the stairway. There Virgil, who has led him through temporal and
eternal fires, bids him follow his pleasure, until he meets the fair
lady who bade him undertake this journey.

"Till those bright eyes
With gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste
To succor thee, thou mayst or seat thee down
Or wander where thou wilt. Expect no more
Sanction of warning voice or sign from me,
Free of thine own arbitrament to choose.
Discreet, judicious. To distrust thy sense
Were henceforth error. I invest thee then
With crown and mitre, sovereign o'er thyself."

_Canto XXVIII._ Through the Garden of Eden Dante now strolls with
Statius and Virgil, until he beholds, on the other side of a pellucid
stream (whose waters have the "power to take away remembrance of
offence"), a beautiful lady (the countess Matilda), who smiles upon
him. Then she informs Dante she has come to "answer every doubt" he
cherishes, and, as they wander along on opposite sides of the stream,
she expounds for his benefit the creation of man, the fall and its
consequences, and informs him how all the plants that grow on earth
originate here. The water at his feet issues from an unquenchable
fountain, and divides into two streams, the first of which, Lethe,
"chases from the mind the memory of sin," while the waters of the
second, Eunoe, have the power to recall "good deeds to one's mind."

_Canto XXIX._ Suddenly the lady bids Dante pause, look, and hearken.
Then he sees a great light on the opposite shore, hears a wonderful
music, and soon beholds a procession of spirits, so bright that they