my rising fears. "Far from it, far from it!" answered Blackana. "We
are now in the lowest legislative center _where foul fiends invent the
horrible laws of personal pollution in the mortal body, and political
bribery in the civil body._"
Blackana held me by the hand. I seemed not to walk but rather to move
along without effort, seeing the pictures of lowest life and ill-shaped
spirits, some of monster size.
Into an immense auditorium I was wafted, a building without foundations
or floor. Here, amidst uncanny noises, hovered a vast throng of Satan's
lowest legislators.
The dreadful suggestions here given, and the terrible debates that
followed, beggar human description. From all parts of the great hall
the busy wires were communicating with every section of the earth's
surface.
Blackana, still holding me by the hand, spoke! thus in a derisive
strain:
"O mortal, now comes my glorious revenge I have tasted your insults
until their galling bitterness grinds me still. I have craved for this
hour when I might leave you to the mercy of the lowest, and bring you
under my feet for ever."
Then, turning to the chairman of the great assemblage, Blackana
attracted his attention, and at once the attention of all the spectral
monsters of the place.
"Here," commenced he, "is a piece of mortal flesh, fresh from the
surface. I have been forced, by some strange power, to conduct this
mortal man through these nether levels until he has seen the workings
of our underground plans and schemes. He must never see the light of
day, lest the world above may know the true inwardness and source of
such laws as are called cursed, and rise in hosts against our surface
operations."
At this Blackana thrust me forward, and I went straightway to the
chairman who seized me by the back and held me aloft in his right hand,
while a deafening roar of strident voices was measuring my doom.
"_Ho, ye ten thousand!_" I cried aloud, at which the horrid chairman
fell backward, and I dropped unharmed to his own chair as the whole
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