Inferno, Canto 22

Commentary

The canto answers the obscene trumpet of Inferno XXI by listing genuine signals for campaigns, assaults, musters, retreats, civic riders, raids, tournaments, bells, drums, castle signs, ships, land, and stars. The comparison is mock-epic because Barbariccia's signal belongs to a grotesque escort, not a disciplined army. Dante then names the ten demons as fierce company, accepts the proverb of fitting company, and fixes his attention on the pitch, the bolgia, and the people burning within it.

XXII.1–3 The canto opens with horsemen taking the field, beginning assault, mustering, and sometimes retreating.

XXII.1–3 The opening measures Barbariccia's obscene signal against real military movement. Dante begins with organized cavalry, assault, display, and retreat, giving the devils a mock-epic frame they immediately fail to deserve. The high register depends on the low signal that ended the previous canto.

XXII.4–6 Aretine civic space, raiding parties, tournaments, and jousts widen the catalogue from battlefield to city and spectacle.

XXII.4–6 The Aretine address brings civic violence into the mock-military catalogue. The signals are not only abstract war signs. They are attached to Italian city life, factional intimidation, raids, and chivalric display, all of which make the devil escort look like a grotesque civic militia.

XXII.7–9 Trumpets, bells, drums, castle signs, native signals, and foreign ones continue the catalogue of legitimate command systems.

XXII.7–9 The catalogue treats signs as public coordination before turning them into parody. Bells, drums, and castle signals belong to shared civic and military codes. Their accumulation makes Barbariccia's signal comic because the devils possess signs without trustworthy order.

XXII.10–12 No cavalry, infantry, or ship ever moved to so strange a shawm, whether by land-sign or star.

XXII.10–12 Cennamella completes the contrast between noble navigation and grotesque command. The line rises to ships and stars, then collapses the whole catalogue into the devils' strange instrument. The point is not similarity but comic non-equivalence.

XXII.10 Cennamella names a strange wind instrument after the obscene trumpet of Inferno XXI. The word keeps the sound world low and bodily after the catalogue of legitimate signals. It should not be flattened into generic command noise.

XXII.12 The star signal gives the catalogue its highest point before comic collapse. Navigation by land or star is an ordered reading of signs. Barbariccia's signal is also a sign, but it is grotesque, local, and morally disordered.

XXII.13–15 The poets travel with the ten demons, and Dante frames the fierce company through a proverb about fitting company.

XXII.13–15 The proverb normalizes an abnormal escort without removing its danger. Dante accepts that place determines company: saints in church, gluttons in tavern, devils in this bolgia. The comic proverb also keeps the poets physically compromised by Malacoda's escort.

XXII.13 Li diece demoni resumes the ten-devil escort assigned in Inferno XXI. The canto is not a fresh scene but the next movement under Malacoda's compromised guidance and Barbariccia's command.

XXII.15 The church-and-tavern proverb turns moral place into fitting company. Dante's company with devils is horrible but contextually apt. The proverb makes a comic rule out of infernal placement.

XXII.16–18 Dante keeps his attention fixed on the pitch to observe the bolgia and the people burning within it.

XXII.16–18 The pilgrim's gaze returns the canto from signal parody to punishment. The comic escort does not replace the bolgia's moral work. Dante deliberately watches the pitch, its conditions, and the burned people inside it.

XXII.16 Pegola remains the fifth bolgia's governing material. Pitch conceals, burns, sticks, and cooks. It is the perfect matter for a sin that hid corrupt dealing under public surfaces.

Commentary

The hidden sinners become visible through animal similes. Like dolphins arching to warn sailors, barrators show their backs briefly to ease pain, then vanish like lightning. Like frogs at a ditch edge, they keep only snouts exposed and hide their bodies, but they dive under the boil when Barbariccia nears. One sinner lingers; Graffiacan hooks his pitch-matted hair and hauls him up like an otter. Dante notes that he has learned the devils' names, and the pack shouts for Rubicante to flay the captive.

XXII.19–21 Dolphins arch their backs as warning signs for sailors to save their vessel.

XXII.19–21 The dolphin simile makes surfacing into a sign under threat. The sinners' backs will resemble warning signs, not free emergence. The simile also keeps nautical material in play after the ship and star imagery of line 12.

XXII.19 Dalfini begins the canto's chain of animal comparisons. The dolphins are not ornamental. They make the sinners' backs into signs and set up a world where corrupt officials are read through animal behavior.

