After him, came the treasurers, and such a cry following them, for cheating and stealing, that some said the thieves were coming; others said no; and the company was divided upon’t. They were much troubled at the word, thieves, and desired the benefit of counsel to plead their cause. “And very good reason,” said one of the devils, “here’s a discarded apostle that has executed both offices, let them take him, where’s Judas?” When the treasurers heard that, they turned aside, and by chance, spied in a devil’s hand, a huge roll of accusations ready drawn into a formal charge against them. With that, one of the boldest among them: “Away, away,” cried he, “with these informations; we’ll rather come to a fine and compound, though it were for ten or twenty thousand years in purgatory.” “Ha! ha!” quoth the devil, a cunning snap that drew up the charge, “if ye are upon those terms ye are hard put to’t.” Whereupon the treasurers, being brought to a forced put, were e’en glad to make the best of a bad game, and follow the fencer. These were no sooner gone, but in came an unlucky pastry-man; they asked him if he would be tried. “That’s e’en as’t hits,” said he. At that word, the devil that managed the cause against him, pressed his charge, and laid it home to him, that he had put off cats for hares; and filled his pies with bones instead of flesh; and not only so, but that he had sold horse-flesh, dogs, and foxes, for beef and mutton. Upon the issue, it was proved against him, that Noah never had so many animals in his ark as this poor fellow had put in his pies (for we read of no rats and mice there), so that he e’en gave up his cause, and went away to see if his oven were hot. Next, came the philosophers with their syllogisms, and it was no ill entertainment to hear them chop logic, and put all their expostulations, in mood and figure. But the pleasantest people in the world were the poets, who insisted upon it, that they were to be tried by Jupiter; and to the charge of worshiping false gods, their answer was that through them they worshipped the true one, and were rather mistaken in the name than in the worship. Virgil had much to say for himself, for his _Sicelides Musæ_; but Orpheus interrupted him, who being the father of the poets desired to be heard for them all. “What, he?” cried one of the devils, “yes; for teaching that boys were better bed-fellows than wenches; but the women had combed his coxcomb for him, if they could have catched him.” “Away with him to hell once again,” then they cried; “and let him get out now if he can.” So they all filed off, and Orpheus was their guide, because he had been there once before. So soon as the poets were gone, there knocked at the gate a rich penurious chuff; but ’twas told him that the Ten Commandments kept it, and that he had not kept them. “It is impossible,” quoth he, “under favour, to prove that ever I broke any one of them.” And so he went to justify himself from point to