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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Devil Stories
+       An Anthology
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Maximilian J. Rudwin
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVIL STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL STORIES
+
+AN ANTHOLOGY
+
+SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL COMMENTS
+
+BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+    _“Mortal, mock not at the Devil,
+      Life is short and soon will fail,
+    And the ‘fire everlasting’
+      Is no idle fairy-tale.”_
+                               --HEINE.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+ALFRED · A · KNOPF
+
+MCMXXI
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL LORE
+
+ANTHOLOGIES OF DIABOLICAL LITERATURE EDITED BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+I. DEVIL STORIES [First Series]
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+  DEVIL PLAYS
+  DEVIL ESSAYS
+  DEVIL LEGENDS
+  THE BOOK OF LADY LILITH
+  ANTHOLOGY OF SATANIC VERSE
+  BIBLIOGRAPHIA DIABOLICA
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN_
+
+
+The Prophet and Disputation
+Scenes in the Religious Drama
+of the German Middle Ages.
+
+The Devil Scenes in the Religious
+Drama of the German Middle
+Ages.
+
+The Devil in the German Religious
+Plays of the Middle
+Ages and the Reformation.
+[Hesperia: Johns Hopkins
+Studies in Modern Philology,
+No. 6.]
+
+The Origin of the German Carnival
+Comedy.
+
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+The Devil in Modern French
+Literature.
+
+
+
+
+TO ALL STUDENTS OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN LITERATURE
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The preparation of this book would have been out of the question
+without the co-operation of authors and publishers. Proper
+acknowledgment has been given on the first page of each selection to
+the publishers who have granted us permission to reprint it. We take
+this opportunity to express once more our deep appreciation of the
+courtesies extended to us by all the parties concerned in the material
+between the covers of this book. Special thanks are offered to Mr.
+John Masefield for his permission to republish his story, and to
+Messrs. Arthur Symons and Leo Wiener and to Miss Isabel F. Hapgood for
+their permission to use their translations of the foreign stories
+which we have selected. To Professor Henry Alfred Todd and Dr. Dorothy
+Scarborough, of Columbia University, who have kindly read portions of
+the manuscript, the editor is indebted for a number of helpful
+suggestions. He adds his thanks to Professor Raymond Weeks, also of
+Columbia University, who called his attention to the Daudet story, and
+to his former colleague, Professor Otto A. Greiner, of Purdue
+University, who was good enough to read part of the proofs.
+
+                                             THE PUBLISHER.
+                                                THE EDITOR.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY 1
+  _A Mediaeval Tale By Francis Oscar Mann_
+
+BELPHAGOR, OR THE MARRIAGE OF THE DEVIL (1549) 14
+  _From the Italian of Niccolò Machiavelli_
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER (1824) 28
+  _By Washington Irving_
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN (1828) 46
+  _From the German of Wilhelm Hauff_
+
+ST. JOHN’S EVE (1830) 56
+  _From the Russian of Nikolái Vasilévich Gógol_
+  _Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood_
+
+THE DEVIL’S WAGER (1833) 79
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN (1834) 93
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+BON-BON (1835) 112
+  _By Edgar Allan Poe_
+
+THE PRINTER’S DEVIL (1836) 136
+  _Anonymous_
+
+THE DEVIL’S MOTHER-IN-LAW (1859) 149
+  _From the Spanish by Fernán Caballero_
+  _Translated by J. H. Ingram_
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER (1864) 162
+  _From the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire_
+  _Translated by Arthur Symons_
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES (1869) 167
+  _A Christmas Story From the French of Alphonse Daudet_
+  _Translated by Robert Routeledge_
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS (1871) 179
+  _By Frederick Beecher Perkins_
+
+THE DEVIL’S ROUND (1874) 203
+  _A Tale of Flemish Golf From the French of Charles Deulin_
+  _Translated by Isabel Bruce_
+  _With an introductory note by Andrew Lang_
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL (1888) 222
+  _From the French of Guy de Maupassant_
+
+THE DEMON POPE (1888) 228
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+MADAM LUCIFER (1888) 242
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+LUCIFER (1895) 250
+  _From the French of Anatole France_
+  _Translated by Alfred Allinson_
+
+THE DEVIL (1899) 257
+  _From the Russian of Maxím Gorky_
+  _Translated by Leo Wiener_
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN (1905) 268
+  _By John Masefield_
+
+NOTES 279
+
+INDEX 325
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Of all the myths which have come down to us from the East, and of all
+the creations of Western fancy and belief, the Personality of Evil has
+had the strongest attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the
+greatest enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence. So
+large a place has Satan taken in our imagination, and we might also
+say in our heart, that his expulsion therefrom, no matter what
+philosophy may teach us, must for ever remain an impossibility. As a
+character in imaginative literature Lucifer has not his equal in
+heaven above or on the earth beneath. In contrast to the idea of Good,
+which is the more exalted in proportion to its freedom from
+anthropomorphism, the idea of Evil owes to the presence of this
+element its chief value as a poetic theme. The discrowned archangel
+may have been inferior to St. Michael in military tactics, but he
+certainly is his superior in matters literary. The fair angels--all
+frankness and goodness--are beyond our comprehension, but the fallen
+angels, with all their faults and sufferings, are kin to us.
+
+There is a legend that the Devil has always had literary aspirations.
+The German theosophist Jacob Böhme relates that when Satan was asked
+to explain the cause of God’s enmity to him and his consequent
+downfall, he replied: “I wanted to be an author.” Whether or not the
+Devil has ever written anything over his own signature, he has
+certainly helped others compose their greatest works. It is a
+significant fact that the greatest imaginations have discerned an
+attraction in Diabolus. What would the world’s literature be if from
+it we eliminated Dante’s _Divine Comedy_, Calderón’s _Marvellous
+Magician_, Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, Goethe’s _Faust_, Byron’s _Cain_,
+Vigny’s _Eloa_, and Lermontov’s _Demon_? Sorry indeed would have been
+the plight of literature without a judicious admixture of the
+Diabolical. Without the Devil there would simply be no literature,
+because without his intervention there would be no plot, and without a
+plot the story of the world would lose its interest. Even now, when
+the belief in the Devil has gone out of fashion, and when the very
+mention of his name, far from causing men to cross themselves, brings
+a smile to their faces, Satan has continued to be a puissant personage
+in the realm of letters. As a matter of fact, Beelzebub has perhaps
+received his greatest elaboration at the hands of writers who believed
+in him just as little as Shakespeare did in the ghost of Hamlet’s
+father.
+
+Commenting on Anatole France’s _The Revolt of the Angels_, an American
+critic has recently written: “It is difficult to rehabilitate
+Beelzebub, not because people are of one mind concerning Beelzebub,
+but because they are of no mind at all.” How this demon must have
+laughed when he read these lines! Why, he needs no rehabilitation. The
+Devil has never been absent from the world of letters, just as he has
+never been missing from the world of men. Since the days of Job, Satan
+has taken a deep interest in the affairs of the human race; and while
+most writers content themselves with recording his activities on this
+planet, there never have been lacking men of sufficient courage to
+call upon the prince of darkness in his proper dominions in order to
+bring back to us, for our instruction and edification, a report of his
+work there. The most distinguished poet his infernal Highness has ever
+entertained at his court, it will be recalled, was Dante. The mark
+which the scorching fires of hell left on Dante’s face, was to his
+contemporaries sufficient proof of the truth of his story.
+
+The subject-matter of literature may always have been in a state of
+flux, but the Devil has been present in all the stages of literary
+evolution. All schools of literature in all ages and in all languages
+set themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, to represent and
+interpret the Devil, and each school has treated him in its own
+characteristic manner.
+
+The Devil is an old character in literature. Perhaps he is as old as
+literature itself. He is encountered in the story of the paradisiacal
+sojourn of our first ancestors, and from that day on, Satan has
+appeared unfailingly, in various forms and with various functions, in
+all the literatures of the world. His person and his power continued
+to develop and to multiply with the advance of the centuries, so that
+in the Middle Ages the world fairly pullulated with demons. From his
+minor place in the biblical books, the Devil grew to a position of
+paramount importance in mediaeval literature. The Reformation, which
+was a movement of progress in so many respects, left his position
+intact. Indeed, it rather increased his power by withdrawing from the
+saints the right of intercession in behalf of the sinners. Neither the
+Renaissance of ancient learning nor the institution of modern science
+could prevail against Satan. As a matter of fact, the growth of the
+interest in the Devil has been on a level with the development of the
+spirit of philosophical inquiry. French classicism, to be sure,
+occasioned a setback for our hero. As a member of the Christian
+hierarchy of supernatural personages, the Devil could not help but be
+affected by the ban under which Boileau placed Christian
+supernaturalism. But even the eighteenth century, a period so inimical
+to the Supernatural, produced two master-devils in fiction: Le Sage’s
+Asmodeus and Cazotte’s Beelzebub--worthy members of the august company
+of literary Devils.
+
+But as if to make amends for its long lack of appreciation of the
+Devil’s literary possibilities, France, in the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, brought about a distinct reaction in his favour.
+The sympathy extended by that country of revolutionary progress to all
+victims and to all rebels, whether individuals or classes or nations,
+could not well be denied to the celestial outlaw. The fighters for
+political, social, intellectual, and emotional liberty on earth, could
+not withhold their admiration from the angel who demanded freedom of
+thought and independence of action in heaven. The rebel of the
+Empyrean was hailed as the first martyr in the cause of liberty, and
+his rehabilitation in heaven was demanded by the rebels on earth.
+Satan became the symbol of the restless, hapless nineteenth century.
+Through his mouth that age uttered its protest against the monarchs
+of heaven and earth. The Romantic generation of 1830 thought the world
+more than ever out of joint, and who was better fitted than the Devil
+to express their dissatisfaction with the celestial government of
+terrestrial affairs? Satan is the eternal Malcontent. To Hamlet,
+Denmark seemed gloomy; to Satan, the whole world appears dark. The
+admiration of the Romanticists for Satan was mixed with pity and
+sympathy--so much his melancholy endeared him to their sympathies, so
+kindred it seemed to their human weakness. The Romanticists felt a
+deep admiration for solitary grandeur. This “knight of the doleful
+countenance,” laden with a curse and drawing misfortune in his train,
+was the ideal Romantic hero. Was he not indeed the original _beau
+ténébreux_? Thus Satan became the typical figure of that period and
+its poetry. It has been well remarked that if Satan had not existed,
+the Romanticists would have invented him. The Devil’s influence on the
+Romantic School was so strong and so sustained that soon it was named
+after him. The terms Romantic and Satanic came to be wellnigh
+synonymous. The interest which the French Romanticists showed in the
+Devil, moreover, passed beyond the boundaries of France and the limits
+of the nineteenth century. The Symbolists, for whom the mysteries of
+Erebus had a potent attraction, were simply obsessed by Satan. But
+even the Naturalists, who certainly were not haunted by phantoms,
+often succumbed to his charms. Foreign writers turning for inspiration
+to France, where the literature of the last century reached its
+highest perfection, were also caught in the French enthusiasm for the
+Devil.
+
+Needless to say that this Devil is not the evil spirit of mediaeval
+dogma. The Romantic Devil is an altogether new species of the _genus
+diaboli_. There are fashions in Devils as in dresses, and what is a
+Devil in one country or one century may not pass muster in another. It
+is related that after the glory of Greece had departed, a mariner,
+voyaging along her coast by night, heard from the woods the cry:
+“Great Pan is dead!” But Pan was not dead; he had fallen asleep to
+awake again as Satan. In like manner, when the eighteenth century
+believed Satan to be dead, he was, as a matter of fact, only
+recuperating his energies for a fresh start in a new form. His new
+avatar was Prometheus. Satan continued to be the enemy of God, but he
+was no longer the enemy of man. Instead of a demon of darkness he
+became a god of grace. This champion of celestial combat was not
+actuated by hatred and envy of man, as Christianity was thought to
+teach us, but by love and pity for humankind. The strongest expression
+of this idea of the Devil in modern literature has been given by
+August Strindberg, whose Lucifer is a compound of Prometheus, Apollo
+and Christ. However, this interpretation of the Devil, whatever value
+it may have from the point of view of originality, is aesthetically as
+well as theologically not acceptable. Such a revaluation of an old
+value offends our intellect while it touches our heart. All successful
+treatment of the Devil in literature and art must be made to
+correspond with the norm of popular belief. In art we are all
+orthodox, whatever our views may be in religion. This new conception
+of Satan will be found chiefly in poetry, while the popular concept
+has been continued in prose. But even here a gradual evolution of the
+idea of the Devil will be observed. The nineteenth century Demon is an
+improvement on his _confrère_ of the thirteenth. He differs from his
+older brother as a cultivated flower from a wild blossom. The Devil as
+a human projection is bound to partake in the progress of human
+thought. Says Mephistopheles:
+
+    “Culture, which the whole world licks,
+    Also unto the Devil sticks.”
+
+The Devil advances with the progress of civilization, because he is
+what men make him. He has benefited by the modern levelling tendency
+in characterization. Nowadays supernatural personages, like their
+human creators, are no longer painted either as wholly white or as
+wholly black, but in various shades of grey. The Devil, as Renan has
+aptly remarked, has chiefly benefited by this relativist point of
+view. The Spirit of Evil is better than he was, because evil is no
+longer so bad as it was. Satan, even in the popular mind, is no longer
+a villain of the deepest dye. At his worst he is the general
+mischief-maker of the universe, who loves to stir up the earth with
+his pitch-fork. In modern literature the Devil’s chief function is
+that of a satirist. This fine critic directs the shafts of his sarcasm
+against all the faults and foibles of men. He spares no human
+institution. In religion, art, society, marriage--everywhere his
+searching eye can detect the weak spots. The latest demonstration of
+the Devil’s ability as a satirist of men and morals is furnished by
+Mark Twain in his posthumous romance _The Mysterious Stranger_.
+
+The Devil Lore Series, which opens with this book of Devil Stories, is
+to serve as documentary evidence of man’s abiding interest in the
+Devil. It will be a sort of portrait-gallery of the literary
+delineations of Satan. The Anthologies of Diabolical Literature may be
+considered, I trust, without any risk of offence to any theological or
+philosophical prepossession. To those alike who accept and who reject
+the belief in the Devil’s spiritual entity apart from man’s, there
+must be profit and pleasure in the contemplation of his literary
+incarnations. As regards the Devil’s fitness as a literary character,
+all intelligent men and women, believers and unbelievers, may be
+assumed to have but one opinion.
+
+This Series is wholly devoted to the Christian Devil with the total
+disregard of his cousins in the other faiths. There will, however, be
+found a strong Jewish element in Christian demonology. It must be
+borne in mind that our literature has become saturated through
+Christian channels with the traditions of the parent creed.
+
+This collection has been limited to twenty tales. Within the bounds
+thus set, an effort has been made to have this book as representative
+of national and individual conceptions of the Devil as possible. The
+tales have been taken from many times and tongues. Selection has been
+made not only among writers, but also among the stories of each
+writer. In two instances, however, where the choice was not so easy,
+an author is represented by two specimens from his pen.
+
+The stories have been arranged in chronological order to show the
+constant and continuous appeal on the part of the Devil to our
+story-writers. The mediaeval tale, although published last, was
+placed first. For obvious reasons, this story has not been given in
+its original form, but in its modernized version. While this is not
+meant to be a nursery-book, it has been made _virginibus puerisque_,
+and for this reason, selections from Boccaccio, Rabelais and Balzac
+could not find their way into these pages. Moreover, as this volume
+was limited to narratives in prose, devil’s tales in verse by Chaucer,
+Hans Sachs and La Fontaine could not be considered, either.
+Nevertheless this collection is sufficiently comprehensive to please
+all tastes in Devils. The reader will find between the covers of this
+book Devils fascinating and fearful, Devils powerful and picturesque,
+Devils serious and humorous, Devils pathetic and comic, Devils
+phantastic and satiric, Devils gruesome and grotesque. I have tried,
+though, to keep them all in good humour throughout the book, and can
+accordingly assure the reader that he need fear no harm from an
+intimate acquaintance with the diabolical company to which he is
+herewith introduced.
+
+                                       MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY[1]
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+    [1] Taken by permission from _The Devil in a Nunnery and
+    other Mediaeval Tales_, by Francis Oscar Mann, published by
+    P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1914.
+
+Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see on a seven days’
+journey. Neither was it any less pleasant in the days of our Lord King
+Edward, the third of that name, he who fought and put the French to
+shameful discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another
+hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he now sleeps in the
+great Church at Westminster.
+
+Buckinghamshire is full of smooth round hills and woodlands of
+hawthorn and beech, and it is a famous country for its brooks and
+shaded waterways running through the low hay meadows. Upon its hills
+feed a thousand sheep, scattered like the remnants of the spring snow,
+and it was from these that the merchants made themselves fat purses,
+sending the wool into Flanders in exchange for silver crowns. There
+were many strong castles there too, and rich abbeys, and the King’s
+Highway ran through it from North to South, upon which the pilgrims
+went in crowds to worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.
+Thereon also rode noble knights and stout men-at-arms, and these you
+could follow with the eye by their glistening armour, as they wound
+over hill and dale, mile after mile, with shining spears and shields
+and fluttering pennons, and anon a trumpet or two sounding the same
+keen note as that which rang out dreadfully on those bloody fields of
+France. The girls used to come to the cottage doors or run to hide
+themselves in the wayside woods to see them go trampling by; for
+Buckinghamshire girls love a soldier above all men. Nor, I warrant
+you, were jolly friars lacking in the highways and the by-ways and
+under the hedges, good men of religion, comfortable of penance and
+easy of life, who could tip a wink to a housewife, and drink and crack
+a joke with the good man, going on their several ways with tight
+paunches, skins full of ale and a merry salutation for every one. A
+fat pleasant land was this Buckinghamshire; always plenty to eat and
+drink therein, and pretty girls and lusty fellows; and God knows what
+more a man can expect in a world where all is vanity, as the Preacher
+truly says.
+
+There was a nunnery at Maids Moreton, two miles out from Buckingham
+Borough, on the road to Stony Stratford, and the place was called
+Maids Moreton because of the nunnery. Very devout creatures were the
+nuns, being holy ladies out of families of gentle blood. They
+punctually fulfilled to the letter all the commands of the pious
+founder, just as they were blazoned on the great parchment Regula,
+which the Lady Mother kept on her reading-desk in her little cell. If
+ever any of the nuns, by any chance or subtle machination of the Evil
+One, was guilty of the smallest backsliding from the conduct that
+beseemed them, they made full and devout confession thereof to the
+Holy Father who visited them for this purpose. This good man loved
+swan’s meat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed to
+provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and whatsoever
+penance he laid upon them they performed to the utmost, and with due
+contrition of heart.
+
+From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently carried out the
+services of Holy Mother Church. After dinner, one read aloud to them
+from the Rule, and again after supper there was reading from the life
+of some notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample
+for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage. For the rest, they
+tended their herb garden, reared their chickens, which were famous for
+miles around, and kept strict watch over their haywards and
+swineherds. If time was when they had nothing more important on hand,
+they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages imaginable for the
+Bishop, the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot
+and other godly men of religion round about, who were forced often to
+bleed themselves for their health’s sake and their eternal salvation,
+so that these venerable men in process of time came to have by them
+great chests full of these useful articles. If little tongues wagged
+now and then as the sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who
+shall blame them, _Eva peccatrice_? Not I; besides, some of them were
+something stricken in years, and old women are garrulous and hard to
+be constrained from chattering and gossiping. But being devout women
+they could have spoken no evil.
+
+One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at supper, the
+Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged up and down the hall at
+the long trestled tables. The Abbess had just said “_Gratias_” and
+the sisters had sung “_Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula
+saeculorum, Amen_,” when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and, with
+many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the hands, sidled himself
+up upon the dais, and, permission having been given him, spoke to the
+Lady Mother thus:
+
+“Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who asks refreshment
+and a night’s lodging.” It is true he spoke softly, but little pink
+ears are sharp of hearing, and nuns, from their secluded way of life,
+love to hear news of the great world.
+
+“Send him away,” said the Abbess. “It is not fit that a man should lie
+within this house.”
+
+“Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he should starve of
+hunger and exhaustion on his way to do penance and worship at the Holy
+Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.”
+
+“What kind of pilgrim is he?”
+
+“Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears of a reverend and
+gracious aspect, a young man well spoken and well disposed. Madam
+knows it waxeth late, and the ways are dark and foul.”
+
+“I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages and good
+works, to faint and starve by the wayside. Let him sleep with the
+haywards.”
+
+“But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance and conversation;
+saving your reverence, I would not wish to ask him to eat and sleep
+with churls.”
+
+“He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter and eat of our poor
+table.”
+
+“Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command. He hath with him,
+however, an instrument of music and would fain cheer you with
+spiritual songs.”
+
+A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches of the great
+hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.
+
+“Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light juggler, a singer
+of vain songs, a mocker. I would not have these quiet halls disturbed
+by wanton music and unholy words. God forbid.” And she crossed
+herself.
+
+“Madam, I will answer for it.”
+
+The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went down the middle of
+the hall, his keys rattling at his belt. A little buzz of conversation
+rose from the sisters and went up to the oak roof-trees, like the
+singing of bees. The Abbess told her beads.
+
+The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God knows what manner of
+man he was; I cannot tell you. He certainly was lean and lithe like a
+cat, his eyes danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks
+and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit’s that lives on roots and
+ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went like the tune of a May game,
+and he screwed and twisted his scarlet-jerkined body in time with
+them. In his left hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his
+right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones of those
+who heard it, and teased every delicate nerve in the body. Such a tune
+would have tickled the ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go
+pilgrimaging certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the young nuns
+tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they showed their red gums,
+it is hard to tell. Even the Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though
+she tried to frown a moment later.
+
+The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal devil in his
+legs making the nuns think of the games the village folk play all
+night in the churchyard on Saint John’s Eve.
+
+“Gracious Mother,” he cried, bowing deeply and in comely wise, “allow
+a poor pilgrim on his way to confess and do penance at the shrine of
+Saint Alban to take food in your hall, and to rest with the haywards
+this night, and let me thereof make some small recompense with a few
+sacred numbers, such as your pious founder would not have disdained to
+hear.”
+
+“Young man,” returned the Abbess, “right glad am I to hear that God
+has moved thy heart to godly works and to go on pilgrimages, and
+verily I wish it may be to thy soul’s health and to the respite of thy
+pains hereafter. I am right willing that thou shouldst refresh thyself
+with meat and rest at this holy place.”
+
+“Madam, I thank thee from my heart, but as some slight token of
+gratitude for so large a favour, let me, I pray thee, sing one or two
+of my divine songs, to the uplifting of these holy Sisters’ hearts.”
+
+Another burst of chatter, louder than before, from the benches in the
+hall. One or two of the younger Sisters clapped their plump white
+hands and cried, “Oh!” The Lady Abbess held up her hand for silence.
+
+“Verily, I should be glad to hear some sweet songs of religion, and I
+think it would be to the uplifting of these Sisters’ hearts. But,
+young man, take warning against singing any wanton lines of vain
+imagination, such as the ribalds use on the highways, and the idlers
+and haunters of taverns. I have heard them in my youth, although my
+ears tingle to think of them now, and I should think it shame that any
+such light words should echo among these sacred rafters or disturb the
+slumber of our pious founder, who now sleeps in Christ. Let me remind
+you of what saith Saint Jeremie, _Onager solitarius, in desiderio
+animae suae, attraxit ventum amoris_; the wild ass of the wilderness,
+in the desire of his heart, snuffeth up the wind of love; whereby that
+holy man signifies that vain earthly love, which is but wind and air,
+and shall avail nothing at all, when this weak, impure flesh is
+sloughed away.”
+
+“Madam, such songs as I shall sing, I learnt at the mouth of our holy
+parish priest, Sir Thomas, a man of all good learning and purity of
+heart.”
+
+“In that case,” said the Abbess, “sing in God’s name, but stand at the
+end of the hall, for it suits not the dignity of my office a man
+should stand so near this dais.”
+
+Whereon the pilgrim, making obeisance, went to the end of the hall,
+and the eyes of all the nuns danced after his dancing legs, and their
+ears hung on the clear, sweet notes he struck out of his cithern as he
+walked. He took his place with his back against the great hall door,
+in such attitude as men use when they play the cithern. A little
+trembling ran through the nuns, and some rose from their seats and
+knelt on the benches, leaning over the table, the better to see and
+hear him. Their eyes sparkled like dew on meadowsweet on a fair
+morning.
+
+Certainly his fingers were bewitched or else the devil was in his
+cithern, for such sweet sounds had never been heard in the hall since
+the day when it was built and consecrated to the service of the
+servants of God. The shrill notes fell like a tinkling rain from the
+high roof in mad, fantastic trills and dying falls that brought all
+one’s soul to one’s lips to suck them in. What he sang about, God only
+knows; not one of the nuns or even the holy Abbess herself could have
+told you, although you had offered her a piece of the True Cross or a
+hair of the Blessed Virgin for a single word. But a divine yearning
+filled all their hearts; they seemed to hear ten thousand thousand
+angels singing in choruses, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia; they floated
+up on impalpable clouds of azure and silver, up through the blissful
+paradises of the uppermost heaven; their nostrils were filled with the
+odours of exquisite spices and herbs and smoke of incense; their eyes
+dazzled at splendours and lights and glories; their ears were full of
+gorgeous harmonies and all created concords of sweet sounds; the very
+fibres of being were loosened within them, as though their souls would
+leap forth from their bodies in exquisite dissolution. The eyes of the
+younger nuns grew round and large and tender, and their breath almost
+died upon their velvet lips. As for the old nuns, the great, salt
+tears coursed down their withered cheeks and fell like rain on their
+gnarled hands. The Abbess sat on her dais with her lips apart, looking
+into space, ten thousand thousand miles away. But no one saw her and
+she saw no one; every one had forgotten every one else in that
+delicious intoxication.
+
+Then with a shrill cry, full of human yearnings and desire, the
+minstrel came to a sudden stop--
+
+    “Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
+      And the small rain will down rain?
+    Christ, if my love were in my arms,
+      And I in my bed again.”
+
+Silence!--not one of the holy Sisters spoke, but some sighed; some put
+their hands over their hearts, and one put her hand in her hood, but
+when she felt her hair shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again
+sharply, as though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, “O Jesu.”
+
+Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to speak in a cracked,
+high voice, quickly and monotonously, as though she spoke in a dream.
+Her eyes were wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. “God knows,”
+she said, “I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all those who be maids
+here, to be mindful of the woods. For they are green, but they are
+deep and dark, and it is merry in the springtime with the thick turf
+below and the good boughs above, all alone with your heart’s
+darling--all alone in the green wood. But God help me, he would not
+stay any more than snow at Easter. I thought just now that I was back
+with him in the woods. God keep all those that be maids from the green
+woods.”
+
+The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate,
+was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though
+she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely
+shoulders rise and fall. “Blessed Virgin,” she cried. “Ah, ye ask too
+much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know,” and her grey eyes
+filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the
+table, and sobbed aloud.
+
+Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig
+dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters
+privily mocked, “It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have
+held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into
+mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into
+earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips
+again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy
+Mother! Holy Mother!”
+
+“He must come oftener,” said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little
+nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a
+plum. “I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of
+apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every
+time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in
+the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring
+again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples.”
+
+Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her
+arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself.
+
+      “Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay.”
+
+She moaned to herself, “I have seen the village women go to the well,
+carrying their babies with them, and they laugh as they go by on the
+way. Their babies hold them tight round the neck, and their mothers
+comfort them, saying, ‘Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my
+sweeting.’ Christ and the blessed Saints know that I have never felt a
+baby’s little hand in my bosom--and now I shall die without it, for I
+am old and past the age of bearing children.”
+
+      “Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay.”
+
+“I have heard them on a May morning, with their pipes and tabors and
+jolly, jolly music,” cried Sister Helen; “I have seen them too, and my
+heart has gone with them to bring back the white hawthorn from the
+woods. ‘A man and a maid to a hawthorn bough,’ as it says in the song.
+They sing outside my window all Saint John’s Eve so that I cannot say
+my prayers for the wild thoughts they put into my brain, as they go
+dancing up and down in the churchyard; I cannot forget the pretty
+words they say to each other, ‘Sweet love, a kiss’; ‘kiss me, my love,
+nor let me go’; ‘As I went through the garden gate’; ‘A bonny black
+knight, a bonny black knight, and what will you give to me? A kiss,
+and a kiss, and no more than a kiss, under the wild rose tree.’ Oh,
+Mary Mother, have pity on a poor girl’s heart, I shall die, if no one
+love me, I shall die.”
+
+“In faith, I am truly sorry, William,” said Sister Agnes, who was
+gaunt and hollow-eyed with long vigils and overfasting, for which the
+good father had rebuked her time after time, saying that she
+overtasked the poor weak flesh. “I am truly sorry that I could not
+wait. But the neighbours made such a clamour, and my father and mother
+buffeted me too sorely. It is under the oak tree, no more than a foot
+deep, and covered with the red and brown leaves. It was a pretty sight
+to see the red blood on its neck, as white as whalebone, and it
+neither cried nor wept, so I put it down among the leaves, the pretty
+poppet; and it was like thee, William, it was like thee. I am sorry I
+did not wait, and now I’m worn and wan for thy sake, this many a long
+year, and all in vain, for thou never comst. I am an old woman now,
+and I shall soon be quiet and not complain any more.”
+
+Some of the Sisters were sobbing as if their hearts would break; some
+sat quiet and still, and let the tears fall from their eyes unchecked;
+some smiled and cried together; some sighed a little and trembled like
+aspen leaves in a southern wind. The great candles in the hall were
+burning down to their sockets. One by one they spluttered out. A
+ghostly, flickering light fell upon the legend over the broad dais,
+“_Connubium mundum sed virginitas paradisum complet_”--“Marriage
+replenisheth the World, but virginity Paradise.”
+
+“Dong, dong, dong.” Suddenly the great bell of the Nunnery began to
+toll. With a cry the Abbess sprang to her feet; there were tear stains
+on her white cheeks, and her hand shook as she pointed fiercely to the
+door.
+
+“Away, false pilgrim,” she cried. “Silence, foul blasphemer! _Retro
+me, Satanas._” She crossed herself again and again, saying _Pater
+Noster_.
+
+The nuns screamed and trembled with terror. A little cloud of blue
+smoke arose from where the minstrel had stood. There was a little
+tongue of flame, and he had disappeared. It was almost dark in the
+hall. A few sobs broke the silence. The dying light of a single candle
+fell on the form of the Lady Mother.
+
+“Tomorrow,” she said, “we shall fast and sing _Placebo_ and _Dirige_
+and the _Seven Penitential Psalms_. May the Holy God have mercy upon
+us for all we have done and said and thought amiss this night. Amen.”
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+We read in the ancient archives of Florence the following account, as
+it was received from the lips of a very holy man, greatly respected by
+every one for the sanctity of his manners at the period in which he
+lived. Happening once to be deeply absorbed in his prayers, such was
+their efficacy, that he saw an infinite number of condemned souls,
+belonging to those miserable mortals who had died in their sins,
+undergoing the punishment due to their offences in the regions below.
+He remarked that the greater part of them lamented nothing so bitterly
+as their folly in having taken wives, attributing to them the whole of
+their misfortunes. Much surprised at this, Minos and Rhadamanthus,
+with the rest of the infernal judges, unwilling to credit all the
+abuse heaped upon the female sex, and wearied from day to day with its
+repetition, agreed to bring the matter before Pluto. It was then
+resolved that the conclave of infernal princes should form a committee
+of inquiry, and should adopt such measures as might be deemed most
+advisable by the court in order to discover the truth or falsehood of
+the calumnies which they heard. All being assembled in council, Pluto
+addressed them as follows: “Dearly beloved demons! though by celestial
+dispensation and the irreversible decree of fate this kingdom fell to
+my share, and I might strictly dispense with any kind of celestial or
+earthly responsibility, yet, as it is more prudent and respectful to
+consult the laws and to hear the opinion of others, I have resolved to
+be guided by your advice, particularly in a case that may chance to
+cast some imputation upon our government. For the souls of all men
+daily arriving in our kingdom still continue to lay the whole blame
+upon their wives, and as this appears to us impossible, we must be
+careful how we decide in such a business, lest we also should come in
+for a share of their abuse, on account of our too great severity; and
+yet judgment must be pronounced, lest we be taxed with negligence and
+with indifference to the interests of justice. Now, as the latter is
+the fault of a careless, and the former of an unjust judge, we,
+wishing to avoid the trouble and the blame that might attach to both,
+yet hardly seeing how to get clear of it, naturally enough apply to
+you for assistance, in order that you may look to it, and contrive in
+some way that, as we have hitherto reigned without the slightest
+imputation upon our character, we may continue to do so for the
+future.”
+
+The affair appearing to be of the utmost importance to all the princes
+present, they first resolved that it was necessary to ascertain the
+truth, though they differed as to the best means of accomplishing this
+object. Some were of opinion that they ought to choose one or more
+from among themselves, who should be commissioned to pay a visit to
+the world, and in a human shape endeavour personally to ascertain how
+far such reports were grounded in truth. To many others it appeared
+that this might be done without so much trouble merely by compelling
+some of the wretched souls to confess the truth by the application of
+a variety of tortures. But the majority being in favour of a journey
+to the world, they abided by the former proposal. No one, however,
+being ambitious of undertaking such a task, it was resolved to leave
+the affair to chance. The lot fell upon the arch-devil Belphagor, who,
+previous to the Fall, had enjoyed the rank of archangel in a higher
+world. Though he received his commission with a very ill grace, he
+nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto’s imperial mandate, and
+prepared to execute whatever had been determined upon in council. At
+the same time he took an oath to observe the tenor of his
+instructions, as they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and
+ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were to the following
+effect:--_Imprimis_, that the better to promote the object in view, he
+should be furnished with a hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly,
+that he should make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the
+world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he should enter
+into the marriage state; and lastly, that he should live with his wife
+for the space of ten years. At the expiration of this period, he was
+to feign death and return home, in order to acquaint his employers, by
+the fruits of experience, what really were the respective conveniences
+and inconveniences of matrimony. The conditions further ran, that
+during the said ten years he should be subject to all kinds of
+miseries and disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty,
+prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall, unless, indeed,
+he could contrive by his own skill and ingenuity to avoid them. Poor
+Belphagor having signed these conditions and received the money,
+forthwith came into the world, and having set up his equipage, with a
+numerous train of servants, he made a very splendid entrance into
+Florence. He selected this city in preference to all others, as being
+most favourable for obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and
+having assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he took a
+house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because he was unable to
+explain the instructions under which he acted, he gave out that he was
+a merchant, who having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria,
+and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo, whence he had lastly
+set out for Italy, with the intention of marrying and settling there,
+as one of the most polished and agreeable countries he knew.
