The elders cry out three times: "Come, bride, from Lebanon!" and then "Blessed is he who comes" — the words of the Hosannas spoken to Christ entering Jerusalem, now applied to Beatrice's approach. A hundred angels scatter flowers. From within the cloud of flowers, clothed in the three colors of faith (white veil, green cloak, crimson dress), appears a woman. Dante knows her, though ten years have passed since her death, before she fully reveals her face. His heart pounds. He turns to say to Virgil: look — I have never felt such trembling — and Virgil is gone. Vanished. Without a word. The guide of the Inferno and all of Purgatorio has simply ceased to be present.
Dante weeps. He is bereft. And Beatrice speaks — sternly, calling him by name (the only time in the entire poem Dante uses his own name): "Dante, do not weep because Virgil is gone. Do not weep yet — for another sword is coming." She rebukes him immediately: how did he dare to climb the mountain? Does he not know what she prepared for him? And then she names his failures. After her death, when he could no longer see her face, he turned away. He chased lesser beauties. He followed false goods and false images of the good. He wasted the promise that had been placed in him. She speaks not with cruelty but with the grief of a love that was betrayed — and with the authority of one who saw clearly what he was and what he became and what it cost.
Dante, facing her, cannot speak. He looks down. His shame is total. Beatrice's rebuke is not a judicial sentence but a return to truth — she is restoring him to the reality of what he has been. Angels, watching, weep with Dante, moved by pity for his shame.