was Hezekiah, whose penitence delayed for him the hour of his death:  next Hezekiah, Constantine, though, in letting the pope become a prince instead of a pastor, he had unwittingly brought destruction on the world:  next Constantine, William the Good of Sicily, whose death is not more lamented than the lives of those who contest his crown and lastly, next William, Riphaeus the Trojan.  “What erring mortal,” cried the bird, “would believe it possible to find Riphaeus the Trojan among the blest?—­but so it is; and he now knows more respecting the divine grace than mortals do, though even he discerns it not to the depth."[28]

The bird again relapsing into silence, appeared to repose on the happiness of its thoughts, like the lark which, after quivering and expatiating through all its airy warble, becomes mute and content, having satisfied its soul to the last drop of its sweetness.[29]

But again Dante could not help speaking, being astonished to find Pagans in Heaven; and once more the celestial figure indulged his curiosity.  It told him that Trajan had been delivered from hell, for his love of justice, by the prayers of St. Gregory; and that Riphaeus, for the same reason, had been gifted with a prophetic knowledge of the Redemption; and then it ended with a rapture on the hidden mysteries of Predestination, and on the joy of ignorance itself when submitting to the divine will.  The two blessed spirits, meanwhile, whom the bird mentioned, like the fingers of sweet lutenist to sweet singer, when they quiver to his warble as it goes, manifested the delight they experienced by movements of accord simultaneous as the twinkling of two eyes.[30]

Dante turned to receive his own final delight from the eyes of Beatrice, and he found it, though the customary smile on her face was no longer there.  She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy Contemplation.

In this crystal sphere, called after the name of the monarch who reigned over the Age of Innocence, Dante looked up, and beheld a ladder, the hue of which was like gold when the sun glisters it, and the height so great that its top was out of sight; and down the steps of this ladder he saw coming such multitudes of shining spirits, that it seemed as if all the lights of heaven must have been there poured forth; but not a sound was in the whole splendour.  It was spared to the poet for the same reason that he missed the smile of Beatrice.  When they came to a certain step in the ladder, some of the spirits flew off it in circles or other careers, like rooks when they issue from their trees in the morning to dry their feathers in the sun, part of them going away without returning, others returning to the point they left, and others contenting themselves with flying round about it.  One of them came so near Dante and Beatrice, and brightened with such ardour, that the poet saw it was done in affection towards them, and begged the loving spirit to tell them who it was.