+
+Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently about thirty
+years of age, and he lived in a style of life that showed he was in
+pretty easy circumstances, if not possessed of immense wealth. Being,
+moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted the notice
+of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and
+small incomes. The former of these were soon offered to him, from
+among whom Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl of the name of Onesta,
+a daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had also three sons, all grown up,
+and three more daughters, also nearly marriageable. Though of a noble
+family and enjoying a good reputation in Florence, his father-in-law
+was extremely poor, and maintained as poor an establishment.
+Roderigo, therefore, made very splendid nuptials, and omitted nothing
+that might tend to confer honour upon such a festival, being liable,
+under the law which he received on leaving his infernal abode, to feel
+all kinds of vain and earthly passions. He therefore soon began to
+enter into all the pomps and vanities of the world, and to aim at
+reputation and consideration among mankind, which put him to no little
+expense. But more than this, he had not long enjoyed the society of
+his beloved Onesta, before he became tenderly attached to her, and was
+unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now,
+along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had
+brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of
+pride, that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her; for
+her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss
+to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became
+infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo’s
+attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an
+ascendancy over him and rule him with a rod of iron. Not content with
+this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with
+all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most
+indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her
+father, her brothers, her friends, and relatives, the duty of the
+matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some
+time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the
+follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her
+taste for dress, and every article of the newest fashion, in which
+our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual
+habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was
+obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in
+portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish
+one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with
+silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater’s
+establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his
+fortune was soon consumed. At length the Carnival season was at hand;
+the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as
+usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to
+vie with each other in the splendour of their parties, and the Lady
+Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance,
+insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their
+feasts. For the reasons above stated, he submitted to her will; nor,
+indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult
+it might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of
+preserving the peace and comfort of his household, and of awaiting
+quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case,
+inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height
+of asperity by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to
+act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the
+house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable
+life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered in consequence of
+having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs it is impossible to
+express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with
+him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than
+longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself,
+amidst this turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the
+ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of
+the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being
+still in good credit, in order to support his rank he resorted to
+bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against
+him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy
+speculators in that market. Just as his case became extremely
+delicate, there arrived sudden tidings both from East and West that
+one of his wife’s brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo’s
+profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich
+cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he
+himself was lost. No sooner did this affair transpire than his
+creditors assembled, and supposing it must be all over with him,
+though their bills had not yet become due, they resolved to keep a
+strict watch over him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his
+part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling how deeply
+he was bound by the Stygian law, determined at all hazards to make his
+escape. So taking horse one morning early, as he luckily lived near
+the Prato gate, in that direction he went off. His departure was soon
+known; the creditors were all in a bustle; the magistrates were
+applied to, and the officers of justice, along with a great part of
+the populace, were dispatched in pursuit. Roderigo had hardly
+proceeded a mile before he heard this hue and cry, and the pursuers
+were soon so close at his heels that the only resource he had left was
+to abandon the highroad and take to the open country, with the hope of
+concealing himself in the fields. But finding himself unable to make
+way over the hedges and ditches, he left his horse and took to his
+heels, traversing fields of vines and canes, until he reached
+Peretola, where he entered the house of Matteo del Bricca, a labourer
+of Giovanna del Bene. Finding him at home, for he was busily providing
+fodder for his cattle, our hero earnestly entreated him to save him
+from the hands of his adversaries close behind, who would infallibly
+starve him to death in a dungeon, engaging that if Matteo would give
+him refuge, he would make him one of the richest men alive, and afford
+him such proofs of it before he took his leave as would convince him
+of the truth of what he said; and if he failed to do this, he was
+quite content that Matteo himself should deliver him into the hands of
+his enemies.
+
+Now Matteo, although a rustic, was a man of courage, and concluding
+that he could not lose anything by the speculation, he gave him his
+hand and agreed to save him. He then thrust our hero under a heap of
+rubbish, completely enveloping him in weeds; so that when his pursuers
+arrived they found themselves quite at a loss, nor could they extract
+from Matteo the least information as to his appearance. In this
+dilemma there was nothing left for them but to proceed in the pursuit,
+which they continued for two days, and then returned, jaded and
+disappointed, to Florence. In the meanwhile, Matteo drew our hero from
+his hiding-place, and begged him to fulfil his engagement. To this
+his friend Roderigo replied: “I confess, brother, that I am under
+great obligations to you, and I mean to return them. To leave no doubt
+upon your mind, I will inform you who I am;” and he proceeded to
+acquaint him with all the particulars of the affair: how he had come
+into the world, and married, and run away. He next described to his
+preserver the way in which he might become rich, which was briefly as
+follows: As soon as Matteo should hear of some lady in the
+neighbourhood being said to be possessed, he was to conclude that it
+was Roderigo himself who had taken possession of her; and he gave him
+his word, at the same time, that he would never leave her until Matteo
+should come and conjure him to depart. In this way he might obtain
+what sum he pleased from the lady’s friends for the price of
+exorcizing her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan, Roderigo
+disappeared.
+
+Not many days elapsed before it was reported in Florence that the
+daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei, a lady married to Buonajuto
+Tebalducci, was possessed by the devil. Her relations did not fail to
+apply every means usual on such occasions to expel him, such as making
+her wear upon her head St. Zanobi’s cap, and the cloak of St. John of
+Gualberto; but these had only the effect of making Roderigo laugh. And
+to convince them that it was really a spirit that possessed her, and
+that it was no flight of the imagination, he made the young lady talk
+Latin, hold a philosophical dispute, and reveal the frailties of many
+of her acquaintance. He particularly accused a certain friar of having
+introduced a lady into his monastery in male attire, to the no small
+scandal of all who heard it, and the astonishment of the brotherhood.
+Messer Ambrogio found it impossible to silence him, and began to
+despair of his daughter’s cure. But the news reaching Matteo, he lost
+no time in waiting upon Ambrogio, assuring him of his daughter’s
+recovery on condition of his paying him five hundred florins, with
+which to purchase a farm at Peretola. To this Messer Ambrogio
+consented; and Matteo immediately ordered a number of masses to be
+said, after which he proceeded with some unmeaning ceremonies
+calculated to give solemnity to his task. Then approaching the young
+lady, he whispered in her ear: “Roderigo, it is Matteo that is come.
+So do as we agreed upon, and get out.” Roderigo replied: “It is all
+well; but you have not asked enough to make you a rich man. So when I
+depart I will take possession of the daughter of Charles, king of
+Naples, and I will not leave her till you come. You may then demand
+whatever you please for your reward; and mind that you never trouble
+me again.” And when he had said this, he went out of the lady, to the
+no small delight and amazement of the whole city of Florence.
+
+It was not long again before the accident that had happened to the
+daughter of the king of Naples began to be buzzed about the country,
+and all the monkish remedies having been found to fail, the king,
+hearing of Matteo, sent for him from Florence. On arriving at Naples,
+Matteo, after a few ceremonies, performed the cure. Before leaving the
+princess, however, Roderigo said: “You see, Matteo, I have kept my
+promise and made a rich man of you, and I owe you nothing now. So,
+henceforward you will take care to keep out of my way, lest as I have
+hitherto done you some good, just the contrary should happen to you in
+future.” Upon this Matteo thought it best to return to Florence, after
+receiving fifty thousand ducats from his majesty, in order to enjoy
+his riches in peace, and never once imagined that Roderigo would come
+in his way again. But in this he was deceived; for he soon heard that
+a daughter of Louis, king of France, was possessed by an evil spirit,
+which disturbed our friend Matteo not a little, thinking of his
+majesty’s great authority and of what Roderigo had said. Hearing of
+Matteo’s great skill, and finding no other remedy, the king dispatched
+a messenger for him, whom Matteo contrived to send back with a variety
+of excuses. But this did not long avail him; the king applied to the
+Florentine council, and our hero was compelled to attend. Arriving
+with no very pleasant sensations at Paris, he was introduced into the
+royal presence, when he assured his majesty that though it was true he
+had acquired some fame in the course of his demoniac practice, he
+could by no means always boast of success, and that some devils were
+of such a desperate character as not to pay the least attention to
+threats, enchantments, or even the exorcisms of religion itself. He
+would, nevertheless, do his majesty’s pleasure, entreating at the same
+time to be held excused if it should happen to prove an obstinate
+case. To this the king made answer, that be the case what it might, he
+would certainly hang him if he did not succeed. It is impossible to
+describe poor Matteo’s terror and perplexity on hearing these words;
+but at length mustering courage, he ordered the possessed princess to
+be brought into his presence. Approaching as usual close to her ear,
+he conjured Roderigo in the most humble terms, by all he had ever done
+for him, not to abandon him in such a dilemma, but to show some sense
+of gratitude for past services and to leave the princess. “Ah! thou
+traitorous villain!” cried Roderigo, “hast thou, indeed, ventured to
+meddle in this business? Dost thou boast thyself a rich man at my
+expense? I will now convince the world and thee of the extent of my
+power, both to give and to take away. I shall have the pleasure of
+seeing thee hanged before thou leavest this place.” Poor Matteo
+finding there was no remedy, said nothing more, but, like a wise man,
+set his head to work in order to discover some other means of
+expelling the spirit; for which purpose he said to the king, “Sire, it
+is as I feared: there are certain spirits of so malignant a character
+that there is no keeping any terms with them, and this is one of them.
+However, I will make a last attempt, and I trust that it will succeed
+according to our wishes. If not, I am in your majesty’s power, and I
+hope you will take compassion on my innocence. In the first place, I
+have to entreat that your majesty will order a large stage to be
+erected in the centre of the great square, such as will admit the
+nobility and clergy of the whole city. The stage ought to be adorned
+with all kinds of silks and with cloth of gold, and with an altar
+raised in the middle. Tomorrow morning I would have your majesty, with
+your full train of lords and ecclesiastics in attendance, seated in
+order and in magnificent array, as spectators of the scene at the said
+place. There, after having celebrated solemn mass, the possessed
+princess must appear; but I have in particular to entreat that on one
+side of the square may be stationed a band of men with drums,
+trumpets, horns, tambours, bagpipes, cymbals, and kettle-drums, and
+all other kinds of instruments that make the most infernal noise. Now,
+when I take my hat off, let the whole band strike up, and approach
+with the most horrid uproar towards the stage. This, along with a few
+other secret remedies which I shall apply, will surely compel the
+spirit to depart.”
+
+These preparations were accordingly made by the royal command; and
+when the day, being Sunday morning, arrived, the stage was seen
+crowded with people of rank and the square with the people. Mass was
+celebrated, and the possessed princess conducted between two bishops,
+with a train of nobles, to the spot. Now, when Roderigo beheld so vast
+a concourse of people, together with all this awful preparation, he
+was almost struck dumb with astonishment, and said to himself, “I
+wonder what that cowardly wretch is thinking of doing now? Does he
+imagine I have never seen finer things than these in the regions
+above--ay! and more horrid things below? However, I will soon make him
+repent it, at all events.” Matteo then approaching him, besought him
+to come out; but Roderigo replied, “Oh, you think you have done a fine
+thing now! What do you mean to do with all this trumpery? Can you
+escape my power, think you, in this way, or elude the vengeance of the
+king? Thou poltroon villain, I will have thee hanged for this!” And
+as Matteo continued the more to entreat him, his adversary still
+vilified him in the same strain. So Matteo, believing there was no
+time to be lost, made the sign with his hat, when all the musicians
+who had been stationed there for the purpose suddenly struck up a
+hideous din, and ringing a thousand peals, approached the spot.
+Roderigo pricked up his ears at the sound, quite at a loss what to
+think, and rather in a perturbed tone of voice he asked Matteo what it
+meant. To this the latter returned, apparently much alarmed: “Alas!
+dear Roderigo, it is your wife; she is coming for you!” It is
+impossible to give an idea of the anguish of Roderigo’s mind and the
+strange alteration which his feelings underwent at that name. The
+moment the name of “wife” was pronounced, he had no longer presence of
+mind to consider whether it were probable, or even possible, that it
+could be her. Without replying a single word, he leaped out and fled
+in the utmost terror, leaving the lady to herself, and preferring
+rather to return to his infernal abode and render an account of his
+adventures, than run the risk of any further sufferings and vexations
+under the matrimonial yoke. And thus Belphagor again made his
+appearance in the infernal domains, bearing ample testimony to the
+evils introduced into a household by a wife; while Matteo, on his
+part, who knew more of the matter than the devil, returned
+triumphantly home, not a little proud of the victory he had achieved.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER[2]
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+    [2] Courtesy of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers, New York &
+    London.
+
+A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet,
+winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
+Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp or morass. On one side
+of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
+rises abruptly from the water’s edge into a high ridge, on which grow
+a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
+gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
+treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
+bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of
+the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
+kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
+landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
+stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
+money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
+he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
+ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
+wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
+there hanged for a pirate.
+
+About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent
+in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
+there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of
+Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself: they were so miserly
+that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
+lay hands on, she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
+alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying
+about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the
+conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
+property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone, and
+had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of
+sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
+traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as
+articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a
+thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
+pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he
+would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
+and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
+
+The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom’s wife was a
+tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.
+Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
+face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to
+words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely
+wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and
+clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his
+way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
+
+One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
+neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward,
+through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.
+The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some
+of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat
+for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and
+quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green
+surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering
+mud: there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the
+tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake; where the trunks of pines
+and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators
+sleeping in the mire.
+
+Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
+forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
+precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a
+cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the
+sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck rising
+on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm
+piece of ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of
+the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during
+their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of
+fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used
+as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
+of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the
+level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks
+and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the
+dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
+
+It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
+fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would
+have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for
+the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
+down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the
+savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil
+spirit.
+
+Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of
+the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen
+hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving
+with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
+turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something
+hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull,
+with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on
+the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
+been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
+taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
+
+“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt from
+it.
+
+“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes,
+and beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the
+stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard
+nor seen any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on
+observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the
+stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a
+rude half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his
+body; but his face was neither black nor copper-colour, but swarthy
+and dingy, and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to
+toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that
+stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his
+shoulder.
+
+He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
+
+“What are you doing on my grounds?” said the black man, with a hoarse
+growling voice.
+
+“Your grounds!” said Tom, with a sneer, “no more your grounds than
+mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody.”
+
+“Deacon Peabody be d--d,” said the stranger, “as I flatter myself he
+will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those of
+his neighbours. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.”
+
+Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
+of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
+core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
+high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
+scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed
+wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
+around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
+great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The
+one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been
+hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
+rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it
+was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
+
+“He’s just ready for burning!” said the black man, with a growl of
+triumph. “You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
+winter.”
+
+“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to cut down Deacon Peabody’s
+timber?”
+
+“The right of a prior claim,” said the other. “This woodland belonged
+to me long before one of your whitefaced race put foot upon the soil.”
+
+“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said Tom.
+
+“Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries;
+the black miner in others. In this neighbourhood I am known by the
+name of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated
+this spot, and in honour of whom they now and then roasted a white
+man, by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
+exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the
+persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and
+prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand-master of the Salem
+witches.”
+
+“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,” said Tom,
+sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old Scratch.”
+
+“The same, at your service!” replied the black man, with a half civil
+nod.
+
+Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;
+though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
+think that to meet with such a singular personage, in this wild,
+lonely place, would have shaken any man’s nerves; but Tom was a
+hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with
+a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
+
+It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest
+conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told
+him of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate, under the
+oak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
+under his command, and protected by his power, so that none could find
+them but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place
+within Tom Walker’s reach, having conceived an especial kindness for
+him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
+conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed
+them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to
+think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money was
+in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger
+paused. “What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?”
+said Tom. “There’s my signature,” said the black man, pressing his
+finger on Tom’s forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets
+of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into
+the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and
+so on, until he totally disappeared.
+
+When Tom reached home, he found the black print of a finger burnt, as
+it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
+
+The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
+Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
+papers with the usual flourish, that “A great man had fallen in
+Israel.”
+
+Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
+and which was ready for burning. “Let the freebooter roast,” said Tom,
+“who cares!” He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
+no illusion.
+
+He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
+an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was
+awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to
+comply with the black man’s terms, and secure what would make them
+wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself
+to the Devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
+flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and
+bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she
+talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her.
+
+At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and
+if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same
+fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort
+towards the close of a summer’s day. She was many hours absent. When
+she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke
+something of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing at
+the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
+terms: she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it
+was she forbore to say.
+
+The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron
+heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight
+came, but she did not make her appearance: morning, noon, night
+returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
+safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
+silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
+Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
+she was never heard of more.
+
+What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
+pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
+confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
+way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
+slough; others, more charitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
+household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
+surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
+the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
+was said a great black man, with an ax on his shoulder, was seen late
+that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in
+a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
+
+The most current and probable story, however, observes, that Tom
+Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property,
+that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During
+a long summer’s afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no
+wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was
+nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he
+flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a
+neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
+twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to flit about, his
+attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows hovering about
+a cypress-tree. He looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check
+apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture
+perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy; for
+he recognized his wife’s apron, and supposed it to contain the
+household valuables.
+
+“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly to himself,
+“and we will endeavour to do without the woman.”
+
+As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and
+sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
+the checked apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and
+liver tied up in it!
+
+Such, according to this most authentic old story, was all that was to
+be found of Tom’s wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the
+black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but
+though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil,
+yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must
+have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of
+cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair,
+that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of
+the woodman. Tom knew his wife’s prowess by experience. He shrugged
+his shoulders, as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
+“Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must have had a tough time of
+it!”
+
+Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of
+his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like
+gratitude towards the black woodman, who, he considered, had done him
+a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance
+with him, but for some time without success; the old black-legs played
+shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for
+calling for: he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his
+game.
+
+At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom’s eagerness to the
+quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the
+promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
+woodman’s dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the
+swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom’s advances with
+great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
+
+By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
+haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate’s
+treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
+generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but
+there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
+inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
+means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
+Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he
+should fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused: he
+was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not
+tempt him to turn slave-trader.
+
+Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but
+proposed, instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil being
+extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
+his peculiar people.
+
+To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom’s taste.
+
+“You shall open a broker’s shop in Boston next month,” said the black
+man.
+
+“I’ll do it tomorrow, if you wish,” said Tom Walker.
+
+“You shall lend money at two per cent. a month.”
+
+“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.
+
+“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchants to
+bankruptcy”--
+
+“I’ll drive them to the d--l,” cried Tom Walker.
+
+“You are the usurer for my money!” said black-legs with delight. “When
+will you want the rhino?”
+
+“This very night.”
+
+“Done!” said the devil.
+
+“Done!” said Tom Walker.--So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
+
+A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a
+counting-house in Boston.
+
+His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a
+good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the time
+of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time
+of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills,
+the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for
+speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
+for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with
+maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where,
+but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great
+speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country,
+had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making
+sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the
+dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients
+were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the
+consequent cry of “hard times.”
+
+At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as
+usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
+and adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber;
+the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short,
+every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
+sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
+
+Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and acted like a
+“friend in need”; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
+security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
+hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
+squeezed his customers closer and closer: and sent them at length, dry
+as a sponge, from his door.
+
+In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty
+man, and exalted his cocked hat upon ’Change. He built himself, as
+usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of
+it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a
+carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the
+horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and
+screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the
+souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
+
+As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
+things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the
+next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black
+friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
+He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He
+prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force
+of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during
+the week, by the clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians
+who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck
+with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in
+their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious
+as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his
+neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
+became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the
+expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In
+a word, Tom’s zeal became as notorious as his riches.
+
+Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
+lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
+might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a
+small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
+counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
+people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green
+spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to
+drive some usurious bargain.
+
+Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and
+that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled
+and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed
+that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which
+case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was
+determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This,
+however, is probably a mere old wives’ fable. If he really did take
+such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the
+authentic old legend; which closes his story in the following manner.
+
+One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
+thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his
+white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of
+foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an
+unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatest
+friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months’
+indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
+day.
+
+“My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish,” said the
+land-jobber. “Charity begins at home,” replied Tom; “I must take care
+of myself in these hard times.”
+
+“You have made so much money out of me,” said the speculator.
+
+Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he, “if
+I have made a farthing!”
+
+Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped
+out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which
+neighed and stamped with impatience.
+
+“Tom, you’re come for,” said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank
+back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
+coat-pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage
+he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The
+black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the
+lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the
+thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and
+stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down
+the street; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning-gown
+fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the
+pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black
+man, he had disappeared.
+
+Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who
+lived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of the
+thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
+along the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure,
+such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the
+fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp towards
+the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in
+that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
+
+The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
+shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and
+tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement
+of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have
+been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom’s
+effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
+his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to
+cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with
+chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his
+half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire
+and was burnt to the ground.
+
+Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
+griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
+to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd’s
+money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and old
+Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
+horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
+troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
+into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent
+throughout New England, of “The Devil and Tom Walker.”
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen
+other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl
+of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at
+the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of
+departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had
+slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and
+played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of
+nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have
+woven new chains around us.
+
+This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for
+our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend
+Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his
+apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would
+certainly be in time for tea and supper.
+
+The enjoyment of his society had already become such a necessity, that
+this piece of information made us helpless and ill at ease.
+
+The conversation turned naturally on our absent friend and his
+striking, brilliant apparition among us. It was strange, but I could
+not get it out of my head that I had already met with him in my walk
+through life, but in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was,
+it still forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I
+called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection of a man who
+in his whole demeanour, but more especially in his glance, had the
+greatest resemblance to him. The one of whom I now speak was a foreign
+physician, who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived at
+first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd of worshippers
+collected around him. The thought of this man was always a melancholy
+one, for it was asserted that some serious misfortune always followed
+his visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled
+him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the same person.
+
+I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea that incessantly
+haunted me, and how unpleasant it was to identify so horrible a being
+as the stranger who had so afflicted my native city, with our mutual
+friend who had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will
+seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that all my
+neighbours were full of precisely the same idea, and that all fancied
+they had seen our agreeable companion in some entirely different
+shape.
+
+“You are enough to make one downright melancholy,” said Baroness von
+Thingen, who sat near me; “you make our friend Natas out to be the
+Wandering Jew, or God knows what more!”
+
+A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had joined our circle
+some days before, and passed his time in quiet, silent enjoyment,
+enlivened by an occasional deep conference with the Rhine wine, had
+kept smiling to himself during what he called our “comparative
+anatomy,” and twirling his huge snuff-box between his fingers with
+such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like a coach-wheel.
+
+“I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to make,” exclaimed he
+at last. “Under your favour, gracious lady, I do not look upon him as
+being precisely the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very strange
+mortal. As long as he was present, the thought would, it is true, now
+and then flash up in my mind, ‘You have seen this man before, but pray
+where was it?’ but these recollections were driven away as if by magic
+whenever he fastened upon me those dark wandering eyes of his.”
+
+“So was it with me--and with me--and with me,” exclaimed we all in
+astonishment.
+
+“Hem! hem!” smiled the Professor. “Even now the scales seem to fall
+from my eyes, and I see that he is the very same person I saw in
+Stuttgart twelve years ago.”
+
+“What, you have seen him then, and in what circumstances?” asked Lady
+von Thingen eagerly, and almost blushed at the eagerness she
+displayed.
+
+The Professor took a pinch of snuff, shook the superfluous grains off
+his waistcoat, and answered--“It may be now about twelve years since I
+was forced by a law-suit to spend some months in Stuttgart. I lived at
+one of the best hotels, and generally dined with a large company at
+the table d’hôte. Once upon a time I made my first appearance at table
+after a lapse of several days, during which I had been forced to keep
+my room. The company were talking very eagerly about a certain Signor
+Barighi, who for some time past had been delighting the other visitors
+with his lively wit, and his fluency in all languages. All were
+unanimous in his praise, but they could not exactly agree as to his
+occupation; some making him out a diplomatist, others a teacher of
+languages, a third party a distinguished political exile, and a fourth
+a spy of the police. The door opened, all seemed silent, even
+confused, at having carried on the dispute in so loud a tone; I judged
+that the person spoken of must be among us, and saw--”
+
+“Who, pray?”
+
+“Under favour, the same person who has amused us so agreeably for some
+days past. There was nothing supernatural in this, to be sure, but
+listen a moment; for two days Signor Barighi, as the stranger was
+called, had given a new relish to our meals by his brilliant
+conversation, when mine host interrupted us suddenly--‘Gentlemen,’
+said he, ‘prepare yourself for an unique entertainment which will be
+provided for you tomorrow.’
+
+“We asked what this meant, and a grey headed captain, who had presided
+at the hotel table many years, informed us of the joke as
+follows--Exactly opposite this dining room, an old bachelor lives,
+solitary and alone, in a large deserted house; he is a retired
+Counsellor of State--lives on a handsome premium, and has an enormous
+fortune besides. He is, however, a downright fool, and has some of the
+strangest peculiarities; thus, for instance, he often gives himself
+entertainments on a scale of extravagant luxury. He orders covers for
+twelve, from the hotel, he has excellent wines in his cellar, and one
+or the other of our waiters has the honour to attend table. You think,
+perhaps, that at these feasts he feeds the hungry, and gives drink to
+the thirsty--no such thing; on the chairs lie old yellow leaves of
+parchment, from the family record, and the old hunks is as jovial as
+if he had the merriest set of fellows around him; he talks and laughs
+with them, and the whole thing is said to be so fearful to look upon,
+that the youngest waiters are always sent over, for whoever has been
+to one such supper will enter the deserted house no more.
+
+“The day before yesterday he had a supper, and our new waiter, Frank,
+there, calls heaven and earth to witness that nobody shall ever induce
+him to go there a second time. The next day after the entertainment
+comes the Counsellor’s second freak. Early in the morning he leaves
+the city, and comes back the morning after; not, however, to his own
+house, which during this time is fast locked and bolted, but into this
+hotel. Here he treats people he has been in the habit of seeing for a
+whole year, as strangers; dines, and afterwards places himself at one
+of the windows, and examines his own house across the way from top to
+bottom.
+
+“‘Who does that house opposite belong to?’ he then asks the host.
+
+“The other regularly bows and answers, ‘It belongs to the Counsellor
+of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency’s service.’”
+
+“But, Professor,” here observed I, “what has this silly Hasentreffer
+of yours to do with our Natas?”
+
+“A moment’s patience, Doctor,” answered the Professor, “the light will
+soon break in upon you. Hasentreffer then examines the house, and learns
+that it belongs to Hasentreffer. ‘Oh, what!’ he asks, ‘the same that was
+a student with me at Tibsingen’--then throws open the window, stretches
+his powdered head out, and calls out--‘Ha-asentreffer--Ha-asentreffer!’
+
+“Of course no one answers, but he remarks: ‘The old fellow would never
+forgive me if I was not to look in on him for a moment,’ then takes up
+his hat and cane, unlocks his own house, goes in, and all goes on
+after as before.
+
+“All of us,” the Professor proceeded in his story, “were greatly
+astonished at this singular story, and highly delighted at the idea of
+the next day’s merriment. Signor Barighi, however, obliged us to
+promise that we would not betray him, as he said he was preparing a
+capital joke to play off on the Counsellor.
+
+“We all met at the table d’hôte earlier than usual, and besieged the
+windows. An old tumble down carriage, drawn by two blind steeds, came
+crawling down the street; it stopped before the hotel. There’s
+Hasentreffer, there’s Hasentreffer, was echoed by every mouth; and we
+were filled with extravagant merriment when we saw the little man get
+out, neatly powdered, dressed in an iron grey surtout with a huge
+meerschaum in hand. An escort of at least ten servants followed him
+in, and in this guise he entered the dining-room.
+
+“We sat down at once. I have seldom laughed as much as I did then; for
+the old chap insisted, with the greatest coolness, that he came direct
+from Carrel, and that he had six days before been extremely well
+entertained at the Swan Inn at Frankfort. Barighi must have
+disappeared before the dessert, for when the Counsellor left the
+table, and the other guests, full of curiosity, imitated his example,
+Barighi was nowhere to be seen.
+
+“The Counsellor took his seat at the window; we all followed his
+example and watched his movements. The house opposite seemed desolate
+and uninhabited. Grass grew on the threshold, the shutters were
+closed, and on some of them birds seemed to have built their nests.
+
+“‘A fine house that, opposite,’ said the old man to our host, who kept
+standing behind him in the third position. ‘Who does it belong to?’
+
+“‘To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency’s
+service.’
+
+“‘Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a fellow-student with me,’
+exclaimed he; ‘he would never forgive me if I was not to inform him that
+I was here.’ He opened the window,--‘Ha-asentreffer--Hasentreffer!’ cried
+he, in a hoarse voice. But who can paint our terror, when opposite, in
+the empty house, which we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a
+window-shutter was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it
+peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his chintz
+morning-gown and white nightcap, under which a few thin grey locks
+were visible; this, this exactly, was his usual morning costume. Down
+to the minutest wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the
+street was precisely the same as the one that stood by our side. But
+a panic seized us, when the figure in the morning-gown called out
+across the street, in just the same hoarse voice, ‘What do you want?
+who are you calling to, hey?’
+
+“‘Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?’ said the one on our
+side of the way, pale as death, in a trembling voice, and quaking as
+he leaned against the window for support.
+
+“‘I’m the man,’ squeaked the other, and nodded his head in a friendly
+way; ‘have you any commands for me?’
+
+“‘But I’m the man too,’ said our friend mournfully, ‘how can it be
+possible?’
+
+“‘You are mistaken, my dear friend,’ answered he across the way, ‘you
+are the thirteenth, be good enough just to step across the street to
+my house, and let me twist your neck for you! it is by no means
+painful.’
+
+“‘Waiter! my hat and stick,’ said the Counsellor, pale as death, and
+his voice escaped in mournful tones from his hollow chest. ‘The devil
+is in my house and seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you,
+gentlemen,’ added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon
+left the room.
+
+“‘What does this mean?’ we asked each other; ‘are we all beside
+ourselves?’
+
+“The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking quietly out of the
+window, while our good silly old friend crossed the street at his
+usual formal pace. At the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys
+out of his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door--he of the
+morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in.
+
+“The latter now withdrew from the window, and we saw him go forward to
+meet our acquaintance at the room-door.
+
+“Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear, and trembled.
+‘Gentlemen,’ said the former, ‘God pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of
+those two must be the devil in human shape.’ We laughed at our host,
+and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of Barighi’s; but
+our host assured us that no one could have obtained access to the
+house except he was in possession of the Counsellor’s very
+artificially contrived keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table
+not ten minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could he have
+disguised himself so completely in so short a time, even supposing him
+to have known how to unlock a strange house? He added, that the two
+were so fearfully like one another, that he who had lived in the
+neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish the true one from
+the counterfeit. ‘But, for God’s sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the
+horrid shrieks opposite?’
+
+“We rushed to the window--terrible and fearful voices rang across from
+the empty house; we fancied we saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his
+image in the morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On a
+sudden all was quiet.
+
+“We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed to cross over
+to the house--we all agreed to it. We crossed the street--the huge
+bell at the old man’s door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard
+in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith’s--the door was
+broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide
+silent staircase--all the doors were fastened; at length one was
+opened. In a splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey
+frock-coat torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible
+disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.
+
+“Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found, neither in
+Stuttgart nor elsewhere.”
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN’S EVE[3]
+
+BY NIKOLÁI VASILÉVICH GÓGOL
+
+
+    [3] From _St. John’s Eve and Other Stories_, translated by
+    Isabel F. Hapgood from the Russian of N. V. Gógol.
+    (Copyright, 1886, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. By permission of
+    the Publishers.)
+
+Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day
+of his death, he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were
+times, when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he
+would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to
+recognize it. Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for
+us simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are
+scribblers, or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the
+usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort
+of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C
+book, every month, or even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed
+this same story out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot
+about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom
+I have mentioned, and one of whose tales you have already read, I
+think, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and,
+opening it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich was on the
+point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected
+that he had forgotten to wind thread about them, and stick them
+together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand
+something about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I
+undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when all at once he
+caught me by the hand, and stopped me.
+
+“Stop! tell me first what you are reading.”
+
+I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.
+
+“What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich? These were your very
+words.”
+
+“Who told you that they were my words?”
+
+“Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: _Related by such
+and such a sacristan_.”
+
+“Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a
+Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? _’Twas just the same as though one
+hadn’t his wits about him!_ Listen, I’ll tell it to you on the spot.”
+
+We moved up to the table, and he began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten
+rolls and makovniki[4] with honey in the other world!) could tell a
+story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn’t
+stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for
+the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a
+tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you
+snatch your cap, and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old
+mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when the frost was
+crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow
+panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb,
+drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her
+foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.
+
+    [4] Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.
+
+The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something,
+lighted us within our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us
+children, collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not
+crawled off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great age.
+But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
+the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and
+Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some
+deed of old which always sent a shiver through our frames, and made
+our hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes such terror took
+possession of us in consequence of them, that, from that evening on,
+Heaven knows what a marvel everything seemed to us. If you chanced to
+go out of the cottage after nightfall for anything, you imagine that a
+visitor from the other world has lain down to sleep in your bed; and I
+should not be able to tell this a second time were it not that I had
+often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the
+bed, for the Evil One rolled up in a ball! But the chief thing about
+grandfather’s stories was, that he never had lied in his life; and
+whatever he said was so, was so.