XXII.22–24 A sinner briefly shows his back to lighten pain, then hides faster than lightning.

XXII.22–24 The barrators' exposure is momentary because concealment remains their condition. They surface only to ease pain, then vanish almost instantly. A sin of hidden dealing receives a punishment that allows only anxious, partial visibility.

XXII.25–27 Frogs at a ditch edge keep only their snouts out while hiding feet and bodies.

XXII.25–27 The frog simile lowers the barrators from public officials to ditch creatures. Only the snout remains visible; the rest is concealed. This image translates political corruption into a comic but exact posture of hiding.

XXII.26 Ranocchi makes concealment comic, bodily, and exact. Frogs expose only snouts while hiding feet and bulk. The posture mirrors barrators who surface only enough to survive.

XXII.28–30 The sinners stand exposed on every side until Barbariccia approaches and they withdraw under the boiling.

XXII.28–30 Barbariccia's presence turns the bolgia surface into a field of sudden retreat. The barrators' fear of demonic policing controls when they can be seen. Visibility is governed by threat, not confession.

XXII.29 Barbariccia's approach governs visibility in the bolgia. His name and command continue from Inferno XXI. When he nears, sinners choose painful concealment over exposure to hooks.

XXII.31–33 Dante still shudders at seeing one sinner linger like a frog left behind when another darts away.

XXII.31–33 The narrator's continuing shudder prevents the comic animal scene from becoming weightless. The simile is low and lively, but Dante marks lasting bodily response. The episode is funny because grotesque, not because harmless.

XXII.31 Accapriccia marks a remembered bodily shudder. The narrator's heart still reacts to the scene. The line keeps fear and revulsion inside a canto often remembered for comedy.

XXII.34–36 Graffiacan hooks the sinner's pitch-matted hair and hauls him up like an otter.

XXII.34–36 Hook, pitch, hair, and otter image compress capture and stickiness. The line makes the punishment tactile: the barrator is not just seized but caught through the very pitch that hides him. The animal comparison keeps the devils' custody inside a predatory bestiary.

XXII.34 Graffiacan's name suits his hooking action. The devil's identity and function converge when he snags the sinner. The Malebranche names remain comic, bestial, and operational.

XXII.35 Arruncigliò and pitch-matted hair make violence sticky. The hook does not simply pierce; it catches in hair glued by pitch. The sound texture of the line reinforces the material viscosity of the bolgia.

XXII.37–39 Dante says he already knew all the devils' names from their selection and mutual calls.

XXII.37–39 The canto depends on the named escort from Inferno XXI. Dante's attention to names makes the Malebranche a recurring squad rather than generic devils. Fear and curiosity together create a precise memory of demonic social order.

XXII.40–42 The cursed devils call on Rubicante to set claws on the sinner's back and flay him.

XXII.40–42 The pack's first response to capture is collective escalation. The Malebranche are custodians, but their custody is appetite for tearing. Rubicante's claws turn punishment into a threat of flaying before speech begins.

XXII.40 Rubicante is summoned when the pack wants flaying, not interrogation. The named devil enters as an instrument of escalating violence. His line keeps the Malebranche catalogue active through action.

Commentary

Dante asks Virgil to learn who the wretch is now in the hands of his adversaries. The captive says he was born in Navarre, placed in a lord's service by his mother, and later served in the household of good King Thibault. There he practiced barratry, for which he now renders account in heat. Ciriatto wounds him with a boar-like tusk, while Barbariccia restrains the devils enough for further questioning. The Navarrese says he recently left another nearby sinner and wishes he were still covered in pitch, safe from claw and hook.

XXII.43–45 Dante asks Virgil to learn who the wretch is who has fallen into his adversaries' hands.

XXII.43–45 Avversari keeps the scene politically and diabolically charged. The captive is a sinner justly punished, but he is also a prisoner among enemies. The language lets infernal custody resemble earthly interrogation and political vengeance.

XXII.45 Avversari makes the devils resemble political enemies as well as theological adversaries. Dante's wording lets the scene echo earthly custody and interrogation. The captive is damned, but the devils' handling of him is also recognizably factional and brutal.

XXII.46–48 Virgil asks where the captive is from, and he answers that he was born in the kingdom of Navarre.

XXII.46–48 Dante identifies the sinner by origin before any personal name. The Navarrese's place-based identity matters for the canto's geography of public fraud. Tradition may call him Ciampolo, but the text foregrounds kingdom, service, and office.

