Dante and Virgil descend to the second circle, this one smaller than the first. This is the actual beginning of Hell where the sinners are punished for their sins. Dante witnesses Minos, a great beast, examining each soul as it stands for judgment.
Minos hears the souls confess their sins, and then wraps his tail around himself to determine the number of the circle where the sinner belongs. Minos tells Dante to beware of where he goes and to whom he turns. Minos cautions Dante against entering, but Virgil silences him, first by asking him why he too questions Dante (as Charon did), and then by telling him, in the same words he used to tell Charon, that it was willed, and what is willed must occur. (The word "Heaven" is not used, here or anywhere else in Hell.)
Dante beholds a place completely dark, in which there is noise worse than that of a storm at sea. Lamenting, moaning, and shrieking, the spirits are whirled and swept by an unceasing storm. Dante learns that these are the spirits doomed by carnal lust. He asks the names of some that are blown past, and Virgil answers with their names and some knowledge of their stories.
Dante then asks particularly to speak to two sinners who are together, and Virgil tells him to call them to him in the name of love. They come, and one thanks Dante for his pity and wishes him peace, and she then tells their story. She reveals first that a lower circle of Hell waits for the man who murdered them. With bowed head, Dante tells Virgil he is thinking of the "sweet thoughts and desires" that brought the lovers to this place. Calling Francesca by name, he asks her to explain how she and her lover were lured into sin.
Francesca replies that a book of the romance of Lancelot and Guinevere caused their downfall. They were alone, reading it aloud, and so many parts of the book seemed to tell of their own love. They kissed, and the book was forgotten. “We read no more that day.”
During her story, the other spirit weeps bitterly, and Dante is so moved by pity that he also weeps—and faints.