+
+I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that
+there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can
+even read civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a
+simple prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and
+would show all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people
+laugh at everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad
+in the world! What then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to
+love me if it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once
+he said something about witches; ... What then? Along comes one of
+these head-breakers,--and doesn’t believe in witches! Yes, glory to
+God that I have lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to
+whom it would be easier to lie in confession than it would for our
+brothers and equals to take snuff, and those people would deny the
+existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and
+they won’t even tell what it was! There’s no use in talking about
+them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
+hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half
+a score of miserable izbás, unplastered, badly thatched, were
+scattered here and there about the fields. There was not an enclosure
+or a decent shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the
+wealthy lived: and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why,
+a hole in the ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke
+could you tell that a God-created man lived there. You ask, why they
+lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a
+wandering, Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign
+lands; it was rather because there was no reason for setting up a
+well-ordered khata[5]. How many people were wandering all over the
+country,--Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that
+their own countrymen might make a descent, and plunder everything.
+Anything was possible.
+
+    [5] Wooden house.
+
+In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
+appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about,
+got drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was
+not a hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, and he seemed to
+have dropped from the sky, and went flying about the street of the
+village, of which no trace now remains, and which was not more than a
+hundred paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks
+he met; then there were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka
+flowed like water.... He would address the pretty girls, and give them
+ribbons, earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do
+with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about
+accepting his presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through
+unclean hands. My grandfather’s aunt, who kept a tavern at the time,
+in which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often had his
+carouses, said that no consideration on the face of the earth would
+have induced her to accept a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid
+accepting? Fear seized on every one when he knit his bristly brows,
+and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet, God knows
+whither: but if you accept, then the next night some fiend from the
+swamp, with horns on his head, comes to call, and begins to squeeze
+your neck, when there is a string of beads upon it; or bite your
+finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag you by the hair, if
+ribbons are braided in it. God have mercy, then, on those who owned
+such gifts! But here was the difficulty: it was impossible to get rid
+of them; if you threw them into the water, the diabolical ring or
+necklace would skim along the surface, and into your hand.
+
+There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember
+rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed
+memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to Church, even on
+Easter, he determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.
+Well, he hardly escaped with his life. “Hark ye, pannotche!”[6] he
+thundered in reply, “learn to mind your own business instead of
+meddling in other people’s, if you don’t want that goat’s throat of
+yours stuck together with boiling kutya.”[7] What was to be done with
+this unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented himself with
+announcing that any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk
+would be counted a Catholic, an enemy of Christ’s church, not a member
+of the human race.
+
+    [6] Sir.
+
+    [7] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins,
+    which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial
+    masses.
+
+In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer
+whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered
+either his father or mother. The church starost,[8] it is true, said
+that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my
+grandfather’s aunt would not hear to that, and tried with all her
+might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them
+about as much as we need last year’s snow. She said that his father
+had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only
+knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as
+a eunuch, had made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths
+and maidens about his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only
+had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue
+crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by his side, a whip in one
+hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpass
+all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter
+had was a grey svitka with more holes in it than there are gold pieces
+in a Jew’s pocket. And that was not the worst of it, but this: that
+Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have
+chanced to see. My deceased grandfather’s aunt used to say--and you
+know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call
+anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this Cossack
+maiden’s cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just
+bathed in God’s dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and coquets
+with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such as our
+maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow
+pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched
+as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight
+of which the youth smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs
+of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven’s wing, and soft as
+young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs
+interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons), fell in curls over her
+kuntush.[9] Eh! may I never intone another alleluia in the choir, if I
+would not have kissed her, in spite of the grey which is making its
+way all through the old wool which covers my pate, and my old woman
+beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know what happens when
+young men and maids live side by side. In the twilight the heels of
+red boots were always visible in the place where Pidórka chatted with
+her Petrus. But Korzh would never have suspected anything out of the
+way, only one day--it is evident that none but the Evil One could have
+inspired him--Petrus took it into his head to kiss the Cossack
+maiden’s rosy lips with all his heart in the passage, without first
+looking well about him; and that same Evil One--may the son of a dog
+dream of the holy cross!--caused the old greybeard, like a fool, to
+open the cottage-door at that same moment. Korzh was petrified,
+dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky
+kisses had completely stunned him. It surprised him more than the blow
+of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik generally
+drives out his intoxication for lack of fusees and powder.
+
+    [8] Elder.
+
+    [9] Upper garment in Little Russia.
+
+Recovering himself, he took his grandfather’s hunting-whip from the
+wall, and was about to belabour Peter’s back with it, when Pidórka’s
+little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other,
+and, grasping his father’s legs with his little hands, screamed out,
+“Daddy, daddy! don’t beat Petrus!” What was to be done? A father’s
+heart is not made of stone. Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he
+led him quietly from the house. “If you ever show yourself in my
+cottage again, or even under the windows, look out, Petró! by Heaven,
+your black moustache will disappear; and your black locks, though
+wound twice about your ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name
+is not Terentii Korzh.” So saying, he gave him a little taste of his
+fist in the nape of his neck, so that all grew dark before Petrus, and
+he flew headlong. So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow seized
+upon our doves; and a rumour was rife in the village, that a certain
+Pole, all embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre, spurs, and
+pockets jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan
+Taras goes through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh’s
+house. Now, it is well known why the father is visited when there is a
+black-browed daughter about. So, one day, Pidórka burst into tears,
+and clutched the hand of her Ivas. “Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly
+to Petrus, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him all: I
+would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his white face,
+but my fate decrees not so. More than one towel have I wet with
+burning tears. I am sad, I am heavy at heart. And my own father is my
+enemy. I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not love. Tell him they
+are preparing a wedding, but there will be no music at our wedding:
+ecclesiastics will sing instead of pipes and kobzas.[10] I shall not
+dance with my bridegroom: they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be
+my dwelling,--of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross will
+stand upon the roof.”
+
+    [10] Eight-stringed musical instrument.
+
+Petró stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent
+child lisped out Pidórka’s words to him. “And I, unhappy man, thought
+to go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my
+beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us. I will have a
+wedding, too, dear little fish, I, too; but no ecclesiastics will be
+at that wedding. The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over
+me; the smooth field will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my
+roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash
+the Cossack’s bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. But what am I?
+Of whom, to whom, am I complaining? ’Tis plain, God willed it so. If I
+am to be lost, then so be it!” and he went straight to the tavern.
+
+My late grandfather’s aunt was somewhat surprised on seeing Petrus in
+the tavern, and at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and she
+stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy,
+about half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his
+woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter
+than wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground. “You have
+sorrowed enough, Cossack,” growled a bass voice behind him. He looked
+round--Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like a brush, his
+eyes like those of a bull. “I know what you lack: here it is.” Then
+he jingled a leather purse which hung from his girdle, and smiled
+diabolically. Petró shuddered. “He, he, he! yes, how it shines!” he
+roared, shaking out ducats into his hand: “he, he, he! and how it
+jingles! And I only ask one thing for a whole pile of such
+shiners.”--“It is the Evil One!” exclaimed Petró:--“Give them here! I
+am ready for anything!” They struck hands upon it. “See here, Petró,
+you are ripe just in time: tomorrow is St. John the Baptist’s day.
+Only on this one night in the year does the fern blossom. Delay not. I
+will await thee at midnight in the Bear’s ravine.”
+
+I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the woman brings
+their corn, with as much anxiety as Petrus awaited the evening. And,
+in fact, he looked to see whether the shadows of the trees were not
+lengthening, if the sun were not turning red towards setting; and, the
+longer he watched, the more impatient he grew. How long it was!
+Evidently, God’s day had lost its end somewhere. And now the sun is
+gone. The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark.
+It grows colder in the fields. It gets dusky, and more dusky, and at
+last quite dark. At last! With heart almost bursting from his bosom,
+he set out on his way, and cautiously descended through the dense
+woods into the deep hollow called the Bear’s ravine. Basavriuk was
+already waiting there. It was so dark, that you could not see a yard
+before you. Hand in hand they penetrated the thin marsh, clinging to
+the luxuriant thorn-bushes, and stumbling at almost every step. At
+last they reached an open spot. Petró looked about him: he had never
+chanced to come there before. Here Basavriuk halted.
+
+“Do you see, before you stand three hillocks? There are a great many
+sorts of flowers upon them. But may some power keep you from plucking
+even one of them. But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look
+not round, no matter what may seem to be going on behind thee.”
+
+Petró wanted to ask--and behold, he was no longer there. He approached
+the three hillocks--where were the flowers? He saw nothing. The wild
+steppe-grass darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance.
+But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole bed of
+flowers, all wonderful, all strange: and there were also the simple
+fronds of fern. Petró doubted his senses, and stood thoughtfully
+before them, with both hands upon his sides.
+
+“What prodigy is this? one can see these weeds ten times in a day:
+what marvel is there about them? was not devil’s-face laughing at me?”
+
+Behold! the tiny flower-bud crimsons, and moves as though alive. It is
+a marvel, in truth. It moves, and grows larger and larger, and flashes
+like a burning coal. The tiny star flashes up, something bursts
+softly, and the flower opens before his eyes like a flame, lighting
+the others about it. “Now is the time,” thought Petró, and extended
+his hand. He sees hundreds of shaggy hands reach from behind him, also
+for the flower; and there is a running about from place to place, in
+the rear. He half shut his eyes, plucked sharply at the stalk, and the
+flower remained in his hand. All became still. Upon a stump sat
+Basavriuk, all blue like a corpse. He moved not so much as a finger.
+His eyes were immovably fixed on something visible to him alone: his
+mouth was half open and speechless. All about, nothing stirred. Ugh!
+it was horrible!--But then a whistle was heard, which made Petró’s
+heart grow cold within him; and it seemed to him that the grass
+whispered, and the flowers began to talk among themselves in delicate
+voices, like little silver bells; the trees rustled in waving
+contention;--Basavriuk’s face suddenly became full of life and his
+eyes sparkled. “The witch has just returned,” he muttered between his
+teeth. “See here, Petró: a beauty will stand before you in a moment;
+do whatever she commands; if not--you are lost for ever.” Then he
+parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick, and before him stood a tiny
+izbá, on chicken’s legs, as they say. Basavriuk smote it with his
+fist, and the wall trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them,
+and with a whine, transforming itself into a cat, flew straight at his
+eyes. “Don’t be angry, don’t be angry, you old Satan!” said Basavriuk,
+employing such words as would have made a good man stop his ears.
+Behold, instead of a cat, an old woman with a face wrinkled like a
+baked apple, and all bent into a bow: her nose and chin were like a
+pair of nut-crackers. “A stunning beauty!” thought Petró; and cold
+chills ran down his back. The witch tore the flower from his hand,
+bent over, and muttered over it for a long time, sprinkling it with
+some kind of water. Sparks flew from her mouth, froth appeared on her
+lips.
+
+“Throw it away,” she said, giving it back to Petró.
+
+Petró threw it, and what wonder was this? the flower did not fall
+straight to the earth, but for a long while twinkled like a fiery ball
+through the darkness, and swam through the air like a boat: at last it
+began to sink lower, and fell so far away, that the little star,
+hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible. “Here!” croaked
+the old woman, in a dull voice: and Basavriuk, giving him a spade,
+said, “Dig here, Petró: here you will find more gold than you or Korzh
+ever dreamed of.”
+
+Petró spat on his hands, seized the spade, applied his foot, and
+turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time.... There was
+something hard: the spade clinked, and would go no farther. Then his
+eyes began to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried to
+seize it; but the chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther,
+and deeper still: and behind him he heard a laugh, more like a
+serpent’s hiss. “No, you shall not see the gold until you procure
+human blood,” said the witch, and led up to him a child of six,
+covered with a white sheet, indicating by a sign that he was to cut
+off his head. Petró was stunned. A trifle, indeed, to cut off a man’s
+or even an innocent child’s head for no reason whatever! In wrath he
+tore off the sheet enveloping his head, and behold! before him stood
+Ivas. And the poor child crossed his little hands, and hung his
+head.... Petró flew upon the witch with the knife like a madman, and
+was on the point of laying hands on her....
+
+“What did you promise for the girl?” ... thundered Basavriuk; and like
+a shot he was on his back. The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame
+flashed from the earth; it illumined it all inside, and it was as if
+moulded of crystal; and all that was within the earth became visible,
+as if in the palm of the hand. Ducats, precious stones in chests and
+kettles, were piled in heaps beneath the very spot they stood on. His
+eyes burned, ... his mind grew troubled.... He grasped the knife like
+a madman, and the innocent blood spurted into his eyes. Diabolical
+laughter resounded on all sides. Misshaped monsters flew past him in
+herds. The witch, fastening her hands in the headless trunk, like a
+wolf, drank its blood.... All went round in his head. Collecting all
+his strength, he set out to run. Everything turned red before him. The
+trees seemed steeped in blood, and burned and groaned. The sky glowed
+and glowered.... Burning point, like lightning, flickered before his
+eyes. Utterly exhausted, he rushed into his miserable hovel, and fell
+to the ground like a log. A death-like sleep overpowered him.
+
+Two days and two nights did Petró sleep, without once awakening. When
+he came to himself, on the third day, he looked long at all the
+corners of his hut; but in vain did he endeavour to recollect; his
+memory was like a miser’s pocket, from which you cannot entice a
+quarter of a kopek. Stretching himself, he heard something clash at
+his feet. He looked--two bags of gold. Then only, as if in a dream, he
+recollected that he had been seeking some treasure, that something had
+frightened him in the woods.... But at what price he had obtained it,
+and how, he could by no means understand.
+
+Korzh saw the sacks,--and was mollified. “Such a Petrus, quite unheard
+of! yes, and did I not love him? Was he not to me as my own son?” And
+the old fellow carried on his fiction until it reduced him to tears.
+Pidórka began to tell him some passing gipsies had stolen Ivas; but
+Petró could not even recall him--to such a degree had the Devil’s
+influence darkened his mind! There was no reason for delay. The Pole
+was dismissed, and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls were baked,
+towels and handkerchiefs embroidered; the young people were seated at
+table; the wedding-loaf was cut; banduras, cymbals, pipes, kobzi,
+sounded, and pleasure was rife....
+
+A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the present day. My
+grandfather’s aunt used to tell--what doings!--how the maidens--in
+festive head-dresses of yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which
+they bound gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the
+seams with red silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers; in morocco
+shoes, with high iron heels--danced the gorlitza as swimmingly as
+peacocks, and as wildly as the whirlwind; how the youths--with their
+ship-shaped caps upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, with a
+little slit at the nape where the hair-net peeped through, and two
+horns projecting, one in front and another behind, of the very finest
+black lambskin; in kuntushas of the finest blue silk with red
+borders--stepped forward one by one, their arms akimbo in stately
+form, and executed the gopak; how the lads--in tall Cossack caps, and
+light cloth svitkas, girt with silver embroidered belts, their short
+pipes in their teeth--skipped before them, and talked nonsense. Even
+Korzh could not contain himself, as he gazed at the young people, from
+getting gay in his old age. Bandura in hand, alternately puffing at
+his pipe and singing, a brandy-glass upon his head, the greybeard
+began the national dance amid loud shouts from the merry-makers. What
+will not people devise in merry mood! They even began to disguise
+their faces. They did not look like human beings. They are not to be
+compared with the disguises which we have at our weddings nowadays.
+What do they do now? Why, imitate gipsies and Moscow pedlars. No! then
+one used to dress himself as a Jew, another as the Devil: they would
+begin by kissing each other, and end by seizing each other by the
+hair.... God be with them! you laughed till you held your sides. They
+dressed themselves in Turkish and Tartar garments. All upon them
+glowed like a conflagration ... and then they began to joke and play
+pranks.... Well, then away with the saints!
+
+An amusing thing happened to my grandfather’s aunt, who was at this
+wedding. She was dressed in a voluminous Tartar robe, and, wineglass
+in hand, was entertaining the company. The Evil One instigated one man
+to pour vodka over her from behind. Another, at the same moment,
+evidently not by accident, struck a light, and touched it to her; ...
+the flame flashed up; poor aunt, in terror, flung her robe from her,
+before them all.... Screams, laughter, jests, arose, as if at a fair.
+In a word, the old folks could not recall so merry a wedding.
+
+Pidórka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman and lady. There was
+plenty of everything, and everything was handsome.... But honest
+people shook their heads when they looked at their way of living.
+“From the Devil no good can come,” they unanimously agreed. “Whence,
+except from the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth? Where
+else could he get such a lot of gold? Why, on the very day that he got
+rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?” Say, if you can, that
+people imagine things! In fact, a month had not passed, and no one
+would have recognized Petrus. Why, what had happened to him? God
+knows. He sits in one spot, and says no word to any one: he thinks
+continually, and seems to be trying to recall something. When Pidórka
+succeeds in getting him to speak, he seems to forget himself, carries
+on a conversation, and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently
+glances at the sacks, “Stop, stop! I have forgotten,” he cries, and
+again plunges into revery, and again strives to recall something.
+Sometimes when he has sat long in a place, it seems to him as though
+it were coming, just coming back to mind, ... and again all fades
+away. It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern: they bring him
+vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to him. Some one comes
+along, and strikes him on the shoulder; ... but beyond that everything
+is veiled in darkness before him. The perspiration streams down his
+face, and he sits exhausted in the same place.
+
+What did not Pidórka do? She consulted the sorceress; and they poured
+out fear, and brewed stomach-ache,[11]--but all to no avail. And so
+the summer passed. Many a Cossack had mowed and reaped: many a
+Cossack, more enterprising than the rest, had set off upon an
+expedition. Flocks of ducks were already crowding our marshes, but
+there was not even a hint of improvement.
+
+    [11] “To pour out fear,” is done with us in case of fear;
+    when it is desired to know what caused it, melted lead or wax
+    is poured into water and the object whose form it assumes is
+    the one which frightened the sick person; after this, the
+    fear departs. _Sónvashnitza_ is brewed for giddiness, and
+    pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is burned,
+    thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled
+    with water, which is placed on the patient’s stomach: after
+    an incantation, he is given a spoonful of this water to
+    drink.
+
+It was red upon the steppes. Ricks of grain, like Cossacks’ caps,
+dotted the fields here and there. On the highway were to be
+encountered wagons loaded with brushwood and logs. The ground had
+become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had
+the snow begun to besprinkle the sky, and the branches of the trees
+were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the
+red-breasted finch hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish
+Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with
+huge sticks, chased wooden tops upon the ice; while their fathers lay
+quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in
+their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to
+take the air, and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the
+snow began to melt, and the ice rind slipped away: but Petró remained
+the same; and, the longer it went on, the more morose he grew. He sat
+in the middle of the cottage as though nailed to the spot, with the
+sacks of gold at his feet. He grew shy, his hair grew long, he became
+terrible; and still he thought of but one thing, still he tried to
+recall something, and got angry and ill-tempered because he could not
+recall it. Often, rising wildly from his seat, he gesticulates
+violently, fixes his eyes on something as though desirous of catching
+it: his lips move as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten
+word--and remain speechless. Fury takes possession of him: he gnaws
+and bites his hands like a man half crazy, and in his vexation tears
+out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he falls into
+forgetfulness, as it were, and again begins to recall, and is again
+seized with fury and fresh tortures.... What visitation of God is
+this?
+
+Pidórka was neither dead nor alive. At first it was horrible to her to
+remain alone in the cottage; but, in course of time, the poor woman
+grew accustomed to her sorrow. But it was impossible to recognize the
+Pidórka of former days. No blush, no smile: she was thin and worn with
+grief, and had wept her bright eyes away. Once, some one who evidently
+took pity on her, advised her to go to the witch who dwelt in the
+Bear’s ravine, and enjoyed the reputation of being able to cure every
+disease in the world. She determined to try this last remedy: word by
+word she persuaded the old woman to come to her. This was St. John’s
+Eve, as it chanced. Petró lay insensible on the bench, and did not
+observe the new-comer. Little by little he rose, and looked about him.
+Suddenly he trembled in every limb, as though he were on the scaffold:
+his hair rose upon his head, ... and he laughed such a laugh as
+pierced Pidórka’s heart with fear. “I have remembered, remembered!”
+he cried in terrible joy; and, swinging a hatchet round his head, he
+flung it at the old woman with all his might. The hatchet penetrated
+the oaken door two vershok.[12] The old woman disappeared; and a child
+of seven in a white blouse, with covered head, stood in the middle of
+the cottage.... The sheet flew off. “Ivas!” cried Pidórka, and ran to
+him; but the apparition became covered from head to foot with blood,
+and illumined the whole room with red light.... She ran into the
+passage in her terror, but, on recovering herself a little, wished to
+help him; in vain! the door had slammed to behind her so securely that
+she could not open it. People ran up, and began to knock: they broke
+in the door, as though there were but one mind among them. The whole
+cottage was full of smoke; and just in the middle, where Petrus had
+stood, was a heap of ashes, from which smoke was still rising. They
+flung themselves upon the sacks: only broken potsherds lay there
+instead of ducats. The Cossacks stood with staring eyes and open
+mouths, not daring to move a hair, as if rooted to the earth, such
+terror did this wonder inspire in them.
+
+    [12] Three inches and a half.
+
+I do not remember what happened next. Pidórka took a vow to go upon a
+pilgrimage, collected the property left her by her father, and in a
+few days it was as if she had never been in the village. Whither she
+had gone, no one could tell. Officious old women would have dispatched
+her to the same place whither Petró had gone; but a Cossack from Kiev
+reported that he had seen, in a cloister, a nun withered to a mere
+skeleton, who prayed unceasingly; and her fellow-villagers recognized
+her as Pidórka, by all the signs,--that no one had ever heard her
+utter a word; that she had come on foot, and had brought a frame for
+the ikon of God’s mother, set with such brilliant stones that all were
+dazzled at the sight.
+
+But this was not the end, if you please. On the same day that the Evil
+One made way with Petrus, Basavriuk appeared again; but all fled from
+him. They knew what sort of a bird he was,--none else than Satan, who
+had assumed human form in order to unearth treasures; and, since
+treasures do not yield to unclean hands, he seduced the young. That
+same year, all deserted their earth huts, and collected in a village;
+but, even there, there was no peace, on account of that accursed
+Basavriuk. My late grandfather’s aunt said that he was particularly
+angry with her, because she had abandoned her former tavern, and tried
+with all his might to revenge himself upon her. Once the village
+elders were assembled in the tavern, and, as the saying goes, were
+arranging the precedence at the table, in the middle of which was
+placed a small roasted lamb, shame to say. They chattered about this,
+that, and the other,--among the rest about various marvels and strange
+things. Well, they saw something; it would have been nothing if only
+one had seen it, but all saw it; and it was this: the sheep raised his
+head; his goggling eyes became alive and sparkled; and the black,
+bristling moustache, which appeared for one instant, made a
+significant gesture at those present. All, at once, recognized
+Basavriuk’s countenance in the sheep’s head: my grandfather’s aunt
+thought it was on the point of asking for vodka.... The worthy elders
+seized their hats, and hastened home.
+
+Another time, the church starost himself, who was fond of an
+occasional private interview with my grandfather’s brandy-glass, had
+not succeeded in getting to the bottom twice, when he beheld the glass
+bowing very low to him. “Satan take you, let us make the sign of the
+cross over you!” ... And the same marvel happened to his better half.
+She had just begun to mix the dough in a huge kneading-trough, when
+suddenly the trough sprang up. “Stop, stop! where are you going?”
+Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went skipping all about the
+cottage.... You may laugh, but it was no laughing-matter to your
+grandfathers. And in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the
+village with holy water, and chase the Devil through the streets with
+his brush; and my late grandfather’s aunt long complained, that, as
+soon as it was dark, some one came knocking at her door, and
+scratching at the wall.
+
+Well! All appears to be quiet now, in the place where our village
+stands; but it was not so very long ago--my father was still
+alive--that I remember how a good man could not pass the ruined
+tavern, which a dishonest race had long managed for their own
+interest. From the smoke-blackened chimneys, smoke poured out in a
+pillar, and rising high in the air, as if to take an observation,
+rolled off like a cap, scattering burning coals over the steppe; and
+Satan (the son of a dog should not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully
+in his lair, that the startled ravens rose in flocks from the
+neighbouring oak-wood, and flew through the air with wild cries.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save
+church-yard ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of
+graves, and all eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the pool.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking stars, and the wicked and
+devilish wills-o’-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+good men astray.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owl, as he flappeth
+along lazily; or the magician, as he rideth on his infernal
+broomstick, whistling through the air like the arrows of a Yorkshire
+archer.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o’clock of the night,) that two
+beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse
+with each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the
+heathens feigned), but of demons; and the second, with whom he held
+company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir
+Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre,
+Villacerf and autre lieux. But the great die as well as the humble;
+and nothing remained of brave Roger now, but his coffin and his
+deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had
+bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was
+stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking
+into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo,
+would groan and roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatory, being
+bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and
+roast in saecula saeculorum.
+
+“It is hard,” said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through
+the clouds, “that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for
+want of a single ave.”
+
+“How, Sir Soul?” said the demon. “You were on earth so wicked, that
+not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame a
+creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
+subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honour, as am I also:” and to show his authority,
+he lashed with his tail the ribs of the wretched Rollo.
+
+“Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for
+my sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail,
+by her prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that
+every day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks
+which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor
+carcass, were now not applied above once a week; the roasting had
+ceased, the boiling had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept
+up, to remind me of my situation.”
+
+“A gentle stew,” said the demon.
+
+“Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been
+a blessed angel.”
+
+“And the other ave?” said the demon.
+
+“She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of the
+prayer.” And hereat the wretched spirit began to weep and whine
+piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the
+tail of Mercurius the devil.
+
+“It is, in truth, a hard case,” said the demon; “but I know of no
+remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below.”
+
+“But I have relations,” said the Earl; “my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?”
+
+“Thou didst hate and oppress him when living.”
+
+“It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--”
+
+“You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover.”
+
+“Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?”
+
+“A dozen, without a doubt.”
+
+“And my brother, the prior?”
+
+“A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth,
+except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine.”
+
+“And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+saved.”
+
+“Aves with them are _rarae_ aves,” replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; “and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that no
+one of these will say a prayer to save thee.”
+
+“I would wager willingly,” responded he of Chauchigny; “but what has a
+poor soul like me to stake?”
+
+“Every evening, after the day’s roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup
+of cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year,
+that none of the three will pray for thee.”
+
+“Done!” said Rollo.
+
+“Done!” said the demon; “and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+Chauchigny.”
+
+Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
+Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
+banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.
+
+“With whom shall we begin?” said the demon: “with the baron or the
+lady?”
+
+“With the lady, if you will.”
+
+“Be it so; her window is open, let us enter.”
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda’s chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The young lady’s eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that
+it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
+visitors. Her fair cheek rested in her white arm, and her white arm
+on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported
+by sweet thoughts and swan’s down; a lute was at her side, and a book
+of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
+amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed
+for ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word “Edward!”
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. “The jade is at her old
+pranks,” said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: “I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villainous
+page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle.”
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle
+(for a year’s sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of
+his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. “What’s
+o’clock?” said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: “is he
+come?”
+
+“Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the
+love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a
+year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single
+ave.”
+
+“I will say it for thee tomorrow, uncle.”
+
+“Tonight, or never.”
+
+“Well, tonight be it:” and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
+her the prayer-book, from under the table; but he had no sooner
+touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. “It
+was hotter,” he said, “than his master Sir Lucifer’s own particular
+pitchfork.” And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid
+of her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the demon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
+and began--
+
+“Ave Maria.”
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+“Hark!” said Matilda.
+
+    “Now the toils of day are over,
+      And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+    Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+      The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+    “The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+      Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+    And summoning the stars to guard
+      The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!”
+
+“For mercy’s sake!” said Sir Rollo, “the ave first, and next the
+song.”
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+“Ave Maria gratia plena!” but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+    “The faithful night! Now all things lie
+      Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+    In pious hope I hither hie,
+      And humbly chant mine ev’ning hymn.
+
+    “Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+      (For never holy pilgrim kneel’d,
+    Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+      My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!”
+
+“Virgin love!” said the Baron. “Upon my soul, this is too bad!” and he
+thought of the lady’s lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But _she_ only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+“Niece Matilda!” cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, “wilt thou listen to the
+lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
+words to make him happy?”
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: “Edward is neither impudent nor a liar,
+Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song.”
+
+“Come away,” said Mercurius; “he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will
+come the supper.”
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
+page sung away till morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“My virtues have been my ruin,” said poor Sir Rollo, as he and
+Mercurius slunk silently out of the window. “Had I hanged that knave
+Edward, as I did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung
+mine ave, and I should have been by this time an angel in heaven.”
+
+“He is reserved for wiser purposes,” responded the devil: “he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde’s brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedlar, who shall,
+finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair
+Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying,
+we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil.”
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much
+for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he
+would not, and he could not cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the
+brother might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
+there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
+signified that “it was his royal pleasure to be drunk,” and the
+gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master.
+Mercurius was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid
+countenance into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him
+wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a
+person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of
+the company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
+which he was amusing the society.
+
+“Holy Mother!” cried he, “it is Sir Roger.”
+
+“Alive!” screamed Sir Randal.
+
+“No, my lord,” Mercurius said; “Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honour to act as his counsellor and
+attendant.”
+
+“Nephew,” said Sir Roger, “the demon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential.”
+
+“I will do anything, uncle, in my power.”
+
+“Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?” But Sir Randal looked very
+blank at this proposition. “I mean life spiritual, Randal,” said Sir
+Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing
+all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so
+popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his
+first appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with
+him, and used his utmost eloquence and endeavours to convert the
+devil; the knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the
+men-at-arms forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded
+round the two strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse.
+The ghostly man, however, had little chance in the controversy, and
+certainly little learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him.
+“Father Peter,” said he, “our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want
+of a single ave: wilt thou say it for him?” “Willingly, my lord,” said
+the monk, “with my book;” and accordingly he produced his missal to
+read, without which aid it appeared that the holy father could not
+manage the desired prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his
+devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father
+Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent
+ditty:--
+
+    “Some love the matin-chimes, which tell
+      The hour of prayer to sinner:
+    But better far’s the mid-day bell,
+      Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+    For when I see a smoking fish,
+      Or capon drowned in gravy,
+    Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+      Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+    “My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+      Whereon I sit so jolly;
+    A smiling rosy country wench
+      My saint and patron holy.
+    I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+      I press her ringlets wavy.
+    And in her willing ear I speak
+      A most religious ave.
+
+    “And if I’m blind, yet heaven is kind,
+      And holy saints forgiving;
+    For sure he leads a right good life
+      Who thus admires good living.
+    Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+      Our blood celestial ichor:
+    Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+      They may not change our liquor!”
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
+an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms,
+and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most
+melodious and emphatic glee. “I am sorry, fair uncle,” hiccupped Sir
+Randal, “that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a
+more orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
+another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer.”
+
+“It is my own fault,” said Sir Rollo; “for I hanged the last
+confessor.” And he wished his nephew a surly goodnight, as he prepared
+to quit the room.
+
+“Au revoir, gentlemen,” said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
+his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humour. He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
+his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods,
+and the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two
+in Champagne found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the
+court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage
+and cloister, until they reached the door of the prior’s cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo’s brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer;
+his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead
+of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew;
+and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his
+wager with poor Sir Roger.
+
+“You seem to be well acquainted with the road,” said the knight.
+
+“I have reason,” answered Mercurius, “having, for a long period, had
+the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little
+chance with him.”
+
+“And why?” said Sir Rollo.
+
+“He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his
+soul and his body are forfeited at once.”
+
+“Why, thou false and traitorous devil!” said the enraged knight; “and
+thou knewest this when we made our wager?”
+
+“Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+chance of losing?”
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius’s door.
+
+“Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
+of my nephew’s chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
+alone, my wager had been won.”
+
+“Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee; however, thou
+mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
+will stand without for five minutes when it will be time to commence
+our journey.”
+
+It was the poor Baron’s last chance: and he entered his brother’s room
+more for the five minutes’ respite than from any hope of success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he
+stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his
+long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver
+rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. “I am,”
+said he, “the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from
+pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate.”
+
+“Whence camest thou?”
+
+“From the abode of the blessed in Paradise,” replied Sir Roger, who
+was inspired with a sudden thought; “it was but five minutes ago that
+the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy
+wicked compact with the fiend. ‘Go,’ said he, ‘to thy miserable
+brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he may escape from
+paying the awful forfeit of his bond.’”
+
+“And how may that be?” said the prior; “the false fiend hath deceived
+me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
+return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?”
+
+“I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+Lazarus” (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a
+saint), “I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated,
+and sped hither to save thee. ‘Thy brother,’ said the Saint, ‘hath but
+one day more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject
+of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying
+an ave.’”
+
+“It is the express condition of the agreement,” said the unhappy monk,
+“I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan’s, body and
+soul.”
+
+“It is the express condition of the Saint,” answered Roger, fiercely;
+“pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever.”
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. “Amen!”
+said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+“Amen!” said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it
+was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, “Do not
+fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two.”
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: _but this time
+the devil had not his tail round his neck_. “I will let thee off thy
+bet,” said he to the demon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+
+“I believe, my lord,” said the demon, politely, “that our ways
+separate here.” Sir Roger sailed gaily upwards: while Mercurius having
+bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth,
+and perhaps lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the
+devil dashed him against the iron spikes and buttresses of the
+church.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
+came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
+butcher’s daughter (to whom he owed considerable for cutlets) to quit
+the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair
+creature’s name--“was as lovely a bit of mutton,” her father said, “as
+ever a man would wish to stick a knife into.” She had sat to the
+painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any
+of Gambouge’s pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in
+numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
+Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge,
+who was by this time the offspring of their affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
+lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+household; baker’s bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father,
+unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and
+swore that his daughter, and the dauber, her husband, should have no
+more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and
+crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do
+without: but in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish,
+and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a
+kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they,
+in course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great
+warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a
+washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and
+arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a second
+father in _her uncle_,--a base pun, which showed that her mind was
+corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple Griskinissa
+of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa’s face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humour
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
+foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear,
+and the peach-colour on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and
+crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck
+fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair,
+wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once
+so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of
+his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck,
+and cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the
+neighbours could hear this woman’s tongue, and understand her doings;
+bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the
+floor, and poor Gambouge’s oil and varnish pots went clattering
+through the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and
+Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the
+brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a
+picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced
+a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and
+swore in the most pathetic manner. “O miserable fate of genius!” cried
+he, “was I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be
+bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the
+world, or sold only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has
+misled me; cursed be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or
+steal, let me sell myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil,
+I should not be more wretched than I am now!”
