Arise, ye too, ministers of destruction, lords of the
unquenchable fires, and as my anger and my venom overflow, and my malice
rush forth, do ye assiduously scatter all broadcast among the damned, and
chiefly among the Christians; urge on the engines of torture to their
uttermost; devise and invent; increase the heat of the fire and the
ebullition, until the hissing flood of the cauldrons overwhelms them; and
when their unutterable woes are extremest, then sneer at them and
mockingly reproach them, and when ye have exhausted all your store of
scorn and gall, hie to me and ye shall be replenished."
A great stillness had brooded over hell for some time, while the pains
grew far more unbearable by being given no vent. But now the silence
which Lucifer had enjoined was broken, when the fierce butchers, like
bears maddened by hunger, fell upon their captives; then there arose such
doleful cries, such dismal howling, from every quarter, louder than the
roar of rushing torrents, than the rumble of an earthquake, till hell
itself became ten times more horrible. I would have died, had not my
friend saved me. "Quaff deep this time," said he, "to give thee strength
to behold things yet more dire.
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