Silencious, alone and without escort, we went, one in front, the other behind, 
as the Minor Brothers walk by the roads.

I said to myself: 
"These devils were fooled by us so that I am sure they are irritated by it. And that 
they will run after us, crueler than  is the dog to the hare it seizes by the teeth."
 I already felt my hairs bristling by fear. I remained attentive behind and then I said to my Master: 
"If you do not hide us promptly, you and me, Master, I am well afraid of the Mal-griffe; 
we already have them  on our steps, I imagine them so close that I hear them already." 

He answered me: 
"Your thoughts coincided at this very moment with mine, 
that from ones and the others, I had in my head but the only desire to flee.
 If the slope of the side on the right-hand dam is such that we can go down
 in the following pit, we will avoid the hunting that you imagine with such anguish."
 At this time, I saw them arrive all their wings spread, not very far, and trying to seize us. 
My guide took  me at once in his arms, like a mother does it of her son, 
and he let himself slip on his back by the inclined rocks which close one on the sides of the other pit. 

As soon as his feet had touched the bed of this hollow, that they were above us on the peak; 
but there was nothing any more to fear, because the sublime Providence, who wanted to make them
the civils servant of the fifth pit, remove from them, the capacity to leave it. 
There we found at the bottom, plaintive people who walk around with slow steps, crying, 
with their demorilized air, unconscious and stripped of their free will. 
They carried blindfolds in front of their eyes. They went, one on a crutch, the other bound, 
some in yokes, the others armed with artificial limbs; these yokes were of lead so that in addition to 
limiting their gestures, they slowed down their movements.

 Oh, what an overpowering dress for eternity! 
We also turned towards the left, with them, attentive to their painful complaints; but under their exhausted
 loads, these tired people, made them go so slowly, that with each step we had new companions.
The  I said to my guide: 
"Try to find one of them who will be able to tell us who he is and why he is bound that way for eternity." 

And one of the damned, who recognized my accent of the country, shouted to slow down our steps 
and, he said to me: 
"You who, with the movement of your mouth, appears alive to me, if you ar dead, 
by what privilege do you walk without carrying crutches?"
 
And he added without waiting for my answer:
"From where you are from, who came to the hell of the leeches, do not scorn to say to us 
who you are but know that on earth, we exchanged our freedom against the dependence 
of our Mother the State which thought she was the Providence, and that this one 
supported us until that, there is no providence any more but the State. 
We are here, stripped and forgotten by the other Providence, the true one, 
and the only one who reigns in the heavens." 

To my eyes suddenly appeared to me, a damned one, by three piles, he was crucified on the ground. 
When he saw me, he twisted all his members, blowing in his black beard while sighing;  he says to me: 
"The one you look at, thus, is the Ayatollah Khomeiny who suggested to the people of Islam 
that it was necessary to sentence Salman Rushdi to the torment. I am as you see it, accompanied 
by those who formed with me, the council to execute the Fatta. 
We are placed naked thus across the way, and the people, who listened to us so much, 
still listen to us and makes us feel all their weight on our bodies." 

And I saw very well, as if it was a dream, a man attached to the pilori at the base of the Nelson column, 
that torturers were on the point of executing; and the hysterical crowd formed of ayatollahs, of talibans, 
of american evangelists and other twisted spirits of my race that I recognized, they shouted, they made the wave and 
they moulted themselves into a unic torturer, as if it were a formless crowd, excited by celebrities,
publicity professionals and a music coming from an organ with thundering sounds;
it waited, from the blood sheded by an intellectual or an artist, the expiation of their own faults, and 
which would see them forgiven until the birth of the next collective fear. 

Then I saw twelve worthy and elegant citizens, such as priests, read a message to the tortured victim 
of which I could not hear what it was said, then the crowd overexcited itself and shouted in one voice: 
"Death to whom, who think!" 

I woke up at the very moment when the axe was going to fall down on my neck and to precipitate
 my skull to the bottom of the Place Jacques-Cartier, from where it was going to roll and be immersed 
in the viscous waters of the Old Port. 

"I want to sing to you, Jeanne, oh my Queen, 
come to my assistance and protect me. 
Make me pass, victoriously, through these torments, 
the insidious calomnies and the lies of malicious tonges. 
Deliver me from the howling deer ready to devour me, 
from the hand of the torturers who bait themselves against my body, 
from all the tortures which they multiply against me. 
Make that I do not feel the burns of the flames that surround me, 
and withdraw me from this hell where, I was plunged,  by the coarse scandalmongerings,
 the denunciations to the authorities, the libelous slanderings. 
Until the last of my sighs, my soul praised your Name, 
and I beg you, take away from any danger, whom who loves you, 
and deliver him from the hand of these pagan,
Jeanne my Queen."(1) 

My Master was moved for a moment by my disorder, then he asked one of the torture victims: 
"Tell me, brother, if it is by the bridge which leaves the large circle where the exit  is, 
such as made us believe it, Mal-griffe?"
 The other answered: 
"Except that this bridge is broken, but you will be able to go up by the crumbling 
which is inclined and rises on its basis from the bottom." 
And he added with discretion:
 "I heard  that some one once said that the devil, in addition to being a blind State Servant, has
 many other vices and among them, I heard that he is a liar and a prevaricator and that it is in that,
 that he serves very well the State." 

My guide, to these words, went away in hurried steps, his face disturbed by anger; and I then left 
these damned, heavily handicapped ones, following the traces of his beloved feet.