Then his sons passed away, and, groping blindly among the dead, he lingered on, until, famine becoming more potent than anything else, he yielded to its demands.

Having finished this grewsome tale, Ugolino continued his feast upon the head of his foe! "Thus having spoke, Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth He fasten'd like a mastiff's 'gainst the bone, Firm and unyielding." Dante, passing on, discovers many other victims encased in the ice, and is so chilled by a glacial breeze that his face muscles stiffen.
He is about to ask Virgil whence this wind proceeds, when one of the ice-encrusted victims implores him to remove its hard mask from his face.

Promising to do so in return for the man's story, Dante learns he is a friar who, in order to rid himself of inconvenient kinsmen, invited them all to dinner, where he suddenly uttered the fatal words which served as a signal for hidden assassins to despatch them.

When Dante indignantly exclaims the perpetrator of this heinous deed is on earth, the criminal admits that, although his shadow still lingers above ground, his soul is down here in Ptolomea, undergoing the penalty for his sins.

Hearing this, Dante refuses to clear away the ice, and excuses himself to his readers by stating "ill manners were best courtesy to him." _Canto XXXIV._ Virgil now directs Dante's glance ahead, until our poet dimly descries what looks like an immense windmill.