Chapter IX

Further on, thousands on thousands of harsh, rough accents wounded his ears with a discordant roar,--blasphemies, cries for vengeance, drinking songs, indecencies, curses of despair, threats of the helpless, and sacrilegious oaths of the impious.

Teobaldo traversed the second circle with the rapidity of a meteor crossing the sky in a summer evening, that he might not hear his own voice which vibrated there thunderously loud, exceeding all other voices in the stress of that infernal concert.

“I do not believe in God! I do not believe in God!” still spake his tone beating through that ocean of blasphemies; and Teobaldo began to believe.