[1] The fleur-de-lys of France.

[2] Charles II., King of Apulia, son of Charles of Anjou.


"This little star is furnished with good spirits who have been
active in order that honor and fame may follow them. And when the
desires thus straying mount here, it must needs be that the rays
of the true love mount upward less living.[1] But in the
commeasuring of our wages with our desert is part of our joy,
because we see them neither less nor greater. Hereby the living
Justice so sweetens the affection in us, that it can never
be bent aside to any wrong. Diverse voices make sweet notes; thus
in our life diverse benches[2] render sweet harmony among these
wheels.

[1] The desire for fame interferes with, though it may not wholly
prevent, the true love of God.

[2] The different grades of the blessed.


"And within the present pearl shines the light of Romeo, whose
great and beautiful work was ill rewarded. But the Provencals who
wrought against him are not smiling; and forsooth he goes an ill
road who makes harm for himself of another's good deed.[1] Four
daughters, and each a queen, had Raymond Berenger, and Romeo, a
humble person and a pilgrim, did this[2] for him. And then
crooked words moved him to demand a reckoning of this just man,
who rendered to him seven and five for ten. Then he departed,
poor and old, and if the world but knew the heart he had, while
begging his livelihood bit by bit, much as it lauds him it would
laud him more."

[1] According to Giovanni Villani (vi. 90), one Romeo, a pilgrim,
came to the court of Raymond Berenger IV., Count of Provence (who
died, in 1245), and winning the count's favor, served him with
such wisdom and fidelity that by his means his master's revenues
were greatly increased, and his four daughters married to four
kings,--Margaret, to Louis IX. of France, St. Louis; Eleanor, to
Henry III. of England; Sanzia, to Richard, Earl of Cornwall
(brother of Henry III.), elected King of the Romans; and
Beatrice, to Charles of Anjou (brother of Louis IX.), King of
Apulia and Sicily. The Provencal nobles, jealous of Romeo,
procured his dismissal, and he departed, with his mule and his
pilgrim's staff and scrip, and was never seen more.

[2] The making each a queen.



CANTO VII. Discourse of Beatrice.--The Fall of Man.--The scheme
of his Redemption.

"Osanna sanctus Deus Sabaoth, superillustrans claritate tua
felices ignes horum malacoth!"[1]--thus, turning to its own
melody, this substance,[2] upon which a double light is
twinned,[3] was seen by me to sing. And it and the others moved
with their dance, and like swiftest sparks veiled themselves to
me with sudden distance. I was in doubt, and was saying to
myself, "Tell her, tell her," I was saying, "tell her, my Lady,
who slakes my thirst with her sweet distillings;" but that
reverence which lords it altogether over me, only by BE and by
ICE,[4] bowed me again like one who drowses. Little did Beatrice
endure me thus, and she began, irradiating me with a smile such
as would make a man in the fire happy, "According to my
infallible advisement, how a just vengeance could be justly
avenged has set thee thinking. But I will quickly loose thy mind:
and do thou listen, for my words will make thee a present of a
great doctrine.

[1] "Hosanna! Holy God of Sabaoth, beaming with thy brightness
upon the blessed fires of these realms."

[2] Substance, as a scholastic term, signifies a being subsisting
by itself with a quality of its own. "Substantiae nomen
significat essentiam cui competit sic esse, id est per se esse;
quod tamen esse non est ipsa ejus essentia."--Summa Theol. I.
iii. 5.

[3] The double light of Emperor and compiler of the Laws.

[4] Only by the sound of her name.


"By not enduring for his own good a curb upon the power which
wills, that man who was not born,--damning himself, damned all
his offspring; wherefore the human race lay sick below for many
centuries, in great error, till it pleased the Word of God to
descend where He, by the sole act of His eternal love, united
with Himself in person the nature which had. removed itself from
its Maker.

"Now direct thy sight to the discourse which follows. This
nature, united with its Maker, became sincere and good, as it had
been created; but by itself it had been banished from Paradise,
because it turned aside from the way of truth and from its own
life. The punishment therefore which the cross afforded, if it be
measured by the nature assumed, none ever so justly stung; and,
likewise, none was ever of such great wrong, regarding the Person


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