+
+“Quite the contrary,” cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+“What!” exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. “Who’s
+there?--where are you?--who are you?”
+
+“You were just speaking of me,” said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder
+of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
+“Where are you?” cried he again.
+
+“S-q-u-e-e-z-e!” exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze;
+when, as sure as I’m living, a little imp spurted out from the hole
+upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily
+manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to
+be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then
+he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the
+poor painter what he wanted with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself
+at last upon the top of Gambouge’s easel,--smearing out, with his
+heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the
+allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+“What!” exclaimed Simon, “is it the--”
+
+“Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
+am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me
+a little better.”
+
+“Upon my word,” said the painter, “it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+existence.”
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and with one of Mr. Macready’s
+best looks, said,--
+
+    “There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+    Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but
+felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
+of his new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: “You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
+how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
+the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
+the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of
+an article which, in itself, is a supposition--a valueless, windy,
+uncertain property of yours, called by some poet of your own, I think,
+an _animula_, _vagula_, _blandula_--bah! there is no use beating about
+the bush--I mean _a soul_. Come, let me have it; you know you will
+sell it some other way, and not get such good pay for your
+bargain!”--and, having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his
+fob a sheet as big as a double _Times_, only there was a different
+_stamp_ in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
+to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
+found in the Devil’s own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
+skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over
+the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven
+years, and at the end of that time was to become the property of
+the--; =provided= that during the course of the seven years, every
+single wish which he might form should be gratified by the other of
+the contracting parties; otherwise the deed became null and nonavenue,
+and Gambouge should be left “to go to the--his own way.”
+
+“You will never see me again,” said Diabolus, in shaking hands with
+poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at
+this day--“never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask
+will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me,
+it is the best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like
+scandal. But if you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and
+out of the course of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of
+this you are the best judge.” So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but
+whether up the chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture
+or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of
+delight, as, heaven forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be,
+if he were allowed an opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+“Heigho!” said Simon. “I wonder whether this be a reality or a
+dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means
+to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I’m too hungry for that. I wish I
+could see a capon and a bottle of white wine.”
+
+“MONSIEUR SIMON!” cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+“C’est ici,” quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so;
+and lo! there was a _restaurateur’s_ boy at the door, supporting a
+tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a
+tall amber-coloured flask of Sauterne.
+
+“I am the new boy, sir,” exclaimed this youth, on entering; “but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things.”
+
+Simon grinned, and said, “Certainly, I did _ask for_ these things.”
+But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on
+his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew they were for
+old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived
+on the floor beneath.
+
+“Go, my boy,” he said; “it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses.”
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
+the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning
+his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+inevitable bill which was to follow all.
+
+“Ye gods!” said he, as he scraped away at the back-bone, “what a
+dinner! what wine!--and how gaily served up too!” There were silver
+forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver
+dish. “Why the money for this dish and these spoons,” cried Simon,
+“would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH”--and here Simon
+whistled, and turned round to see that no one was peeping--“I wish
+the plate were mine.”
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! “Here they are,” thought Simon
+to himself; “why should not I _take them_?” and take them he did.
+“Detection,” said he, “is not so bad as starvation; and I would as
+soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge.”
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout,
+and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he
+was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the
+pawnbroker--that establishment which is called in France the Mont de
+Piété. “I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend,” said Simon,
+“with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care.”
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. “I can give you
+nothing upon them,” said he.
+
+“What!” cried Simon; “not even the worth of the silver?”
+
+“No; I could buy them at that price at the ‘Café Morisot,’ Rue de la
+Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper.” And, so
+saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he
+wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for
+crime--_when crime is found out!_--otherwise, conscience takes matters
+much more easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
+virtuous.
+
+“But, hark ye, my friend,” continued the honest broker, “there is no
+reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have
+half the money?--speak, or I peach.”
+
+Simon’s resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. “Give
+me half,” he said, “and let me go.--What scoundrels are these
+pawnbrokers!” ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
+“seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
+gain.”
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
+less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
+up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon
+it was inscribed the simple number, 152. “A gambling-house,” thought
+Gambouge. “I WISH I had half the money that is now on the table, up
+stairs.”
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of _rouge et noir_. Gambouge’s five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was
+more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
+round--in “its predestined circle rolled,” as Shelley has it, after
+Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
+thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
+the delighted painter. “Oh, Diabolus!” cried he, “now it is that I
+begin to believe in thee! Don’t talk about merit,” he cried; “talk
+about fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of
+_zeroes_.” And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
+received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
+lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds upon the table. Suffice it to say,
+that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
+bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had
+been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a
+prince for half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had
+a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He
+repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
+_restaurateur’s_ plate. “O honesty!” he cried, “how unworthy is an
+action like this of a man who has a property like mine!” So he went
+back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable. “My
+friend,” said he, “I have sinned against all that I hold most sacred:
+I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy money. In the
+name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully sold
+thee!”
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, “Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
+that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I will never sell it at
+all.”
+
+“Well,” cried Gambouge, “thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth.” And here he produced a billet of
+five hundred francs. “Look,” said he, “this money is all I own; it is
+the payment of two years’ lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
+months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I _stole_ that
+plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
+houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer
+the thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did
+wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!”
+
+The broker was alarmed. “Give me thy note,” he cried; “here is the
+plate.”
+
+“Give me an acquittal first,” cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
+“sign me a paper, and the money is yours.” So Troisboules wrote
+according to Gambouge’s dictation: “Received, for thirteen ounces of
+plate, twenty pounds.”
+
+“Monster of iniquity!” cried the painter, “fiend of wickedness! thou
+art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds’
+worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a
+convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money,
+or I will bring thee to justice!”
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
+up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now
+returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner,
+and restored the plate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a
+profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown
+rich, grew likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father.
+He fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And
+I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre,
+in similar circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
+than ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he
+went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and _vice versâ_: in fact,
+she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a
+cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be
+supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the most
+miserable dog in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point of
+drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and during a
+considerable number of hours in each day, he thus dissipated,
+partially, his domestic chagrin. O philosophy! we may talk of thee:
+but, except at the bottom of the wine-cup, where thou liest like
+truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
+was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes,
+and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six
+years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as
+that which we have described at the commencement of this history. He
+had grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to
+mass, and had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to
+consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole
+matter.
+
+“I am inclined to think, holy sir,” said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
+desires were accomplished, “that, after all, this demon was no other
+than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that
+bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity.”
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church
+comfortably together, and entered afterwards a _café_, where they sat
+down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his
+button-hole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the
+marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.
+“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, as he took a place opposite them, and
+began reading the papers of the day.
+
+“Bah!” said he, at last,--“sont-ils grands ces journaux anglais?
+Look, sir,” he said, handing over an immense sheet of _The Times_ to
+Mr. Gambouge, “was ever anything so monstrous?”
+
+Gambouge smiled, politely, and examined the proffered page. “It is
+enormous,” he said; “but I do not read English.”
+
+“Nay,” said the man with the orders, “look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is.”
+
+Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked
+at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. “Come, M. l’Abbé,”
+he said; “the heat and glare of this place are intolerable.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The stranger rose with them. “Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur,” said he; “I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, who
+will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it
+necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at
+church_, as you may fancy.”
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper
+signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
+live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had
+consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers
+of the Palais. But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his
+poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted
+could give him a pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
+all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon’s confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee. “My friend,” said he, “I have it! Eureka!--I have found
+it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit
+college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter’s; and
+tell his Holiness you will double all if he will give you absolution!”
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome
+_ventre à terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition,
+and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in
+due form.
+
+“Now,” said he, “foul fiend, I defy you! arise. Diabolus! your
+contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe
+on the road to salvation.” In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the
+hand of his confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the
+cheeks of these good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them holding his sides, and lashing his tail
+about, as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+“Why,” said he, “what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+_that_?” and he tossed the Pope’s missive into a corner. “M. l’Abbé
+knows,” he said, bowing and grinning, “that though the Pope’s paper
+may pass current _here_, it is not worth twopence in our country. What
+do I care about the Pope’s absolution? You might just as well be
+absolved by your under butler.”
+
+“Egad,” said the Abbé, “the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
+which he points out clearly enough.”
+
+“No, no, Gambouge,” continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, “go
+thy ways, old fellow, that _cock won’t fight_.” And he retired up the
+chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
+scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed,
+or a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine
+than to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
+such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
+under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night
+or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and
+cursed his stars that he ever had married the butcher’s daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in
+the city of Paris--he gaily presided at one end of his table, while
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other
+extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+appear. The old ladies screamed and hoped he would not appear naked;
+the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
+company. “I will not show my _credentials_,” he said, blushing, and
+pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, “unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the
+person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will.”
+
+“You know,” said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+“that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months
+to come.”
+
+“I am,” replied the new comer.
+
+“You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit
+the bond which I gave you?”
+
+“It is true.”
+
+“You declare this before the present company?”
+
+“Upon my honour, as a gentleman,” said Diabolus, bowing, and laying
+his hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+“My love,” continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, “will you
+be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
+anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who,
+in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest
+and fondest companion.”
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+husband’s side, and took him tenderly by the hand. “Simon!” said she,
+“is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?”
+
+Simon continued solemnly: “Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to
+obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract has
+to run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half
+a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her
+caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which
+falls from her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I
+will deliver myself up at the appointed time.”
+
+Not Lord G----, when flogged by Lord B----, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley’s Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus
+did now. “Take another year, Gambouge,” screamed he; “two more--ten
+more--a century; roast me on Lawrence’s gridiron, boil me in holy
+water, but don’t ask that: don’t, don’t bid me live with Mrs.
+Gambouge!”
+
+Simon smiled sternly. “I have said it,” he cried; “do this, or our
+contract is at an end.”
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every
+person in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped
+down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and
+lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty
+pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped
+Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through
+the keyhole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. “You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!” cried a shrill and well-known voice, “you have been asleep
+these two hours:” and here he received another terrific box on the
+ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
+Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
+and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+
+“I wish,” said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, “that
+dreams were true;” and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+    Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,
+    Je suis plus savant que Balzac--
+    Plus sage que Pibrac;
+    Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque
+    De la nation cossaque,
+    La mettroit au sac;
+    De Charon je passerois le lac
+    En dormant dans son bac;
+    J’irois au fier Eac,
+    Sans que mon cœur fit tic ni tac,
+    Presenter du tabac.
+                       --_French Vaudeville._
+
+That Pierre Bon-Bon was a _restaurateur_ of uncommon qualifications,
+no man who, during the reign of ----, frequented the little _café_ in
+the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at
+liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree,
+skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more
+especially undeniable. His _pâtés à la fois_ were beyond doubt
+immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays _sur la
+Nature_--his thoughts _sur l’Ame_--his observations _sur l’Esprit_? If
+his _omelettes_--if his _fricandeaux_ were inestimable, what
+_littérateur_ of that day would not have given twice as much for an
+“_Idée de Bon-Bon_” as for all the trash of all the “_Idées_” of all
+the rest of the _savants_? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no
+other man had ransacked--had read more than any other would have
+entertained a notion of reading--had understood more than any other
+would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although,
+while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to
+assert “that his _dicta_ evinced neither the purity of the Academy,
+nor the depth of the Lyceum”--although, mark me, his doctrines were by
+no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that
+they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of
+their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them
+abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon--but let this go no further--it is to
+Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The
+former was indeed not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an
+Aristotelian--nor did he, like the modern Leibnitz, waste those
+precious hours which might be employed in the invention of a
+_fricassée_ or, _facili gradu_, the analysis of a sensation, in
+frivolous attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of
+ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was Ionic--Bon-Bon was equally
+Italic. He reasoned _a priori_--He reasoned _a posteriori_. His ideas
+were innate--or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond--he
+believed in Bossarion. Bon-Bon was emphatically a--Bon-Bonist.
+
+I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of _restaurateur_. I
+would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in
+fulfilling his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a
+proper estimation of their dignity and importance. Far from it. It
+was impossible to say in which branch of his profession he took the
+greater pride. In his opinion the powers of the intellect held
+intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. I am not
+sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the Chinese, who hold
+that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all events were
+right, he thought, who employed the same word for the mind and the
+diaphragm.[13] By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of
+gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the
+metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings--and what great man
+has not a thousand?--if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they
+were failings of very little importance--faults indeed which, in other
+tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.
+As regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it
+in this history but for the remarkable prominency--the extreme _alto
+relievo_--in which it jutted out from the plane of his general
+disposition. He could never let slip an opportunity of making a
+bargain.
+
+    [13] Φρένες.
+
+Not that he was avaricious--no. It was by no means necessary to the
+satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own
+proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected--a trade of any
+kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances--a triumphant smile
+was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a
+knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.
+
+At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humour so peculiar
+as the one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark.
+At the epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity _not_ attracted
+observation, there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon
+reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon
+was found to differ widely from the downright grin with which he would
+laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown
+out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made
+in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of
+unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations
+implanted by the author of all evil for wise purposes of his own.
+
+The philosopher had other weaknesses--but they are scarcely worthy our
+serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary
+profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle.
+Whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid
+proof, of such profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far
+as I can learn, did not think the subject adapted to minute
+investigation;--nor do I. Yet in the indulgence of a propensity so
+truly classical, it is not to be supposed that the _restaurateur_
+would lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont to
+characterize, at one and the same time, his _essais_ and his
+_omelettes_. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted
+hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Côtes du Rhône. With
+him Sauternes was to Médoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport
+with a syllogism in sipping St. Péray, but unravel an argument over
+Clos-Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had
+it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the
+peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded--but this was by
+no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, _that_ trait of mind in
+the philosophic Bon-Bon _did_ begin at length to assume a character of
+strange intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with
+the _diablerie_ of his favourite German studies.
+
+To enter the little _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre was, at the
+period of our tale, to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius. Bon-Bon
+was a man of genius. There was not a _sous-cuisinier_ in Rouen who
+could not have told you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat
+knew it, and forbore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of
+genius. His large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the
+approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a
+sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of
+the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true
+that much of this habitual respect might have been attributed to the
+personal appearance of the metaphysician. A distinguished exterior
+will, I am constrained to say, have its way even with a beast; and I
+am willing to allow much in the outward man of the _restaurateur_
+calculated to impress the imagination of the quadruped. There is a
+peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the little great--if I may be
+permitted so equivocal an expression--which mere physical bulk alone
+will be found at all times inefficient in creating. If, however,
+Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his head was
+diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the rotundity
+of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon
+the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
+his acquirements--in its immensity a fitting habitation for his
+immortal soul.
+
+I might here--if it so pleased me--dilate upon the matter of
+habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external
+metaphysician. I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short,
+combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped
+white flannel cap and tassels--that his pea-green jerkin was not after
+the fashion of those worn by the common class of _restaurateurs_ at
+that day--that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning
+costume permitted--that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that
+barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the
+garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured
+velvet of Genoa--that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously
+filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the
+exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding
+and embroidery--that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
+material called _aimable_--that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form
+a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson
+devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the
+morning--and that his _tout ensemble_ gave rise to the remarkable
+words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it was
+difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,
+or the rather a very Paradise of perfection.” I might, I say,
+expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,--but I forbear; merely
+personal details may be left to historical novelists,--they are
+beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.
+
+I have said that “to enter the _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre
+was to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius”--but then it was only
+the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_.
+A sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one
+side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _pâté_. On
+the back were visible in large letters _Oeuvres de Bon-Bon_. Thus was
+delicately shadowed forth the twofold occupation of the proprietor.
+
+Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building
+presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique
+construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the _café_.
+In a corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An
+array of curtains, together with a canopy _à la grecque_, gave it an
+air at once classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonally
+opposite, appeared, in direct family communion, the properties of the
+kitchen and the _bibliothèque_. A dish of polemics stood peacefully
+upon the dresser. Here lay an ovenful of the latest ethics--there a
+kettle of duodecimo _mélanges_. Volumes of German morality were hand
+and glove with the gridiron--a toasting-fork might be discovered by
+the side of Eusebius--Plato reclined at his ease in the
+frying-pan--and contemporary manuscripts were filed away upon the
+spit.
+
+In other respects the _Café de Bon-Bon_ might be said to differ little
+from the usual _restaurants_ of the period. A large fireplace yawned
+opposite the door. On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard
+displayed a formidable array of labelled bottles.
+
+It was here, about twelve o’clock one night, during the severe winter
+of ----, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having listened for some time to
+the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity--that
+Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked
+the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific
+mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of
+blazing fagots.
+
+It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or
+twice during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to
+its centre with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies
+of the wall, and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully
+the curtains of the philosopher’s bed, and disorganized the economy of
+his _pâté_-pans and papers. The huge folio sign that swung without,
+exposed to the fury of the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a
+moaning sound from its stanchions of solid oak.
+
+It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his
+chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a
+perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity
+of his meditations. In attempting _des œufs à la Princesse_, he had
+unfortunately perpetrated an _omelette à la Reine_; the discovery of a
+principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew;
+and last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable
+bargains which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing
+to a successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these
+unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some
+degree of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is
+so well calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate
+vicinity the large black water-dog we have spoken of before, and
+settling himself uneasily in his chair, he could not help casting a
+wary and unquiet eye toward those distant recesses of the apartment
+whose inexorable shadows not even the red fire-light itself could more
+than partially succeed in overcoming. Having completed a scrutiny
+whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible to himself, he drew
+close to his seat a small table covered with books and papers, and
+soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous
+manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.
+
+He had been thus occupied for some minutes, when “I am in no hurry,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon,” suddenly whispered a whining voice in the
+apartment.
+
+“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning
+the table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.
+
+“Very true,” calmly replied the voice.
+
+“Very true!--what is very true?--how came you here?” vociferated the
+metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at
+full length upon the bed.
+
+“I was saying,” said the intruder, without attending to the
+interrogatories,--“I was saying that I am not at all pushed for
+time--that the business, upon which I took the liberty of calling, is
+of no pressing importance--in short, that I can very well wait until
+you have finished your Exposition.”
+
+“My Exposition!--there now!--how do _you_ know?--how came _you_ to
+understand that I was writing an Exposition--good God!”
+
+“Hush!” replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising
+quickly from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an
+iron lamp that depended overhead swung convulsively back from his
+approach.
+
+The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the
+stranger’s dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure,
+exceedingly lean, but much above the common height, were rendered
+minutely distinct by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted
+tight to the skin, but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a
+century ago. These garments had evidently been intended for a much
+shorter person than their present owner. His ankles and wrists were
+left naked for several inches. In his shoes, however, a pair of very
+brilliant buckles gave the lie to the extreme poverty implied by the
+other portions of his dress. His head was bare, and entirely bald,
+with the exception of the hinder-part, from which depended a _queue_
+of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles, with side glasses,
+protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and at the same
+time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their colour or their
+conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a
+shirt; but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
+precision around the throat, and the ends, hanging down formally side
+by side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an
+ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and
+demeanour might have very well sustained a conception of that nature.
+Over his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an
+instrument resembling the _stylus_ of the ancients. In a breast-pocket
+of his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with
+clasps of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned
+outwardly from the person as to discover the words “_Rituel
+Catholique_” in white letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy
+was interestingly saturnine--even cadaverously pale. The forehead was
+lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of contemplation. The
+corners of the mouth were drawn down into an expression of the most
+submissive humility. There was also a clasping of the hands, as he
+stepped towards our hero--a deep sigh--and altogether a look of such
+utter sanctity as could not have failed to be unequivocally
+prepossessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the countenance of the
+metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory survey of his
+visitor’s person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted
+him to a seat.
+
+There would however be a radical error in attributing this
+instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher to any one of
+those causes which might naturally be supposed to have had an
+influence. Indeed, Pierre Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to
+understand of his disposition, was of all men the least likely to be
+imposed upon by any speciousness of exterior deportment. It was
+impossible that so accurate an observer of men and things should have
+failed to discover, upon the moment, the real character of the
+personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To say no more,
+the conformation of his visitor’s feet was sufficiently remarkable--he
+maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hat--there was a
+tremulous swelling about the hinder-part of his breeches--and the
+vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. Judge, then, with what
+feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself thrown thus at once
+into the society of a person for whom he had at all times entertained
+the most unqualified respect. He was, however, too much of the
+diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in
+regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to appear at
+all conscious of the high honour he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by
+leading his guest into conversation, to elicit some important ethical
+ideas, which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated
+publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same time
+immortalize himself--ideas which, I should have added, his visitor’s
+great age, and well-known proficiency in the science of morals, might
+very well have enabled him to afford.
+
+Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit
+down, while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the
+fire, and place upon the now re-established table some bottles of
+Mousseaux. Having quickly completed these operations, he drew his
+chair _vis-à-vis_ to his companion’s, and waited until the latter
+should open the conversation. But plans even the most skilfully
+matured are often thwarted in the outset of their application--and
+the _restaurateur_ found himself _nonplussed_ by the very first words
+of his visitor’s speech.
+
+“I see you know me, Bon-Bon,” said he; “ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hi!
+hi! hi--ho! ho! ho!--hu! hu! hu!”--and the Devil, dropping at once the
+sanctity of his demeanour, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from
+ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and,
+throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and
+uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches,
+joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off a tangent,
+stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.
+
+Not so the philosopher: he was too much a man of the world either to
+laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation
+of the cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see
+the white letters which formed the words “_Rituel Catholique_” on the
+book in his guest’s pocket, momently changing both their colour and
+their import, and in a few seconds, in place of the original title,
+the words “_Registre des Condamnés_” blaze forth in characters of red.
+This startling circumstance, when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor’s
+remark, imparted to his manner an air of embarrassment which probably
+might not otherwise have been observed.
+
+“Why, sir,” said the philosopher, “why, sir, to speak sincerely--I
+believe you are--upon my word--the d--dest--that is to say, I think--I
+imagine--I _have_ some faint--some _very_ faint idea--of the
+remarkable honour--”
+
+“Oh!--ah!--yes!--very well!” interrupted his Majesty; “say no more--I
+see how it is.” And hereupon, taking off his green spectacles, he
+wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited
+them in his pocket.
+
+If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his
+amazement was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented
+itself to view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of
+curiosity to ascertain the colour of his guest’s, he found them by no
+means black, as he had anticipated--nor grey, as might have been
+imagined--nor yet hazel nor blue--nor indeed yellow nor red--nor
+purple--nor white--nor green--nor any other colour in the heavens
+above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In
+short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no
+eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having
+existed at any previous period--for the space where eyes should
+naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level
+of flesh.
+
+It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some
+inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon; and the reply of
+his Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.
+
+“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon--eyes! did you say?--oh!--ah!--I perceive! The
+ridiculous prints, eh, which are in circulation, have given you a
+false idea of my personal appearance. Eyes!--true. Eyes, Pierre
+Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place--_that_, you would say,
+is the head?--right--the head of a worm. To _you_, likewise, these
+optics are indispensable--yet I will convince you that my vision is
+more penetrating than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner--a
+pretty cat--look at her--observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you behold
+the thoughts--the thoughts, I say--the ideas--the reflections--which
+are being engendered in her pericranium? There it is now--you do not!
+She is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of
+her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of
+ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of
+metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of
+my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance,
+liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron or a pitchfork. To
+you, I allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavour,
+Bon-Bon, to use them well; _my_ vision is the soul.”
+
+Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and
+pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without
+scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.
+
+“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his Majesty, tapping
+our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his
+glass after a thorough compliance with his visitor’s injunction. “A
+clever book that of yours, upon my honour. It’s a work after my own
+heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be
+improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That
+philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as
+much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a
+blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and
+for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity.
+I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral
+truth I am alluding?”
+
+“Cannot say that I--”
+
+“Indeed!--why it was I who told Aristotle that, by sneezing, men
+expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis.”
+
+“Which is--hiccup!--undoubtedly the case,” said the metaphysician,
+while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseaux, and
+offering his snuff-box to the fingers of his visitor.
+
+“There was Plato, too,” continued his Majesty, modestly declining the
+snuff-box and the compliment it implied--“there was Plato, too, for
+whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew
+Plato, Bon-Bon?--ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at
+Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for
+an idea. I bade him write down that ‘ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν αὐλός.’ He said that
+he would do so, and went home, while I stepped over to the pyramids.
+But my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even to aid a
+friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind the
+philosopher’s chair as he was inditing the ‘αυλός.’
+
+“Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down.
+So the sentence now reads ‘ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν αύγος,’ and is, you perceive,
+the fundamental doctrine in his metaphysics.”
+
+“Were you ever at Rome?” asked the _restaurateur_, as he finished his
+second bottle of Mousseaux, and drew from the closet a larger supply
+of Chambertin.
+
+“But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time,” said the
+Devil, as if reciting some passage from a book--“there was a time when
+occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft
+of all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the
+people, and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive
+power--at that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon--at that time _only_ I was in
+Rome, and I have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of
+its philosophy.”[14]
+
+    [14] Ils écrivaient sur la philosophie (_Cicero_,
+    _Lucretius_, _Seneca_), mais c’était la philosophie
+    grecque.--_Condorcet._
+
+“What do you think of--what do you think of--hiccup!--Epicurus?”
+
+“What do I think of _whom_?” said the Devil, in astonishment; “you
+surely do not mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of
+Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir?--I am Epicurus! I am the same
+philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated
+by Diogenes Laertes.”
+
+“That’s a lie!” said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a
+little into his head.
+
+“Very well!--very well, sir!--very well, indeed, sir!” said his
+Majesty, apparently much flattered.
+
+“That’s a lie!” repeated the _restaurateur_, dogmatically; “that’s
+a--hiccup!--a lie!”
+
+“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the Devil, pacifically, and
+Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at an argument, thought it his duty
+to conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.
+
+“As I was saying,” resumed the visitor--“as I was observing a little
+while ago, there are some very _outré_ notions in that book of yours,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug
+about the soul? Pray, sir, what _is_ the soul?”
+
+“The--hiccup!--soul,” replied the metaphysician, referring to his MS.,
+“is undoubtedly--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“Indubitably--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“Indisputably--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“Evidently--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“Incontrovertibly--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“Hiccup!--”
+
+“No, sir!”
+
+“And beyond all question, a--”
+
+“No, sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here the philosopher, looking
+daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third
+bottle of Chambertin.)
+
+“Then--hiccup!--pray, sir--what--what is it?”
+
+“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” replied his
+Majesty, musingly. “I have tasted--that is to say, I have known some
+very bad souls, and some too--pretty good ones.” Here he smacked his
+lips, and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in
+his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.
+
+He continued:
+
+“There was the soul of Cratinus--passable: Aristophanes--racy:
+Plato--exquisite--not _your_ Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your
+Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus--faugh! Then let me
+see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius.
+Then there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus
+Flaccus,--dear Quinty! as I called him when he sang a _saeculare_ for
+my amusement, while I toasted him, in pure good humour, on a fork. But
+they want _flavour_, these Romans. One fat Greek is worth a dozen of
+them, and besides will _keep_, which cannot be said of a Quirite. Let
+us taste your Sauterne.”
+
+Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the _nil admirari_, and
+endeavoured to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however,
+conscious of a strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail.
+Of this, although extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher
+took no notice:--simply kicking the dog, and requesting him to be
+quiet. The visitor continued:
+
+“I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;--you know I am
+fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso,
+to my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong
+twang of Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus--and
+Titus Livius was positively Polybius and none other.”
+
+“Hiccup!” here replied Bon-Bon, and his Majesty proceeded:
+
+“But if I _have_ a _penchant_, Monsieur Bon-Bon--if I _have_ a
+_penchant_, it is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is
+not every dev--I mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to
+_choose_ a philosopher. Long ones are _not_ good; and the best, if not
+carefully shelled, are apt to be a little rancid on account of the
+gall.”
+
+“Shelled!!”
+
+“I mean taken out of the carcass.”
+
+“What do you think of a--hiccup!--physician?”
+
+“_Don’t_ mention them!--ugh! ugh!” (Here his Majesty retched
+violently.) “I never tasted but one--that rascal Hippocrates!--smelt
+of asafoetida--ugh! ugh! ugh!--caught a wretched cold washing him in
+the Styx--and after all he gave me the cholera-morbus.”
+
+“The--hiccup!--wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the--hiccup!--abortion of
+a pill-box!”--and the philosopher dropped a tear.
+
+“After all,” continued the visitor, “after all, if a dev--if a
+gentleman wishes to _live_, he must have more talents than one or two;
+and with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy.”
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Why we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know
+that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to
+keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death,
+unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is _not_ good), they
+will--smell--you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be
+apprehended when the souls are consigned to us in the usual way.”
+
+“Hiccup!--hiccup!--good God! how _do_ you manage?”
+
+Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the
+Devil half started from his seat;--however, with a slight sigh, he
+recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I
+tell you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we _must_ have no more swearing.”
+
+The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough
+comprehension and acquiescence, and the visitor continued:
+
+“Why, there are _several_ ways of managing. The most of us starve:
+some put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits
+_vivente corpore_, in which case I find they keep very well.”
+
+“But the body!--hiccup!--the body!!”
+
+“The body, the body--well, what of the body?--oh! ah! I perceive. Why,
+sir, the body is not _at all_ affected by the transaction. I have made
+innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never
+experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and Nero,
+and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and--and a thousand
+others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter
+part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why isn’t
+there A--, now, whom you know as well as I? Is _he_ not in possession
+of all his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener
+epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who--but, stay! I have his
+agreement in my pocket-book.”
+
+Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a
+number of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the
+letters _Machi_--_Maza_--_Robesp_--with the words _Caligula_,
+_George_, _Elizabeth_. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of
+parchment, and from it read aloud the following words:
+
+“In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary
+to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d’or,
+I, being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the
+bearer of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the
+shadow called my soul. (Signed) A....”[15] (Here His Majesty repeated
+a name which I do not feel myself justified in indicating more
+unequivocally.)
+
+    [15] Query.--_Arouet?_
+
+“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but, like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon,
+he was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a
+shadow! Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hu! hu! hu! Only think of a
+_fricasséed_ shadow!”
+
+“_Only_ think--hiccup!--of a _fricasséed_ shadow!” exclaimed our hero,
+whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of
+His Majesty’s discourse. “Only think of a--hiccup!--_fricasséed_
+shadow!! Now, damme!--hiccup!--humph! If _I_ would have been such
+a--hiccup!--nincompoop! _My_ soul, Mr.--humph!”
+
+“_Your_ soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”
+
+“Yes, sir--hiccup!--_my_ soul is--”
+
+“What, sir?”
+
+“_No_ shadow, damme!”
+
+“Did you mean to say--”
+
+“Yes, sir, _my_ soul is--hiccup!--humph!--yes, sir.”
+
+“Did you not intend to assert--”
+
+“_My_ soul is--hiccup!--peculiarly qualified for--hiccup!--a--”
+
+“What, sir?”
+
+“Stew.”
+
+“Ha!”
+
+“_Soufflée._”
+
+“Eh!”
+
+“_Fricassée._”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“_Ragoût_ and _fricandeau_--and see here, my good fellow! I’ll let you
+have it--hiccup!--a bargain.” Here the philosopher slapped His Majesty
+upon the back.
+
+“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter calmly, at the same
+time rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.
+
+“Am supplied at present,” said His Majesty.
+
+“Hic-cup!--e-h?” said the philosopher.
+
+“Have no funds on hand.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Besides, very unhandsome in me--”
+
+“Sir!”
+
+“To take advantage of--”
+
+“Hic-cup!”
+
+“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”
+
+Here the visitor bowed and withdrew--in what manner could not
+precisely be ascertained--but in a well-concerted effort to discharge
+a bottle at “the villain,” the slender chain was severed that depended
+from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of
+the lamp.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER’S DEVIL
+
+
+As I was sitting in my armchair and preparing an essay on the Devil in
+literature, sleep overpowered me; the pen fell from my hands, and my
+head reclined upon the desk. I had been thinking so much about the
+Devil in my waking hours, that the same idea pursued me after I had
+fallen asleep. I heard a gentle rap at the door, and having bawled out
+as usual, “Come in,” a little gentleman entered, wrapped in a large
+blue cloth cloak, with a slouched hat, and goggles over his eyes.
+After bowing and scraping with considerable ceremony, he took off his
+hat, and threw his cloak over the back of a chair, when I immediately
+perceived that my visitor was no mortal. His face was hideously ugly;
+the skin appearing very much like wet paper, and the forehead covered
+with those cabalistic signs whose wondrous significance is best known
+to those who correct the press. On the end of his long hooked nose
+there seemed to me to be growing, like a carbuncle, the first letter
+of the alphabet, glittering with ink and ready to print. I observed,
+also, that each of his fingers and toes, or rather claws, was in the
+same manner terminated by one of the letters of the alphabet; and as
+he slashed round his tail to brush a fly off his nose, I noticed that
+the letter Z formed the extremity of that useful member. While I was
+looking with no small astonishment and some trepidation at my
+extraordinary visitor, he took occasion to inform me that he had
+taken liberty to call, as he was afraid I might forget him in the
+treatise which I was writing--an omission which he assured me would
+cause him no little mortification. “In me,” says he, “you behold the
+prince and patron of printers’ devils. My province is to preside over
+the hell of books; and if you will only take the trouble to accompany
+me a little way, I will show you some of the wonders of that world.”
+As my imagination had lately been much excited by perusing Dante’s
+_Inferno_, I was delighted with an adventure which promised to turn
+out something like his wonderful journey, and I readily consented to
+visit my new friend’s dominions, and we sallied forth together. As we
+pursued our way, my conductor endeavoured to give me some information
+respecting the world I was about to enter, in order to prepare me for
+the wonders I should encounter there. “You must know,” remarked he,
+“that books have souls as well as men; and the moment any work is
+published, whether successful or not, its soul appears in precisely
+the same form in another world; either in this domain, which is
+subject to me, or in a better region, over which I have no control. I
+have power only to exhibit the place of punishment for bad books,
+periodicals, pamphlets, and, in short, publications of every kind.”
