816. Since the genera of hatred and revenge are countless, and the species of them even more countless, and since the hell of one genus is never like that of another, and it is accordingly impossible to number every single one of them in order, let me therefore relate what I have seen. Someone came to me who looked like a nobleman. (Spirits have appeared to me as in broad daylight, and in light even brighter. They have done so however before my internal sight, since the Lord's Divine mercy has allowed me into the presence of spirits.) On his first arrival that man pretended by beckoning movements to have many matters he wished to convey to me. He asked whether I was a Christian, and I replied that I was. He asserted that he was too, and asked to be alone with me, to tell me something that others were not to hear. But I replied that in the next life people are unable to be alone in the way people imagine they are on earth, and that many spirits were present. He drew closer however and went round behind my back, at which point I perceived that he was an assassin. While he was there I felt a kind of stab through the heart, and immediately after that in the brain, the kind of stab from which someone would easily die. But because I was protected by the Lord I feared nothing. What method he used I do not know. Thinking that I was dead he told others that he had just left someone whom he had killed in this manner - and indeed by a fatal blow from behind - and he said that he was skilled in a method by which the victim knew nothing before falling down dead, and one by which nobody would doubt his innocence. From this I was given to know that he had recently departed this earthly life where he had performed such villainy. The punishment of such people is horrifying. After they have undergone hellish tortures for ages their face at length becomes abhorrent and utterly grotesque, so that it is not a face any more but something that looks like dirty yellow rope. In this way they lose everything human, at which point everyone shudders at the sight of them. As a consequence they roam around like wild animals in gloomy places.