Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/158

152 rolled her long, floating tresses, and twisted their masses round her hands; and the Young Man saw that her soul was inwoven in those meshes, and streamed down their golden length with horrible writhings of pain. And she said: "Whosoever thou mayst be, tell me—and thou, also: tell me, both of you,—why they have forced me to glide down from the warm surface of the earth to its uttermost abysses? As long as my body was graceful and fair I walked in the sunshine, and everybody was kind to me. But when like the flower I faded,—as the loveliest flower must fade,—they seized me and hurled me down among those who rot in the sepulchre where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! When men grow old, the young honor them in song; but we, alas! long before the hour of our death, they order us to lie down in the grave! We complain, we supplicate, we entreat, we appeal! But they are afar; they hear us not. Then our agony begins; ah! they have gone still farther off; they hear us no longer; they will not come even to say farewell; and there is nothing left us but to die!"

As she spoke, others rose, and, standing upon their feet, cried: "Justice! justice!" And after these, others, striking their breasts, sobbed and cursed! Streams of tears flowed from their eyes, poured down their long, disheveled locks, and then fell rippling to the ground with the dull rustling of autumnal rain. Scarcely would the weaker and more exhausted among them rise when they would fall back anew; while those who had not been able to rise at all dragged themselves along upon their hands and knees, and many, veiling their faces with their hands in sad memory of their lost beauty, turned towards the apparition, and nothing but the fire of two burning eyes about to die out forever could be seen between the tapering fingers.

The Young Man then perceived some old men in long, black robes, carrying vases of holy water, which they sprinkled freely over the sufferers, while they chanted in low and melancholy cadence. Some of the women bowed their heads patiently, and at once went sweetly to sleep upon their mats. Others knelt, kissed the hands of the old men, and murmured to them the interminable