Dante is listening to a thundering waterfall descending to the next circle when three runners stop him, recognizing him as a Florentine by his clothes. They are horribly burned, and cannot stop moving as they address Dante, but walk in a constant circle, turning their heads to look at him. They are Guido Guerra, Tegghaio Aldobrandi, and Jacopo Rusticucci—three courteous Guelph Florentines, and thus Dante’s political allies. Dante respectfully greets them, and they ask for news of Florence. Dante tells them there is nothing good to report: Florence is a mess, riddled with pride and excess. The three men seem unsurprised, and—like so many of the people Dante meets—ask him to speak of them to living people when he gets back to earth. Then they, like Latini, run off into the plains again.

Dante and Virgil follow the sound of the waterfall and find it: a huge dark cataract so loud that it hurts the ears.

Virgil tells Dante to do something peculiar. Dante is wearing a rope belt, with which, he said, he had once considered trying to tame the leopard he saw in the dark wood (some scholars speculate this is the belt of a Franciscan religious order.