How I have heard you growl over the three
stone steps to purgatory, for instance!
L. Yes; because Dante's meaning is worth getting at, but mine
matters nothing at least, if ever I think it is of any consequence
so I speak it as clearly as may be. But you may make anything you
like of the serpent forests I could have helped you to find out
what they were, by giving a little more detail, but it would have
been tiresome.
SIBYL. It is much more tiresome not to find out Tell us, please,
as Isabel says, because we feel so stupid.
L. There is no stupidity, you could not possibly do more than
guess at anything so vague. But I think, you, Sibyl, at least,
might have recollected what first dyed the mulberry.
SIBYL. So I did, but that helped little, I thought of Dante's
forest of suicides, too, but you would not simply have borrowed
that.
L. No! If I had had strength to use it, I should have stolen it,
to beat into another shape; not borrowed it. But that idea of
souls in trees is as old as the world; or at least, as the world
of man. And I DID mean that there were souls in those dark
branches,--the souls of all those who had perished in misery
through the pursuit of riches, and that the river was of their
blood, gathering gradually, and flowing out of the valley.
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