The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of Paradise;—­Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence imagined their golden age;—­and at these words she looked at Virgil and Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her kindly words.

Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, “Behold, and listen!” and a light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed by a dulcet melody.  The poets resumed their way in a rapture of expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs like fire.  A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs, and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.

The love that had never left Dante’s heart from childhood told him who it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for encouragement.  Virgil was gone.  At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and the tears ran down his cheeks.

“Dante,” said the veiled maiden across the stream, “weep not that Virgil leaves thee.  Weep thou not yet.  The stroke of a sharper sword is coming, at which it will behove thee to weep.”  Then assuming a sterner attitude, and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech for the last, she added, “Observe me well.  I am, as thou suspectest, Beatrice indeed;—­Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to seek the mountain at last.  And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that here only can man be happy?”

Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.

Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour of bitterness was mingled with her pity.

She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, “In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust;” but went no farther in the psalm than the words, “Thou hast set my feet in a large room.”  The tears of Dante had hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled down his cheeks.