XXII.48 The sinner is textually the Navarrese before he is the traditional Ciampolo. Dante gives origin, not a personal name. The name Ciampolo comes from the commentary tradition, not from the line itself.

XXII.52–54 The Navarrese served good King Thibault's household, practiced barratry there, and now renders account in the heat.

XXII.52–54 The sinner gives the canto's plainest self-definition of barratry. Court service becomes the setting for corrupt dealing. Rendo ragione turns financial and administrative accountability into infernal accounting in heat.

XXII.52 Re Tebaldo anchors the barrator in court household service. The king's exact identification should be cautious, but the social setting is clear: corrupt access grows inside service to a ruler.

XXII.53 Baratteria names the canto's public-fraud offense directly. The Navarrese does not need allegorical decoding here. He states the corrupt practice that has placed him in the pitch.

XXII.55 Ciriatto's boar tusk turns demonic custody into bestial tearing. The name and tusk image make him a body built for ripping rather than orderly guard duty.

XXII.58–60 The mouse has arrived among bad cats, but Barbariccia holds him and orders the devils back while he forks him.

XXII.58–60 The cat-and-mouse image turns custody into predatory play. The Navarrese is guilty, but among the Malebranche he is also small prey. Barbariccia's restraint is not mercy; it preserves control over the interrogation and the prey.

XXII.58 Male gatte and sorco cast the episode as cat-and-mouse predation. The sinner is morally guilty, yet the simile makes the devils' pleasure in custody predatory and theatrical.

XXII.60 Inforco makes Barbariccia's restraint coercive rather than merciful. He holds or forks the captive so Virgil can question him. Procedure depends on physical domination.

XXII.64–66 Virgil asks whether the captive knows any other Italian sinners under the pitch.

XXII.64–66 Virgil's question shifts from one biography to a network of corrupt public actors. The request for other Latins turns the bolgia into a searchable field of civic corruption. The pitch conceals a political and regional archive of barratry.

XXII.65 Latino asks for Italian-linked sinners under the pitch. Virgil's question moves the inquiry from one sinner to a recognizable political-linguistic field, preparing the Sardinian and later Tuscan/Lombard references.

XXII.67–69 The captive says he recently left a nearby sinner and wishes he were still covered with him, free from claw and hook.

XXII.67–69 The pitch is punishment, but it is also shelter from the devils. The sinner's wish reverses ordinary escape logic. Being covered by pitch is painful, yet safer than exposure to claws and hooks.

XXII.69 Claw and hook define exposure as worse than immersion. The pitch burns, but the devils' tools make the surface more dangerous. The barrator's fear is physically rational.

Commentary

Libicocco loses patience and tears a piece from the captive's arm; Draghignazzo reaches for his legs before the decurion Barbariccia reins the devils in. Virgil asks whom the Navarrese had left below. The answer turns to Sardinia: Fra Gomita of Gallura, a vessel of every fraud who sold his master's enemies and was sovereign in barratry, and Michel Zanche of Logodoro, whose talk with Gomita about Sardinia never tires. The Navarrese then points to Farfarello's grinding threat and uses fear of being scratched as a way to control the scene.

XXII.70–72 Libicocco says they have suffered enough and tears a piece from the captive's arm with his hook.

XXII.70–72 The devil's impatience parodies patience by rushing to inflict suffering. Sofferto sounds like endurance, but Libicocco uses it to justify tearing flesh. Demonic custody cannot hold stable procedure against appetite.

XXII.70 Libicocco converts impatience into tearing action. His complaint that the devils have suffered too much is grotesque because he immediately inflicts suffering on the captive.

XXII.73 Draghignazzo continues the pack's failure to remain restrained. After Libicocco tears the arm, Draghignazzo reaches for the legs. The interrogation constantly threatens to collapse into dismemberment.

XXII.74 Decurio gives Barbariccia mock-military office. The term makes the Malebranche squad sound organized, but their repeated loss of discipline exposes the title as comic and unstable.

XXII.81 Fra Gomita introduces Sardinian administrative corruption. The name shifts the canto from the Navarrese's court service to another network of deputies, prisoners, money, and local lordship.

XXII.82–84 Fra Gomita of Gallura is called a vessel of every fraud who had his master's enemies in hand and handled them to their satisfaction.

XXII.82–84 Fra Gomita embodies office as purchasable custody. The charge is not private cleverness but corrupt administration: enemies in a lord's hand are released or managed through fraud. Vasel d'ogne froda makes him an instrument filled with every kind of deceit.

