Closer and closer they gather – a moving mass of evil personified.
As Franchezzo stands watching the crowd, his attention is drawn to a group of spirits who are pointing over at him. Faithful Friend leaves Franchezzo to speak with them alone for they may recognise him as having been there before.
As Faithful Friend moves away, the dark spirits draw near to Franchezzo with every gesture of friendliness. Franchezzo responds with politeness, though he feels the most violent repugnance to their company – they are repulsive-looking, horrible in their wicked, leering ugliness.
One touches Franchezzo on the shoulder. As Franchezzo turns to him, with a dim sense of having seen him before, the spirit laughs – a wild horrid laugh – and cries out –
I hail thee, friend – who I see dost not so well remember me as I do thee, though it was upon the earth plane we met before. I, as well as others, then sought hard to be of service to thee, only thou wouldst have none of our help, and played us, methinks, but a scurvy trick instead. None the less for this, we, who are as lambs, didst thou but know us, have forgiven thee.
Another also draws near to Franchezzo, leering with a smile perfectly diabolical and says –
So ho! You are here after all, friend, in this nice land with us. Then surely you must have done something to merit the distinction? Say whom you have killed or caused to be killed, for none are here who cannot claim at least one slain by them, while many of us can boast of a procession as long as the ghosts that appeared to Macbeth, and others again – our more distinguished citizens – count their slain by hundreds. Did you kill that one after all? – ha! ha! ha!
And he breaks into such a wild horrible peal of laughter that Franchezzo turns to fly from them – for, like a flash, the memory of that time when he, too, could have been almost a murderer comes across his mind and he recognises in these horrible beings those who had surrounded him and counselled him how to fulfil his desire – how to wreak his vengeance. Franchezzo recoils from them but they have no thought to let him go. He is here – drawn down, as they hoped, at last – and they seek to keep him with them that he might afford them some sport and they might avenge themselves on him for their former defeat.
Franchezzo reads this thought in their minds, though outwardly they are crowding around him with every protestation of hearty friendliness. For a moment he is at a loss what to do. Then he resolves to go with them and see what they intend, watching at the same time for the first opportunity to free himself from them. He suffers them to take him by an arm each and they proceed towards a large house on one side of the square which they say is theirs and where they will have the pleasure of introducing him to their friends. Faithful Friend passes close to them and looking at Franchezzo impresses the warning –
Consent to go but beware of entering into any of their enjoyments or allowing your mind to be dragged down to their level.
They enter and pass up a wide staircase of greyish stone, which like all things here bears the marks and stains of shame and crime. The broad steps are broken and imperfect, with holes here and there large enough, some of them, to let a man through into the black dungeon-like depths beneath. As they pass up he feels one of them give him a sly push just as they are stepping over one of these and had he not been watching for some such trick he might have been tripped up and pushed in. As it is he simply draws aside and his too officious companion narrowly escapes tumbling in himself, at which the rest all laugh and he scowls savagely at Franchezzo. Franchezzo recognises him just then as the one whose hand had shrivelled in the silver ring of fire drawn around his beloved on the occasion when her love had drawn him to her and saved him from yielding to these dark fiends. This spirit holds his hand carefully hidden under his black cloak, yet Franchezzo can see through it and he sees the shrivelled hand and arm and knows that he might indeed beware of its owner.
At the top of the staircase they pass into a large magnificent room, lighted up by a glare of fire and hung around with dark draperies which are in perfect rags and tatters and all splashed with crimson stains of wet blood, as though this had been the scene of, not one but many, murders. Around the rooms are placed ghostly phantoms of ancient furniture – ragged, dirty and defaced, yet retaining in them a semblance to an earthly apartment of great pretensions to splendour. This room is filled with the spirits of men and women. They have lost all that could ever have given them any claim to the charms and privileges of their sex. They are worse to look on than the most degraded bedraggled specimens to be seen in any earthly slum at night. Only in Hell can women sink to such an awful degradation. The men are as bad or even worse and words utterly fail him to describe them. They are eating, drinking, shouting, dancing, playing cards and quarrelling over them – going on in such a way as the worst and lowest scenes of earthly dissipation can but faintly picture.
Franchezzo can see a faint reflection of the earthly lives of each and knows each alike has been guilty, not only of shameless lives, but also of murder from one motive or another. On his left is one who had been a Duchess in the days of the sixteenth century and he sees that in her history she had from jealousy and cupidity poisoned no less than six persons. Beside her is a man who had belonged to the same era and had caused several persons obnoxious to him to be assassinated by his bravoes and had slain another with his own hand in a treacherous manner during a quarrel.
Another woman had killed her illegitimate child because it stood between her and wealth and position. She has not been many years in this place and seems more overcome by shame and remorse than any of the others, so Franchezzo resolves to get near to and speak to her.
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Astronaut photo of ash cloud from Mount Cleveland, Alaska – ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center |