Below this cell I saw a kind of vast pit, and in it what looked like an infinite quantity of loathsome ordure, burning with a green flame, and on drawing near, I was aware, from the horrid howling that proceeded from it, that it was composed of men piled one upon another, the horrible flames crackling meanwhile through them. "This hollow," said the angel, "is the couch of those who say after committing some great sin, 'pooh! I am not the first, I have plenty of companions;' and thus you see, they _do_ get plenty of companions, to verify their words and to increase their agony." Opposite to this horrible place was a large cellar, where I could see men twisted, as tow is twisted, or hemp is spun. "Pray," said I "who are these?" "Panegyrists," said he, "and out of sheer mockery to them, the devils are trying whether it is possible to twist them as flexibly as they twisted their own discourse." A little way below that cell, I could but just descry a sort of prison-pool, very dark, and in it things which had been men, having faces like the heads of wolf-dogs, and up to their jaws in bog, barking blasphemy and lies most furiously, as long as they could get their sting above the mud. At this moment a troop of devils happening to pass by, some of these creatures contrived to bite in the heels, ten or twelve of the devils who had brought them thither. "Woe and destruction to you hell-dogs!" said one of the devils who had been bit, "you shall pay for this;" and forthwith commenced beating the bog, till the wretches were drowned in the stinking abysses. "Who," he then added, "have deserved hell better than you, who have been hunting up and devising gossip, and buzzing lies about from house to house, in order that you might laugh, after having set a whole country at loggerheads. What more could one of ourselves have done?" "That," said the angel, "is the bed of the tale-bearers, the slanderers, and the whisperers, and of all other envious curs, who are continually wounding people behind their backs with their hands or their tongues."