Cosi volse gli artigli al suo compagno,
E fu con lui sopra il fosso ghermito.
Ma l'altro fu bene sparvier grifagno
Ad artigliar ben lui, ed ambo e due

Cadder nel mezzo del bogliente stagno.1

'The sinner went below; the other, flying, steered upward. Not otherwise the duck, of a sudden, when the falcon nears, dives down, and she returns angry and ruffled. Calcabrina, wroth at the jest, flying, kept behind him, bent that the sinner should get away for the scuffle's sake. And, when the jobber was lost to sight, upon his companion he turned his claws and grappled him above the ditch. But the other, like a fullfledged sparrowhawk, clawed him well, and together they fell into the midst of the seething pool.'

Though a hungry falcon might stoop for a swimming duck, her action would be a misdemeanour, for it was a rule of falconry not to fly the falcon until her quarry was running or on the wing.2 The situation in this instance is plainly that the duck makes for the water

1 Inf. XXII, 128-141.

2 ALBERTUS MAGNUS, De Falconibus, cap. 6, Furthermore, this falcon is, above all, to be taught not to clutch the quarry in water, because there she is out of the falconer's reach, and might be hurt. Therefore she must not be flown at the prey lengthwise of the water, but is to be held till the birds appear beyond the river bank aloft, and then the gerfalcon is to be flown from the waterside because through the gerfalcon's flight they dare not return to the water. If, now, the gerfalcon is flown from the field then the birds make for the water or escape, and, if they be struck, fall into the water, and then the falcon following her prey is hurt or drowned, and if she gets off is made timid on account of her injury' (propter læsionem venationis).

pursued by the falcon, which fails to give the duck a deadly clutch. In the tussle the falcon rumples her plumage;1 then, unable to pursue her quarry into the water, she sweeps up wrathfully. One devil claws the other, as so often happens in falconry, when two hawks, stooping for the same prey, and both missing, turn in anger, clutch, and one hawk trusses the other with her long, dagger-like claws. Her ferocity is accurately described by Dante.

If any phase of animal existence is portrayed by Dante in a masterly way, it is to be found in his pictures of hawks; for he understood them well, and painted their portraits in a few entirely natural attitudes. In his treatment of this purely medieval theme Dante is distinctly modern. One will scarcely find more accurate observation in the superb poems of Leconte de Lisle.

1

1 Inf. XXII, 132, 'Ed ei ritorna su crucciato e rotto.' 'Rotto' is a technical term, and is, therefore, often mistranslated. Cf. Liber de Curis Avium, in Scelta di Curios. Lett., vol. 140, p. 56, ‘E senpre quando a lo sparviere sono piegate le penne, si dea soccorrere coll' acqua calda e colla banbagia, e menarla dolcemente sopra esse, e regenerannosi; inpercio che sozza cosa ene a colui che tene lo sparviere se l'uccello ene rotto.'

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE KITE

ANGERED at Charles II, Count of Anjou, Frederick of Aragon, and other princes and tyrants whose politics displeased him, Dante cries out that it would be better for them to fly low like a swallow, than like a kite to make lofty circles over things most vile.1 It is not clear whether Dante transfers his loathing of human baseness to the kite. The tendency to detest such animals as vary most from human standards was commoner in Dante's time than now. In the kite Dante sees a confusion of things; it flies far up toward Heaven, but is simply making ready to swoop down on

carrion.

Hugo of St. Victor berates the scavenger and robber of hen-roosts with all the ferocity of which his dubious similitudes and unconvincing allegory are capable,2 and a French design of the thirteenth (?) century represents Gluttony by a youth seated on a wolf with a kite ('mulvus'), Gluttony's emblem, perched on his left hand. 'Gluttony,' reads the legend, 'is like to a youth astride a wolf bearing in his hand a kite.' Dante has caught

1 Conv. IV, vi, 187–190, 'Meglio sarebbe a voi come rondine volare basso, che come nibbio altissime rote fare sopra cose vilissime.' 2 De Bestiis, lib. I, cap. 40.

Chasse de St. Taurin d'Evreux. See CAHIER, Mélanges, vol. II, p. 26.