I came next to a noisome dark hole, and there I saw a company of dyers, all in dirt and smoke, intermixed with the devils, and so alike that it would have posed the subtlest inquisitor in Spain to have said, which were the devils and which the dyers.
There stood at my elbow a strange kind of mongrel devil, begot betwixt a black and a white; with a head so bestruck with little horns, that it looked at a distance like a hedgehog. I took the boldness to ask him, where they quartered the Sodomites, the old women and the cuckolds. “As for the cuckolds,” said he, “they are all over hell, without any certain quarter or station; and in truth, ’tis no easy matter to know a cuckold from a devil, for (like kind husbands) they wear their wives’ favours still, and the very same headpieces in hell that they wore living in the world. As to the Sodomites, we have no more to do with them than needs must; but upon all occasions, we either fly, or face them: for if ever we come to give them a broadside, ’tis ten to one but we get a hit betwixt wind and water; and yet we fence with our tails, as well as we can, and they get now and then a flap o’er the mouth into the bargain. And for the old women, we make them stand off; for we take as little pleasure in them, as you do: and yet the jades will be persecuting us with their passions; and ye shall have a bawd of five-and-fifty do ye all the gambols of a girl of fifteen. And yet, after all this, there’s not an old woman in hell; for let her be as old as Paul’s — bald, blind, toothless, wrinkled, decrepit: this is not long of her age, she’ll tell you; but a terrible fit of sickness last year, that fetched off her hair, and brought her so low that she has not yet recovered her flesh again. She lost her eyes by a hot rheum; and utterly spoiled her teeth with cracking of peach-stones and eating of sweet-meats when she was a maid. And when the weight of her years has almost brought both ends together, ’tis nothing she’ll tell ye but a crick she has got in her back: and though she might recover her youth again, by confessing her age, she’ll never acknowledge it.”
My next encounter was, a number of people making their moan that they had been taken away by sudden death. “That’s an impudent lie,” cried a devil, “(saving this gentleman’s presence) for no man dies suddenly. Death surprises no man, but gives all men sufficient warning and notice.” I was much taken with the devil’s civility and discourse; which he pursued after this manner. “Do ye complain,” says he, “of sudden death? that have carried death about ye, ever since you were born; that have been entertained with daily spectacles of carcasses and funerals; that have heard so many sermons upon the subject; and read so many good books upon the frailty of life and the certainty of death. Do ye not know that every moment ye live brings ye nearer to your end? Your clothes wear out, your woods and your houses decay, and yet ye look that your bodies should be immortal. What are the common accidents and diseases of life, but so many warnings to provide yourself for a remove? Ye have death at the table, in your daily food and nourishment; for your life is maintained by the death of other creatures. And you have the lively picture of it, every night for your bedfellow. With what face then can you charge your misfortunes upon sudden death? that have spent your whole life, both at bed, and at board, among so many remembrances of your mortality. No, no; change your style, and hereafter confess yourselves to have been careless and incredulous. You die, thinking you are not to die yet; and forgetting that death grows upon you, and goes along with ye from one end of your life to the other, without distinguishing of persons or ages, sex or quality; and whether it finds ye well or ill-doing; As the tree falls, so it lies.”