263. While I was meditating on these things, an angel from the Lord said to me, "You shall presently see, and be convinced by ocular demonstration, what is the nature and quality of that infernal love." Then suddenly the earth opened on the left, and I saw a devil ascending from hell, with a square cap on his head let down over his forehead even to his eyes: his face was full of pimples as of a burning fever, his eyes fierce and firy, his breast swelling immensely; from his mouth he belched smoke like a furnace, his loins seemed all in a blaze, instead of feet he had bony ankles without flesh, and from his body exhaled a stinking and filthy heat. On seeing him I was alarmed, and cried out, "Approach no nearer; tell me, whence are you?" He replied in a hoarse tone of voice, "I am from below, where I am with two hundred in the most supereminent of all societies. We are all emperors of emperors, king of kings, dukes of dukes, and princes of princes; no one in our society is barely an emperor, a king, a duke, or a prince. We sit there on thrones of thrones, and despatch thence mandates through the whole world and beyond it." I then said to him, "Do you not see that you are insane from the phantasy of super-eminence?" and he replied, "How can you say so, when we absolutely seem to ourselves, and are also acknowledged by each other, to have such distinction?" On hearing this, I was unwilling to repeat my charge of insanity, as he was insane from phantasy; and I was informed that this devil, during his abode in the world, had been only a house-steward, and at that time he was so lifted up in spirit, that he despised all mankind in comparison with himself, and indulged in the phantasy that he was more worthy than a king, and even than an emperor; in consequence of which proud conceit, he had denied God, and had regarded all the holy things of the church as of no concern to himself, but of some to the stupid multitude. At length I asked him, "How long do you two hundred thus glory among yourselves?" He replied "to eternity; but such of us as torture others for denying our super-eminence, sink under ground; for we are allowed to glory, but not to do mischief to any one." I asked him again, "Do you know what befalls those who sink under ground?" He said, "They sink down into a certain prison, where they are called viler than the vile, or the vilest, and are set to work." I then said to him. "Take heed therefore, lest you also should sink down."