So saying, the wretch gave a gesture of contempt with his thumb and finger towards heaven, and said, “Take it, God—­a fig for thee!” [31]

“From that instant,” said Dante, “the serpents and I were friends; for one of them throttled him into silence, and another dashed his hands into a knot behind his back.  O Pistoia!  Pistoia! why art not thou thyself turned into ashes, and swept from the face of the earth, since thy race has surpassed in evil thine ancestors?  Never, through the whole darkness of hell, beheld I a blasphemer so dire as this—­not even Capaneus himself.”

The Pistoian fled away with the serpents upon him, followed by a Centaur, who came madly galloping up, crying, “Where is the caitiff?” It was the monster-thief Cacus, whose den upon earth often had a pond of blood before it, and to whom Hercules, in his rage, when he slew him, gave a whole hundred blows with his club, though the wretch perceived nothing after the ninth.  He was all over adders up to the mouth; and upon his shoulders lay a dragon with its wings open, breathing fire on whomsoever it met.

The Centaur tore away; and Dante and Virgil were gazing after him, when they heard voices beneath the bank on which they stood, crying, “Who are ye?” The pilgrims turned their eyes downwards, and beheld three spirits, one of whom, looking about him, said, “Where’s Cianfa?” Dante made a sign to Virgil to say nothing.

Cianfa came forth, a man lately, but now a serpent with six feet.[32]

“If thou art slow to believe, reader, what I am about to tell thee,” says the poet, “be so; it is no marvel; for I myself, even now, scarcely credit what I beheld.”

The six-footed serpent sprang at one of the three men front to front, clasping him tightly with all its legs, and plunging his fangs into either cheek.  Ivy never stuck so close to a tree as the horrible monster grappled with every limb of that pinioned man.  The two forms then gradually mingled into one another like melting wax, the colours of their skin giving way at the same time to a third colour, as the white in a piece of burning paper recedes before the brown, till it all becomes black.  The other two human shapes looked on, exclaiming, “Oh, how thou changest, Agnello!  See, thou art neither two nor yet one.”  And truly, though the two heads first became one, there still remained two countenances in the face.  The four arms then became but two, and such also became the legs and thighs; and the two trunks became such a body as was never beheld; and the hideous twofold monster walked slowly away.[33]

A small black serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on the ground, and lying stretched before him.  The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood looking at the adder’s eyes, and endeavouring to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, and both of them breathed hard, and sent forth a smoke that mingled into one volume.