The princess Lucre was next, with her silly, mean figure, bringing along with her very many of the money loving race--such as usurers, lawyers, extortioners, overseers, game-keepers, harlots, and some ecclesiastics also. Next to these was the amiable princess Pleasure and her daughter Folly, conducting their subjects--consisting of players at dice, cards, draughts, games of legerdemain, and of poets, musicians, tellers of old stories, drunkards, ladies of pleasure, debauches, pretty fellows, with a thousand million of all kinds of baubles, to serve now as instruments of punishment for the lost fools. After these three had gone with their prisoners to the palace, to receive their judgment--behold Hypocrisy, the last of all, conducting a more numerous rout than any of the others, of all nations and ages, of town and country, gentle and simple, males and females. At the tail of the two-faced multitudes we advanced till we came in sight of the palace, through many dragons and horned sprites, and warriors of Hell, the black wardens of the gloomy pandemonium, I all the time crouching very carefully within my veil. We entered the frightful and awful edifice, every corner of which abounded with horror. The walls were immense rocks of glowing adamant, the pavement of an insufferably sharp flint, the roof of burning steel, meeting like an arch of greenish- blue and dusky-red flames, and in its size and its heat, resembling an immense vaulted baking oven. Opposite to the door, on a flaming throne, the Arch-Fiend was seated, his principal lost angels on both sides of him, on thrones of fire terrible to behold--sitting according to their former rank in the regions of light, when they were amiable messengers. It would only be in vain to endeavour to relate how obscene and horrible they were; and the longer I looked at any one of them, seven times more hideous he appeared. In the midst, above the head of Lucifer, was a vast fist, holding a very frightful bolt. The princesses, after making their obeisance, returned to the world to their charges, without making any stay. As soon as they had departed, a gigantic, wide-mouthed devil, by command of the king, uttered a shout louder than a hundred discharges of artillery, as loud if possible as the last trumpet, for the purpose of summoning the infernal parliament. And lo! the rabble of Hell instantly filled the palace and the porch in every shape, after the image and similitude of the principal sin, which each delighted to thrust upon mankind. After commanding silence, Lucifer, with his look directed to the potentates nearest to him, began to speak, very graciously, in the following manner:--