Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river; but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he would of course do what he desired.[2] He then desired him to gird his companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by the water’s side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a path which the rising sun would disclose.  And with these words he disappeared.[3]

The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step in vain till he finds the path he has lost.  The full dawn by this time had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance.[4] Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante, who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned, and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.

On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,—­moving onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,—­when they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog, but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness.  Dante had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on looking again, it had grown far brighter.  Two splendid phenomena, he knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by degrees, another below it.  The two splendours quickly turned out to be wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried out, “Down, down,—­on thy knees!  It is God’s angel.  Clasp thine hands.  Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed.  Lo, how he needs neither sail nor oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings!  Lo, how he holds them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can never be weary.”

The “divine bird” grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the ground.  A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with him, so light that it drew not a drop of water.  The celestial pilot stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm beginning “When Israel came out of Egypt.”  At the close of the psalm, the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he came.