Coming out of that wondrous defile, I heard much talking, and for every word such wild horse-laughter as if some five hundred devils would shed their horns with laughing. But after I had drawn near to behold the very rare sight of a smile in hell, what was it but two gentlemen, lately arrived, appealing for the respect due to their rank, and the merriment was intended only to give affront to them. A pot-bellied squire stood there with an enormous roll of parchment, his genealogical chart, declaring from how many of the Fifteen Tribes of Gwynedd he had sprung, how many justices of the peace, and how many sheriffs there had been of his house. “Ha ha,” cried one of the devils, “we know the merit of most of your forebears, were you like your father, or great-great-grandsire, we would not have deigned to touch you. But thou, thou art but the heir of utter darkness, vile whelp, thou art hardly worth a night’s lodging; and yet thou shalt have some nook to await the dawn.” And at the word the impetuous monster pierces him with his pitchfork, and after whirling him thirty times through the fiery welkin, hurled him into a hole out of sight. “That is right enough for a half-blood squire,” said the other, “but I hope ye will be better mannered towards a knight who has served the king in person; twelve earls and fifty knights can I recount from mine own ancient line.” “If thine ancestors, and thy long pedigree are all thy plea, thou canst go the same gate,” quoth a devil, “for we remember scarce one old estate of large extent which some oppressor, some murderer or robber has not founded, leaving it to others as arrant as they, to idle blockheads or to drunken swine. To maintain lavish pomp, they had to grind their vassals and tenants, and if there be a beautiful pony or a fine cow which my lady covets, she will have them, and well it happens if the daughters, yea, even the wives, escape the lust of their lord. And the small free-holders around them must either vainly follow or give bail for them, resulting in their own ruin, the loss of their possessions, and the sale of their patrimony, or expect to be hated and despised, and forced to every idle pursuit. Oh how nobly they swear to gain the confidence of their minions or of their tradesmen, and when decked out in their finery, how contemptuously they look upon many an officer of importance in church and state, as if such were mere worms compared with them. Woe’s me, is not all blood of one color? Was it not the same way that ye all entered the world?” “For all that, craving your pardon,” said the knight, “there are some births purer than others.” “For the great doom all your carcases are the same,” said the imp, “everyone of you is defiled by the sin that took its origin in Adam.” “But, sir,” continued he, “if your blood is aught better than another, the less scum will there be when shortly it will be bubbling through your body, and if there be more, we must examine you, part by part, through