XXII.82 Vasel d'ogne froda makes Gomita a container and instrument of fraud. The phrase is totalizing: Gomita is not merely guilty of one bribe but figured as a vessel fit for every fraudulent practice. Gallura locates that fraud in Sardinian governance.

XXII.83 Donno marks lordship in the Sardinian setting. The term preserves the local-political texture of Gomita's office: he had his lord's enemies in hand and converted that trust into corrupt transaction.

XXII.85–87 Gomita took money, let prisoners off smoothly, and in other offices was not a petty but a sovereign barrator.

XXII.85–87 The canto defines barratry through bribed release and repeated office abuse. Money changes custody into private advantage. The comic escalation from not-small to sovereign barrator makes corruption a kind of inverted mastery.

XXII.85 Taking money and releasing prisoners gives a concrete act of barratry. The line shows public custody sold for private gain. It is a political transaction, not merely personal greed.

XXII.87 Sovrano turns Gomita's barratry into inverted excellence. The word usually suggests superiority or rule; here it crowns corruption. He is not a small barrator but sovereign in the wrong craft.

XXII.88–90 Gomita keeps company with Michel Zanche of Logodoro, and their tongues never tire of talking about Sardinia.

XXII.88–90 Sardinia becomes a local system of remembered corruption. Michel Zanche extends the example from one deputy to a regional fellowship of barrators. Their endless talk makes corrupt place-memory part of the punishment's social texture.

XXII.88 Michel Zanche adds a second Sardinian barrator to the corrupt fellowship. His association with Gomita makes the pitch a social space where corrupt officials continue their local talk and affiliations.

XXII.89 Logodoro and Sardinia localize the canto's corruption beyond Tuscany and Navarre. The fifth bolgia is international but still local in texture: each corrupt office belongs to a place, a lordship, and a political memory.

XXII.91–93 The Navarrese points to a teeth-grinding devil and says he would speak more, but fears being scratched.

XXII.91–93 Real fear becomes the Navarrese's first instrument of control. He is genuinely endangered, but he also redirects attention to the devils' lack of discipline. The coarse phrase about scratching his scurf helps turn vulnerability into comic leverage.

XXII.91 Digrigna makes demonic body language part of the interrogation. The captive reads teeth as threat and uses that threat to halt or redirect speech. Fear becomes socially useful.

XXII.93 Tigna gives the captive's fear a coarse comic edge. The phrasing is low, but it is not empty vulgarity. It helps the Navarrese convert danger into a performance that restrains Farfarello.

XXII.94–96 The great provost turns to Farfarello, who rolls his eyes to strike, and orders the wicked bird away.

XXII.94–96 Barbariccia's command briefly restores procedure over predatory impulse. The mock-official title gran proposto makes the devil squad sound bureaucratic, but Farfarello's rolling eyes and bird insult keep that hierarchy unstable and bestial.

XXII.94 Gran proposto makes Barbariccia a parody official. He has rank and can command the pack, but the title sounds comic in a scene where discipline constantly fails.

XXII.96 Malvagio uccello keeps Farfarello inside the canto's animal field. Barbariccia's rebuke restrains a devil by naming him as a wicked bird. The insult anticipates the later bird and falconry imagery around Alichin and Calcabrina.

Commentary

The frightened captive says that if the travelers want to see or hear Tuscans and Lombards, he can summon them, provided the Malebranche stand aside so the others will not fear revenge. He promises to whistle in the usual way and bring seven for one. Cagnazzo lifts his snout and correctly calls the plan a malicious trick to throw himself back down. The Navarrese replies with ironic self-accusation, pretending that only excessive malice would make him seek worse pain for his companions. Alichin cannot restrain himself, boasts that wings will beat above the pitch, and turns the trap into a game. At the reader address, the devils look away; the Navarrese times his leap and frees himself.

XXII.97–99 The frightened captive offers to make Tuscans or Lombards come if the travelers want to see or hear them.

XXII.97–99 The Navarrese converts Virgil's inquiry into bait shaped for Dante and Virgil. Tuscans and Lombards narrow the earlier question about Latins to regions that match the poets' interests and speech. The trick begins as audience analysis.

XXII.99 Toschi o Lombardi is bait tailored to the listeners. The Navarrese has heard enough to aim his offer at Dante's Tuscany and Virgil's Lombard associations. Fraud begins by reading desire.

