Note 741 — CANTO XXIX.

My ruth: Enlightened moralist though Dante is, he yet shows himself man of his age enough to be keenly alive to the extremest claims of kindred; and while he condemns the vendetta by the words put into Virgil’s mouth, he confesses to a feeling of meanness not to have practised it on behoof of a distant relative. There is a high art in this introduction of Geri del Bello. Had they conferred together Dante must have seemed either cruel or pusillanimous, reproaching or being reproached. As it is, all the poetry of the situation comes out the stronger that they do not meet face to face: the threatening finger, the questions hastily put to Geri by the astonished shades, and his disappearance under the dark vault when by the law of his punishment the sinner can no longer tarry.