And of such a one some might say, how is he dead and yet
goes about? I answer that the man is dead and the beast remains."[191]
Accordingly he has put living persons in the _Inferno_, like Frate
Alberigo and Branca d' Oria, of whom he says with bitter sarcasm that he
still "eats and drinks and puts on clothes," as if that were his highest
ideal of the true ends of life.[192] There is a passage in the first
canto of the _Inferno_[193] which has been variously interpreted:--
"The ancient spirits disconsolate
Who cry out each one for the _second death_."
Miss Rossetti cites it as an example of what she felicitously calls "an
ambiguity, not hazy, but prismatic, and therefore not really perplexing."
She gives us accordingly our choice of two interpretations, "'each cries
out on account of the second death which he is suffering,' and 'each
cries out for death to come a second time and ease him of his
sufferings.'"[194] Buti says: "Here one doubts what the author meant by
the second death, and as for me I think he meant the last damnation,
which shall be at the day of judgment, because they would wish through
envy that it had already come, that they might have more companions,
since the first death is the first damnation, when the soul parted from
the body is condemned to the pains of hell for its sins.
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