After him arose Asmodai, the devil of lust:  “’T is not unknown to you, mightiest King of the deep, nor to you, princes of the land of despair, how many of the gulfs of hell have I filled through voluptuousness and lewdness.  What of the time I kindled such a flame of lust over all the world that the deluge had needs be sent to clear the earth of men, and to sweep them all into our unquenchable fire?  What of Sodoma and Gomorrah, fine and fair cities, which I so consumed with licentiousness that a hell-shower blazed in their infernal lusts and beat them down here alive, to burn for ages on ages.  And what of the great hosts of the Assyrians, who were all slain in one night on my account?  I disappointed Sarah of seven husbands’ {108a} and Solomon and many a thousand other kings did I bring to shame through women.  Wherefore let me and this sweet sin go, and I will kindle the hellish spark so generally that it will at length become one with this inextinguishable flame, for scarce one will ever return from following me to walk in the paths of life.”  At that he sat down.

Then Belphegor, chief of sloth and idleness, stood up and spake thus:  “I am the great prince of listlessness and sloth, who have great influence upon millions of all sorts and conditions of men; I am that stagnant pond where the spawn of every evil is bred, where the dregs of every corruption and baleful slime grows rank.  What good wouldst thou be, Asmodai, or ye, chief damned evils, were I not?  I, who keep the windows open and unguarded that ye may enter into the man when ye will, through his eyes, his ears and his mouth.  I will go and roll them all over the precipice unto you in their sleep.”

Then Satan, the devil of delusion, who was on Lucifer’s left hand, arose, and turning his grim visage to the king, began:  “It is unnecessary for me to recount my deeds to thee, Oh lost Archangel, or to you, swarthy princes of Destruction:  for ’twas I who dealt the first blow to man, and mighty was that blow, to be the cause of death from the beginning of the world to its end.  Is it likely that I, who erst ravaged all the earth, could not now give advice that would serve one little isle?  Could not I, who deceived Eve in Paradise, overcome Anne in Britain?  If inborn craft and continuous experience for five thousand years profit aught, my advice is that you adorn your daughter Hypocrisy to deceive Britain and its queen:  you have no other as serviceable as she; her sway extends more widely than that of all the rest of your daughters, and her subjects are more numerous.  Was it not through her that I beguiled the first woman?  And ever since she has remained on earth and waxed very great therein, so that by now the world is hardly anything but one mass of hypocrisy.  And were it not for the craftiness of Hypocrisy how could anyone of us do business in any part of the world?  For what man would ever have aught to do with sin, did he once behold it in its true color and under its own proper