CHAPTER XII.
RIDICULING PRIESTS.
THE pictures in the room of the three States were large, and painted by an artist who knew how to make horrible ones. They appeared to be stuck to the walls. The light is admitted from small high windows, curtained, so as to make everything look gloomy. They told us that they were painted by an artist, to whom God had given power to represent things exactly as they appeared in heaven, hell, and purgatory.
In heaven, the picture of which hangs on one side of the apartment, multitudes of nuns and priests are put in the highest places, with the Virgin Mary at their head, St. Peter and other saints, far above the great numbers of good Catholics of other classes, who are crowded in below.
In purgatory are multitudes of people; and in one part, called "The place of lambs," are infants who died unbaptised. "The place of darkness" is that part of purgatory in which adults are collected, there they are surrounded by flames, waiting to be delivered by the prayers of the living.
In the picture of hell the faces were the most horrible that can be imagined. Persons of different descriptions were represented, with the most distorted features, ghastly complexions, and every variety of dreadful expression: some with wild beasts gnawing at their heads, others furiously biting the iron bars which kept them in, with looks which could not fail to make a spectator shudder.
I could hardly persuade myself that the figures
