"I will not this time," quoth conscience, "be drowned in beer, or blinded
by rewards, or deafened by song and good company, or hushed or stupified
by a thoughtless torpor; now I will be heard, and never shall the truth,
the stinging truth, cease dinning in your ears." The will creates a
desire for the lost paradise, the memory reproaches them with the ease
wherewith it might have been gained, and the reason shews the greatness
of the loss, and the certainty that nought awaits them but this
unspeakable gnawing for ever and ever; so by these three means,
conscience rends them more terribly than would all the devils in hell.
Coming out of that wondrous defile, I heard much talking, and for every
word such wild horse-laughter as if some five hundred devils would shed
their horns with laughing. But after I had drawn near to behold the very
rare sight of a smile in hell, what was it but two gentlemen, lately
arrived, appealing for the respect due to their rank, and the merriment
was intended only to give affront to them. A pot-bellied squire stood
there with an enormous roll of parchment, his genealogical chart,
declaring from how many of the Fifteen Tribes of Gwynedd he had sprung,
how many justices of the peace, and how many sheriffs there had been of
his house.
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