It spares none. Sage and saint cannot escape it. Virtue and chastity are not secure against its onslaught. Scandal thrives on human weakness. Foul and filthy in its nature, it finds its place among the graceful and great.
Credulous ear is ever eager to believe anything and everything poured into it.
The idle tongue of the talebearer wags and many a one is ever at hand to lend an easy ear and believe and credit the scandal. There are those that enjoy talking scandal as a means of killing time and find a malicious delight in giving currency to it. Scandal, thus, fills the air in human society, civilized and refined. Recounting the ghastly spectacle of the vision vouchsafed him of hell, Viraf relates that a backbiter's soul is attacked from the rear for such a sinner indulges in secret calumnies at the back of his victim in this world. The tongue of a slanderer, he says, is gnawed by serpents and scorpions and the noxious creatures of inferno.