Dante is borne across the river Acheron in his sleep, he does not tell us how, and awakes on the brink of “the dolorous valley of the abyss.” He now enters the First Circle of the Inferno; the Limbo of the Unbaptized, the border land, as the name denotes.

Frate Alberico in § 2 of his Vision says, that the divine punishments are tempered to extreme youth and old age:⁠—