CANTO LXV.
After the annual parade Hiprah Hunt is given a farewell banquet at Satan's palace on the Styx.
As guest of honor he sits at one end of a long table and Satan sits at the other. He describes the magnificence of the scene and his meeting with the members of the Hell Common Council.
Charming women from the female department wait on the table.
When in response to a toast Mr. Hunt tells the Demons that a great majority of the civilized world think Hell only a bugaboo dream, they are convulsed with laughter.
The banquet over, Hiprah Hunt bids farewell to Satan and his colleagues. The Arch-Fiend asks him to come again, and Mr. Hunt promises to do so if he recovers from the exploration just ended.
Taking an ascending car back to the American entrance he climbs out into the upper world, through the same wild forest he had passed six weeks before. Under a star-lit sky he makes his way home with proofs that Hell really is; that Dante was right, and that Hiprah Hunt is his legitimate successor.
In conclusion, Mr. Hunt adds the following verse, the wisdom of which no reader will deny who has followed the explorer's journey below, or better still followed his own life, noting the penalties that resulted from folly and disobedience of laws of right living here on earth:
"Good people all, who deal with the Devil,
Be warned now by what I say!
His credit's long, and his tongue is civil,
But you'll have the Devil to pay."
