Why
speak I of such deeds as the impaling or sawing of men alive, the tearing
of the flesh in pieces with iron pincers or the broiling of it, chop by
chop, with candles, or the jambing of skulls as flat as a slate, in a
press, and all the most frightful degradation the earth ever witnessed?
All such are but pleasures compared with one of these. Here, a million
shrieks, harsh groans and deep sighs; there, fierce lamentations and loud
cries in answer: the howling of dogs were sweet, delightful music
compared with these voices. Before we had gone far from the shores of
that accursed river into wild Perdition, we could see by the light of
their own fire, here and there, men and women without number, whom a
countless host of devils unceasingly and with all their might kept always
torturing; and as the devils were shrieking from the intensity of their
own suffering, they made the damned give response to the utmost. I
observed the part nearest me more minutely: there, the devils with
pitchforks hurled them head foremost upon poisonous hatchels formed of
terrible, barbed darts, thereon to struggle by their brains; then
shortly, they threw them together, layer on layer, upon the summit of one
of the burning crags, there to blaze like a bonfire.
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