Chapter 54 Section five

At the Soldier's Aid, Reverend Green, first speaking to Dante in general terms, then began to explain the exile's journey in detail.Hell is divided into several circles, and the lower the circle is, the closer it is to Satan, the devil's punishment place for all sins.At Hell's Entrance, Grimm guides Teal through the Land of the Wallers and sees the worst sinner on the lap, the Retreat.The fact that the bishop, who had been an insignificant man to Thiel, refused to accept a position of power in which he would have done justice for millions made Thiel furious.In a university lecture hall, Thiel overheard Justice Healy flatly rejecting the rather important post offered to him—one that asked him to defend Dante.

Thiel bought a box of deadly flies and maggots, and a box of wasps, and followed Judge Healy from the courthouse to the Great Oak Park, watching the judge say goodbye to his family. In the early hours of the next morning, Thiel sneaked into the house through the back door and cracked Healy's skull with a pistol butt.He took off the judge's clothes and folded them neatly, for the coward was not worthy of such clothes.Healy was then dragged out the back door and maggots and worms were placed in his head wound.Thiel also planted a white flag in the sand nearby, since it was the warning sign Dante had spotted on the wall sitters.Having done this, he immediately felt himself with Dante, as he set out on the long and dangerous journey of salvation, among the dead.

One week, Green was sick and didn't come to help preach, and Teal was terribly upset.It wasn't long before Greene returned and preached on buying and selling the clergy.Thiel had already been dismayed by the agreement reached between the school board and the Reverend Talbot, as he had heard in the university lecture halls.How could a priest accept money to discredit Dante to the public, and sell his power for a thousand filthy dollars?But he has been helpless, and now he knows how to punish. On several occasions during the night shift, Teal had seen a safe-burglar named Willard Burndy in a seedy tavern.Till had no trouble finding Berndy in a tavern, and Berndy was very drunk, much to his nerves.Dan Teal paid him to tell him how to steal a thousand dollars out of Reverend Talbot's safe.

Till entered the Second Unitarian Church through the tunnel where the fugitive slaves were hidden, and observed Reverend Talbot's excited descent into the catacombs every afternoon.He counted Talbot's steps—one, two, three—in order to figure out how long it would take to reach the stairs.He estimated Talbot's height, made a mark on the wall with chalk, and Till dug a hole with precise measurements, in which he planned to bury the priest head-to-toe, and the priest's two feet It just happened to be exposed outside, and of course the dirty money had to be buried under his body.On a Sunday afternoon, he caught Talbot and dumped kerosene from a lantern over his feet... After punishing Reverend Talbot, Dan Teal was convinced the Dante Club would do it for him proud of things.He wondered when those weekly meetings that Reverend Green had mentioned were held at Mr. Longfellow's house.Sunday, no doubt, Teal thought to himself—the Sabbath.

Thiel asked around Cambridge and had no trouble finding the big yellow colonial house.But looking through the Longfellow windows, he found no sign of a meeting taking place.In fact, shortly after Teal had pressed his face to the pane to peer in, there was a loud commotion from inside, as the moonlight shone on the buttons of his uniform.Thiel didn't want to disturb Dante's club, interrupt Dante's defenders as they went about their duties. Green was once again absent from the pulpit at the aid center, and this time there was no excuse for illness, and Teal was almost at a loss.Thiel went to the public library to ask where he could take Italian lessons, since Green had suggested to a soldier that he read the Divine Comedy in its original Italian.The librarian found a newspaper with an advertisement for a tutor named Mr. Pietro Bucky, so Till invited Bucky to teach him.The teacher brought Thiel a small collection of grammar books and exercises, most of which he wrote himself—they didn't involve Dante at all.

At one point, Bucky offered to sell him a Venetian century edition of The Divine Comedy.Teal had the hard leather bound "Divine Comedy" in his hand, but despite Bucky's praises for its beauty, he had no interest in it.Nor is the book the Dante he had in mind.Fortunately, shortly thereafter, Greene was again preaching at the Aid, this time concerning Dante's shocking experience when he descended into the Divisor's circle. Fate roared to Dan Teal as loud as a cannon.He had also seen this unforgivable crime--to sow discord, to create division--incarnated in a man named Janison.Thiel had heard him lecture at Tickna Fields about defending Dante, urging the Dante Club to rebel against Harvard, denouncing Dante in the Harvard Boardroom, urging members to stop Longfellow, Lowell and Fields.So Thiel forced Jannison with the point of a bayonet through the fugitive slave tunnel to Boston Harbor.Janison begged for his life, cried, and gave him money.Telling him to do him justice, Teal cut him into pieces and carefully bandaged Janison's wounds.Thiel never thought of himself as murdering, because punishment requires pain, a sense of confinement.It was the most definite thing he found in Dante.None of the punishments he witnessed was new.Thiel had seen it all in his life, on the streets of Boston, on the battlefields across the country.

Teal knew that the Dante Club was horrified at the defeat of their enemies, as Reverend Green delivered a series of sermons in sudden ecstasy: Dante came to a frozen lake of sinners, here sinners were traitors, belonged to this A class of the worst sinners ever discovered and proclaimed by travelers.So Manning and Meade were frozen in ice while Till watched in the morning light in his ensign uniform.He had worn this uniform as before, watching Healy, the worm-ridden, writhing naked; watching Talbot, the priesthood trader, feet, his dirty money under his head; watching Janison tremble and sway as he hangs and slices to pieces.

But, not long after, Lowell and Fields came, and then Holmes and Longfellow also came-they didn't come to repay him at all!Lowell shot him, and Mr Fields shouted and urged Lowell to shoot.Thiel's heart was bleeding.Thiel had expected that Longfellow and the other protectors gathered on the street corner would enthusiastically support his intentions.Now he understands that they don't understand what the Dante Club really needs to do.There is so much that is not being done to make Boston better, and so much gates of hell are left open.Thiel thought of the street corner, of Dr. Holmes slumped in front of him—Lowell bursting out of the author's anteroom, shouting, "You betrayed the Dante Club, you betrayed the Dante Club."