XXII.100 The request that the Malebranche stand aside is the trick's practical condition. It sounds reasonable because other sinners would fear revenge. It is also exactly what the Navarrese needs to regain room to move.

XXII.103–105 The Navarrese promises that one sinner will bring seven when he whistles in the usual way for someone outside.

XXII.103–105 The proposed whistle makes barrator solidarity sound like a practical custom. The promise is plausible because hidden sinners need signals of their own. A canto that opened with command signals now turns to a counterfeit summoning signal.

XXII.104 Suffolerò introduces a rival signal system among the barrators. The canto that began with trumpets, bells, and stars now turns on a whistle. Signals coordinate both public order and fraudulent escape.

XXII.106–108 Cagnazzo lifts his snout, shakes his head, and calls out the malice by which the captive plans to throw himself down.

XXII.106–108 Cagnazzo correctly smells the trick. The dog-like snout is comic, but the judgment is accurate. Fraudulent territory makes suspicion a real cognitive virtue, even in a devil.

XXII.106 Cagnazzo's lifted snout matches his correct suspicion. The doggish gesture is comic, but it makes his discernment bodily. He smells the fraud more accurately than Alichin will judge it.

XXII.107 Malizia names the trick in the canto's own moral vocabulary. Cagnazzo calls the device what it is: a malicious plan. The irony is that the devils' own malice makes them divided over how to respond.

XXII.109–111 The captive, rich in snares, replies that he must be excessively malicious if he is seeking greater misery for his companions.

XXII.109–111 Ciampolo tells the truth as a lie-shaped defense. He does have snares in abundance, but he frames malice as absurd self-accusation. Fraud here does not need false words only; it uses tone, timing, and inverted implication.

XXII.109 Lacciuoli describes the Navarrese as stocked with snares. The phrase confirms Cagnazzo's suspicion even as the captive prepares to disarm it. He is a trapped man who still carries traps in speech.

XXII.112–114 Alichin cannot hold back and says that if the captive dives, he will not pursue at a gallop.

XXII.112–114 Alichin's competitive impulse opens the escape route. He breaks from the wiser suspicion of the others because the challenge touches pride. The devil becomes usable by the barrator precisely through his desire to win.

XXII.112 Alichin's inability to hold back makes him the trick's opening. He is not deceived because the trick is subtle only; he is deceived because the challenge fits his own appetite for pursuit and victory.

XXII.115–117 Alichin claims he will beat his wings over the pitch and use the bank as a shield to test whether the captive alone can outdo them.

XXII.115–117 The challenge turns policing into a tactical contest. Alichin imagines flight and the bank will secure the devils' advantage. His plan assumes superior force, but it underrates the sinner's fear and timing.

XXII.115 Alichin trusts wings over pitch. His boast assumes aerial superiority. The final entanglement will expose wings as vulnerable to the very pitch he patrols.

XXII.118–120 The reader is told to hear a new game as each devil turns his eyes to the other bank, beginning with the most reluctant one.

XXII.118–120 Nuovo ludo makes the escape a staged game for readerly attention. The address announces not doctrine but action, sport, and theatrical reversal. Cagnazzo's reluctance remains legible because he had already read the trick.

XXII.118 Nuovo ludo announces action as game, spectacle, and contest. The reader is invited to hear a new play of fraud. The term keeps low comedy formally marked without detaching it from moral exposure.

XXII.121–123 The Navarrese chooses his time, plants his feet, leaps, and frees himself from their provost.

XXII.121–123 Timing, not strength, defeats the Malebranche. The sinner's intelligence is practical and bodily: he chooses the instant, plants his feet, and leaps. The provost's control dissolves in one point of motion.

XXII.121 The Navarrese's success depends on choosing the instant. The phrase makes his escape an act of practiced opportunism. This is the same intelligence that made him a barrator, redirected against devils.

XXII.123 Si sciolse reverses Barbariccia's custody. The captive frees himself from the provost's control in a single leap. The mock-official hierarchy has been undone by the sinner it tried to hold.

Commentary

The devils are pricked by blame, especially Alichin, who caused the failure. He launches after the Navarrese, but wings cannot outrun fear: the sinner dives under while Alichin rises defeated like a falcon after a duck. Calcabrina, eager for a brawl once the prey escapes, turns his talons against Alichin. The two grapple over the ditch and fall into the boiling pitch. Heat separates them, but the pitch binds their wings. Barbariccia sends four devils with hooks to rescue the pitch-stuck pair, already cooking under the crust, and the poets leave them entangled.

