ido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of
Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to
his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to
wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of
those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind
them, and walked the reverse way of their looking.

The fifth gulf was a lake of boiling pitch, constantly heaving and
subsiding throughout, and bubbling with the breath of those within it.
They were Public Peculators. Winged black devils were busy about the
lake, pronging the sinners when they occasionally darted up their backs
for relief like dolphins, or thrust out their jaws like frogs. Dante
at first looked eagerly down into the gulf, like one who feels that he
shall turn away instantly out of the very horror that attracts him.
"See--look behind thee!" said Virgil, dragging him at the same time from
the place where he stood, to a covert behind a crag. Dante looked round,
and beheld a devil coming up with a newly-arrived sinner across his
shoulders, whom he hurled into the lake, and then dashed down after him,
like a mastiff let loose on a thief. It was a man from Lucca, where
every soul was a false dealer except Bonturo.[29] The devil called out
to other devils, and a heap of them fell upon the wretch with hooks as
he rose to the surface; telling him, that he must practise there in
secret, if he practised at all; and thrusting him back into the boiling
pitch, as cooks thrust back flesh into the pot. The devils were of the
lowest and most revolting habits, of which they made disgusting jest and
parade.

Some of them, on a sudden, perceived Dante and his guide, and were going
to seize them, when Virgil resorted to his usual holy rebuke. For a
while they let him alone; and Dante saw one of them haul a sinner out of
the pitch by the clotted locks, and hold him up sprawling like an otter.
The rest then fell upon him and flayed him.

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 juris