George Borrow: The Man and His BooksThomas, Edward
General
George Borrow: The Man and His Books
Thomas, Edward
Borrow, George, 1803-1881
"I at the first glance saw more pains and torments than the heart of man
can imagine or the tongue relate; a single one of which was sufficient to
make the hair stand erect, the blood to freeze, the flesh to melt, the
bones to drop from their places--yea, the spirit to faint. What is
empaling or sawing men alive, tearing off the flesh piecemeal with iron
pincers, or broiling the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing
heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were
upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a
hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a
boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of
a dog is sweet, delicious music when compared with these sounds. When we
had proceeded a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the
wild place of Damnation, I perceived, by their own light, innumerable men
and women here and there; and devils without number and without rest,
incessantly employing their strength in tormenting. Yes, there they
were, devils and damned, the devils roaring with their own torments, and
making the damned roar by means of the torments which they inflicted upon
them. I paid particular observation to the corner which was nearest me.
There I beheld the devils with pitchforks, tossing the damned up into the
air that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchets or barbed pikes,
there to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl
in multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags,
there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar,
to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they
would be allowed to shiver for a time; thence they would be precipitated
into a loathsome pool of boiling brimstone, to wallow there in
conflagration, smoke and the suffocation of horrible stench; from the
pool they would be driven to the marsh of Hell, that they might embrace
and be embraced by the reptiles, many times worse than serpents and
vipers; after allowing them half an hour's dalliance with these creatures
the devils would seize a bundle of rods of steel, fiery hot from the
furnace, and would scourge them till their howling, caused by the
horrible inexpressible pain which they endured, would fill the vast abode
of darkness, and when the fiends deemed that they had scourged them
enough, they would take hot irons and sear their bloody wounds. . . ."
And this would have particularly pleased Borrow, who disliked and
condemned smoking:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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