At the entrance to the second circle stands Minos — not the just king of legend but a monstrous judge, his great tail coiling around his own body. Each soul confesses its sins to him; he wraps his tail around himself as many times as the circle number to which they must descend, then flings them down. He warns Dante not to trust the breadth of the gate. Virgil silences him as before.
The punishment of the lustful is the hurricane: a great, howling storm that never ceases, that drives the souls in an endless torrent through the dark air, beating them, turning them, never letting them rest. As desire once drove their reason, so now the wind drives them — there is no foothold, no stopping, no respite. Dante sees famous lovers: Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan. The catalogue of the great lovers of history is also a catalogue of catastrophe: nearly every name here brought death or destruction on themselves or others.
Dante calls to two souls moving together, somewhat lighter than the rest — they come to him as doves come to their nest in fair weather, carried by their desire. They are Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, sister-in-law and brother-in-law, killed together by Francesca's husband (Paolo's brother) when he caught them in adultery. Francesca speaks — with a courtly eloquence, a literary grace that is itself part of the indictment. She quotes the troubadour love tradition: Love, which is quickly kindled in a gentle heart, seized this man for the beautiful body taken from me (and the manner still wounds me); Love, which absolves no beloved from loving in return, seized me with delight in him so strongly that, as you see, it does not leave me even now; Love led us to one death. She describes the moment — they were reading of Lancelot and Guinevere; they came to the passage where Lancelot kissed; that day they read no further. Dante faints at the end.