Pagina 433 de 1391

Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their messenger

to men from the world below. And he beheld and saw the souls

departing after judgment at either chasm; some who came from

earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who came from

heaven, were clean and bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest

awhile in the meadow; here they discoursed with one another of

what they had seen in the other world. Those who came from earth

wept at the remembrance of their sorrows, but the spirits from

above spoke of glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He said that

for every evil deed they were punished tenfold-now the journey

was of a thousand years' duration, because the life of man was

reckoned as a hundred years-and the rewards of virtue were in the

same proportion. He added something hardly worth repeating about

infants dying almost as soon as they were born. Of parricides and

other murderers he had tortures still more terrible to narrate.