[Illustration: PLATE XII.--THE LEGEND OF OWEN.] Owen was thrown on the dark shadowy earth, where the demons creep like hideous serpents. A mysterious wind, which he scarcely heard, passed over the mud, and it seemed to the knight as if he had been pierced by a spear-head. After a while the demons lifted him up; they took him straight off to the east, where the sun rises, as if they were going to the place where the universe ends. "Now, after they had journeyed for a long time here and there over divers countries, they brought him to an open field, very long and very full of griefs and chastisements; he could not see the end of the field, it was so long; there were men and women of various ages, who lay down all naked on the ground with their bellies downwards, who had hot nails driven into their hands and feet; and there was a fiery dragon, who sat upon them and drove his teeth into their flesh, and seemed as if he would eat them; hence they suffered great agony, and bit the earth in spite of its hardness, and from time to time they cried most piteously 'Mercy, mercy;' but there was no one there who had pity or mercy, for the devils ran among them and over them, and beat them most cruelly." The devils brought the knight towards a house of punishment, so broad and long that one could not see the end. This house is the house of baths, like those of the infernal regions, and the souls that are bathed in ignominy are there heaped in large vats. "Now so it was, that each of these vats was filled with some kind of metal, hot and boiling, and there they plunged and bathed many people of various ages, some of whom were plunged in over their heads, others up to the eyebrows, others up to the eyes, and others up to the mouth. Now all in truth of these people cried out with a loud voice and wept most piteously." Scarcely had the knight passed this terrible place, and left behind in his mysterious voyage that column of fire which rose like a lighthouse in the shades, and which shone so sadly betwixt hope and eternal despair, than a vast and magnificent spectacle displayed itself in the subterranean space. This luminous and odorescent region, where one might see so many archbishops, bishops, and monks of every order, was the terrestrial paradise; man does not stay there always; they told the knight that he could not taste too long its rapid delights; it is a place of transition between purgatory and the abodes of heaven, just as the dark places which he had traversed were made by the Creator between the world and the infernal regions. "In spite of our joys," said the souls, "we shall pass away from here." Then they took him to a mountain, and told him to look, and asked of him what colour the heavens seemed to be there where he was standing, and he replied it was the colour of burning gold, such as is in the furnace; and then they said to him, "That which you see is the entrance to heaven and the gate of paradise."