+
+We now arrived at the mouth of a cavern, which I did not remember to
+have ever noticed before, though I had repeatedly passed the spot in
+my walks. It looked to me more like the entrance to a coalmine than
+anything else, as the sides were entirely black. Upon examining them
+more closely, I found that they were covered with a black fluid which
+greatly resembled printer’s ink, and which seemed to corrode and wear
+away the rocks of the cavern wherever it touched them. “We have lately
+received a large supply of political publications,” said my companion;
+“and hell is perfectly saturated with their maliciousness. We carry on
+a profitable trade upon the earth, by retailing this ink to the
+principal political editors. Unfortunately, it is not found to answer
+very well for literary publications, though they have tried it with
+considerable success in printing the London _Quarterly_ and several of
+the other important reviews.”
+
+The cavern widened as we advanced, and we came presently into a vast
+open plain, which was bounded on one side by a wall so high that it
+seemed to reach the very heavens. As we approached the wall I observed
+a vast gateway before us, closed up by folding doors. The gates opened
+at our approach, and we entered. I found myself in a warm sandy
+valley, bounded on one side by a steep range of mountains. A feeble
+light shone upon it, much like that of a sick chamber, and the air
+seemed confined and stifling like that of the abode of illness. My
+ears were assailed by a confused whining noise, as if all the litters
+of new-born puppies, kittens with their eyes unopened, and babes just
+come to light, in the whole world, were brought into one spot, and
+were whelping, mewing, and squalling at once. I turned in mute wonder
+to my guide for explanation; and he informed me that I now beheld the
+destined abode of all still-born and abortive publications; and the
+infantine noises which I heard were only their feeble wailing for the
+miseries they had endured in being brought into the world. I now saw
+what the feebleness of the light had prevented my observing before,
+that the soil was absolutely covered with books of every size and
+shape, from the little diamond almanac up to the respectable quarto. I
+saw folios there. These books were crawling about and tumbling over
+each other like blind whelps, uttering, at the same time, the most
+mournful cries. I observed one, however, which remained quite still,
+occasionally groaning a little, and appeared like an overgrown toad
+oppressed with its own heaviness. I drew near, and read upon the back,
+“_Resignation_, a Novel.” The cover flew open, and the title-page
+immediately began to address me. I walked off, however, as fast as
+possible, only distinguishing a few words about “the injustice and
+severity of critics;” “bad taste of the public;” “very well
+considering;” “first effort;” “feminine mind,” &c. &c. I presently
+discovered a very important-looking little book, stalking about among
+the rest in a great passion, kicking the others out of the way, and
+swearing like a trooper; till at length, apparently exhausted with its
+efforts, it sunk down to rise no more. “Ah ha!” exclaimed my little
+diabolical friend, “here is a new comer; let’s see who he is;” and
+coming up, he turned it over with his foot so that we could see the
+back of it, upon which was printed “_The Monikins_, by the Author of,
+&c. &c.” I noticed that the book had several marks across it, as if
+some one had been flogging the unfortunate work. “It is only the marks
+of the scourge,” said my companion, “which the critics have used
+rather more severely, I think, than was necessary.” I expected, after
+all the passion I had seen, and the great importance of feeling,
+arrogance, and vanity the little work had manifested, that it would
+have some pert remarks to make to us; but it was so much exhausted
+that it could not say a word. At the bottom of the valley was a small
+pond of a milky hue, from which there issued a perfume very much like
+the smell of bread and butter. An immense number of thin, prettily
+bound manuscript books were soaking in this pond of milk, all of
+which, I was informed, were _Young Ladies’ Albums_, which it was
+necessary to souse in the slough, to prevent them from stealing
+passages from the various works about them. As soon as I heard what
+they were, I ran away with all my speed, having a mortal dread of
+these books.
+
+We had now traversed the valley, and, approaching the barrier of
+mountains, we found a passage cut through, which greatly resembled the
+Pausilipo, near Naples; it was closed on the side towards the valley,
+only with a curtain of white paper, upon which were printed the names
+of the principal reviews, which my conductor assured me were enough to
+prevent any of the unhappy works we had seen from coming near the
+passage.
+
+As we advanced through the mountains, occasional gleams of light
+appeared before us, and immediately vanished, leaving us in darkness.
+My guide, however, seemed to be well acquainted with the way, and we
+went on fearlessly till we emerged into an open field, lighted up by
+constant flashes of lightning, which glared from every side; the air
+was hot, and strongly impregnated with sulphur. “Each department of my
+dominions,” said the Devil, “receives its light from the works which
+are sent there. You are now surrounded by the glittering but
+evanescent coruscations of the more recent novels. This department of
+hell was never very well supplied till quite lately, though Fielding,
+Smollett, Maturin, and Godwin, did what they could for us. Our
+greatest benefactors have been Disraeli, Bulwer, and Victor Hugo; and
+this glare of light, so painful to our eyes, proceeds chiefly from
+their books.” There was a tremendous noise like the rioting of an army
+of drunken men, with horrible cries and imprecations, and fiend-like
+laughing, which made my blood curdle; and such a scrambling and
+fighting among the books, as I never saw before. I could not imagine
+at first what could be the cause of this, till I discovered at last a
+golden hill rising up like a cone in the midst of the plane, with just
+room enough for one book on the summit; and I found that the novels
+were fighting like so many devils for the occupation of this place.
+One work, however, had gained possession of it, and seemed to maintain
+its hold with a strength and resolution which bade defiance to the
+rest. I could not at first make out the name of this book, which
+seemed to stand upon its golden throne like the Prince of Hell; but
+presently the whole arch of the heavens glared with new brilliancy,
+and the magic name of _Vivian Grey_ flashed from the book in letters
+of scorching light. I was much afraid, however, that _Vivian_ would
+not long retain his post; for I saw _Pelham_ and _Peregrine Pickle_,
+and the terrible _Melmoth_ with his glaring eyes, coming together to
+the assault, when a whirlwind seized them all four and carried them
+away to a vast distance, leaving the elevation vacant for some other
+competitor. “There is no peace to the wicked, you see,” said my
+Asmodeus. “These books are longing for repose, and they can get none
+on account of the insatiable vanity of their authors, whose desire for
+distinction made them careless of the sentiments they expressed and
+the principles they advocated. The great characteristic of works of
+this stamp is action, intense, painful action. They have none of that
+beautiful serenity which shines in Scott and Edgeworth; and they are
+condemned to illustrate, by an eternity of contest here, the restless
+spirit with which they are inspired.”
+
+While I was looking on with fearful interest in the mad combat before
+me, the horizon seemed to be darkened, and a vast cloud rose up in the
+image of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stretched from the east to the
+west till he covered the firmament. In his talons he carried an open
+book, at the sight of which the battle around me was calmed; the
+lightnings ceased to flash, and there was an awful stillness. Then
+suddenly there glared from the book a sheet of fire, which rose in
+columns a thousand feet high, and filled the empyrean with intense
+light; the pillars of flame curling and wreathing themselves into
+monstrous letters, till they were fixed in one terrific glare, and I
+read--“BYRON.” Even my companion quailed before the awful light, and I
+covered my face with my hands. When I withdrew them, the cloud and the
+book had vanished, and the contest was begun again--“You have seen the
+Prince of this division of hell,” said my guide.
+
+We now began rapidly to descend into the bowels of the earth; and,
+after sinking some thousand feet, I found myself on terra firma again,
+and walking a little way, we came to a gate of massive ice, over which
+was written in vast letters--“My heritage is despair.” We passed
+through, and immediately found ourselves in a vast basin of lead,
+which seemed to meet the horizon on every side. A bright light shone
+over the whole region; but it was not like the genial light of the
+sun. It chilled me through; and every ray that fell upon me seemed
+like the touch of ice. The deepest silence prevailed; and though the
+valley was covered with books, not one moved or uttered a sound. I
+drew near to one, and I shivered with intense cold as I read upon
+it--“Voltaire.” “Behold,” said the demon, “the hell of infidel books;
+the light which emanates from them is the light of reason, and they
+are doomed to everlasting torpor.” I found it too cold to pursue my
+investigations any farther in this region, and I gladly passed on from
+the leaden gulf of Infidelity.
+
+I had no sooner passed the barrier which separated this department
+from the next, than I heard a confused sound like the quacking of
+myriads of ducks and geese, and a great flapping of wings; of which I
+soon saw the cause. “You are in the hell of newspapers,” said my
+guide. And sure enough, when I looked up I saw thousands of newspapers
+flying about with their great wooden back-bones, and the padlock
+dangling like a bobtail at the end, flapping their wings and hawking
+at each other like mad. After circling about in the air for a little
+while, and biting and tearing each other as much as they could, they
+plumped down, head first, into a deep black-looking pool, and were
+seen no more. “We place these newspapers deeper in hell than the
+Infidel publications,” said the Devil; “because they are so much more
+extensively read, and thereby do much greater mischief. It is a kind
+of pest of which there is no end; and we are obliged to allot the
+largest portion of our dominions to containing them.”
+
+We now came to an immense pile of a leaden hue, which I found at last
+to consist of old worn-out type, which was heaped up to form the wall
+of the next division. A monstrous u, turned bottom upwards (in this
+way ⋂) formed the arch of a gateway through which we passed; and then
+traversed a draw-bridge, which was thrown across a river of ink, upon
+whose banks millions of horrible little demons were sporting. I
+presently saw that they were employed in throwing into the black
+stream a quantity of books which were heaped up on the shore. As I
+looked down into the stream, I saw that they were immediately devoured
+by the most hideous and disgusting monsters which were floundering
+about there. I looked at one book, which had crawled out after being
+thrown into the river; it was dripping with filth, but I distinguished
+on the back the words--_Don Juan_. It had hardly climbed up the bank,
+however, when one of the demons gave it a kick, and sent it back into
+the stream, where it was immediately swallowed. On the back of some of
+the books which the little imps were tossing in, I saw the name
+of--_Rochester_, which showed me the character of those which were
+sent into this division of the infernal regions.
+
+Beyond this region rose up a vast chain of mountains, which we were
+obliged to clamber over. After toiling for a long time, we reached the
+summit, and I looked down upon an immense labyrinth built upon the
+plain below, in which I saw a great number of large folios, stalking
+about in solemn pomp, each followed by a number of small volumes and
+pamphlets, like so many pages or footmen watching the beck of their
+master. “You behold here,” said the demon, “all the false works upon
+theology which have been written since the beginning of the Christian
+era. They are condemned to wander about to all eternity in the
+hopeless maze of this labyrinth, each folio drawing after it all the
+minor works to which it gave origin.” A faint light shone from these
+ponderous tomes; but it was like the shining of a lamp in a thick
+mist, shorn of its rays, and illuminating nothing around it. And if my
+companion had not held a torch before me, I should not have discerned
+the outlines of this department of the Infernal world. As my eye
+became somewhat accustomed to the feeble light, I discovered beyond
+the labyrinth a thick mist, which appeared to rise from some river or
+lake. “That,” said my companion, “is the distinct abode of German
+Metaphysical works, and other treatises of a similar unintelligible
+character. They are all obliged to pass through a press; and if there
+is any sense in them, it is thus separated from the mass of nonsense
+in which it is imbedded, and is allowed to escape to a better world.
+Very few of the works, however, are found to be materially diminished
+by passing through the press.” We had now crossed the plain, and stood
+near the impenetrable fog, which rose up like a wall before us. In
+front of it was the press managed by several ugly little demons, and
+surrounded by an immense number of volumes of every size and shape,
+waiting for the process which all were obliged to undergo. As I was
+watching their operations, I saw two very respectable German folios,
+with enormous clasps, extended like arms, carrying between them a
+little volume, which they were fondling like a pet child with marks of
+doting affection. These folios proved to be two of the most abstruse,
+learned, and incomprehensible of the metaphysical productions of
+Germany; and the bantling which they seemed to embrace with so much
+affection, was registered on the back--“_Records of a School_.” I did
+not find that a single ray of intelligence had been extracted from
+either of the two after being subjected to the press. As soon as the
+volumes had passed through the operation of yielding up all the little
+sense they contained, they plunged into the intense fog, and
+disappeared for ever.
+
+We next approached the verge of a gulf, which appeared to be
+bottomless; and there was dreadful noise, like the war of the
+elements, and forked flames shooting up from the abyss, which reminded
+me of the crater of Vesuvius. “You have now reached the ancient limits
+of hell,” said the demon, “and you behold beneath your feet the
+original chaos on which my domains are founded. But within a few years
+we have been obliged to build a yet deeper division beyond the gulf,
+to contain a class of books that were unknown in former times.” “Pray,
+what class can be found,” I asked, “worse than those which I have
+already seen, and for which it appears hell was not bad enough?” “They
+are American re-prints of English publications,” replied he, “and they
+are generally works of such a despicable character, that they would
+have found their way here without being republished; but even where
+the original work was good, it is so degenerated by the form under
+which it re-appears in America, that its merit is entirely lost, and
+it is only fit for the seventh and lowest division of hell.”
+
+I now perceived a bridge spanning over the gulf, with an arch that
+seemed as lofty as the firmament. We hastily passed over, and found
+that the farthest extremity of the bridge was closed by a gate, over
+which was written three words. “They are the names of the three furies
+who reign over this division,” said my guide. I of course did not
+contradict him; but the words looked very much like some I had seen
+before; and the more I examined them, the more difficult was it to
+convince myself that the inscription was not the same thing as the
+sign over a certain publishing house in Philadelphia.
+
+“These,” said the Devil, “are called the three furies of the hell of
+books; not from the mischief they do there to the works about them,
+but for the unspeakable wrong they did to the same works upon the
+earth, by re-printing them in their hideous brown paper editions.” As
+soon as they beheld me, they rushed towards me with such piteous
+accents and heart-moving entreaties, that I would intercede to save
+them from their torment, that I was moved with the deepest compassion,
+and began to ask my conductor if there were no relief for them. But he
+hurried me away, assuring me that they only wanted to sell me some of
+their infernal editions, and the idea of owning any such property was
+so dreadful that it woke me up directly.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S MOTHER-IN-LAW[16]
+
+BY FERNÁN CABALLERO
+
+
+    [16] From _Spanish Fairy Tales_. By Fernán Caballero.
+    Translated by J. H. Ingram. (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
+    Co., 1881. By permission of the Publishers.)
+
+In a town, named Villagañanes, there was once an old widow uglier than
+the sergeant of Utrera, who was considered as ugly as ugly could be;
+drier than hay; older than foot-walking, and more yellow than the
+jaundice. Moreover, she had so crossgrained a disposition that Job
+himself could not have tolerated her. She had been nicknamed “Mother
+Holofernes,” and she had only to put her head out of doors to put all
+the lads to flight. Mother Holofernes was as clean as a new pin, and
+as industrious as an ant, and in these respects suffered no little
+vexation on account of her daughter Panfila, who was, on the contrary,
+so lazy, and such an admirer of the Quietists, that an earthquake
+would not move her. So it came to pass that Mother Holofernes began
+quarrelling with her daughter almost from the day that the girl was
+born.
+
+“You are,” she said, “as flaccid as Dutch tobacco, and it would take a
+couple of oxen to draw you out of your room. You fly work as you would
+the pest, and nothing pleases you but the window, you shameless girl.
+You are more amorous than Cupid himself, but, if I have any power, you
+shall live as close as a nun.”
+
+On hearing all this, Panfila got up, yawned, stretched herself, and
+turning her back on her mother, went to the street door. Mother
+Holofernes, without paying attention to this, began to sweep with most
+tremendous energy, accompanying the noise of the broom with a
+monologue of this tenor:--
+
+“In my time girls had to work like men.”
+
+The broom gave the accompaniment of _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+“And lived as secluded as nuns.”
+
+And the broom went _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+“Now they are a pack of fools.”--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+“Of idlers.”--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+“And think of nothing but husbands.--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+“And are a lot of good-for-nothings.”
+
+The broom following with its chorus.
+
+By this time she had nearly reached the street door, when she saw her
+daughter making signs to a youth; and the handle of the broom, as the
+handiest implement, descended upon the shoulders of Panfila, and
+effected the miracle of making her run. Next, Mother Holofernes,
+grasping the broom, made for the door; but scarcely had the shadow of
+her head appeared, than it produced the customary effect, and the
+aspirant disappeared so swiftly that it seemed as if he must have had
+wings on his feet.
+
+“Drat that fellow!” shouted the mother; “I should like to break all
+the bones in his body.”
+
+“What for? Why should I not think of getting married?”
+
+“What are you saying? You get married, you fool! not while I live!”
+
+“Why were you married, madam? and my grandmother? and my great
+grandmother?”
+
+“Nicely I have been repaid for it, by you, you sauce-box! And
+understand me, that if I chose to get married, and your grandmother
+also, and your great grandmother also, I do not intend that you shall
+marry; nor my granddaughter, nor my great granddaughter! Do you hear
+me?”
+
+In these gentle disputes the mother and daughter passed their lives,
+without any other result than that the mother grumbled more and more
+every day, and the daughter became daily more and more desirous of
+getting a husband.
+
+Upon one occasion, when Mother Holofernes was doing the washing, and
+as the lye was on the point of boiling, she had to call her daughter
+to help her lift the caldron, in order to pour its contents on to the
+tub of clothes. The girl heard her with one ear, but with the other
+was listening to a well-known voice which sang in the street:--
+
+    “I would like to love thee,
+      Did thy mother let me woo!
+    May the demon meddle
+      In all she tries to do!”
+
+The sound outside being more attractive for Panfila than the caldron
+within, she did not hasten to her mother, but went to the window.
+Mother Holofernes, meanwhile, seeing that her daughter did not come,
+and that time was passing, attempted to lift the caldron by herself,
+in order to pour the water upon the linen; and as the good woman was
+small, and not very strong, it turned over, and burnt her foot. On
+hearing the horrible groans Mother Holofernes made, her daughter went
+to her.
+
+“Wretch, wretch!” cried the enraged Mother Holofernes to her daughter,
+“may you love Barabbas! And as for marrying--may Heaven grant you may
+marry the Evil One himself!”
+
+Sometime after this accident an aspirant presented himself: he was a
+little man, young, fair, red-haired, well-mannered, and had
+well-furnished pockets. He had not a single fault, and Mother
+Holofernes was not able to find any in all her arsenal of negatives.
+As for Panfila, it wanted little to send her out of her senses with
+delight. So the preparations for the wedding were made, with the usual
+grumbling accompaniment on the part of the bridegroom’s future
+mother-in-law. Everything went on smoothly straightforward, and
+without a break--like a railroad--when, without knowing why, the
+popular voice--a voice which is as the personification of
+conscience,--began to rise in a murmur against the stranger, despite
+the fact that he was affable, humane, and liberal; that he spoke well
+and sang better; and freely took the black and horny hands of the
+labourers between his own white and beringed fingers. They began to
+feel neither honoured nor overpowered by so much courtesy; his
+reasoning was always so coarse, although forcible and logical.
+
+“By my faith!” said Uncle Blas; “why does this ill-faced gentleman
+call me Mr. Blas, as if that would make me any better? What does it
+look like to you?”
+
+“Well, as for me,” said Uncle Gil, “did he not come to shake hands
+with me as if we had some plot between us? Did he not call me citizen?
+I, who have never been out of the village, and never want to go.”
+
+As for Mother Holofernes, the more she saw of her future son-in-law,
+the less regard she had for him. It seemed to her that between that
+innocent red hair and the cranium were located certain protuberances
+of a very curious kind; and she remembered with emotion that
+malediction she had uttered against her daughter on that ever
+memorable day on which her foot was injured and her washing spoilt.
+
+At last, the wedding day arrived. Mother Holofernes had made pastry
+and reflections--the former sweet, the latter bitter; a great _olla
+podrida_ for the food, and a dangerous project for supper; she had
+prepared a barrel of wine that was generous, and a line of conduct
+that was not. When the bridal pair were about to retire to the nuptial
+chamber, Mother Holofernes called her daughter aside, and said: “When
+you are in your room, be careful to close the door and windows; shut
+all the shutters, and do not leave a single crevice open but the
+keyhole of the door. Take with you this branch of consecrated olive,
+and beat your husband with it as I advise you; this ceremony is
+customary at all marriages, and signifies that the woman is going to
+be master, and is followed in order to sanction and establish the
+rule.”
+
+Panfila, for the first time obedient to her mother, did everything
+that she had prescribed.
+
+No sooner did the bridegroom espy the branch of consecrated olive in
+the hands of his wife, than he attempted to make a precipitous
+retreat. But when he found the doors and windows closed, and every
+crevice stopped up, seeing no other means of escape than by passing
+through the keyhole, he crept into that; this spruce, red-and-white,
+and well-spoken bachelor being, as Mother Holofernes had suspected,
+neither more nor less than the Evil One himself, who, availing himself
+of the right given him by the anathema launched against Panfila by her
+mother, thought to amuse himself with the pleasures of a marriage, and
+encumber himself with a wife of his own, whilst so many husbands were
+supplicating him to take theirs off their hands.
+
+But this gentleman, despite his reputation for wisdom, had met with a
+mother-in-law who knew more than he did; and Mother Holofernes was not
+the only specimen of that genus. Therefore, scarcely had his lordship
+entered into the keyhole, congratulating himself upon having, as
+usual, discovered a method of escape, than he found himself in a
+phial, which his foreseeing mother-in-law had ready on the other side
+of the door; and no sooner had he got into it than the provident old
+dame sealed the vessel hermetically. In a most tender voice, and with
+most humble supplications, and most pathetic gestures, her son-in-law
+addressed her, and desired that she would grant him his liberty. But
+Mother Holofernes was not to be deceived by the demon, nor
+disconcerted by orations, nor imposed upon by honeyed words; she took
+charge of the bottle and its contents, and went off to a mountain. The
+old lady vigorously climbed to the summit of this mountain, and there,
+on its most elevated crest, in a rocky and secluded spot, deposited
+the phial, taking leave of her son-in-law with a shake of her closed
+fist as a farewell greeting.
+
+And there his lordship remained for ten years. What years those ten
+were! The world was as quiet as a pool of oil. Everybody attended to
+his own affairs, without meddling in those of other people. Nobody
+coveted the position, nor the wife, nor the property of other persons;
+theft became a word without signification; arms rusted; powder was
+only consumed in fireworks; prisons stood empty; finally, in this
+decade of the golden age, only one single deplorable event occurred
+... the lawyers died from hunger and quietude.
+
+Alas! that so happy a time should have an end! But everything has an
+end in this world, even the discourses of the most eloquent fathers of
+the country. At last the much-to-be-envied decade came to a
+termination in the following way.
+
+A soldier named Briónes had obtained permission for a few days’ leave
+to enable him to visit his native place, which was Villagañanes. He
+took the road which led to the lofty mountain upon whose summit the
+son-in-law of Mother Holofernes was cursing all mothers-in-law, past,
+present, and future, promising as soon as ever he regained his power
+to put an end to that class of vipers, and by a very simple
+method--the abolition of matrimony. Much of his time was spent in
+composing and reciting satires against the invention of washing linen,
+the primal cause of his present trouble.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the mountain, Briónes did not care to go round
+the mountain like the road, but wished to go straight ahead, assuring
+the carriers who were with him, that if the mountain would not go to
+the right-about for him he would pass over its summit, although it
+were so high that he should knock his head against the sky.
+
+When he reached the summit, Briónes was struck with amazement on
+seeing the phial borne like a pimple on the nose of the mountain. He
+took it up, looked through it, and on perceiving the demon, who with
+years of confinement and fasting, the sun’s rays, and sadness, had
+dwindled and become as dried as a prune, exclaimed in surprise:--
+
+“Whatever vermin is this? What a phenomenon!”
+
+“I am an honourable and meritorious demon,” said the captive, humbly
+and courteously. “The perversity of a treacherous mother-in-law, into
+whose clutches I fell, has held me confined here during the last ten
+years; liberate me, valiant warrior, and I will grant any favour you
+choose to solicit.”
+
+“I should like my demission from the army,” said Briónes.
+
+“You shall have it; but uncork, uncork quickly, for it is a most
+monstrous anomaly to have thrust into a corner, in these revolutionary
+times, the first revolutionist in the world.”
+
+Briónes drew the cork out slightly, and a noxious vapour issued from
+the bottle and ascended to his brain. He sneezed, and immediately
+replaced the stopper with such a violent blow from his hand that the
+cork was suddenly depressed, and the prisoner, squeezed down, gave a
+shout of rage and pain.
+
+“What are you doing, vile earthworm, more malicious and perfidious
+than my mother-in-law?” he exclaimed.
+
+“There is another condition,” responded Briónes, “that I must add to
+our treaty; it appears to me that the service I am going to do you is
+worth it.”
+
+“And what is this condition, tardy liberator?” inquired the demon.
+
+“I should like for thy ransom four dollars daily during the rest of my
+life. Think of it, for upon that depends whether you stay in or come
+out.”
+
+“Miserable avaricious one!” exclaimed the demon, “I have no money.”
+
+“Oh!” replied Briónes, “what an answer from a great lord like you!
+Why, friend, that is the Minister of War’s answer! If you can’t pay me
+I cannot help you.”
+
+“Then you do not believe me,” said the demon, “only let me out, and I
+will aid you to obtain what you want as I have done for many others.
+Let me out, I say, let me out.”
+
+“Gently,” responded the soldier, “there is nothing to hurry about.
+Understand me that I shall have to hold you by the tail until you have
+performed your promise to me; and if not, I have nothing more to say
+to you.”
+
+“Insolent, do you not trust me then!” shouted the demon.
+
+“No,” responded Briónes.
+
+“What you desire is contrary to my dignity,” said the captive, with
+all the arrogance that a being of his size could express.
+
+“Now I must go,” said Briónes.
+
+“Good-bye,” said the demon, in order not to say _adieu_.
+
+But seeing that Briónes went off, the captive made desperate jumps in
+the phial, shouting loudly to the soldier.
+
+“Return, return, dear friend,” he said; and muttered to himself, “I
+should like a four-year-old bull to overtake you, you soulless fool!”
+and then he shouted, “Come, come, beneficent fellow, liberate me, and
+hold me by the tail, or by the nose, valiant warrior;” and then
+muttered to himself, “Some one will avenge me, obstinate soldier; and
+if the son-in-law of Mother Holofernes is not able to do it, there are
+those who will burn you both, face to face, in the same bonfire, or I
+have little influence.”
+
+On hearing the demon’s supplications Briónes returned and uncorked the
+bottle. Mother Holofernes’s son-in-law came forth like a chick from
+its shell, drawing out his head first and then his body, and lastly
+his tail, which Briónes seized; and the more the demon tried to
+contract it the firmer he held it.
+
+After the ex-captive, who was somewhat cramped, had occasionally
+stopped to stretch his arms and legs, they took the road to court, the
+demon grumbling and following the soldier, who carried the tail well
+secured in his hands.
+
+On their arrival they went to court, and the demon said to his
+liberator:--
+
+“I am going to put myself into the body of the princess, who is
+extremely beloved by her father, and I shall give her pains that no
+doctor will be able to cure; then you present yourself and offer to
+cure her, demanding for your recompense four dollars daily, and your
+discharge. I will then leave her to you, and our accounts will be
+settled.”
+
+Everything happened as arranged and foreseen by the demon, but Briónes
+did not wish to let go his hold of the tail, and he said:--
+
+“Well devised, sir, but four dollars are a ransom unworthy of you, of
+me, and of the service that we have undertaken. Find some method of
+showing yourself more generous. To do this will give you honour in the
+world, where, pardon my frankness, you do not enjoy the best of
+characters.”
+
+“Would that I could get rid of you!” said the demon to himself, “but I
+am so weak and so numbed that I am not able to go alone. I must have
+patience! that which men call a virtue. Oh, now I understand why so
+many fall into my power for not having practised it. Forward then for
+Naples, for it is necessary to submit in order to liberate my tail. I
+must go and submit to the arbitration of fate for the satisfaction of
+this new demand.”
+
+Everything succeeded according to his wish. The princess of Naples
+fell a victim to convulsive pains and took to her bed. The king was
+greatly afflicted. Briónes presented himself with all the arrogance
+his knowledge that he would receive the demon’s aid could give him.
+The king was willing to make use of his services, but stipulated that
+if within three days he had not cured the princess, as he confidently
+promised to, he should be hanged. Briónes, certain of a favourable
+result, did not raise the slightest objection.
+
+Unfortunately, the demon heard this arrangement made, and gave a leap
+of delight at seeing within his hands the means of avenging himself.
+
+The demon’s leap caused the princess such pain that she begged them to
+take the doctor away.
+
+The following day this scene was repeated. Briónes then knew that the
+demon was at the bottom of it, and intended to let him be hanged. But
+Briónes was not a man to lose his head.
+
+On the third day, when the pretended doctor arrived, they were
+erecting the gallows in front of the very palace door. As he entered
+the princess’s apartment, the invalid’s pains were redoubled and she
+began to cry out that they should put an end to that impostor.
+
+“I have not exhausted all my resources yet,” said Briónes gravely,
+“deign, your Royal Highness, to wait a little while.” He then went out
+of the room and gave orders in the princess’s name that all the bells
+of the city should be rung.
+
+When he returned to the royal apartment, the demon, who has a mortal
+hatred of the sound of bells, and is, moreover, inquisitive, asked
+Briónes what the bells were ringing for.
+
+“They are ringing,” responded the soldier, “because of the arrival of
+your mother-in-law, whom I have ordered to be summoned.”
+
+Scarcely had the demon heard that his mother-in-law had arrived, than
+he flew away with such rapidity that not even a sun’s ray could have
+caught him. Proud as a peacock, Briónes was left in victorious
+possession of the field.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER[17]
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+    [17] From _The English Review_, November 1918. By permission
+    of the Editor and Mr. Arthur Symons.
+
+Yesterday, across the crowd of the boulevard, I found myself touched
+by a mysterious Being I had always desired to know, and who I
+recognized immediately, in spite of the fact that I had never seen
+him. He had, I imagined, in himself, relatively as to me, a similar
+desire, for he gave me, in passing, so significant a sign in his eyes
+that I hastened to obey him. I followed him attentively, and soon I
+descended behind him into a subterranean dwelling, astonishing to me
+as a vision, where shone a luxury of which none of the actual houses
+in Paris could give me an approximate example. It seemed to me
+singular that I had passed so often that prodigious retreat without
+having discovered the entrance. There reigned an exquisite, an almost
+stifling atmosphere, which made one forget almost instantaneously all
+the fastidious horrors of life; there I breathed a sombre sensuality,
+like that of opium-smokers when, set on the shore of an enchanted
+island, over which shone an eternal afternoon, they felt born in them,
+to the soothing sounds of melodious cascades, the desire of never
+again seeing their households, their women, their children, and of
+never again being tossed on the decks of ships by storms.
+
+There were there strange faces of men and women, gifted with so fatal
+a beauty that I seemed to have seen them years ago and in countries
+which I failed to remember, and which inspired in me that curious
+sympathy and that equally curious sense of fear that I usually
+discover in unknown aspects. If I wanted to define in some fashion or
+other the singular expression of their eyes, I would say that never
+had I seen such magic radiance more energetically expressing the
+horror of _ennui_ and of desire--of the immortal desire of feeling
+themselves alive.
+
+As for mine host and myself, we were already, as we sat down, as
+perfect friends as if we had always known each other. We drank
+immeasurably of all sorts of extraordinary wines, and--a thing not
+less bizarre--it seemed to me, after several hours, that I was no more
+intoxicated than he was.
+
+However, gambling, this superhuman pleasure, had cut, at various
+intervals, our copious libations, and I ought to say that I had gained
+and lost my soul, as we were playing, with an heroical carelessness
+and light-heartedness. The soul is so invisible a thing, often useless
+and sometimes so troublesome, that I did not experience, as to this
+loss, more than that kind of emotion I might have, had I lost my
+visiting card in the street.
+
+We spent hours in smoking cigars, whose incomparable savour and
+perfume give to the soul the nostalgia of unknown delights and sights,
+and, intoxicated by all these spiced sauces, I dared, in an access of
+familiarity which did not seem to displease him, to cry, as I lifted
+a glass filled to the brim with wine: “To your immortal health, Old
+He-Goat!”
+
+We talked of the universe, of its creation and of its future
+destruction; of the leading ideas of the century--that is to say, of
+Progress and Perfectibility--and, in general, of all kinds of human
+infatuations. On this subject his Highness was inexhaustible in his
+irrefutable jests, and he expressed himself with a splendour of
+diction and with a magnificence in drollery such as I have never found
+in any of the most famous conversationalists of our age. He explained
+to me the absurdity of different philosophies that had so far taken
+possession of men’s brains, and deigned even to take me in confidence
+in regard to certain fundamental principles, which I am not inclined
+to share with any one.
+
+He complained in no way of the evil reputation under which he lived,
+indeed, all over the world, and he assured me that he himself was of
+all living beings the most interested in the destruction of
+_Superstition_, and he avowed to me that he had been afraid,
+relatively as to his proper power, once only, and that was on the day
+when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the rest of the human
+herd, cry in his pulpit: “My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when
+you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of
+the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!”
+
+The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally on the subject
+of Academies, and my strange host declared to me that he didn’t
+disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pens, the words, and the
+consciences of pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in
+person, in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings.
+
+Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he had any news of
+God--who has not his hours of impiety?--especially as the old friend
+of the Devil. He said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a
+deeper shade of sadness: “We salute each other when we meet.” But, for
+the rest, he spoke in Hebrew.
+
+It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long an audience to
+a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it.
+
+Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous personage, sung
+by so many poets, and served by so many philosophers who work for his
+glory’s sake without being aware of it, said to me: “I want you to
+remember me always, and to prove to you that I--of whom one says so
+much evil--am often enough _bon diable_, to make use of one of your
+vulgar locutions. So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you
+have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to
+have gained, if your fate had been fortunate--that is to say, the
+possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life,
+this bizarre affection of _ennui_, which is the source of all your
+maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by
+you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your
+vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come
+to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made
+the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as
+you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without
+lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot, and where the
+women are as scented as the flowers.” With this he rose up and said
+good-bye to me with a charming smile.
