At last, finding how futile was his attempt to sunder his bonds and how unavailing to contend against the Almighty, he returned to his throne and resumed his speech, in words somewhat more calm, but twice as malignant:  “Though none but the Omnipotent Thunderer could overcome my power and my guile, to Him I am unwillingly constrained to submit; but I can pour forth the vials of my wrath here below, nearer at hand, and let loose my ire upon those who are already under my banner, and within the length of my chain.  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.”  Hardly were the words from his lips, when lo! heavenly Justice, who sits above the abyss, guardian of the gates of Hell, advanced scourging three men with rods of fiery scorpions.  “Ha ha,” cried Lucifer, “here are three reverend gentlemen whom Justice thought worthy himself to conduct to my kingdom.”  “Woe’s me,” said one of the three, “who ever wanted him to take the trouble?” “That matters not,” answered he, with a look that made the fiends wax pale, and tremble so that they knocked one against the other, “it was the will of the Infinite Creator that I myself should lead to their home such accursed murderers.”  “Sirrah,”—­addressing one of the demons,—­“open me the fold of the assassins, where Cain, Nero, Bradshaw, Bonner, Ignatius and innumerable others like them dwell.”  “Alack, alack! we have never slain any man,” cried one.  “No thanks to you that you did not, for time only was wanting,” said Justice.  When the den was opened, there came out such a hideous blast of blood-red flames, and such a shriek as if a thousand dragons were uttering their death-wail.  As Justice was passing by on his return, in an instant he caused such a tempest of fiery whirlwinds to fall upon the Evil One and his princes that Lucifer was swept away, and with him Beelzebub, Satan, Moloch,