Cotton from the outside
I
"Oh, Heaven help us! What is that dreadful noise! Run, run! Has somebody been killed?"
"Do not distress yourself, kind-hearted sir. It is only the merchants of Alexandria, buying cotton."
"But they are murdering one another surely."
"Not so. They merely gesticulate."
"Does any place exist whence one could view their gestures in safety?"
"There is such a place."
"I shall come to no bodily harm there?"
"None, none."
"Then conduct me, pray."
And mounting to an upper chamber we looked down into a stupendous Hall.
It is usual to compare such visions to Dante's Inferno, but this really did resemble it, because it was marked out into the concentric circles of which the Florentine speaks. Divided from each other by ornamental balustrades, they increased in torment as they decreased in size, so that the inmost ring was congested beyond redemption with perspiring souls. They shouted and waved and spat at each other across the central basin which was empty but for a permanent official who sat there, fixed
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