“O flesh of my flesh!” it exclaimed to Dante; “O superabounding Divine Grace! when was the door of Paradise ever twice opened, as it Shall have been to thee?"[13] Dante, in astonishment, turned to Beatrice, and saw such a rapture of delight in her eyes, that he seemed, at that instant, as if his own had touched the depth of his acceptance and of his heaven.[14]

The light resumed its speech, but in words too profound in their meaning for Dante to comprehend.  They seemed to be returning thanks to God.  This rapturous absorption being ended, the speaker expressed in more human terms his gratitude to Beatrice; and then, after inciting Dante to ask his name, declared himself thus: 

“O branch of mine, whom I have long desired to behold, I am the root of thy stock; of him thy great-grandsire, who first brought from his mother the family-name into thy house, and whom thou sawest expiating his sin of pride on the first circle of the mountain.  Well it befitteth thee to shorten his long suffering with thy good works.  Florence,[15] while yet she was confined within the ancient boundary which still contains the bell that summons her to prayer, abided in peace, for she was chaste and sober.  She had no trinkets of chains then, no head-tires, no gaudy sandals, no girdles more worth looking at than the wearers.  Fathers were not then afraid of having daughters, for fear they should want dowries too great, and husbands before their time.  Families were in no haste to separate; nor had chamberers arisen to shew what enormities they dared to practise.  The heights of Rome had not been surpassed by your tower of Uccellatoio, whose fall shall be in proportion to its aspiring.  I saw Bellincion Berti walking the streets in a leathern girdle fastened with bone; and his wife come from her looking-glass without a painted face.  I saw the Nerlis and the Vecchios contented with the simplest doublets, and their good dames hard at work at their spindles.  O happy they!  They were sure of burial in their native earth, and none were left desolate by husbands that loved France better than Italy.  One kept awake to tend her child in its cradle, lulling it with the household words that had fondled her own infancy.  Another, as she sat in the midst of her family, drawing the flax from the distaff, told them stories of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.  It would have been as great a wonder, then, to see such a woman as Cianghella, or such a man as Lapo Salterello, as it would now be to meet with a Cincinnatus or a Cornelia.[16]

“It was at that peaceful, at that beautiful time,” continued the poet’s ancestor, “when we all lived in such good faith and fellowship, and in so sweet a place, that the blessed Virgin vouchsafed the first sight of me to the cries of my mother; and there, in your old Baptistery, I became, at once, Christian and Cacciaguida.  My brothers were called Moronto and Eliseo.  It was my wife that brought thee, from Valdipado, thy family name of Alighieri.  I then followed the Emperor Conrad, and he made me a knight for my good service, and I went with him to fight against the wicked Saracen law, whose people usurp the fold that remains lost through the fault of the shepherd.  There, by that foul crew, was I delivered from the snares and pollutions of the world; and so, from the martyrdom, came to this peace.”