What a wonderful contrast! Here we were in the free, wide, noisy, brilliant world again. Here again were the crowds, the venders, saucy grisettes with their bright smiles, shining teeth, and alluring glances. Here again were the bustling _café_s, the music, the lights, the life, and above all the giant arms of the Moulin Rouge sweeping the sky. "Now," quietly remarked Bishop, "having passed through death, we will explore hell." Mr. Thompkins seemed too weak, or unresisting, or apathetic to protest. His face betrayed a queer mixture of emotions, part suffering, part revulsion, part a sort of desperate eagerness for more. [Illustration: 0284] We passed through a large, hideous, fanged, open mouth in an enormous face from which shone eyes of blazing crimson. Curiously enough, it adjoined heaven, whose cool blue lights contrasted strikingly with the fierce ruddiness of hell. Red-hot bars and gratings through which flaming coals gleamed appeared in the walls within the red mouth. A placard announced that should the temperature of this inferno make one thirsty, innumerable bocks might be had at sixty-five centimes each. A little red imp guarded the throat of the monster into whose mouth we had walked; he was cutting extraordinary capers, and made a great show of stirring the fires. The red imp opened the imitation heavy metal door for our passage to the interior, crying,--"Ah, ah, ah! still they come! Oh, how they will roast!" Then he looked keenly at Mr. Thompkins. It was interesting to note how that gentleman was always singled out by these shrewd students of humanity. This particular one added with great gusto, as he narrowly studied Mr. Thompkins, "Hist! ye infernal whelps; stir well the coals and heat red the prods, for this is where we take our revenge on earthly saintliness!" "Enter and be damned,--the Evil One awaits you!" growled a chorus of rough voices as we hesitated before the scene confronting us. Near us was suspended a caldron over a fire, and hopping within it were half a dozen devil musis dans, male and female, playing a selection from "Faust" on stringed instruments, while red imps stood by, prodding with red-hot irons those who lagged in their performance. Crevices in the walls of this room ran with streams of molten gold and silver, and here and there were caverns lit up by smouldering fires from which thick smoke issued, and vapors emitting the odors of a volcano. Flames would suddenly burst from clefts in the rocks, and thunder rolled through the caverns. Red imps were everywhere, darting about noiselessly, some carrying beverages for the thirsty lost souls, others stirring the fires or turning somersaults. Everything was in a high state of motion.