how bodies wind
themselves round one another, how yells for mercy sound, but the heaven
above them is brazen. Only the echo of their shouts return to them.
There however and yonder again in the dark corners grin the masks of
devils with birdlike faces, froglike bodies, and eagle claws. They
hover like bats around the damned and mock their torments. Now they
seize the heaps of the tortured, they shoulder them, and away with them
to the chaldron of burning brimstone. Dost thou see how the blue flames
flare upwards? If one attempts to creep out, the devils flog him in
again with snake scourges; dost thou see that one winding himself as a
serpent round the body of yonder woman, and the toad on her body and
the devil kissing her with his bat-like snout? Now the devils lay their
heads together; how they gnash with their teeth, how their mocking
laugh resounds! They are considering new torments, sharper tortures.
Dost thou see them shaking in fresh pitch, and the red column of flame
now rising upwards? Now the smoke hides the light; a vapour conceals
the ruddy glow, but the shrieks of terror increase. See how they look
at us, how they stretch out their hands to us, they beg for our help,
our prayers...."

"Oh, I can endure no more," sighed the poor child--"every thing smells
of sulphur, I faint--I must leave."

"Go, my daughter, but preserve in a true heart, that which thou has
seen."

Clara and Lydia Erast still lay with bowed heads in their dark corners.
The young Priest took his seat at the organ and played in gentle,
soothing strains, calculated to loose the souls of the penitents from
their excitement. A light step through the Church told him that the
second maiden was now leaving. Only Lydia remained in her dark corner.
The tall figure now approached her. Did he more resemble the archangel
of God, or the angel which had fallen away through lofty pride from the
Eternal, as he thus approached in the gloom the silent worshipper?
Never had Paolo looked handsomer. His black eyes gleamed with the fire
of that ecstasy into which he had worked himself, and a changing colour
glowed over his pale cheek. "Dost thou feel the sweetness of heavenly
love," he whispered. "Lydia, dost thou see the sweet smiling lips of
the Saviour?" The kneeling Lydia felt, how he bowed his face over her
head, her bosom worked tempestuously up and down, her cheeks assumed a
deeper colour. As if in the fervor of prayer he seized her hand, and
the maid