It was Ciampolo, a peculator in the service of the good Thiebault, king of Navarre.  One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita, governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian.  Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils, who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil, catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the borders of gulf the sixth, the region of Hypocrites.

The hypocrites, in perpetual tears, walked about in a wearisome and exhausted manner, as if ready to faint.  They wore huge cowls, which hung over their eyes, and the outsides of which were gilded, but the insides of lead.  Two of them had been rulers of Florence; and Dante was listening to their story, when his attention was called off by the sight of a cross, on which Caiaphas the High Priest was writhing, breathing hard all the while through his beard with sighs.  It was his office to see that every soul which passed him, on its arrival in the place, was oppressed with the due weight.  His father-in-law, Annas, and all his council, were stuck in like manner on crosses round the borders of the gulf.  The pilgrims beheld little else in this region of weariness, and soon passed into the borders of one of the most terrible portions of Evil-budget, the land of the transformation of Robbers.

The place was thronged with serpents of the most appalling and unwonted description, among which ran tormented the naked spirits of the robbers, agonised with fear.  Their hands were bound behind them with serpents—­their bodies pierced and enfolded with serpents.  Dante saw one of the monsters leap up and transfix a man through the nape of the neck; when, lo! sooner than a pen could write o, or i, the sufferer burst into flames, burnt up, fell to the earth a heap of ashes—­was again brought together, and again became a man, aghast with his agony, and staring about him, sighing.[30] Virgil asked him who he was.

“I was but lately rained down into this dire gullet,” said the man, “amidst a shower of Tuscans.  The beast Vanni Fucci am I, who led a brutal life, like the mule that I was, in that den Pistoia.”

“Compel him to stop,” said Dante, “and relate what brought him hither.  I knew the bloody and choleric wretch when he was alive.”

The sinner, who did not pretend to be deaf to these words, turned round to the speaker with the most painful shame in his face, and said, “I feel more bitterly at being caught here by thee in this condition, than when I first arrived.  A power which I cannot resist compels me to let thee know, that I am here because I committed sacrilege and charged another with the crime; but now, mark me, that thou mayest hear something not to render this encounter so pleasant:  Pistoia hates thy party of the Whites, and longs for the Blacks back again.  It will have them, and so will Florence; and there will be a bloody cloud shall burst over the battlefield of Piceno, which will dash many Whites to the earth.  I tell thee this to make thee miserable.”