+
+If it had not been for the shame of humiliating myself before so
+immense an assembly, I might have voluntarily fallen at the feet of
+this generous Gambler, to thank him for his unheard-of munificence.
+But, little by little, after I had left him, an incurable defiance
+entered into me; I dared no longer believe in so prodigious a
+happiness; and as I went to bed, making over again my nightly prayer
+by means of all that remained in me in the matter of faith, I repeated
+in my slumber: “My God, my Lord, my God! Do let the Devil keep his
+word with me!”
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES[18]
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+    [18] From _The Fig and the Idler, an Algerian Legend, and
+    Other Stories_, by Alphonse Daudet. London, T. Fisher Unwin,
+    1892. (By permission of the Publisher.)
+
+I
+
+“Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?”
+
+“Yes, your reverence, two magnificent turkeys, stuffed with truffles.
+I should know something about it, for I myself helped to fill them.
+One would have said their skin would crack as they were roasting, it
+is that stretched....”
+
+“Jesu-Maria! I who like truffles so much!... Quick, give me my
+surplice, Garrigou.... And have you seen anything else in the kitchen
+besides the turkeys?”
+
+“Yes, all kinds of good things.... Since noon, we have done nothing
+but pluck pheasants, hoopoes, barn-fowls, and woodcocks. Feathers were
+flying about all over.... Then they have brought eels, gold carp, and
+trout out of the pond, besides....”
+
+“What size were the trout, Garrigou?”
+
+“As big as that, your reverence.... Enormous!”
+
+“Oh heavens! I think I see them.... Have you put the wine in the
+vessels?”
+
+“Yes, your reverence, I have put the wine in the vessels.... But la!
+it is not to be compared to what you will drink presently, when the
+midnight mass is over. If you only saw that in the dining hall of the
+château! The decanters are all full of wines glowing with every
+colour!... And the silver plate, the chased _epergnes_, the flowers,
+the lustres!... Never will such another midnight repast be seen. The
+noble marquis has invited all the lords of the neighbourhood. At least
+forty of you will sit down to table, without reckoning the farm
+bailiff and the notary.... Oh, how lucky is your reverence to be one
+of them!... After a mere sniff of those fine turkeys, the scent of
+truffles follows me everywhere.... Yum!”
+
+“Come now, come now, my child. Let us keep from the sin of gluttony,
+on the night of the Nativity especially.... Be quick and light the
+wax-tapers and ring the first bell for the mass; for it’s nearly
+midnight and we must not be behind time.”
+
+This conversation took place on a Christmas night in the year of grace
+one thousand six hundred and something, between the Reverend Dom
+Balaguère (formerly Prior of the Barnabites, now paid chaplain of the
+Lords of Trinquelague), and his little clerk Garrigou, or at least him
+whom he took for his little clerk Garrigou, for you must know that the
+devil had on that night assumed the round face and soft features of
+the young sacristan, in order the more effectually to lead the
+reverend father into temptation, and make him commit the dreadful sin
+of gluttony. Well then, while the supposed Garrigou (hum!) was with
+all his might making the bells of the baronial chapel chime out, his
+reverence was putting on his chasuble in the little sacristy of the
+château; and with his mind already agitated by all these gastronomic
+descriptions, he kept saying to himself as he was robing:
+
+“Roasted turkeys, ... golden carp, ... trout as big as that!...”
+
+Out of doors, the soughing night wind was carrying abroad the music of
+the bells, and with this, lights began to make their appearance on the
+dark sides of Mount Ventoux, on the summit of which rose the ancient
+towers of Trinquelague. The lights were borne by the families of the
+tenant farmers, who were coming to hear the midnight mass at the
+château. They were scaling the hill in groups of five or six together,
+and singing; the father in front carrying a lantern, and the women
+wrapped up in large brown cloaks, beneath which their little children
+snuggled and sheltered. In spite of the cold and the lateness of the
+hour these good folks were marching blithely along, cheered by the
+thought that after the mass was over there would be, as always in
+former years, tables set for them down in the kitchens. Occasionally
+the glass windows in some lord’s carriage, preceded by torch-bearers,
+would glisten in the moon-light on the rough ascent; or perhaps a mule
+would jog by with tinkling bells, and by the light of the misty
+lanterns the tenants would recognize their bailiff and would salute
+him as he passed with:
+
+“Good evening, Master Arnoton.”
+
+“Good evening. Good evening, my friend.”
+
+The night was clear, and the stars were twinkling with frost; the
+north wind was nipping, and at times a fine small hail, that slipped
+off one’s garments without wetting them, faithfully maintained the
+tradition of Christmas being white with snow. On the summit of the
+hill, as the goal towards which all were wending, gleamed the château,
+with its enormous mass of towers and gables, and its chapel steeple
+rising into the blue-black sky. A multitude of little lights were
+twinkling, coming, going, and moving about at all the windows; they
+looked like the sparks one sees running about in the ashes of burnt
+paper.
+
+After you had passed the drawbridge and the postern gate, it was
+necessary, in order to reach the chapel, to cross the first court,
+which was full of carriages, footmen and sedan chairs, and was quite
+illuminated by the blaze of torches and the glare of the kitchen
+fires. Here were heard the click of turnspits, the rattle of
+sauce-pans, the clash of glasses and silver plate in the commotion
+attending the preparation of the feast; while over all rose a warm
+vapour smelling pleasantly of roast meat, piquant herbs, and complex
+sauces, and which seemed to say to the farmers, as well as to the
+chaplain and to the bailiff, and to everybody:
+
+“What a good midnight repast we are going to have after the mass!”
+
+
+II
+
+Ting-a-ring!--a--ring!
+
+The midnight mass is beginning in the chapel of the château, which is
+a cathedral in miniature, with groined and vaulted roofs, oak
+wood-work as high as the walls, expanded draperies, and tapers all
+aglow. And what a lot of people! What grand dresses! First of all,
+seated in the carved stalls that line the choir, is the Lord of
+Trinquelague in a coat of salmon-coloured silk, and about him are
+ranged all the noble lords who have been invited.
+
+On the opposite side, on velvet-covered praying-stools, the old
+dowager marchioness in flame-coloured brocade, and the youthful Lady
+of Trinquelague wearing a lofty head-dress of plaited lace in the
+newest fashion of the French court, have taken their places. Lower
+down, dressed in black, with punctilious wigs, and shaven faces, like
+two grave notes among the gay silks and the figured damasks, are seen
+the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton, and the notary Master Ambroy. Then come
+the stout major-domos, the pages, the horsemen, the stewards, Dame
+Barbara, with all her keys hanging at her side on a real silver ring.
+At the end, on the forms, are the lower class, the female servants,
+the cotter farmers and their families; and lastly, down there, near
+the door, which they open and shut very carefully, are messieurs the
+scullions, who enter in the interval between two sauces, to take a
+little whiff of mass; and these bring the smell of the repast with
+them into the church, which now is in high festival and warm from the
+number of lighted tapers.
+
+Is it the sight of their little white caps that so distracts the
+celebrant? Is it not rather Garrigou’s bell? that mad little bell
+which is shaken at the altar foot with an infernal impetuosity that
+seems all the time to be saying: “Come, let us make haste, make
+haste.... The sooner we shall have finished, the sooner shall we be at
+table.” The fact is that every time this devil’s bell tinkles the
+chaplain forgets his mass, and thinks of nothing but the midnight
+repast. He fancies he sees the cooks bustling about, the stoves
+glowing with forge-like fires, the two magnificent turkeys, filled,
+crammed, marbled with truffles....
+
+Then again he sees, passing along, files of little pages carrying
+dishes enveloped in tempting vapours, and with them he enters the
+great hall now prepared for the feast. Oh delight! there is the
+immense table all laden and luminous, peacocks adorned with their
+feathers, pheasants spreading out their reddish-brown wings,
+ruby-coloured decanters, pyramids of fruit glowing amid green boughs,
+and those wonderful fish Garrigou (ah well, yes, Garrigou!) had
+mentioned, laid on a couch of fennel, with their pearly scales
+gleaming as if they had just come out of the water, and bunches of
+sweet-smelling herbs in their monstrous snouts. So clear is the vision
+of these marvels that it seems to Dom Balaguère that all these
+wondrous dishes are served before him on the embroidered altar-cloth,
+and two or three times instead of the _Dominus vobiscum_, he finds
+himself saying the _Benedicite_. Except these slight mistakes, the
+worthy man pronounces the service very conscientiously, without
+skipping a line, without omitting a genuflexion; and all goes
+tolerably well until the end of the first mass; for you know that on
+Christmas Day the same officiating priest must celebrate three
+consecutive masses.
+
+“That’s one done!” says the chaplain to himself with a sigh of
+relief; then, without losing a moment, he motioned to his clerk, or to
+him whom he supposed to be his clerk, and...
+
+“Ting-a-ring ... Ting-a-ring, a-ring!”
+
+Now the second mass is beginning, and with it begins also Dom
+Balaguère’s sin. “Quick, quick, let us make haste,” Garrigou’s bell
+cries out to him in its shrill little voice, and this time the unhappy
+celebrant, completely given over to the demon of gluttony, fastens
+upon the missal and devours its pages with the eagerness of his
+over-excited appetite. Frantically he bows down, rises up, merely
+indicates the sign of the cross and the genuflexions, and curtails all
+his gestures in order to get sooner finished. Scarcely has he
+stretched out his arms at the gospel, before he is striking his breast
+at the _Confiteor_. It is a contest between himself and the clerk as
+to who shall mumble the faster. Versicles and responses are hurried
+over and run one into another. The words, half pronounced, without
+opening the mouth, which would take up too much time, terminate in
+unmeaning murmurs.
+
+“_Oremus ps ... ps ... ps...._”
+
+“_Mea culpa ... pa ... pa...._”
+
+Like vintagers in a hurry pressing grapes in the vat, these two paddle
+in the mass Latin, sending splashes in every direction.
+
+“_Dom ... scum!..._” says Balaguère.
+
+“_... Stutuo!..._” replies Garrigou; and all the time the cursed
+little bell is tinkling there in their ears, like the jingles they put
+on post-horses to make them gallop fast. You may imagine at that speed
+a low mass is quickly disposed of.
+
+“That makes two,” says the chaplain quite panting; then without taking
+time to breathe, red and perspiring, he descends the altar steps
+and...
+
+“Ting-a-ring!... Ting-a-ring!...”
+
+Now the third mass is beginning. There are but a few more steps to be
+taken to reach the dining-hall; but, alas! the nearer the midnight
+repast approaches the more does the unfortunate Balaguère feel himself
+possessed by mad impatience and gluttony. The vision becomes more
+distinct; the golden carps, the roasted turkeys are there, there!...
+He touches them, ... he ... oh heavens! The dishes are smoking, the
+wines perfume the air; and with furiously agitated clapper, the little
+bell is crying out to him:
+
+“Quick, quick, quicker yet!”
+
+But how could he go quicker? His lips scarcely move. He no longer
+pronounces the words; ... unless he were to impose upon Heaven
+outright and trick it out of its mass.... And that is precisely what
+he does, the unfortunate man!... From temptation to temptation; he
+begins by skipping a verse, then two. Then the epistle is too long--he
+does not finish it, skims over the gospel, passes before the _Credo_
+without going into it, skips the _Pater_, salutes the _Preface_ from a
+distance, and by leaps and bounds thus hurls himself into eternal
+damnation, constantly followed by the vile Garrigou (_vade retro,
+Satanas!_), who seconds him with wonderful skill, sustains his
+chasuble, turns over the leaves two at a time, elbows the
+reading-desks, upsets the vessels, and is continually sounding the
+little bell louder and louder, quicker and quicker.
+
+You should have seen the scared faces of all who were present, as they
+were obliged to follow this mass by mere mimicry of the priest,
+without hearing a word; some rise when others kneel, and sit down when
+the others are standing up, and all the phases of this singular
+service are mixed up together in the multitude of different attitudes
+presented by the worshippers on the benches....
+
+“The _abbé_ goes too fast.... One can’t follow him,” murmured the old
+dowager, shaking her head-dress in confusion. Master Arnoton with
+great steel spectacles on his nose is searching in his prayer-book to
+find where the dickens they are. But at heart all these good folks,
+who themselves are thinking about feasting, are not sorry that the
+mass is going on at this post haste; and when Dom Balaguère with
+radiant face turns towards those present and cries with all his might:
+“_Ite, missa est_,” they all respond to him a “_Deo gratias_” in but
+one voice, and that as joyous and enthusiastic, as if they thought
+themselves already seated at the midnight repast and drinking the
+first toast.
+
+
+III
+
+Five minutes afterwards the crowd of nobles were sitting down in the
+great hall, with the chaplain in the midst of them. The château,
+illuminated from top to bottom, was resounding with songs, with
+shouts, with laughter, with uproar; and the venerable Dom Balaguère
+was thrusting his fork into the wing of a fowl, and drowning all
+remorse for his sin in streams of regal wine and the luscious juices
+of the viands. He ate and drank so much, the dear, holy man, that he
+died during the night of a terrible attack, without even having had
+time to repent; and then in the morning when he got to heaven, I leave
+you to imagine how he was received.
+
+He was told to withdraw on account of his wickedness. His fault was so
+grievous that it effaced a whole lifetime of virtue.... He had robbed
+them of a midnight mass.... He should have to pay for it with three
+hundred, and he should not enter into Paradise until he had celebrated
+in his own chapel these three hundred Christmas masses in the presence
+of all those who had sinned with him and by his fault....
+
+... And now this is the true legend of Dom Balaguère as it is related
+in the olive country. At the present time the château of Trinquelague
+no longer exists, but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount
+Ventoux, amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles in the
+wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation; there are birds’
+nests at the corners of the altar, and in the recesses of the lofty
+windows, from which the stained glass has long ago disappeared. It
+seems, however, that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
+wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to the masses and
+to the midnight repasts, see this phantom of a chapel illuminated by
+invisible tapers that burn in the open air, even in snow and wind. You
+may laugh at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
+Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared to me that one
+Christmas night, when he was a little tipsy, he lost his way on the
+hill of Trinquelague; and this is what he saw.... Till eleven
+o’clock, nothing. All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly,
+about midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple, an old,
+old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues off. Very soon
+Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and uncertain shadows moving in
+the road that climbs the hill. They passed on beneath the chapel
+porch, and murmured:
+
+“Good evening, Master Arnoton!”
+
+“Good evening, good evening, my friends!” ...
+
+When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very courageous,
+silently approached, and when he looked through the broken door, a
+singular spectacle met his gaze. All those he had seen pass were
+seated round the choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old
+seats still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
+lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in flowered jackets such as
+our grandfathers had; all with an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From
+time to time the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
+were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit round the
+tapers, the flames of which rose straight and ill-defined, as if they
+were burning behind a veil; and what amused Garrigue very much was a
+certain personage with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
+his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was quite entangled,
+and kept itself upright by noiselessly flapping its wings....
+
+At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure was on his
+knees in the middle of the choir, desperately shaking a clapperless
+and soundless bell, whilst a priest, clad in ancient gold, was coming
+and going before the altar, reciting prayers of which not a word was
+heard.... Most certainly this was Dom Balaguère in the act of saying
+his third low mass.
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS[19]
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+    [19] By permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers. New
+    York and London.
+
+It will not do at all to disbelieve in the existence of a personal
+devil. It is not so many years ago that one of our profoundest divines
+remarked with indignation upon such disbelief. “No such person?” cried
+the doctor with energy. “Don’t tell me! I can hear his tail snap and
+crack about amongst the churches any day!”
+
+And if the enemy is, in truth, still as vigorously active among the
+sons of God as he was in the days of Job (that is to say, in the time
+of Solomon, when, as the critics have found out, the Book of Job was
+written), then surely still more is he vigilant and sly in his tricks
+for foreclosing his mortgages upon the souls of the wicked.
+
+And once more: still more than ever is his personal appearance
+probable in these latter days. The everlasting tooting of the wordy
+Cumming has proclaimed the end of all things for a quarter of a
+century; and he will surely see his prophecy fulfilled if he can only
+keep it up long enough. But, though we discredit the sapient
+Second-Adventist as to the precise occasion of the diabolic avatar,
+has there not been a strange coincidence between his noisy
+declarations, and other evidences of an approximation of the spiritual
+to the bodily sphere of life? Is not this same quarter of a century
+that of the Spiritists? Has it not witnessed the development of Od?
+And of clairvoyance? And have not the doctrines of ghosts, and
+re-appearances of the dead, and of messages from them, risen into a
+prominence entirely new, and into a coherence and semblance at least
+of fact and fixed law such as was never known before? Yea, verily. Of
+all times in the world’s history, to reject out of one’s beliefs
+either good spirits or bad, angelology or diabology, chief good being,
+or chief bad being, this is the most improper.
+
+Dr. Hicok was trebly liable to the awful temptation, under which he
+had assuredly fallen, over and above the fact that he was a prig,
+which makes one feel the more glad that he was so handsomely come up
+with in the end; such a prig that everybody who knew him, invariably
+called him (when he wasn’t by) Hicok-alorum. This charming surname had
+been conferred on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got into
+a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky ways of dodging out
+of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok knew too much to know _that_; and
+so he acquired his fine title to teach him one thing more.
+
+Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,--
+
+  1. He was foreign-born.
+  2. He was a Scotchman.
+  3. He was a physician and surgeon.
+
+The way in which these causes operated was as follows (I wish it were
+allowable to use Artemas Ward’s curiously satisfactory vocable
+“thusly:” like Mrs. Wiggle’s soothing syrup, it “supplies a real
+want”):--
+
+Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing moral stamina of a
+native American, and therefore was comparatively easily beset by sin.
+Being, secondly, a Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited,
+with a conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other folks
+sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly sure of his utter
+mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics, or, as he used to call
+it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization, _dialektik_. Now, in the latter
+two, the Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are simply
+imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence of God, has
+been joined with an equally complete conviction of the exact opposite.
+Let not man, therefore, put those traits asunder--not so much by
+reason of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses would
+try to convince a Scotchman--or anybody else, for that matter.
+
+Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen of this
+profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing materialists, or
+else implicit and extreme Calvinistic Presbyterians, “of the large
+blue kind.” And they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
+self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not Majendie say to
+his students, “Gentlemen, disease is a subject which physicians know
+nothing about”?
+
+So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal devil, and
+believed in his own ability to get the upper hand of that individual
+in a tournament of the wits. Ah, he learned better by terrible
+experience! The doctor was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair,
+a freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows and
+eyelashes, which made him look as if he had finished off his toilet
+with just a light flourish from the dredging-box. He was erect of
+carriage, and of a prompt, ridiculous alertness of step and motion,
+very much like that of Major Wellington De Boots. And his face
+commonly wore a kind of complacent serenity such as the Hindoos
+ascribe to Buddha. I know a little snappish dentist’s-goods dealer up
+town, who might be mistaken for Hicok-alorum any day.
+
+Well, well--what had the doctor done? Why--it will sound absurd,
+probably, to some unbelieving people--but really Dr. Hicok confessed
+the whole story to me himself: he had made a bargain with the Evil
+One! And indeed he was such an uncommonly disagreeable-looking fellow,
+that, unless on some such hypothesis, it is impossible to imagine how
+he could have prospered as he did. He gained patients, and cured them
+too; made money; invested successfully; bought a brown-stone front--a
+house, not a wiglet--then bought other real estate; began to put his
+name on charity subscription lists, and to be made vice-president of
+various things.
+
+Chiefest of all,--it must have been by some superhuman aid that Dr.
+Hicok married his wife, the then and present Mrs. Hicok. Dear me! I
+have described the doctor easily enough. But how infinitely more
+difficult it is to delineate Beauty than the Beast: did you ever think
+of it? All I can say is, that she is a very lovely woman now; and she
+must have been, when the doctor married her, one of the loveliest
+creatures that ever lived--a lively, graceful, bright-eyed brunette,
+with thick fine long black hair, pencilled delicate eyebrows, little
+pink ears, thin high nose, great astonished brown eyes, perfect
+teeth, a little rosebud of a mouth, and a figure so extremely
+beautiful that nobody believed she did not pad--hardly even the
+artists who--those of them at least who work faithfully in the
+life-school--are the very best judges extant of truth in costume and
+personal beauty. But, furthermore, she was good, with the innocent
+unconscious goodness of a sweet little child; and of all feminine
+charms--even beyond her supreme grace of motion--she possessed the
+sweetest, the most resistless--a lovely voice; whose tones, whether in
+speech or song, were perfect in sweetness, and with a strange
+penetrating sympathetic quality and at the same time with the most
+wonderful half-delaying completeness of articulation and modulation,
+as if she enjoyed the sound of her own music. No doubt she did; but it
+was unconsciously, like a bird. The voice was so sweet, the great
+loveliness and kindness of soul it expressed were so deep, that, like
+every exquisite beauty, it rayed forth a certain sadness within the
+pleasure it gave. It awakened infinite, indistinct emotions of beauty
+and perfection--infinite longings.
+
+It’s of no use to tell me that such a spirit--she really ought not to
+be noted so low down as amongst human beings--that such a spirit could
+have been made glad by becoming the yoke-fellow of Hicok-alorum, by
+influences exclusively human. No!--I don’t believe it--I won’t believe
+it--it can’t be believed. I can’t convince you, of course, for you
+don’t know her; but if you did, along with the rest of the evidence,
+and if your knowledge was like mine, that from the testimony of my
+own eyes and ears and judgment--you would know, just as I do, that
+the doctor’s possession of his wife was the key-stone of the arch of
+completed proof on which I found my absolute assertion that he had
+made that bargain.
+
+He certainly had! A most characteristic transaction too; for while,
+after the usual fashion, it was agreed by the “party of the first
+part,”--viz., Old Scratch--that Dr. Hicok should succeed in whatever
+he undertook during twenty years, and by the party of the second part,
+that at the end of that time the D---- should fetch him in manner and
+form as is ordinarily provided, yet there was added a peculiar clause.
+This was, that, when the time came for the doctor to depart, he should
+be left entirely whole and unharmed, in mind, body, and estate,
+provided he could put to the Devil three consecutive questions, of
+which either one should be such that that cunning spirit could not
+solve it on the spot.
+
+So for twenty years Dr. Hicok lived and prospered, and waxed very
+great. He did not gain one single pound avoirdupois however, which may
+perchance seem strange, but is the most natural thing in the world.
+Who ever saw a little, dry, wiry, sandy, freckled man, with white
+eyebrows, that did grow fat? And besides, the doctor spent all his
+leisure time in hunting up his saving trinity of questions; and hard
+study, above all for such a purpose, is as sure an anti-fattener as
+Banting.
+
+He knew the Scotch metaphysicians by heart already, _ex-officio_ as it
+were; but he very early gave up the idea of trying to fool the Devil
+with such mud-pie as that. Yet be it understood, that he found cause
+to except Sir William Hamilton from the muddle-headed crew. He chewed
+a good while, and pretty hopefully, upon the Quantification of the
+Predicate; but he had to give that up too, when he found out how small
+and how dry a meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
+Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload more of old
+casuists, Romanist and Protestant.
+
+He exhausted the learning of the Development Theory. He studied and
+experimented up to the existing limits of knowledge on the question of
+the Origin of Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
+could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at the end of
+our noses on that, as well as most other questions. He hammered his
+way through the whole controversy on the Freedom of the Will. He
+mastered the whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and of
+two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American college
+professors on the other, on the question of Protection or Free Trade.
+He made, with vast pains, an extensive collection of the questions
+proposed at debating societies and college-students’ societies with
+long Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr. Hicok had got the
+idea, that, from the spontaneous activity of so many free young
+geniuses, many wondrous and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having,
+however, tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all these
+innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were only seventeen questions
+debated! The doctor read me a curious little memorandum of his
+conclusions on this unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed
+some day.
+
+He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted little
+Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat the Devil out of his
+soul, can accomplish an amazing deal in twenty years. He even went so
+far as to take into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
+the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in that case, would be
+the mortification of having stooped to an inadequate adversary--a
+foeman unworthy of his steel. So he weighed such queries as the old
+scholastic _brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
+intentiones?_ and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More
+silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, _An averia carrucae
+capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?_
+
+He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and among the chips
+from his workshop is a really clever theory of conundrums. He has a
+classification and discussion of them, all his own, and quite
+ingenious and satisfactory, which divides them into answerable and
+unanswerable, and, under each of these, into resemblant and
+differential.
+
+For instance: let the four classes be distinguished with the initials
+of those four terms, A. R., A. D., U. R., and U. D.; you will find
+that the Infinite Possible Conundrum (so to speak) can always be
+reduced under one of those four heads. Using symbols, as they do in
+discussing syllogism--indeed, by the way, a conundrum is only a
+jocular variation in the syllogism, an intentional fallacy for fun
+(read Whately’s _Logic_, Book III., and see if it isn’t so)--using
+symbols, I say, you have these four “figures:”--
+
+I. (A. R.) Why is A like B? (answerable): as, Why is a gentleman who
+gives a young lady a young dog, like a person who rides rapidly up
+hill? A. Because he gives a gallop up (gal-a-pup).
+
+_Sub-variety_; depending upon a violation of something like the
+“principle of excluded middle,” a very fallacy of a fallacy; such as
+the ancient “nigger-minstrel!” case, Why is an elephant like a brick?
+A. Because neither of them can climb a tree.
+
+II. (A. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (answerable) usually put thus: What
+is the difference between A and B? (Figure I., if worded in the same
+style, would become: What is the similarity between A and B?): as,
+What is the difference between the old United-States Bank and the
+Fulton Ferry-boat signals in thick weather? A. One is a fog whistle,
+and the other is a Whig fossil.
+
+III. (U. R.) Why is A like B? (unanswerable): as Charles Lamb’s
+well-known question, Is that your own hare, or a wig?
+
+IV. (U. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (unanswerable): i. e., What is the
+difference, &c, as, What is the difference between a fac simile and a
+sick family; or between hydraulics and raw-hide licks?
+
+But let me not diverge too far into frivolity. All the hopefully
+difficult questions Dr. Hicok set down and classified. He compiled a
+set of rules on the subject, and indeed developed a whole philosophy
+of it, by which he struck off, as soluble, questions or classes of
+them. Some he thought out himself; others were now and then answered
+in some learned book, that led the way through the very heart of one
+or another of his biggest mill-stones.
+
+So it was really none too much time that he had; and, in truth, he did
+not actually decide upon his three questions, until just a week before
+the fearful day when he was to put them.
+
+It came at last, as every day of reckoning surely comes; and Dr.
+Hicok, memorandum in hand, sat in his comfortable library about three
+o’clock on one beautiful warm summer afternoon, as pale as a sheet,
+his heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp’s biggest steam-hammer at
+Essen, his mouth and tongue parched and feverish, a pitcher of cold
+water at hand from which he sipped and sipped, though it seemed as if
+his throat repelled it into “the globular state,” or dispersed it into
+steam, as red-hot iron does. Around him were the records of the vast
+army of doubters and quibblers in whose works he had been hunting, as
+a traveller labours through a jungle, for the deepest doubts, the most
+remote inquiries.
+
+Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than reason, which
+makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know
+to be true, Dr. Hicok would say to himself, “I know I’ve got him!” And
+then his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly, and
+with so deadly a faintness, as the other side of his awful case loomed
+before him, and he thought, “But if--?” He would not finish _that_
+question; he could not. The furthest point to which he could bring
+himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence in
+the inevitable.
+
+There was a ring at the street-door. The servant brought in a card, on
+a silver salver.
+
+  +-----------------+
+  | MR. APOLLO LYON |
+  +-----------------+
+
+“Show the gentleman in,” said the doctor. He spoke with difficulty;
+for the effort to control his own nervous excitement was so immense an
+exertion, that he hardly had the self-command and muscular energy even
+to articulate.
+
+The servant returned, and ushered into the library a handsome,
+youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman, pale, with large
+melancholy black eyes, and dressed in the most perfect and quiet
+style.
+
+The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree of steadiness
+and politeness that did him the greatest credit.
+
+“How do you do, sir?” he said: “I am happy”--but it struck him that he
+wasn’t, and he stopped short.
+
+“Very right, my dear sir,” replied the guest, in a voice that was
+musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient in tone. “Very right;
+how hollow those formulas are! I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I
+am glad to see _you_, doctor. Now, that is really the fact.”
+
+No doubt! “Divil doubt him!” as an Irishman would say. So is a cat
+glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something like these thoughts arose in
+the doctor’s mind; he smiled as affably as he could, and requested the
+visitor to be seated.
+
+“Thanks!” replied he, and took the chair which the doctor moved up to
+the table for him. He placed his hat and gloves on the table. There
+was a brief pause, as might happen if any two friends sat down at
+their ease for a chat on matters and things in general. The visitor
+turned over a volume or two that lay on the table.
+
+“The Devil,” he read from one of them; “His Origin, Greatness, and
+Decadence. By the Rev. A. Réville, D.D.”
+
+“Ah!” he commented quietly. “A Frenchman, I observe. If it had been an
+Englishman, I should fancy he wrote the book for the sake of the rhyme
+in the title. Do you know, doctor, I fancy that incredulity of his
+will substitute one dash for the two periods in the reverend
+gentleman’s degree! I know no one greater condition of success in some
+lines of operation, than to have one’s existence thoroughly
+disbelieved in.”
+
+The doctor forced himself to reply: “I hardly know how I came to have
+the book here. Yet he does make out a pretty strong case. I confess I
+would like to be certified that he is right. Suppose you allow
+yourself to be convinced?” And the poor fellow grinned: it couldn’t be
+called a smile.
+
+“Why, really, I’ll look into it. I’ve considered the point though, not
+that I’m sure I could choose. And you know, as the late J. Milton very
+neatly observed, one would hardly like to lose one’s intellectual
+being, ‘though full of pain;’” and he smiled, not unkindly but sadly,
+and then resumed: “A Bible too. Very good edition. I remember seeing
+it stated that a professional person made it his business to find
+errors of the press in one of the Bible Society’s editions--this very
+one, I think; and the only one he could discover was a single ‘wrong
+font.’ Very accurate work--very!”
+
+He had been turning over the leaves indifferently as he spoke, and
+laid the volume easily back. “Curious old superstition that,” he
+remarked, “that certain personages were made uncomfortable by this
+work!” And he gave the doctor a glance, as much as to ask, in the most
+delicate manner in the world, “Did you put that there to scare me
+with?”
+
+I think the doctor blushed a little. He had not really expected, you
+know,--still, in case there should be any prophylactic influence--? No
+harm done, in any event; and that was precisely the observation made
+by the guest.
+
+“No harm done, my dear fellow!” he said, in his calm, quiet, musical
+voice. No good, either, I imagine they both of them added to
+themselves.
+
+There is an often repeated observation, that people under the pressure
+of an immeasurable misery or agony seem to take on a preternaturally
+sharp vision for minute details, such as spots in the carpet, and
+sprigs in the wall-paper, threads on a sleeve, and the like. Probably
+the doctor felt this influence. He had dallied a little, too, with the
+crisis; and so did his visitor--from different motives, no doubt; and,
+as he sat there, his eye fell on the card that had just been brought
+to him.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he said; “but might I ask a question about your
+card?”
+
+“Most certainly, doctor: what is it?”
+
+“Why--it’s always a liberty to ask questions about a gentleman’s name,
+and we Scotchmen are particularly sensitive on the point; but I have
+always been interested in the general subject of patronomatology.”
+
+The other, by a friendly smile and a deprecating wave of the hand,
+renewed his welcome to the doctor’s question.
+
+“Well, it’s this: How did you come to decide upon that form of
+name--Mr. Apollo Lyon?”
+
+“Oh! just a little fancy of mine. It’s a newly-invented variable card,
+I believe they call it. There’s a temporary ink arrangement. It struck
+me it was liable to abuse in case of an assumption of _aliases_; but
+perhaps that’s none of my business. You can easily take off the upper
+name, and another one comes out underneath. I’m always interested in
+inventions. See.”
+
+And as the text, “But they have sought out many inventions,” passed
+through Dr. Hicok’s mind, the other drew forth a white handkerchief,
+and, rubbing the card in a careless sort of way, laid it down before
+the doctor. Perhaps the strain on the poor doctor’s nerves was
+unsteadying him by this time: he may not have seen right; but he
+seemed to see only one name, as if compounded from the former two.
+
+  +------------+
+  |  APOLLYON  |
+  +------------+
+
+And it seemed to be in red ink instead of black; and the lines seemed
+to creep and throb and glow, as if the red were the red of fire,
+instead of vermilion. But red is an extremely trying colour to the
+eyes. However, the doctor, startled as he was, thought best not to
+raise any further queries, and only said, perhaps with some
+difficulty, “Very curious, I’m sure!”
+
+“Well, doctor,” said Mr. Lyon, or whatever his name was, “I don’t want
+to hurry you, but I suppose we might as well have our little business
+over?”
+
+“Why, yes. I suppose you wouldn’t care to consider any question of
+compromises or substitutes?”
+
+“I fear it’s out of the question, really,” was the reply, most kindly
+in tone, but with perfect distinctness.
+
+There was a moment’s silence. It seemed to Dr. Hicok as if the beating
+of his heart must fill the room, it struck so heavily, and the blood
+seemed to surge with so loud a rush through the carotids up past his
+ears. “Shall I be found to have gone off with a rush of blood to the
+head?” he thought to himself. But--it can very often be done by a
+resolute effort--he gathered himself together as it were, and with one
+powerful exertion mastered his disordered nerves. Then he lifted his
+memorandum, gave one glance at the sad, calm face opposite him, and
+spoke.
+
+“You know they’re every once in a while explaining a vote, as they
+call it, in Congress. It don’t make any difference, I know; but it
+seems to me as if I should put you more fully in possession of my
+meaning, if I should just say a word or two, about the reasons for my
+selection.”
+
+The visitor bowed with his usual air of pleasant acquiescence.
+
+“I am aware,” said Dr. Hicok, “that my selection would seem thoroughly
+commonplace to most people. Yet nobody knows better than you do, my
+dear sir, that the oldest questions are the newest. The same vitality
+which is so strong in them, as to raise them as soon as thought
+begins, is infinite, and maintains them as long as thought endures.
+Indeed, I may say to you frankly, that it is by no means on novelty,
+but rather on antiquity, that I rely.”
