It is also significant that their partners are not named and do not speak, but their presence is strongly felt during the narration. The partners do not speak because Paolo is enchanted with the manner in which Francesca defends their beautiful love. Ruggieri does not speak because the horror of his betrayal might cause even more torment. Furthermore, throughout this canto, it always seems that, at any moment, Ugolino will suddenly stop his narration and go back to his gnawing more fiercely than before.
Compare the introduction of both speakers: When Dante asks Francesca what brought her to this dreadful situation, she answers: "Thou shall see me speak and weep together" (V, line 26). And Ugolino says: "I will answer like one who weeps and tells" (XXXIII, line 26).
Francesca's answer includes her lover and the fact that as she speaks, they will both "weep together." Francesca and Paolo will weep together because of the difficulty it is, in such present misery, to recount such ultimate joy, as was their love for each other. Ugolino will weep, holding in his embrace the man whose evil caused him such ultimate pain and suffering.
Francesca is a fragile lady, guilty only of letting her overpowering love for Paolo become her sole desire. Love, love, love — so begins the three tercets describing her love for Paolo. Her speech has enormous, moving sincerity and beauty to it. "He loved me and I loved him!" And that is all. Never does she stoop to something so vulgar as to defend her love by saying something so mundane as: "Yes, but they tricked me, they betrayed me, I thought I was marrying the handsome Paolo with his beautiful body; instead, it was his ugly hunch-back vicious brother." This would not be her nature. She does not dwell on her betrayal because her essence is defined by her love and her essence is that of pure womanhood ("l'essere gentile e puro") — soft, pure, modest and tender — and in Hell, she retains those qualities that inspired Paolo's love.
