She beheld Inger, put on her spectacles, and looked at her.
"That is a girl with talents," said she. "I shall ask for her as a souvenir of my visit here; she may do very well as a statue to ornament my great-grandchildren's antechamber;" and she took her.
It was thus little Inger went to the infernal regions. People do not generally go straight through the air to them: they can go by a roundabout path when they know the way.
It was an antechamber in an infinity. One became giddy there at looking forwards, and giddy at looking backwards, and there stood a crowd of anxious, pining beings, who were waiting and hoping for the time when the gates of grace should be opened. They would have long to wait. Hideous, large, waddling spiders wove thousands of webs over their feet; and these webs were like gins or foot-screws, and held them as fast as chains of iron, and were a cause of disquiet to every soul—a painful annoyance. Misers stood there, and lamented that they had forgotten the keys of their money chests. It would be too tiresome to repeat all the complaints and troubles that were poured forth there. Inger thought it shocking to stand there like a statue: she was, as it were, fastened to the ground by the bread.
"This comes of wishing to have clean shoes," said she to herself. "See how they all stare at me!"
Yes, they did all stare at her; their evil passions glared from their eyes, and spoke, without sound, from the corner of their mouths: they were frightful.
"It must be a pleasure to them to see me," thought little Inger. "I have a pretty face, and am well dressed;" and she dried her eyes. She had not lost her conceit. She had not then perceived how her fine clothes had been soiled in the brewhouse of the Old Woman of the Bogs. Her dress was covered with dabs of nasty matter; a snake had wound itself among her hair, and it dangled over her neck; and from every fold in her garment peeped out a toad, that puffed like an asthmatic lap-dog. It was very disagreeable. "But all the rest down here look horrid too," was the reflection with which she consoled herself.
But the worst of all was the dreadful hunger she felt. Could she not stoop down and break off a piece of the bread on which she was standing? No; her back was stiffened; her hands and her arms were stiffened; her whole body was like a statue of stone; she could only move her eyes, and these she could turn entirely round, and that was an ugly sight. And flies came and crept over her eyes backwards and forwards. She winked her eyes; but the intruders did not fly away, for they could not—their wings had been pulled off. That was another misery added to the hunger—the gnawing hunger that was so terrible to bear!
"If this goes on I cannot hold out much longer," she said.
But she had to hold out, and her sufferings became greater.