soul,
We saw two more, so iced up in one hole,
That the one's visage capp'd the other's head;
And as a famish'd man devoureth bread,
So rent the top one's teeth the skull below
'Twixt nape and brain. Tydeus, as stories show,
Thus to the brain of Menalippus ate:--
"O thou!" I cried, "showing such bestial hate
To him thou tearest, read us whence it rose;
That, if thy cause be juster than thy foe's,
The world, when I return, knowing the truth,
May of thy story have the greater ruth."

His mouth he lifted from his dreadful fare,
That sinner, wiping it with the grey hair
Whose roots he had laid waste; and thus he said:--
"A desperate thing thou askest; what I dread
Even to think of. Yet, to sow a seed
Of infamy to him on whom I feed,
Tell it I will:--ay, and thine eyes shall see
Mine own weep all the while for misery.
Who thou may'st be, I know not; nor can dream
How thou cam'st hither; but thy tongue doth seem
To skew thee, of a surety, Florentine.
Know then, that I was once Count Ugoline,
And this man was Ruggieri, the archpriest.
Still thou may'st wonder at my raging feast;
For though his snares be known, and how his key
He turn'd upon my trust, and murder'd me,
Yet what the murder was, of what strange sort
And cruel, few have had the true report.
Hear then, and judge.--In the tower, called since then
The Tower of Famine, I had lain and seen
Full many a moon fade through the narrow bars.
When, in a dream one night, mine evil stars
Shew'd me the future with its dreadful face.
Methought this man led a great lordly chase
Against a wolf and cubs, across the height
Which barreth Lucca from the Pisan's sight.
Lean were the hounds, high-bred, and sharp for blood;
And foremost in the press Gualandi rode,
Lanfranchi, and Sismondi. Soon were seen
The father and his sons, those wolves I mean,
Limping, and by the hounds all crush'd and torn
And as the cry awoke me in the morn,
I heard my boys, the while they dozed in bed
(For they were with me), wail, and ask for bread.
Full cruel, if it move thee not, thou art,
To think what thoughts then rush'd into my heart.
What wouldst thou weep at, weeping not at this?
All had now waked, and something seem'd amiss,
For 'twas the time they used to bring us bread,
And from our dreams had grown a horrid dread.
I listen'd; and a key, down stairs, I heard
Lock up the dreadful tu