XXII.124 Compunto gives the devils a prick of blame, not repentance. They feel the sting of failure because they lost prey. The line should not be moralized into contrition.

XXII.127–129 Alichin's pursuit fails because wings cannot outpace fear; the sinner goes under while the devil rises upward.

XXII.127–129 Sospetto is faster than demonic wings. The barrator's fearful suspicion is not noble, but it is effective. In fraudulent terrain, wary anticipation beats force and flight.

XXII.127 Sospetto names fearful alertness that outruns wings. The word is not mere abstract suspicion; it is the sinner's bodily caution under threat. That caution beats Alichin's force.

XXII.130–132 A duck dives when a falcon approaches, and the falcon returns upward angry and beaten.

XXII.130–132 The falconry simile makes Alichin a failed hunter. The devil has the aerial role, but the duck's dive wins. The image turns proud flight into frustrated return, preparing the greater fall into pitch.

XXII.130 The duck introduces a prey animal that wins by diving. The simile is comic because the inferior creature defeats the aerial hunter by using its own element. The Navarrese's pitch dive has the same logic.

XXII.131 The falcon figure gives Alichin a noble hunting role only to defeat it. Falconry can be elevated elsewhere, but here the devil-hunter returns angry and broken. Flight becomes a sign of failure.

XXII.133–135 Calcabrina, angry at the trick, follows Alichin because he wants the sinner to escape so he can have a brawl.

XXII.133–135 Calcabrina prefers internal violence to successful custody. His anger at the trick becomes appetite for a fight with his companion. The Malebranche lose not only the sinner but the purpose of their office.

XXII.133 Calcabrina's anger at the buffa redirects punishment into brawl. The trick enrages him less because justice failed than because he wants the chance to fight Alichin. Devilish office dissolves into rivalry.

XXII.135 Zuffa exposes Calcabrina's true object of desire. He is eager for the sinner to escape because escape gives him a pretext to attack his companion. The custodian wants disorder.

XXII.136–138 Once the barrator disappears, Calcabrina turns his talons on Alichin and grapples with him above the ditch.

XXII.136–138 The vanished barrator leaves the devils to become each other's prey. The claws that should police sinners turn inward. Fraud has made the guardians mimic the disorder they punish.

XXII.136 Barattier reminds the reader what escaped beneath the comedy. The sinner disappears, but the line names his moral category. The farce remains anchored in the public-fraud bolgia.

XXII.139–141 Alichin proves a fierce sparrowhawk in clawing back, and both devils fall into the middle of the boiling pond.

XXII.139–141 Predatory bird imagery ends in immersion rather than mastery. Alichin can claw, but not control the fight. The hunters fall into the same pitch field that had given them power over the hunted.

XXII.139 Sparvier grifagno turns Alichin into a fierce bird who still falls. The image grants predatory power but not control. The canto's animal logic ends with hunters trapped in the prey-field.

XXII.142–144 The heat quickly separates them, but they cannot rise because their wings are stuck fast.

XXII.142–144 The pitch disables the devils' own instrument of pursuit. Heat breaks the grapple, but pitch binds their wings like birdlime. The aerial police become stuck birds inside the punishment they administer.

XXII.142 Sghermitor makes the heat an ungrappler. The heat separates the fighting devils, but not to save them. It breaks the brawl while the pitch keeps them trapped.

XXII.144 Inviscate turns the devils' wings into trapped-bird wings. The sticky substance used metaphorically for capture now captures the hunters. Their power of flight is neutralized by pitch.

XXII.148–150 The rescuing devils descend on both sides and stretch hooks toward the pitch-stuck pair already cooking under the crust.

XXII.148–150 Hooks used against barrators now rescue devils from barrators' punishment. The tools of policing are turned toward the police themselves. Mpaniati keeps the sticky birdlime logic active as the devils cook under the pitch crust.

XXII.149 Mpaniati continues the birdlime field as hooks reach toward the stuck pair. The devils are now the pitch-stuck bodies to whom hooks are extended. The policing image has fully reversed.

XXII.150 The devils are already cooking under the pitch crust. The kitchen-like punishment of barrators now touches the Malebranche themselves. The custodians briefly experience the material condition they enforce.

XXII.151 The poets leave the devils still entangled.

XXII.151 The canto closes by leaving the Malebranche stuck in their own failed game. The final image belongs to the devils, not the escaped sinner. Their entanglement prepares the poets' urgent break from the escort in Inferno XXIII.