When I sat upon the throne of _Syria_, having no more religion than your _Most Christian Majesty_, I stifled all the dictates of my conscience, pillaged the temple of the _Jews_, caroused with their blood, and running from one crime to another, drew infinite desolations every where after me. But after I had exercised my tyranny on the innocent posterity of several great kings, and left a thousand monuments of my barbarity, I found to my sorrow, that I was mortal, and obliged to submit to that fare, whose attacks feeble nature cannot resist. I then fell into an abyss, which is enlightened only by those flames which will for ever roast such monsters as we; and where I was loaded with heavier irons than any I had plagu’d poor mortals with above. To welcome me into this place of horror, and refresh me after my voyage, I was plung’d into a bath of fire and brimstone, cupp’d by a Master-devil, rubb’d, scrubb’d, _&c._ by a parcel of smoaking, grinning hobgobblins, and afterwards presented with a musical entertainment of groans, howling, and gnashing of teeth. I soon began to play my part in this hideous consort, where despair beat the measure; and because my pains were infinitely greater than those of others, I immediately asked the reason of my torments, and was told it was for having hindered the peopling of Hell, by the multitude of martyrs my long persecutions had made, and of which you cannot be ignorant, if you delight in useful reading. Since I have been in this empire of sorrow, where I found the _Pharaohs_, _Ahabs_, _Jezebels_, _Athaliahs_, _Nebuchadnezzars_, &c. and where I have seen arrive the _Neroes_, _Dioclesians_, _Decii_,[1] _Philips of Austria_, [2] _Charles of Valois_, whose names would fill a volume; the recruits of _Loyola_ arrive every day in search of their captain, but in some confusion, for fear of meeting _Clement_ and _Ravillac_, who never cease cursing them. Your apartments, _Most Christian Hero_, has been some fifty years a rearing, but now they redouble their care, your coming being daily expected; I give you timely notice of it, that you may take your measures accordingly. Perhaps you will be offended at this familiarity, and tell me no man can deserve hell for fighting against hereticks, under the command of an infallible general; but if you know the present state of those miter’d leaders, it would not a little terrify you. _Lucifer_ has turned them into several shapes, and peopl’d his back yard with them; the place ’tis true, is not so delightful as your _Menagerie_ and _Trianon_ at _Versailles_, but much excels it in variety and number of monsters. Your cell is in the same yard, that you may be near your good friends, who advis’d you to make the habitation of the shades a desart; for which the prince of darkness hates you mortally, and designs you something worse than a fistula, or the bull of _Phalaris_. Your ingenious emissaries, _Marillac_, _la Rapine_, and _la