Virgil’s anger, even though it is not directed at him, has made Dante as downcast and as troubled as a shepherd without a pasture for his sheep. Dante is dependent upon his master not only for physical help, but also for spiritual guidance and moral support, and it now seems to Dante that this has been withdrawn. But one look from Virgil soon calms his spirit because Virgil is now the same serene person as he was at their first meeting.
The climb to the next bridge presents problems. Virgil is weightless, but he has to give very careful directions for Dante to test each rock before he puts his weight on it.
They both climb to the top of the sixth chasm, but Dante is out of breath. They walk to the end of the bridge, where it rests on the wall between the seventh and eighth chasms, and look down on the mass of strange serpents below them.
After the poets reach the end of the bridge, they can see the masses of serpents and sinners in the seventh chasm where the Thieves reside. The sinners are naked, and their hands are tied behind them with a serpent whose head and tail are threaded through the spirit’s body at the loins and tied in coils and knots at the front. Another serpent sinks its fangs in the neck of a shade, who immediately takes afire, burns to ashes, and falls on the ground, only to resume its shape and its torment once again. This shade seems as bewildered by what has happened as one who has been the victim of a seizure of some kind.
Dante asks the shade who he is, and he answers that he came recently from Tuscany, where he lived the life of a beast. He is Vanni Fucci of Pistoia. Dante asks what his crime was, for he had seen him once and considered him to be a man of violence. The spirit, ashamed, confesses that it hurts him more for Dante to see him here in this dreadful place than it did to be condemned to this chasm of thieves. In obscure language, he prophesizes that Dante’s party shall suffer greatly.
Canto XXV opens with the same sinner, Fucci, making “figs” with his hands and blaspheming God. A Centaur, Cacus, races up to the group and asks the location of the blasphemer. Virgil explains to Dante that Cacus does not reside with his fellows at the banks of Phlegethon because he stole Hercules’ cattle. Hercules avenged the theft by clubbing Cacus to death, and he continued clubbing long after Cacus was dead. Suddenly, hoards of serpents climb on to Fucci and a dragon perches on his shoulders.
The Centaur leaves and three sinners appear, apparently concerned, asking if a sinner named Cianfa has fallen back. At that moment a six-legged lizard fastens itself to one of the three sinners, Agnello, and weaves itself through the sinner’s body, melding it with the sinner, like hot wax. The two beasts become one and the other two sinners mock Agnello.
A small black monster runs up to one of the remaining two sinners and bites him near his bellybutton. A mutual transformation begins. The monster takes on the human form of the sinner, and the sinner takes on the monster’s form.