+
+The doctor’s hearer bowed with an air of approving interest. “Very
+justly reasoned,” he observed. The doctor went on--
+
+“I have, I may say--and under the circumstances I shall not be
+suspected of conceit--made pretty much the complete circuit of
+unsolved problems. They class exactly as those questions do which we
+habitually reckon as solved: under the three subjects to which they
+relate--God, the intelligent creation, the unintelligent creation.
+Now, I have selected my questions accordingly--one for each of those
+divisions. Whether I have succeeded in satisfying the conditions
+necessary will appear quickly. But you see that I have not stooped to
+any quibbling, or begging either. I have sought to protect myself by
+the honourable use of a masculine reason.”
+
+“Your observations interest me greatly,” remarked the audience. “Not
+the less so, that they are so accurately coincident with my own
+habitual lines of thought--at least, so far as I can judge from what
+you have said. Indeed, suppose you had called upon me to help you
+prepare insoluble problems. I was bound, I suppose, to comply to the
+best of my ability; and, if I had done so, those statements of yours
+are thus far the very preface I supplied--I beg your pardon--should
+have supplied--you with. I fancy I could almost state the questions.
+Well?”--
+
+All this was most kind and complimentary; but somehow it did not
+encourage the doctor in the least. He even fancied that he detected a
+sneer, as if his interlocutor had been saying, “Flutter away, old
+bird! That was _my bait_ that you have been feeding on: you’re safe
+enough; it is my net that holds you.”
+
+“_First Question_,” said Dr. Hicok, with steadiness: “Reconcile the
+foreknowledge and the fore-ordination of God with the free will of
+man?”
+
+“I thought so, of course,” remarked the other. Then he looked straight
+into the doctor’s keen little grey eyes with his deep melancholy black
+ones, and raised his slender fore-finger. “Most readily. The
+reconciliation is _your own conscience_, doctor! Do what you know to
+be right, and you will find that there is nothing to reconcile--that
+you and your Maker have no debates to settle!”
+
+The words were spoken with a weighty solemnity and conviction that
+were even awful. The doctor had a conscience, though he had found
+himself practically forced, for the sake of success, to use a good
+deal of constraint with it--in fact, to lock it up, as it were, in a
+private mad-house, on an unfounded charge of lunacy. But the obstinate
+thing would not die, and would not lose its wits; and now all of a
+sudden, and from the very last quarter where it was to be expected,
+came a summons before whose intensity of just requirement no bolts
+could stand. The doctor’s conscience walked out of her prison, and
+came straight up to the field of battle, and said--
+
+“Give up the first question.”
+
+And he obeyed.
+
+“I confess it,” he said. “But how could I have expected a great basic
+truth both religiously and psychologically so, from--from _you_?”
+
+“Ah! my dear sir,” was the reply, “you have erred in _that_ line of
+thought, exactly as many others have. The truth is one and the same,
+to God, man, and devil.”
+
+“_Second Question_,” said Dr. Hicok. “Reconcile the development
+theory, connection of natural selection and sexual relation, with the
+responsible immortality of the soul.”
+
+“Unquestionably,” assented the other, as if to say, “Just as I
+expected.”
+
+“No theory of creation has any logical connection with any doctrine of
+immortality. What was the motive of creation?--_that_ would be a
+question! If you had asked me _that_! But the question, ‘Where did men
+come from?’ has no bearing on the question, ‘Have they any duties now
+that they are here?’ The two are reconciled, because they do not
+differ. You can’t state any inconsistency between a yard measure and a
+fifty-six pound weight.”
+
+The doctor nodded; he sat down; he took a glass of water, and pressed
+his hand to his heart. “Now, then,” he said to himself, “once more! If
+I have to stand this fifteen minutes I shall be in _some_ other
+world!”
+
+The door from the inner room opened; and Mrs. Hicok came singing in,
+carrying balanced upon her pretty pink fore-finger something or other
+of an airy bouquet-like fabric. Upon this she was looking with much
+delight.
+
+“See, dear!” she said: “how perfectly lovely!”
+
+Both gentlemen started, and the lady started too. She had not known of
+the visit; and she had not, until this instant, seen that her husband
+was not alone.
+
+Dr. Hicok, of course, had never given her the key to his
+skeleton-closet; for he was a shrewd man. He loved her too; and he
+thought he had provided for her absence during the ordeal. She had
+executed her shopping with unprecedented speed.
+
+Why the visitor started, would be difficult to say. Perhaps her voice
+startled him. The happy music in it was enough like a beautified
+duplicate of his own thrilling sweet tones, to have made him
+acknowledge her for a sister--from heaven. He started, at any rate.
+
+“Mr. Lyon, my wife,” said the doctor, somewhat at a loss. Mr. Lyon
+bowed, and so did the lady.
+
+“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure,” she said. “I did not know
+you were busy, dear. There is a thunder-shower coming up. I drove home
+just in season.”
+
+“Oh!--only a little wager, about some conundrums,” said the doctor.
+Perhaps he may be excused for his fib. He did not want to annoy her
+unnecessarily.
+
+“Oh, do let me know!” she said, with much eagerness. “You know how I
+enjoy them!”
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, “not exactly the ordinary kind. I was to
+puzzle my friend here with one out of three questions; and he has
+beaten me in two of them already. I’ve but one more chance.”
+
+“Only one?” she asked, with a smile. “What a bright man your friend
+must be! I thought nobody could puzzle you, dear. Stay; let _me_ ask
+the other question.”
+
+Both the gentlemen started again: it was quite a surprise.
+
+“But are you a married man, Mr. Lyon?” she asked, with a blush.
+
+“No, madam,” was the reply, with a very graceful bow--“I have a
+mother, but no wife. Permit me to say, that, if I could believe there
+was a duplicate of yourself in existence, I would be as soon as
+possible.”
+
+“Oh, what a gallant speech!” said the lady. “Thank you, sir, very
+much;” and she made him a pretty little curtsy. “Then I am quite sure
+of my question, sir. Shall I, dear?”
+
+The doctor quickly decided. “I am done for, anyhow,” he reflected. “I
+begin to see that the old villain put those questions into my head
+himself. He hinted as much. I don’t know but I’d rather she would ask
+it. It’s better to have her kill me, I guess, than to hold out the
+carving-knife to him myself.”
+
+“With all my heart, my dear,” said the doctor, “if Mr. Lyon consents.”
+
+Mr. Lyon looked a little disturbed; but his manner was perfect, as he
+replied that he regretted to seem to disoblige, but that he feared the
+conditions of their little bet would not allow it.
+
+“Beg your pardon, I’m sure, for being so uncivil,” said the lively
+little beauty, as she whispered a few words in her husband’s ear.
+
+This is what she said--
+
+“What’s mine’s yours, dear. Take it. Ask him--buz, buzz, buzz.”
+
+The doctor nodded. Mrs. Hicok stood by him and smiled, still holding
+in her pretty pink fore-finger the frail shimmering thing just
+mentioned; and she gave it a twirl, so that it swung quite round.
+“Isn’t it a love of a bonnet?” she said.
+
+“Yes,” the doctor said aloud. “I adopt the question.”
+
+“_Third Question. Which is the front side of this?_”
+
+And he pointed to the bonnet. It must have been a bonnet, because Mrs.
+Hicok called it so. I shouldn’t have known it from the collection of
+things in a kaleidoscope, bunched up together.
+
+The lady stood before him, and twirled the wondrous fabric round and
+round, with the prettiest possible unconscious roguish look of
+defiance. The doctor’s very heart stood still.
+
+“Put it on, please,” said Mr. Lyon, in the most innocent way in the
+world.
+
+“Oh, no!” laughed she. “I know I’m only a woman, but I’m not _quite_
+so silly! But I’ll tell you what: you men put it on, if you think that
+will help you!” And she held out the mystery to him.
+
+Confident in his powers of discrimination, Mr. Lyon took hold of the
+fairy-like combination of sparkles and threads and feathers and
+flowers, touching it with that sort of timid apprehension that
+bachelors use with a baby. He stood before the glass over the
+mantelpiece. First he put it across his head with one side in front,
+and then with the other. Then he put it lengthways of his head, and
+tried the effect of tying one of the two couples of strings under each
+of his ears. Then he put it on, the other side up; so that it swam on
+his head like a boat, with a high mounted bow and stern. More than
+once he did all this, with obvious care and thoughtfulness.
+
+Then he came slowly back, and resumed his seat. It was growing very
+dark, though they had not noticed it; for the thunder-shower had been
+hurrying on, and already its advanced guard of wind, heavy laden with
+the smell of the rain, could be heard, and a few large drops splashed
+on the window.
+
+The beautiful wife of the doctor laughed merrily to watch the growing
+discomposure of the visitor, who returned the bonnet, with
+undiminished courtesy, but with obvious constraint of manner.
+
+He looked down; he drummed on the table; he looked up; and both the
+doctor and the doctor’s wife were startled at the intense sudden anger
+in the dark, handsome face. Then he sprang up, and went to the window.
+He looked out a moment, and then said--
+
+“Upon my word, that is going to be a very sharp squall! The clouds are
+_very_ heavy. If I’m any judge, something will be struck. I can feel
+the electricity in the air.”
+
+While he still spoke, the first thunder-bolt crashed overhead. It was
+one of those close, sudden, overpoweringly awful explosions from
+clouds very heavy and very near, where the lightning and the thunder
+leap together out of the very air close about you, even as if you were
+in them. It was an unendurable burst of sound, and of the intense
+white sheety light of very near lightning. Dreadfully frightened, the
+poor little lady clung close to her husband. He, poor man, if possible
+yet more frightened, exhausted as he was by what he had been enduring,
+fainted dead away. Don’t blame him: a cast-iron bull-dog might have
+fainted.
+
+Mrs. Hicok, thinking that her husband was struck dead by the
+lightning, screamed terribly. Then she touched him; and, seeing what
+was really the matter, administered cold water from the pitcher on the
+table. Shortly he revived.
+
+“Where is he?” he said.
+
+“I don’t know, love. I thought you were dead. He must have gone away.
+Did it strike the house?”
+
+“Gone away? Thank God! Thank _you_, dear!” cried out the doctor.
+
+Not knowing any adequate cause for so much emotion, she answered him--
+
+“Now, love, don’t you ever say women are not practical again. That was
+a practical question, you see. But didn’t it strike the house? What a
+queer smell. Ozone: isn’t that what you were telling me about? How
+funny, that lightning should have a smell!”
+
+“I believe there’s no doubt of it,” observed Dr. Hicok.
+
+Mr. Apollo Lyon had really gone, though just how or when, nobody could
+say.
+
+“My dear,” said Dr. Hicok, “I do so like that bonnet of yours! I don’t
+wonder it puzzled him. It would puzzle the Devil himself. I firmly
+believe I shall call it your Devil-puzzler.”
+
+But he never told her what the puzzle had been.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S ROUND[20]
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+    [20] From _Longman’s Magazine_, vol. xiv. [Copyright 1889 by
+    Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. By permission of
+    the Publishers.]
+
+     [The following story, translated by Miss Isabel Bruce from
+     _Le Grand Choleur_ of M. Charles Deulin (_Contes du Roi
+     Gambrinus_), gives a great deal of information about French
+     and Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game
+     represents a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The
+     object is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible,
+     to a given point; but, after every three strokes, the
+     opponent is allowed to _décholer_, or make one stroke back,
+     or into a hazard. Here the element of hockey comes in. Get
+     rid of this element, let each man hit his own ball, and, in
+     place of striking to a point--say, the cemetery gate--let
+     men “putt” into holes, and the Flemish game becomes golf. It
+     is of great antiquity. Ducange, in his Lexicon of Low Latin,
+     gives _Choulla_, French _choule_ = “Globulus ligneus qui
+     clava propellitur”--a wooden ball struck with a club. The
+     head of the club was of iron (cf. _crossare_). This is borne
+     out by a miniature in a missal of 1504, which represents
+     peasants playing _choule_ with clubs very like niblicks.
+     Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353, 1357, and
+     other dates older by a century than our earliest Scotch
+     references to golf. At present the game is played in Belgium
+     with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
+     beechwood. M. Zola (_Germinal_, p. 310) represents his
+     miners playing _chole_, or _choulle_, and says that they hit
+     drives of more than 500 yards. Experiments made at Wimbledon
+     with a Belgian club sent over by M. Charles Michel suggest
+     that M. Zola has over-estimated the distance. But M. Zola
+     and M. Deulin agree in making the players _run_ after the
+     ball. M. Henri Gaidoz adds that a similar game, called
+     _soule_, is played in various departments of France. He
+     refers to Laisnel de la Salle. The name _chole_ may be
+     connected with German _Kolbe_, and _golf_ may be the form
+     which this word would assume in a Celtic language. All this
+     makes golf very old; but the question arises, Are the
+     “holes” to which golfers play of Scotch or of Dutch origin?
+     There are several old Flemish pictures of golf; do any of
+     them show players in the act of “holing out”? There is said
+     to be such a picture at Neuchâtel.
+
+                                                     A. LANG.]
+
+
+I
+
+Once upon a time there lived at the hamlet of Coq, near
+Condé-sur-l’Escaut, a wheelwright called Roger. He was a good fellow,
+untiring both at his sport and at his toil, and as skilful in lofting
+a ball with a stroke of his club as in putting together a cartwheel.
+Every one knows that the game of golf consists in driving towards a
+given point a ball of cherrywood with a club which has for head a sort
+of little iron shoe without a heel.
+
+For my part, I do not know a more amusing game; and when the country
+is almost cleared of the harvest, men, women, children, everybody,
+drives his ball as you please, and there is nothing cheerier than to
+see them filing on a Sunday like a flight of starlings across potato
+fields and ploughed lands.
+
+
+II
+
+Well, one Tuesday, it was a Shrove Tuesday, the wheelwright of Coq
+laid aside his plane, and was slipping on his blouse to go and drink
+his can of beer at Condé, when two strangers came in, club in hand.
+
+“Would you put a new shaft to my club, master?” said one of them.
+
+“What are you asking me, friends? A day like this! I wouldn’t give the
+smallest stroke of the chisel for a brick of gold. Besides, does any
+one play golf on Shrove Tuesday? You had much better go and see the
+mummers tumbling in the high street of Condé.”
+
+“We take no interest in the tumbling of mummers,” replied the
+stranger. “We have challenged each other at golf and we want to play
+it out. Come, you won’t refuse to help us, you who are said to be one
+of the finest players of the country?”
+
+“If it is a match, that is different,” said Roger.
+
+He turned up his sleeves, hooked on his apron, and in the twinkling of
+an eye had adjusted the shaft.
+
+“How much do I owe you?” asked the unknown, drawing out his purse.
+
+“Nothing at all, faith; it is not worth while.”
+
+The stranger insisted, but in vain.
+
+
+III
+
+“You are too honest, i’faith,” said he to the wheelwright, “for me to
+be in your debt. I will grant you the fulfilment of three wishes.”
+
+“Don’t forget to wish what is _best_,” added his companion.
+
+At these words the wheelwright smiled incredulously.
+
+“Are you not a couple of the loafers of Capelette?” he asked, with a
+wink.
+
+The idlers of the crossways of Capelette were considered the wildest
+wags in Condé.
+
+“Whom do you take us for?” replied the unknown in a tone of severity,
+and with his club he touched an axle, made of iron, which instantly
+changed into one of pure silver.
+
+“Who are you, then,” cried Roger, “that your word is as good as ready
+money?”
+
+“I am St. Peter, and my companion is St. Antony, the patron of
+golfers.”
+
+“Take the trouble to walk in, gentlemen,” said the wheelwright of Coq;
+and he ushered the two saints into the back parlour. He offered them
+chairs, and went to draw a jug of beer in the cellar. They clinked
+their glasses together, and after each had lit his pipe:
+
+“Since you are so good, sir saints,” said Roger, “as to grant me the
+accomplishment of three wishes, know that for a long while I have
+desired three things. I wish, first of all, that whoever seats himself
+upon the elm-trunk at my door may not be able to rise without my
+permission. I like company and it bores me to be always alone.”
+
+St. Peter shook his head and St. Antony nudged his client.
+
+
+IV
+
+“When I play a game of cards, on Sunday evening, at the ‘Fighting
+Cock,’” continued the wheelwright, “it is no sooner nine o’clock than
+the garde-champêtre comes to chuck us out. I desire that whoever shall
+have his feet on my leathern apron cannot be driven from the place
+where I shall have spread it.”
+
+St. Peter shook his head, and St. Antony, with a solemn air, repeated:
+
+“Don’t forget what is _best_.”
+
+“What is best,” replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly, “is to be the
+first golfer in the world. Every time I find my master at golf it
+turns my blood as black as the inside of the chimney. So I want a club
+that will carry the ball as high as the belfry of Condé, and will
+infallibly win me my match.”
+
+“So be it,” said St. Peter.
+
+“You would have done better,” said St. Antony, “to have asked for your
+eternal salvation.”
+
+“Bah!” replied the other. “I have plenty of time to think of that; I
+am not yet greasing my boots for the long journey.”
+
+The two saints went out and Roger followed them, curious to be present
+at such a rare game; but suddenly, near the Chapel of St. Antony, they
+disappeared.
+
+The wheelwright then went to see the mummers tumbling in the high
+street of Condé.
+
+When he returned, towards midnight, he found at the corner of his door
+the desired club. To his great surprise it was only a bad little iron
+head attached to a wretched worn-out shaft. Nevertheless he took the
+gift of St. Peter and put it carefully away.
+
+
+V
+
+Next morning the Condéens scattered in crowds over the country, to
+play golf, eat red herrings, and drink beer, so as to scatter the
+fumes of wine from their heads and to revive after the fatigues of the
+Carnival. The wheelwright of Coq came too, with his miserable club,
+and made such fine strokes that all the players left their games to
+see him play. The following Sunday he proved still more expert; little
+by little his fame spread through the land. From ten leagues round the
+most skilful players hastened to come and be beaten, and it was then
+that he was named the Great Golfer.
+
+He passed the whole Sunday in golfing, and in the evening he rested
+himself by playing a game of matrimony at the “Fighting Cock.” He
+spread his apron under the feet of the players, and the devil himself
+could not have put them out of the tavern, much less the rural
+policeman. On Monday morning he stopped the pilgrims who were going to
+worship at Notre Dame de Bon Secours; he induced them to rest
+themselves upon his _causeuse_, and did not let them go before he had
+confessed them well.
+
+In short, he led the most agreeable life that a good Fleming can
+imagine, and only regretted one thing--namely, that he had not wished
+it might last for ever.
+
+
+VI
+
+Well, it happened one day that the strongest player of Mons, who was
+called Paternostre, was found dead on the edge of a bunker. His head
+was broken, and near him was his niblick, red with blood.
+
+They could not tell who had done this business, and as Paternostre
+often said that at golf he feared neither man nor devil, it occurred
+to them that he had challenged Mynheer van Belzébuth, and that as a
+punishment for this he had knocked him on the head. Mynheer van
+Belzébuth is, as every one knows, the greatest gamester that there is
+upon or under the earth, but the game he particularly affects is golf.
+When he goes his round in Flanders one always meets him, club in hand,
+like a true Fleming.
+
+The wheelwright of Coq was very fond of Paternostre, who, next to
+himself, was the best golfer in the country. He went to his funeral
+with some golfers from the hamlets of Coq, La Cigogne, and La Queue de
+l’Ayache.
+
+On returning from the cemetery they went to the tavern to drink, as
+they say, to the memory of the dead,[21] and there they lost
+themselves in talk about the noble game of golf. When they separated,
+in the dusk of evening:
+
+    [21] _Boire la cervelle du mort._
+
+“A good journey to you,” said the Belgian players, “and may St.
+Antony, the patron of golfers, preserve you from meeting the devil on
+the way!”
+
+“What do I care for the devil?” replied Roger. “If he challenged me I
+should soon beat him!”
+
+The companions trotted from tavern to tavern without misadventure; but
+the wolf-bell had long tolled for retiring in the belfry of Condé when
+they returned each one to his own den.
+
+
+VII
+
+As he was putting the key into the lock the wheelwright thought he
+heard a shout of mocking laughter. He turned, and saw in the darkness
+a man six feet high, who again burst out laughing.
+
+“What are you laughing at?” said he, crossly.
+
+“At what? Why, at the _aplomb_ with which you boasted a little while
+ago that you would dare measure yourself against the devil.”
+
+“Why not, if he challenged me?”
+
+“Very well, my master, bring your clubs. I challenge you!” said
+Mynheer van Belzébuth, for it was himself. Roger recognized him by a
+certain odour of sulphur that always hangs about his majesty.
+
+“What shall the stake be?” he asked resolutely.
+
+“Your soul?”
+
+“Against what?”
+
+“Whatever you please.”
+
+The wheelwright reflected.
+
+“What have you there in your sack?”
+
+“My spoils of the week.”
+
+“Is the soul of Paternostre among them?”
+
+“To be sure! and those of five other golfers; dead, like him, without
+confession.”
+
+“I play you my soul against that of Paternostre.”
+
+“Done!”
+
+
+VIII
+
+The two adversaries repaired to the adjoining field and chose for
+their goal the door of the cemetery of Condé.[22] Belzébuth teed a
+ball on a frozen heap, after which he said, according to custom:
+
+    [22] They play to points, not holes.
+
+“From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three strokes will you
+run in?”
+
+“In two,” replied the great golfer.
+
+And his adversary was not a little surprised, for from there to the
+cemetery was nearly a quarter of a league.
+
+“But how shall we see the ball?” continued the wheelwright.
+
+“True!” said Belzébuth.
+
+He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly in the dark
+like an immense glowworm.
+
+“Fore!” cried Roger.
+
+He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose to the sky like
+a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three strokes it crossed
+three-quarters of the distance.
+
+“That is good!” said Belzébuth, whose astonishment redoubled. “My turn
+to play now!”[23]
+
+    [23] After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back,
+    or into a hazard.
+
+With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the roofs of Coq
+nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league away. The blow was so violent
+that the iron struck fire against a pebble.
+
+“Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my aid,” murmured the
+wheelwright of Coq.
+
+He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain, the club
+seemed to have acquired a new vigour. At the second stroke the ball
+went as if of itself and hit the door of the cemetery.
+
+“By the horns of my grandfather!” cried Belzébuth, “it shall not be
+said that I have been beaten by a son of that fool Adam. Give me my
+revenge.”
+
+“What shall we play for?”
+
+“Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers.”
+
+
+IX
+
+The devil played up, “pressing” furiously; his club blazed at each
+stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Condé to
+Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six
+leagues from there.
+
+It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers
+followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to
+understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.
+
+In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six
+defunct golfers. Belzébuth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.
+
+“Shall we go on?” said the wheelwright of Coq.
+
+“No,” replied the other; “they expect me at the Witches’ Sabbath on
+the hill of Copiémont.
+
+“That brigand,” said he aside, “is capable of filching all my game.”
+
+And he vanished.
+
+Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went
+to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belzébuth.
+
+
+X
+
+Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he
+little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the
+workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.
+
+“Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?”
+
+“No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted.”
+
+“Then how can I serve you?”
+
+“By following me: your hour is come.”
+
+“The devil,” said the great golfer, “could you not wait a little till
+I have finished this wheel?”
+
+“Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a
+smoke.”
+
+“In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at
+your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound.”
+
+“That’s good, faith; make haste.”
+
+And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm
+trunk.
+
+Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work.
+At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:
+
+“Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?”
+
+The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:
+
+    “Attendez-moi sur l’orme;
+     Vous m’attendrez longtemps.”
+
+“I don’t think he hears me,” said Death. “Ho! friend, are you ready?”
+
+    “Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent, Jean,
+     Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent,”
+
+replied the singer.
+
+“Would the brute laugh at me?” said Death to himself.
+
+And he tried to rise.
+
+To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the _causeuse_.
+He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
+
+“Let us see,” he said to Roger. “What will you take to let me go? Do
+you wish me to prolong your life ten years?”
+
+    “J’ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatière,”
+
+sang the great golfer.
+
+“Will you take twenty years?”
+
+    “Il pleut, il pleut, bergère;
+     Rentre tes blancs moutons.”
+
+“Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?--may the devil admire you!”
+
+The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
+
+    “Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”
+
+In the meanwhile the clock of Condé had just struck four, and the
+boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a
+creature who struggled on the _causeuse_, like a devil in a holy-water
+pot, surprised and soon delighted them.
+
+Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death
+watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at
+him, singing in chorus:
+
+    “Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”
+
+“Will you take a hundred years?” yelled Death.
+
+“Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred
+years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am
+not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age.”
+
+“Then what do you want?”
+
+“From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. ‘Si
+jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!’ says the proverb. I wish to
+preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to
+acquire the knowledge of an old one.”
+
+“So be it,” said Death; “I shall return this day a hundred years.”
+
+    “Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”
+
+
+XI
+
+The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed perfect
+happiness, which was increased by the certainty of its not ending for
+a hundred years. Thanks to his experience, he so well understood the
+management of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
+shop.[24]
+
+    [24] _Vivre à porte close._
+
+He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had not foreseen. His
+wonderful skill at golf ended by frightening the players whom he had
+at first delighted, and was the cause of his never finding any one who
+would play against him.
+
+He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his travels over French
+Flanders, Belgium, and all the greens where the noble game of golf is
+held in honour. At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be
+admired by a new generation of golfers, after which he departed to
+return twenty years later.
+
+Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before long
+became a burden to him. Besides that, it bored him to win on every
+occasion; he was tired of passing like the Wandering Jew through
+generations, and of seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of
+his friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced to making
+new friendships which were undone by the age or death of his fellows;
+all changed around him, he only did not change.
+
+He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which condemned him to
+taste the same pleasures for ever, and he sometimes longed to know the
+calmer joys of old age. One day he caught himself at his
+looking-glass, examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
+white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the snow on the
+forehead of the old.
+
+
+XII
+
+In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise that he was no
+longer amused at anything. If sometimes in the tavern he had a fancy
+for making use of his apron to pass the night at cards: “What is the
+good of this excess?” whispered experience; “it is not sufficient to
+be unable to shorten one’s days, one must also avoid making oneself
+ill.”
+
+He reached the point of refusing himself the pleasure of drinking his
+pint and smoking his pipe. Why, indeed, plunge into dissipations which
+enervate the body and dull the brain?
+
+_The wretch went further and gave up golf!_ Experience convinced him
+that the game is a dangerous one, which overheats one, and is
+eminently adapted to produce colds, catarrhs, rheumatism, and
+inflammation of the lungs.
+
+Besides, what is the use, and what great glory is it to be reputed the
+first golfer in the world?
+
+Of what use is glory itself? A vain hope, vain as the smoke of a pipe.
+
+When experience had thus bereft him one by one of his delusions, the
+unhappy golfer became mortally weary. He saw that he had deceived
+himself, that delusion has its price, and that the greatest charm of
+youth is perhaps its inexperience.
+
+He thus arrived at the term agreed on in the contract, and as he had
+not had a paradise here below, he sought through his hardly-acquired
+wisdom a clever way of conquering one above.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Death found him at Coq at work in his shop. Experience had at least
+taught him that work is the most lasting of pleasures.
+
+“Are you ready?” said Death.
+
+“I am.”
+
+He took his club, put a score of balls in his pocket, threw his sack
+over his shoulder, and buckled his gaiters without taking off his
+apron.
+
+“What do you want your club for?”
+
+“Why, to golf in paradise with my patron St. Antony.”
+
+“Do you fancy, then, that I am going to conduct you to paradise?”
+
+“You must, as I have half-a-dozen souls to carry there, that I once
+saved from the clutches of Belzébuth.”
+
+“Better have saved your own. _En route, cher Dumollet!_”
+
+The great golfer saw that the old reaper bore him a grudge, and that
+he was going to conduct him to the paradise of the lost.[25]
+
+    [25] _Noires glaives._
+
+Indeed a quarter of an hour later the two travellers knocked at the
+gate of hell.
+
+“Toc, toc!”
+
+“Who is there?”
+
+“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.
+
+“Don’t open the door,” cried Belzébuth; “that rascal wins at every
+turn; he is capable of depopulating my empire.”
+
+Roger laughed in his sleeve.
+
+“Oh! you are not saved,” said Death. “I am going to take you where you
+won’t be cold either.”
+
+Quicker than a beggar would have emptied a poor’s box they were in
+purgatory.
+
+“Toc--toc!”
+
+“Who is there?”
+
+“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.
+
+“But he is in a state of mortal sin,” cried the angel on duty. “Take
+him away from here--he can’t come in.”
+
+“I cannot, all the same, let him linger between heaven and earth,”
+said Death; “I shall shunt him back to Coq.”
+
+“Where they will take me for a ghost. Thank you! is there not still
+paradise?”
+
+
+XIV
+
+They were there at the end of a short hour.
+
+“Toc, toc!”
+
+“Who is there?”
+
+“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.
+
+“Ah! my lad,” said St. Peter, half opening the door, “I am really
+grieved. St. Antony told you long ago you had better ask for the
+salvation of your soul.”
+
+“That is true, St. Peter,” replied Roger with a sheepish air. “And
+how is he, that blessed St. Antony? Could I not come in for one moment
+to return the visit he once paid me?”
+
+“Why, here he comes,” said St. Peter, throwing the door wide open.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye the sly golfer had flung himself into
+paradise, unhooked his apron, let it fall to the ground, and seated
+himself down on it.
+
+“Good morning, St. Antony,” said he with a fine salute. “You see I had
+plenty of time to think of paradise, for here we are!”
+
+“What! _You_ here!” cried St. Antony.
+
+“Yes, I and my company,” replied Roger, opening his sack and
+scattering on the carpet the souls of the six golfers.
+
+“Will you have the goodness to pack right off, all of you?”
+
+“Impossible,” said the great golfer, showing his apron.
+
+“The rogue has made game of us,” said St. Antony. “Come, St. Peter, in
+memory of our game of golf, let him in with his souls. Besides, he has
+had his purgatory on earth.”
+
+“It is not a very good precedent,” murmured St. Peter.
+
+“Bah!” replied Roger, “if we have a few good golfers in paradise,
+where is the harm?”
+
+
+XV
+
+Thus, after having lived long, golfed much and drunk many cans of
+beer, the wheelwright of Coq called the Great Golfer was admitted to
+paradise; but I advise no one to copy him, for it is not quite the
+right way to go, and St. Peter might not always be so compliant,
+though great allowances must be made for golfers.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got
+an indistinct impression of it as of a grey shadow outlined against
+the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense
+stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay
+was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a
+weird, seignorial residence, like a dream palace, strange and
+beautiful--this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying
+day.
+
+The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my
+eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a
+cameo, and as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my
+admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or
+more perfect.
+
+As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I
+wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns,
+raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which looked like rockets
+starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of
+gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of
+stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate
+architecture.
+
+As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me
+and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and
+the devil.
+
+A sceptical genius has said: “God made man in his image and man has
+returned the compliment.”
+
+This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write
+the history of the local divinity of every continent, as well as the
+history of the patron saints in each one of our provinces. The negro
+has his ferocious man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan fills his
+paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical people, deified all
+the passions.
+
+Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting
+saint, modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
+
+Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant
+and victorious angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the
+victorious, the conqueror of Satan.
+
+But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and
+tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint
+and the devil.
+
+To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil, Saint Michael
+built himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an
+archangel; and only such a saint could build a residence of such
+magnificence.
+
+But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he
+surrounded his domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the
+sea.
+
+The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the
+salt marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded
+valleys and all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint
+ruled only over the sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint
+Michael was as poor as a church mouse.
+
+After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of
+affairs and began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the
+matter was by no means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.
+
+He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he
+walked across to the shore. The demon was eating his soup in front of
+his door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him,
+kissed the hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him
+refreshments.
+
+Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: “I have come here
+to propose to you a good bargain.”
+
+The devil, candid and trustful, answered: “That will suit me.”
+
+“Here it is. Give me all your lands.”
+
+Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak: “But--”
+
+The saint continued: “Listen first. Give me all your lands. I will
+take care of all the work, the ploughing, the sowing, the fertilizing,
+everything, and we will share the crops equally. How does that suit
+you?”
+
+The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He only demanded in
+addition a few of those delicious grey mullet which are caught around
+the solitary mount. Saint Michael promised the fish.
+
+They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show that it was a
+bargain, and the saint continued: “See here, so that you will have
+nothing to complain of, choose that part of the crops which you
+prefer: the part that grows above ground or the part that stays in
+the ground.” Satan cried out: “I will take all that will be above
+ground.”
+
+“It’s a bargain!” said the saint. And he went away.
+
+Six months later, all over the immense domain of the devil, one could
+see nothing but carrots, turnips, onions, salsify, all the plants
+whose juicy roots are good and savoury and whose useless leaves are
+good for nothing but for feeding animals.
+
+Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint Michael a swindler.
+
+But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for agriculture, went
+back to see the devil and said: “Really, I hadn’t thought of that at
+all; it was just an accident, no fault of mine. And to make things
+fair with you, this year I’ll let you take everything that is under
+the ground.”
+
+“Very well,” answered Satan.
+
+The following spring all the evil spirit’s lands were covered with
+golden wheat, oats as big as beans, flax, magnificent colza, red
+clover, peas, cabbage, artichokes, everything that develops into
+grains or fruit in the sunlight.
+
+Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he completely lost his
+temper. He took back his fields and remained deaf to all the fresh
+propositions of his neighbour.
+
+A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely manor Saint Michael
+looked at the distant and fertile lands and watched the devil direct
+the work, take in his crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry,
+exasperated at his powerlessness. As he was no longer able to deceive
+Satan, he decided to wreak vengeance on him, and he went out to invite
+him to dinner for the following Monday.
+
+“You have been very unfortunate in your dealings with me,” he said; “I
+know it, but I don’t want any ill feeling between us, and I expect you
+to dine with me. I’ll give you some good things to eat.”
+
+Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted eagerly. On the day
+appointed he donned his finest clothes and set out for the castle.
+
+Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal. First there was a
+_vol-au-vent_, full of cocks’ crests and kidneys, with meat-balls,
+then two big grey mullet with cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with
+chestnuts soaked in wine, some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake,
+vegetables which melted in the mouth and nice hot pancake which was
+brought on smoking and spreading a delicious odour of butter.
