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.  Thence they were snatched away up the ravines amidst the eternal ice and snow; {73a} then plunged again into an enormous flood of seething brimstone to be parched, stifled, and choked by the direful stench; thence to a quagmire of vermin, to embrace hellish reptiles far more noxious than serpents or vipers.  After that the devils took knotted rods of fiery steel from the furnace, wherewith they beat them so that their howls resounded throughout all Hell, so inexpressibly excruciating was the pain, and then they seized hot irons to sear the bloody wounds.  No swoon or trance is there to beguile with a moment’s respite, but an unchanging strength to suffer and to feel; though one would have thought that after one awful wail there never could be the strength to raise another as weirdly-loud; yet never will their key be lowered, with the devils ever answering:  “This is your welcome for aye.”  And worse, were it possible, than the pain, was the scorn and bitterness of the devils’ mockery and derision, but worst of all, their own conscience was now thoroughly awakened, and devoured them more relentlessly than a thousand infernal lions.

Still down we go, down afar—­the further we go the worse the plight; at the first view I saw a horrid prison wherein a great many men were uttering blasphemous groans beneath the scourges of the devils:  “Who are all these?” asked I; “This,” answered the Angel, “this is the abode of Woe-that-I-had-not.”  “Woe that I had not been cleansed of all manner of sin in good time,” quoth one.  “Woe is me that I had not believed and repented before my coming here,” quoth another.  Next to the cell of Too-late-a-repentance, and of Pleading-after-judgment, was the prison of the Procrastinators, who were always promising to mend their ways, but who never fulfilled the promise.  “When this trouble is past,” saith one, “I will turn over a new leaf.”  “When this hinderance goes by, I’ll be another man yet,” said another.  But when that comes about, they are no nearer; some other obstacle ever and anon occurs to preventing their starting towards the gate of holiness; and if sometimes a start is made, it takes but little to turn them back again.  Next to these was the prison of Presumption, full of those who, whenever they were urged of old to be rid of their Wantonness, or drunkenness, or avarice, would say:  “God is merciful, and better than His word; He will never damn his own creature upon a cause so trivial.”  But here they yelped blasphemy, asking:  “Where is that