• 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:⁠— “Man is first a little child, then grows and reaches adolescence, and attains to youthful vigor; and, little by little growing weaker, declines into old age; and at every step of life the sum of his sins increases. So likewise the little children are punished least, and more and more the adolescents and the youths; until, their sins decreasing with the long-continued torments, punishment also begins to decrease, as it by a kind of old age ( veluti quadam senectute ).” ↩
• Frate Alberico, in § 9:⁠— “The darkness was so dense and impenetrable that it was impossible to see anything there.” ↩
• Mental, not physical pain; what the French theologians call la peine du dam , the privation of the sight of God. ↩