Just then a legion of devils passed by, and some attempted to
bite the heels of ten or twelve of the devils that had brought them
there: "Woe and ruin take you, ye hell-hounds!" exclaimed one of the
bitten devils, at the same time stamping upon the quagmire until they
sank in the reeking depths. "Who more deserving of hell than ye, who
gossipped and imagined all manner of tales, who retailed lies from house
to house so that ye might laugh, after setting the entire neighbourhood
at war? What more would one of us have done?" "This," said the Angel,
"is the abode of the slanderers, defamers and backbiters, and of all
envious cowards who always do hurt in word or deed behind one's back."
From thence we went past an enormous lair, the vilest I had yet seen, and
the fullest of vermin, of soot, and of stench. "This," said he, "is the
place of those who hoped for heaven because they were harmless, in other
words, because they were neither good nor bad." Next to this foul pit I
saw a great multitude sitting down, whose groans were more fierce than
anything I had heard hitherto in hell. "Save us all!" cried I, "what
makes these complain more than all others, seeing there be no pain, nor
demon near them?" "Ah," answered the Angel, "if the pain without is
less, that which is within is more,--here are stubborn heretics, the
godless and unchristian, many of the worldy-wise, of apostates, of the
persecutors of the church, and millions such as they, who have utterly
been given over to the more bitterly painful punishment of the
conscience, which now without let or ceasing has its full sway over them.
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