ved to bite in the heels, ten or twelve of the devils who had
brought them thither. "Woe and destruction to you hell-dogs!" said one
of the devils who had been bit, "you shall pay for this;" and forthwith
commenced beating the bog, till the wretches were drowned in the stinking
abysses. "Who," he then added, "have deserved hell better than you, who
have been hunting up and devising gossip, and buzzing lies about from
house to house, in order that you might laugh, after having set a whole
country at loggerheads. What more could one of ourselves have done?"
"That," said the angel, "is the bed of the tale-bearers, the slanderers,
and the whisperers, and of all other envious curs, who are continually
wounding people behind their backs with their hands or their tongues."

From here we passed to a vast dungeon, by far the filthiest that I had
seen yet, and the most replete with toads, adders, and stench. "This,"
said my guide, "is the place of the men who expect to get to heaven
because they have no ill intentions, that is, for being neither good nor
bad." Next to this pool of ill savour, I beheld a place where a vast
crowd were sitting, and without any thing visible to torment them,
groaning more piteously than any that I had hitherto heard in Hell.
"Mercy upon us," said I, "what causes these people to complain more than
the rest, when they have neither torture nor devil near them?" "O," said
the angel, "the less torment they have without, the more they have
within. These are refractory heretics, atheists, antichristians, worldly-
wise ones, abjurers of the faith, persecutors of the church, and an
infinity of such like wretches, who are abandoned entirely to the
punishment of conscience, more tormenting than flame or devil, which
domineers over them ceaselessly and without restraint. 'I will never
permit myself any more,' says she, 'to be drowned in ale, nor to be
blinded by bribes, nor deafened by music and company, nor lulled nor
confounded by careless listlessness; for now I _will_ be listened to, and
never shall the clack of the hated truth cease in your ears.' Longing is
ever raging within the wretch for the happiness which he has lost; memory
is ever reproaching him by saying how easy it was to be obtained, and the
understanding showing him the magnitude of his loss, and the certainty
that nothing is now to be obtained, but indescribable gnawing for ever
and ever. So with these three instruments--namely longing