And I fell as one seized by sleep
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e caddi come l’ uom cui sonno piglia.
and I fell as a man does whom sleep overtakes.
The final line: overcome, Dante falls unconscious, as a man drops when sleep takes him. He will wake in Canto IV, already across the river.
The canto ends by drawing its own curtain. Dante faints — <i>caddi come l'uom cui sonno piglia</i>, I fell as one whom sleep seizes — and the loss of consciousness is also a loss of the narration. We are shut out exactly where he is.
It is a masterstroke of construction. Dante cannot cross Acheron; no living soul may ride Charon's ferry. So the poem simply blacks out, and when he wakes at the start of Canto IV he is already on the far bank, carried over by a means the reader is never shown. The swoon seals the Gate of Hell canto and spares Dante — and us — the one crossing that could not be described.
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Inferno 3.136 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/3.136/