Then, climbing the ladder the angel points out, Dante feels him brush away the third obnoxious P., while chanting, "Blessed are the peacemakers." They now reach the fourth ledge, where the sin of indifference or sloth is punished, and, as they trudge along it, Virgil explains that all indifference is due to a lack of love, a virtue on which he eloquently discourses.
_Canto XVIII._ A multitude of spirits now interrupt Virgil, and, when he questions them, two, who lead the rest, volubly quote examples of fervent affection and zealous haste.

They are closely followed by other spirits, the backsliders, who, not having had the strength or patience to endure, preferred inglorious ease to adventurous life and are now consumed with regret.
_Canto XIX._ In the midst of a trance which overtakes him, Dante next has a vision of the Siren which beguiled Ulysses and of Philosophy or Truth.

Then, morning having dawned, Virgil leads him to the next stairway, up which an angel wafts them, chanting "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," while he brushes away another sin scar from our poet's forehead.
In this fifth circle those guilty of avarice undergo punishment by being chained fast to the earth to which they clung, and which they bedew with penitent tears.

One of these, questioned by Dante, reveals he was Pope Adrian V., who, dying a month after his elevation to the papal chair, repented in time of his grasping past.

When Dante kneels compassionately beside this august sufferer, he is implored to warn the pope's kinswoman to eschew the besetting sin of their house.
_Canto XX._ A little further on, among the grovelling figures which closely pave this fifth cornice, Dante beholds Hugues Capet, founder of the third dynasty of French kings, and stigmatized as "root of that ill plant," because this poem was composed only a few years after Philip IV's criminal attempt against Pope Boniface at Agnani.