Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/344

324 gold and silver out of the window. "This silly institution," continues Benvenuto, "lasted only ten months, the treasury being exhausted, and the wretched members became the fable and laughing-stock of all the world."

In honor of this club, Folgore da San Geminiano, a clever poet of the day (1260), wrote a series of twelve convivial sonnets, one for each month of the year, with Dedication and Conclusion. A translation of these sonnets may be found in D. G. Rossetti's Early Italian Poets. The Dedication runs as follows:—

136. "This Capocchio," says the Ottimo, "was a very subtle alchemist; and because he was burned for practising alchemy in Siena, he exhibits his hatred to the Sienese, and gives us to understand that the author knew him."

1. In this Canto the same Bolgia is continued, with different kinds of Falsifiers.

4., king of Thebes and husband of Ino, daughter of Cadmus. His madness is thus described by Ovid, Metamorph. IV., Eusden's Tr.:—