to please him, 3 I drew from the water not full the sponge. I moved on; and my Leader moved on through the spaces vacant only alongside of the rock, 6 as upon a wall one goes close to the battlements; for, the folk, who are pouring out drop by drop through their eyes the evil that possesses all the world, 9 on the other side, approach too near the edge. “ Accursed be thou, old she-wolf, that more than all the other beasts hast prey, 12 because of thy hungry hollow without end! O Heaven! by whose revolution it seems that some believe conditions here below are transmuted, 15 when will he come through whom she shall depart? We were going on with slow and scanty steps, and I attentive to the shades whom I heard 18 piteously lamenting and bewailing; and by chance I heard: “Sweet Mary,” in front of us cried out in the lament, 21 just as a woman does who is in travail; and in continuance: “So poor wast thou as may be seen by that inn 24 where thou didst lay down thy holy burden.” Following this I heard: “O good Fabricius, with poverty thou didst wish rather for virtue, 27 than to possess great riches with vice.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTIyMjQzNA==