CL 513. The lust of seducing innocences is neither the lust of defloration nor the lust of violation, but is a lust peculiar to itself and stands alone. It exists especially with the deceitful. The women who appear to them as innocences are those who account the evil of whoredom as an enormous sin and who therefore are zealous for chastity and at the same time for piety. It is towards these that they burn with desire. In countries of the Catholic religion they are nuns. Believing these nuns to be pious innocences above all others, they look upon them as the dainties and delicacies of their lust. In order to seduce such women, being deceitful, they first think out artifices and then, imbuing their talents therewith and undeterred by shame, they practise them as though they were natural. Their artifices are chiefly simulations of innocence, love, chastity, and piety. By these and other cunning means, they enter into interior friendship with the virgins and so into their love. By various persuasions and at the same time insinuations, they then turn this love from spiritual into natural, and later, by incitements, into corporeal-carnal love, and then they take possession of them at their pleasure. With this accomplished, they rejoice in heart and laugh to scorn those whom they have violated.

CL 514. The lot of these seducers after death is sad, for this seduction is not only impiety but also malignity. After passing through the first period of their life, which is spent in externals, and during which they excel many others in elegant manners and smooth speech, they are brought into the second period which is spent in internals and in which their lust is set free and commences its play. They are then first brought to women who have taken the vow of chastity. While with these, they are explored as to the nature of their malignant concupiscence, and this because they must not be judged unless convicted. When they sensate the chastity of these women, their deceit commences to act and to practise its wiles, but being in vain they leave them.

[2] Afterwards they are introduced to women of genuine innocence. When they attempt in the same way to beguile these, then, as a result of a power given these women, they are grievously punished; for they bring on their hands and feet, and likewise on their neck, the heaviness of numbness, and finally cause them to feel a kind of swoon, and while they are thus suffering, the women escape. After this a way opens for them to a band of harlots who have learned skilfully to counterfeit innocence. Among themselves, these harlots first expose them to ridicule, and then, after various pledges, suffer themselves to be violated.

[3] After several scenes of this kind, then comes the third period which is that of judgment. Then, being convicted, they sink down and are gathered to their like in a hell which is in the northern quarter. There they appear from afar off like weasels. But if they had been consumed with deceit they are taken from this hell to the hell of the deceitful which is deep down in the western quarter at the back. In this hell they appear from afar like serpents of various kinds, and the most deceitful of them like vipers; but in the hell itself, into which it was given me to look, they were seen by me as ghastly with a chalky face. Being merely concupiscences, they do not like to speak, and if they do speak, they merely mutter and murmur various things which are understood by none but the companions at their sides. As they are sitting or standing, they suddenly make themselves invisible and fly around in the cavern like spectres; for they are then in fantasy, and fantasy appears to fly. After flying, they rest, and then, what is surprising, they do not know one another. This is due to the fact that they are in deceit, and deceit does not believe another and so withdraws itself. When they sensate anything proceeding from conjugial love, they flee into crypts and hide themselves. They are also without love of the sex, and are absolute impotences. They are called infernal genii.