+
+They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady red wine, and after
+each course they whetted their appetites with some old apple brandy.
+
+The devil drank and ate to his heart’s content; in fact he took so
+much that he was very uncomfortable, and began to retch.
+
+Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a voice like thunder:
+“What! before me, rascal! You dare--before me--”
+
+Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a stick, pursued
+him. They ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up
+the staircases, galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle
+to gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was running about
+madly and trying hard to escape. At last he found himself at the top
+of the last terrace, right at the top, from which could be seen the
+immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no
+longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and gave him a furious
+kick, which shot him through space like a cannon-ball.
+
+He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily before the
+town of Mortain. His horns and claws stuck deep into the rock, which
+keeps through eternity the traces of this fall of Satan.
+
+He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end of time, and as he
+looked at this fatal castle in the distance, standing out against the
+setting sun, he understood well that he would always be vanquished in
+this unequal struggle, and he went away limping, heading for distant
+countries, leaving to his enemy his fields, his hills, his valleys and
+his marshes.
+
+And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of Normandy,
+vanquished the devil.
+
+Another people would have dreamed of this battle in an entirely
+different manner.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE[26]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [26] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+“So you won’t sell me your soul?” said the devil.
+
+“Thank you,” replied the student, “I had rather keep it myself, if
+it’s all the same to you.”
+
+“But it’s not all the same to me. I want it very particularly. Come,
+I’ll be liberal. I said twenty years. You can have thirty.”
+
+The student shook his head.
+
+“Forty!”
+
+Another shake.
+
+“Fifty!”
+
+As before.
+
+“Now,” said the devil. “I know I’m going to do a foolish thing, but I
+cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away.
+I’ll make you another kind of offer. We don’t have any bargain at
+present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years.
+This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your
+soul, mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant. If you
+give it, we are quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to
+this?”
+
+The student reflected for some minutes. “Agreed,” he said at last.
+
+Scarcely had the devil disappeared, which he did instantaneously, ere
+a messenger reined in his smoking steed at the gate of the University
+of Cordova (the judicious reader will already have remarked that
+Lucifer could never have been allowed inside a Christian seat of
+learning), and, inquiring for the student Gerbert, presented him with
+the Emperor Otho’s nomination to the Abbacy of Bobbio, in
+consideration, said the document, of his virtue and learning, wellnigh
+miraculous in one so young. Such messengers were frequent visitors
+during Gerbert’s prosperous career. Abbot, bishop, archbishop,
+cardinal, he was ultimately enthroned Pope on April 2, 999, and
+assumed the appellation of Silvester the Second. It was then a general
+belief that the world would come to an end in the following year, a
+catastrophe which to many seemed the more imminent from the election
+of a chief pastor whose celebrity as a theologian, though not
+inconsiderable, by no means equalled his reputation as a necromancer.
+
+The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless through the dreaded
+twelvemonth, and early in the first year of the eleventh century
+Gerbert was sitting peacefully in his study, perusing a book of magic.
+Volumes of algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy, and
+other such light reading filled his bookcase; and on a table stood an
+improved clock of his invention, next to his introduction of the
+Arabic numerals his chief legacy to posterity. Suddenly a sound of
+wings was heard, and Lucifer stood by his side.
+
+“It is a long time,” said the fiend, “since I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you. I have now called to remind you of our little contract,
+concluded this day forty years.”
+
+“You remember,” said Silvester, “that you are not to ask anything
+exceeding my power to perform.”
+
+“I have no such intention,” said Lucifer. “On the contrary, I am about
+to solicit a favour which can be bestowed by you alone. You are Pope,
+I desire that you would make me a Cardinal.”
+
+“In the expectation, I presume,” returned Gerbert, “of becoming Pope
+on the next vacancy.”
+
+“An expectation,” replied Lucifer, “which I may most reasonably
+entertain, considering my enormous wealth, my proficiency in intrigue,
+and the present condition of the Sacred College.”
+
+“You would doubtless,” said Gerbert, “endeavour to subvert the
+foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and
+licentiousness, render the Holy See odious and contemptible.”
+
+“On the contrary,” said the fiend, “I would extirpate heresy, and all
+learning and knowledge as inevitably tending thereunto. I would suffer
+no man to read but the priest, and confine his reading to his
+breviary. I would burn your books together with your bones on the
+first convenient opportunity. I would observe an austere propriety of
+conduct, and be especially careful not to loosen one rivet in the
+tremendous yoke I was forging for the minds and consciences of
+mankind.”
+
+“If it be so,” said Gerbert, “let’s be off!”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Lucifer, “you are willing to accompany me to the
+infernal regions!”
+
+“Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning of Plato and
+Aristotle, and give place to the darkness against which I have been
+contending all my life.”
+
+“Gerbert,” replied the demon, “this is arrant trifling. Know you not
+that no good man can enter my dominions? that, were such a thing
+possible, my empire would become intolerable to me, and I should be
+compelled to abdicate?”
+
+“I do know it,” said Gerbert, “and hence I have been able to receive
+your visit with composure.”
+
+“Gerbert,” said the devil, with tears in his eyes, “I put it to
+you--is this fair, is this honest? I undertake to promote your
+interests in the world; I fulfil my promise abundantly. You obtain
+through my instrumentality a position to which you could never
+otherwise have aspired. Often have I had a hand in the election of a
+Pope, but never before have I contributed to confer the tiara on one
+eminent for virtue and learning. You profit by my assistance to the
+full, and now take advantage of an adventitious circumstance to
+deprive me of my reasonable guerdon. It is my constant experience that
+the good people are much more slippery than the sinners, and drive
+much harder bargains.”
+
+“Lucifer,” answered Gerbert, “I have always sought to treat you as a
+gentleman, hoping that you would approve yourself such in return. I
+will not inquire whether it was entirely in harmony with this
+character to seek to intimidate me into compliance with your demand by
+threatening me with a penalty which you well knew could not be
+enforced. I will overlook this little irregularity, and concede even
+more than you have requested. You have asked to be a Cardinal. I will
+make you Pope--”
+
+“Ha!” exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused his sooty hide,
+as the light of a fading ember is revived by breathing upon it.
+
+“For twelve hours,” continued Gerbert. “At the expiration of that time
+we will consider the matter further; and if, as I anticipate, you are
+more anxious to divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to
+assume it, I promise to bestow upon you any boon you may ask within my
+power to grant, and not plainly inconsistent with religion or morals.”
+
+“Done!” cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic words, and in
+a moment the apartment held two Pope Silvesters, entirely
+indistinguishable save by their attire, and the fact that one limped
+slightly with the left foot.
+
+“You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard,” said Gerbert,
+and, taking his book of magic with him, he retreated through a masked
+door to a secret chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled,
+and muttered to himself, “Poor old Lucifer! Sold again!”
+
+If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large
+slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his
+personal appearance with some dissatisfaction.
+
+“I certainly don’t look half so well without my horns,” he
+soliloquized, “and I am sure I shall miss my tail most grievously.”
+
+A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for the deficient
+appendages, and Lucifer now looked every inch a Pope. He was about to
+call the master of the ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the
+door was burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards, rushed
+into the room.
+
+“Down with the sorcerer!” they cried, as they seized and gagged him.
+
+“Death to the Saracen!”
+
+“Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!”
+
+“Knows Greek!”
+
+“Talks Arabic!”
+
+“Reads Hebrew!”
+
+“Burn him!”
+
+“Smother him!”
+
+“Let him be deposed by a general council,” said a young and
+inexperienced Cardinal.
+
+“Heaven forbid!” said an old and wary one, _sotto voce_.
+
+Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame he was doomed to
+inhabit for the next eleven hours was speedily exhausted. Bound and
+helpless, he swooned away.
+
+“Brethren,” said one of the senior cardinals, “it hath been delivered
+by the exorcists that a sorcerer or other individual in league with
+the demon doth usually bear upon his person some visible token of his
+infernal compact. I propose that we forthwith institute a search for
+this stigma, the discovery of which may contribute to justify our
+proceedings in the eyes of the world.”
+
+“I heartily approve of our brother Anno’s proposition,” said another,
+“the rather as we cannot possibly fail to discover such a mark, if,
+indeed, we desire to find it.”
+
+The search was accordingly instituted, and had not proceeded far ere a
+simultaneous yell from all the seven cardinals indicated that their
+investigation had brought more light than they had ventured to expect.
+
+The Holy Father had a cloven foot!
+
+For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly stunned,
+silent, and stupefied with amazement. As they gradually recovered
+their faculties it would have become manifest to a nice observer that
+the Pope had risen very considerably in their good opinion.
+
+“This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation,” said one.
+
+“I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately,” said
+another.
+
+“It is written, ‘the devils believe,’” said a third: “the Holy Father,
+therefore, is not a heretic at any rate.”
+
+“Brethren,” said Anno, “this affair, as our brother Benno well
+remarks, doth indeed call for mature deliberation. I therefore propose
+that, instead of smothering his Holiness with cushions, as originally
+contemplated, we immure him for the present in the dungeon adjoining
+hereunto, and, after spending the night in meditation and prayer,
+resume the consideration of the business tomorrow morning.”
+
+“Informing the officials of the palace,” said Benno, “that his
+Holiness has retired for his devotions, and desires on no account to
+be disturbed.”
+
+“A pious fraud,” said Anno, “which not one of the Fathers would for a
+moment have scrupled to commit.”
+
+The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible Lucifer, and
+bore him carefully, almost tenderly, to the apartment appointed for
+his detention. Each would fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery,
+but each felt that the eyes of his six brethren were upon him: and
+all, therefore, retired simultaneously, each taking a key of the cell.
+
+Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately afterwards. He had
+the most confused idea of the circumstances which had involved him in
+his present scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were
+the usual concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were by no means to
+his taste, and he wished he had been made acquainted with them sooner.
+The dungeon was not only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the
+poor devil in his present form had no latent store of infernal heat to
+draw upon. His teeth chattered, he shivered in every limb, and felt
+devoured with hunger and thirst. There is much probability in the
+assertion of some of his biographers that it was on this occasion that
+he invented ardent spirits; but, even if he did, the mere conception
+of a glass of brandy could only increase his sufferings. So the long
+January night wore wearily on, and Lucifer seemed likely to expire
+from inanition, when a key turned in the lock, and Cardinal Anno
+cautiously glided in, bearing a lamp, a loaf, half a cold roast kid,
+and a bottle of wine.
+
+“I trust,” he said, bowing courteously, “that I may be excused any
+slight breach of etiquette of which I may render myself culpable from
+the difficulty under which I labour of determining whether, under
+present circumstances, ‘Your Holiness,’ or ‘Your infernal Majesty’ be
+the form of address most befitting me to employ.”
+
+“Bub-ub-bub-boo,” went Lucifer, who still had the gag in his mouth.
+
+“Heavens!” exclaimed the Cardinal, “I crave your Infernal Holiness’s
+forgiveness. What a lamentable oversight!”
+
+And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he set out the
+refection, upon which the demon fell voraciously.
+
+“Why the devil, if I may so express myself,” pursued Anno, “did not
+your Holiness inform us that you _were_ the devil? Not a hand would
+then have been raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my
+life for the audience now happily vouchsafed me. Whence this mistrust
+of your faithful Anno, who has served you so loyally and zealously
+these many years?”
+
+Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.
+
+“I shall never forgive myself,” protested the Cardinal, “for the part
+I have borne in this unfortunate transaction. Next to ministering to
+your Majesty’s bodily necessities, there is nothing I have so much at
+heart as to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty to
+remember that I believed myself to be acting in your Majesty’s
+interest by overthrowing a magician who was accustomed to send your
+Majesty upon errands, and who might at any time enclose you in a box,
+and cast you into the sea. It is deplorable that your Majesty’s most
+devoted servants should have been thus misled.”
+
+“Reasons of State,” suggested Lucifer.
+
+“I trust that they no longer operate,” said the Cardinal. “However,
+the Sacred College is now fully possessed of the whole matter: it is
+therefore unnecessary to pursue this department of the subject
+further. I would now humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty,
+or rather, perhaps, your Holiness, since I am about to speak of
+spiritual things, on the important and delicate point of your
+Holiness’s successor. I am ignorant how long your Holiness proposes to
+occupy the Apostolic chair; but of course you are aware that public
+opinion will not suffer you to hold it for a term exceeding that of
+the pontificate of Peter. A vacancy, therefore, must one day occur;
+and I am humbly to represent that the office could not be filled by
+one more congenial than myself to the present incumbent, or on whom he
+could more fully rely to carry out in every respect his views and
+intentions.”
+
+And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances of his past
+life, which certainly seemed to corroborate his assertion. He had not,
+however, proceeded far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another
+key in the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively, “Beware of
+Benno,” ere he dived under a table.
+
+Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold viands. Warned by
+the other lamp and the remains of Lucifer’s repast that some colleague
+had been beforehand with him, and not knowing how many more might be
+in the field, he came briefly to the point as regarded the Papacy, and
+preferred his claim in much the same manner as Anno. While he was
+earnestly cautioning Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could
+and would cheat the very Devil himself, another key turned in the
+lock, and Benno escaped under the table, where Anno immediately
+inserted his fingers into his right eye. The little squeal consequent
+upon this occurrence Lucifer successfully smothered by a fit of
+coughing.
+
+Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham, and exhibited the
+same disgust as Benno on seeing himself forestalled. So far as his
+requests transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he
+would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal
+No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse,
+power to call up the Devil _ad libitum_, and a ring of invisibility to
+allow him free access to his mistress, who was unfortunately a married
+woman.
+
+Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way of poisoning
+Cardinal No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred the same petition as
+respected Cardinal No. 4.
+
+Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion of the
+Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, with the faculty of holding
+them together, and of unlimited non-residence. In the course of his
+harangue he made use of the phrase _non obstantibus_, of which Lucifer
+immediately took a note.
+
+What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he
+had hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and
+Lucifer, regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the
+Church spinning to the other end of the room, and split the marble
+table with a single stroke of his tail. The six crouched and huddling
+Cardinals cowered revealed to one another, and at the same time
+enjoyed the spectacle of his Holiness darting through the stone
+ceiling, which yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up
+afterwards as if nothing had happened. After the first shock of dismay
+they unanimously rushed to the door, but found it bolted on the
+outside. There was no other exit, and no means of giving an alarm. In
+this emergency the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a bright
+example to their ultramontane colleagues. “_Bisogna pazienzia_,” they
+said, as they shrugged their shoulders. Nothing could exceed the
+mutual politeness of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two
+who had sought to poison each other. The Frenchman was held to have
+gravely derogated from good manners by alluding to this circumstance,
+which had reached his ears while he was under the table: and the
+Englishman swore so outrageously at the plight in which he found
+himself that the Italians then and there silently registered a vow
+that none of his nation should ever be Pope, a maxim which, with one
+exception, has been observed to this day.
+
+Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed
+in all the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he
+thought his visitor had probably had enough.
+
+“I should think so indeed,” replied Lucifer. “But at the same time I
+feel myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of
+the loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is
+needless for me to devote any considerable amount of personal
+attention to ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the promised boon,
+which it will be in no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant,
+seeing that it is a work of mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be
+released, and that their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone
+suffered, be buried in oblivion.”
+
+“I hoped you would carry them all off,” said Gerbert, with an
+expression of disappointment.
+
+“Thank you,” said the Devil. “It is more to my interest to leave them
+where they are.”
+
+So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth,
+sheepish and crestfallen. If, after all, they did less mischief than
+Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire
+bewilderment by what had passed, and their utter inability to
+penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even
+with ostentation to good works. They could never quite satisfy
+themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and
+when under the latter impression habitually emitted propositions which
+Gerbert justly stigmatized as rash, temerarious, and scandalous. They
+plagued him with allusions to certain matters mentioned in their
+interviews with Lucifer, with which they naturally but erroneously
+supposed him to be conversant, and worried him by continual nods and
+titterings as they glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish this
+nuisance, and at the same time silence sundry unpleasant rumours which
+had somehow got abroad, Gerbert devised the ceremony of kissing the
+Pope’s feet, which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this
+day. The stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy
+Father had lost his hoof surpasses all description, and they went to
+their graves without having obtained the least insight into the
+mystery.
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER[27]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [27] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+Lucifer sat playing chess with Man for his soul.
+
+The game was evidently going ill for Man. He had but pawns left, few
+and struggling. Lucifer had rooks, knights, and, of course, bishops.
+
+It was but natural under such circumstances that Man should be in no
+great hurry to move. Lucifer grew impatient.
+
+“It is a pity,” said he at last, “that we did not fix some period
+within which the player must move, or resign.”
+
+“Oh, Lucifer,” returned the young man, in heart-rending accents, “it
+is not the impending loss of my soul that thus unmans me, but the loss
+of my betrothed. When I think of the grief of the Lady Adeliza, the
+paragon of terrestrial loveliness!” Tears choked his utterance;
+Lucifer was touched.
+
+“Is the Lady Adeliza’s loveliness in sooth so transcendent?” he
+inquired.
+
+“She is a rose, a lily, a diamond, a morning star!”
+
+“If that is the case,” rejoined Lucifer, “thou mayest reassure
+thyself. The Lady Adeliza shall not want for consolation. I will
+assume thy shape and woo her in thy stead.”
+
+The young man hardly seemed to receive all the comfort from this
+promise which Lucifer no doubt designed. He made a desperate move. In
+an instant the Devil checkmated him, and he disappeared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Upon my word, if I had known what a business this was going to be, I
+don’t think I should have gone in for it,” soliloquized the Devil as,
+wearing his captive’s semblance and installed in his apartments, he
+surveyed the effects to which he now had to administer. They included
+coats, shirts, collars, neckties, foils, cigars, and the like _ad
+libitum_; and very little else except three challenges, ten writs, and
+seventy-four unpaid bills, elegantly disposed around the
+looking-glass. To the poor youth’s praise be it said, there were no
+_billets-doux_, except from the Lady Adeliza herself.
+
+Noting the address of these carefully, the Devil sallied forth, and
+nothing but his ignorance of the topography of the hotel, which made
+him take the back stairs, saved him from the clutches of two bailiffs
+lurking on the principal staircase. Leaping into a cab, he thus
+escaped a perfumer and a bootmaker, and shortly found himself at the
+Lady Adeliza’s feet.
+
+The truth had not been half told him. Such beauty, such wit, such
+correctness of principle! Lucifer went forth from her presence a
+love-sick fiend. Not Merlin’s mother had produced half the impression
+upon him; and Adeliza on her part had never found her lover
+one-hundredth part so interesting as he seemed that morning.
+
+Lucifer proceeded at once to the City, where, assuming his proper
+shape for the occasion, he negotiated a loan without the smallest
+difficulty. All debts were promptly discharged, and Adeliza was
+astonished at the splendour and variety of the presents she was
+constantly receiving.
+
+Lucifer had all but brought her to name the day, when he was informed
+that a gentleman of clerical appearance desired to wait upon him.
+
+“Wants money for a new church or mission, I suppose,” said he. “Show
+him up.”
+
+But when the visitor was ushered in, Lucifer found with discomposure
+that he was no earthly clergyman, but a celestial saint; a saint, too,
+with whom Lucifer had never been able to get on. He had served in the
+army while on earth, and his address was curt, precise, and
+peremptory.
+
+“I have called,” he said, “to notify to you my appointment as
+Inspector of Devils.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed Lucifer, in consternation. “To the post of my old
+friend Michael!”
+
+“Too old,” said the Saint laconically. “Millions of years older than
+the world. About your age, I think.”
+
+Lucifer winced, remembering the particular business he was then about.
+The Saint continued:
+
+“I am a new broom, and am expected to sweep clean. I warn you that I
+mean to be strict, and there is one little matter which I must set
+right immediately. You are going to marry that poor young fellow’s
+betrothed, are you? Now you know you can not take his wife, unless you
+give him yours.”
+
+“Oh, my dear friend,” exclaimed Lucifer, “what an inexpressibly
+blissful prospect you do open unto me!”
+
+“I don’t know that,” said the Saint. “I must remind you that the
+dominion of the infernal regions is unalterably attached to the person
+of the present Queen thereof. If you part with her you immediately
+lose all your authority and possessions. I don’t care a brass button
+which you do, but you must understand that you cannot eat your cake
+and have it too. Good morning!”
+
+Who shall describe the conflict in Lucifer’s bosom? If any stronger
+passion existed therein at that moment than attachment to Adeliza, it
+was aversion to his consort, and the two combined were wellnigh
+irresistible. But to disenthrone himself, to descend to the condition
+of a poor devil!
+
+Feeling himself incapable of coming to a decision, he sent for Belial,
+unfolded the matter, and requested his advice.
+
+“What a shame that our new inspector will not let you marry Adeliza!”
+lamented his counsellor. “If you did, my private opinion is that
+forty-eight hours afterwards you would care just as much for her as
+you do now for Madam Lucifer, neither more nor less. Are your
+intentions really honourable?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Lucifer, “it is to be a Lucifer match.”
+
+“The more fool you,” rejoined Belial. “If you tempted her to commit a
+sin, she would be yours without any conditions at all.”
+
+“Oh, Belial,” said Lucifer, “I cannot bring myself to be a tempter of
+so much innocence and loveliness.”
+
+And he meant what he said.
+
+“Well then, let me try,” proposed Belial.
+
+“You?” replied Lucifer contemptuously; “do you imagine that Adeliza
+would look at you?”
+
+“Why not?” asked Belial, surveying himself complacently in the glass.
+
+He was humpbacked, squinting, and lame, and his horns stood up under
+his wig.
+
+The discussion ended in a wager: after which there was no retreat for
+Lucifer.
+
+The infernal Iachimo was introduced to Adeliza as a distinguished
+foreigner, and was soon prosecuting his suit with all the success
+which Lucifer had predicted. One thing protected while it baffled
+him--the entire inability of Adeliza to understand what he meant. At
+length he was constrained to make the matter clear by producing an
+enormous treasure, which he offered Adeliza in exchange for the
+abandonment of her lover.
+
+The tempest of indignation which ensued would have swept away any
+ordinary demon, but Belial listened unmoved. When Adeliza had
+exhausted herself he smilingly rallied her upon her affection for an
+unworthy lover, of whose infidelity he undertook to give her proof.
+Frantic with jealousy, Adeliza consented, and in a trice found herself
+in the infernal regions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Adeliza’s arrival in Pandemonium, as Belial had planned, occurred
+immediately after the receipt of a message from Lucifer, in whose
+bosom love had finally gained the victory, and who had telegraphed his
+abdication and resignation of Madam Lucifer to Adeliza’s betrothed.
+The poor young man had just been hauled up from the lower depths, and
+was beset by legions of demons obsequiously pressing all manner of
+treasures upon his acceptance. He stared, helpless and bewildered,
+unable to realize his position in the smallest degree. In the
+background grave and serious demons, the princes of the infernal
+realm, discussed the new departure, and consulted especially how to
+break it to Madam Lucifer--a commission of which no one seemed
+ambitious.
+
+“Stay where you are,” whispered Belial to Adeliza; “stir not: you
+shall put his constancy to the proof within five minutes.”
+
+Not all the hustling, mowing, and gibbering of the fiends would under
+ordinary circumstances have kept Adeliza from her lover’s side: but
+what is all hell to jealousy?
+
+In even less time than he had promised, Belial returned, accompanied
+by Madam Lucifer. This lady’s black robe, dripping with blood,
+contrasted agreeably with her complexion of sulphurous yellow; the
+absence of hair was compensated by the exceptional length of her
+nails; she was a thousand million years old, and, but for her
+remarkable muscular vigour, looked every one of them. The rage into
+which Belial’s communication had thrown her was something
+indescribable; but, as her eye fell on the handsome youth, a different
+order of thoughts seemed to take possession of her mind.
+
+“Let the monster go!” she exclaimed; “who cares? Come, my love, ascend
+the throne with me, and share the empire and the treasures of thy fond
+Luciferetta.”
+
+“If you don’t, back you go,” interjected Belial.
+
+What might have been the young man’s decision if Madam Lucifer had
+borne more resemblance to Madam Vulcan, it would be wholly impertinent
+to inquire, for the question never arose.
+
+“Take me away!” he screamed, “take me away, anywhere! anywhere out of
+her reach! Oh, Adeliza!”
+
+With a bound Adeliza stood by his side. She was darting a triumphant
+glance at the discomfited Queen of Hell, when suddenly her expression
+changed, and she screamed loudly. Two adorers stood before her, alike
+in every lineament and every detail of costume, utterly
+indistinguishable, even by the eye of Love.
+
+Lucifer, in fact, hastening to throw himself at Adeliza’s feet and
+pray her to defer his bliss no longer, had been thunderstruck by the
+tidings of her elopement with Belial. Fearing to lose his wife and his
+dominions along with his sweetheart, he had sped to the nether regions
+with such expedition that he had had no time to change his costume.
+Hence the equivocation which confounded Adeliza, but at the same time
+preserved her from being torn to pieces by the no less mystified Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+Perceiving the state of the case, Lucifer with true gentlemanly
+feeling resumed his proper semblance, and Madam Lucifer’s talons were
+immediately inserted into his whiskers.
+
+“My dear! my love!” he gasped, as audibly as she would let him, “is
+this the way it welcomes its own Lucy-pucy?”
+
+“Who is that person?” demanded Madam Lucifer.
+
+“I don’t know her,” screamed the wretched Lucifer. “I never saw her
+before. Take her away; shut her up in the deepest dungeon!”
+
+“Not if I know it,” sharply replied Madam Lucifer. “You can’t bear to
+part with her, can’t you? You would intrigue with her under my nose,
+would you? Take that! and that! Turn them both out, I say! turn them
+both out!”
+
+“Certainly, my dearest love, most certainly,” responded Lucifer.
+
+“Oh, Sire,” cried Moloch and Beelzebub together, “for Heaven’s sake
+let your Majesty consider what he is doing. The Inspector--”
+
+“Bother the Inspector!” screeched Lucifer. “D’ye think I’m not a
+thousand times more afraid of your mistress than of all the saints in
+the calendar? There,” addressing Adeliza and her betrothed, “be off!
+You’ll find all debts paid, and a nice balance at the bank. Out! Run!”
+
+They did not wait to be told twice. Earth yawned. The gates of
+Tartarus stood wide. They found themselves on the side of a steep
+mountain, down which they scoured madly, hand linked in hand. But fast
+as they ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER[28]
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+    [28] Taken by permission from _The Well of St. Claire_, by
+    Anatole France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published,
+    1909, by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+     _E si compiacque tanto Spinello di farlo orribile e
+     contrafatto, che si dice (tanto può alcuna fiata
+     l’immaginazione) che la detta figura da lui dipinta gli
+     apparve in sogno, domandandolo dove egli l’ avesse veduta si
+     brutta._[29]
+                            (_Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, da Messer
+                            Giorgio Vasari.--“Vita di Spinello.”_)
+
+    [29] “And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and
+    portentous Production that it was commonly reported--so great
+    is always the force of fancy--that the said figure (of
+    Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-Piece
+    of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had
+    appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what
+    place he had beheld him under so brutish a form.”
+
+                      _Lives of the most Excellent Painters_, by Giorgio
+                      Vasari.--“Life of Spinello.”
+
+Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence, had a wholesome
+terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly in the watches of the
+night, when it is given to the powers of Darkness to prevail. And the
+worthy man’s fears were not unreasonable, for in those days the Demons
+had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed them of more souls
+with a single picture than a good little Preaching Friar could do in
+thirty sermons. No doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in
+the hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost of his
+powers “that day of wrath, that day of mourning,” which is to reduce
+the universe to ashes, _teste David et Sibylla_, borrowing his deepest
+voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the Archangel’s last
+trump. But there! it was “all sound and fury, signifying nothing,”
+whereas a painting displayed on a Chapel wall or in the Cloister,
+showing Jesus Christ sitting on the Great White Throne to judge the
+living and the dead, spoke unceasingly to the eyes of sinners, and
+through the eyes chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or
+otherwise.
+
+It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa-Croce
+in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine
+Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse
+which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon
+Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell, and Purgatory and
+Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was
+able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was
+instructive and true, and we may say surely less profit is to be had
+of reading the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating
+such representative works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters
+took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the
+flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying
+in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love
+to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert
+carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of
+women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the
+Devils pouring molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbess, who
+had commissioned some work from him and then scamped his pay.
+
+This is why the Demons in those days were bitter enemies of the
+painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all
+the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with
+representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and
+fish, serpents’ bodies and bats’ wings. This sore resentment which
+they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello of Arezzo.
+
+Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of Florentine exiles,
+and his graciousness of mind matched his gentle birth; for he was the
+most skilful painter of his time. He wrought many and great works at
+Florence; and the Pisans begged him to complete Giotto’s
+wall-paintings in their Campo Santo, where the dead rest beneath roses
+in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem. At last, after working long
+years in divers cities and getting much gold, he longed to see once
+more the good city of Arezzo, his mother. The men of Arezzo had not
+forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being enrolled in the
+Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia, had visited the sick
+and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him
+besides for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all
+Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honours on
+his return.
+
+Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important tasks in
+his native town. His wife would tell him:
+
+“You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leave younger men to paint
+instead of you. It is meet a man should end his days in a gentle,
+religious quiet. It is tempting God to be for ever raising new and
+worldly monuments, mere heathen towers of Babel. Quit your colours and
+your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy your peace of mind.”
+
+So the good dame would preach, but he refused to listen, for his one
+thought was to increase his fortune and renown. Far from resting on
+his laurels, he arranged a price with the Wardens of Sant’ Agnolo for
+a history of St. Michael, that was to cover all the Choir of the
+Church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise he
+threw himself with extraordinary ardour. Re-reading the parts of
+Scripture that were to be his inspiration, he set himself to study
+deeply every line and every word of these passages. Not content with
+drawing all day long in his workshop, he persisted in working both at
+bed and board; while at dusk, walking below the hill on whose brow
+Arezzo proudly lifts her walls and towers, he was still lost in
+thought. And we may say the story of the Archangel was already limned
+in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents in red chalk
+on the plaster of the wall. He was soon done tracing these outlines;
+then he fell to painting above the high altar the scene that was to
+outshine all the others in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein
+to glorify the leader of the hosts of Heaven for the victory he won
+before the beginning of time. Accordingly Spinello represented St.
+Michael fighting in the air against the serpent with seven heads and
+ten horns, and he figured with delight, in the bottom part of the
+picture, the Prince of the Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an
+appalling monster. The figures seemed to grow to life of themselves
+under his hand. His success was beyond his fondest hopes; so hideous
+was the countenance of Lucifer, none could escape the nightmare of its
+foulness. The face haunted the painter in the streets and even went
+home with him to his lodging.
+
+Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in his bed beside his
+wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers he saw an Angel as comely as St.
+Michael, but black; and the Angel said to him:
+
+“Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you seen me, that you
+should paint me as you have, under so ignominious a likeness?”
+
+The old painter answered, trembling, that he had never seen him with
+his eyes, never having gone down alive into Hell, like Messer Dante
+Alighieri; but that, in depicting him as he had done, he was for
+expressing in visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin.
+
+Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of San Gemignano seemed
+of a sudden to heave and stagger.
+
+“Spinello,” he went on, “will you do me the pleasure to reason awhile
+with me? I am no mean Logician; He you pray to knows that.”
+
+Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms:
+
+“Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me. You know of my
+enterprise, and how I forsook Heaven to become the Prince of this
+World. A tremendous adventure,--and a unique one, had not the Giants
+in like fashion assailed the god Jupiter, as yourself have seen,
+Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this Titanic war is carved
+in marble.”
+
+“It is true,” said Spinello, “I have seen the tomb, shaped like a
+great tun, in the Church of Santa Reparata at Florence. ’Tis a fine
+work of the Romans.”
+
+“Still,” returned Lucifer, smiling, “the Giants are not pictured on it
+in the shape of frogs or chameleons or the like hideous and horrid
+creatures.”
+
+“True,” replied the painter, “but then they had not attacked the true
+God, but only a false idol of the Pagans. ’Tis a mighty difference.
+The fact is clear, Lucifer, you raised the standard of revolt against
+the true and veritable King of Earth and Heaven.”
+
+“I will not deny it,” said Lucifer. “And how many sorts of sins do you
+charge me with for that?”
+
+“Seven, it is like enough,” the painter answered, “and deadly sins one
+and all.”
+
+“Seven!” exclaimed the Angel of Darkness; “well! the number is
+canonical. Everything goes by sevens in my history, which is close
+bound up with God’s. Spinello, you deem me proud, angry and envious. I
+enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my only aim. Do
+you deem me covetous? Granted again; Covetousness is a virtue for
+Princes. For Gluttony and Lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not
+complain. Remains _Indolence_.”
+
+As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms across his breast,
+and shaking his gloomy head, tossed his flaming locks:
+
+“Tell me, Spinello, do you really think I am indolent? Do you take me
+for a coward? Do you hold that in my revolt I showed a lack of
+courage? Nay! you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the
+guise of a hero, with a proud countenance. You should wrong no one,
+not even the Devil. Cannot you see that you insult Him you make prayer
+to, when you give Him for adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinello,
+you are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great mind to
+pull your ears, as they do to an ill-conditioned schoolboy.”
+
+At this threat, and seeing the arm of Lucifer already stretched out
+towards him, Spinello clapped his hand to his head and began to howl
+with terror.
+
+His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what ailed him. He
+told her with chattering teeth, how he had just seen Lucifer and had
+been in terror for his ears.
+
+“I told you so,” retorted the worthy dame; “I knew all those figures
+you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad.”
+
+“I am not mad,” protested the painter. “I saw him with my own eyes;
+and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing
+tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its
+place the shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong even the
+Devil himself.”
+
+“You had best go to sleep again,” scolded his wife. “You are talking
+stark nonsense, and unchristian to boot.”
+
+Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back
+unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever,
+and then died.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL[30]
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+    [30] From the _National Magazine_, vol. XV. By permission of
+    the Editor and Translator.
+
+Life is a burden in the Fall,--the sad season of decay and death!
+
+The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the
+growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows--all that
+drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it
+with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in
+an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what
+purpose?...
+
+Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous
+thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who
+want to assuage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is
+the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and
+doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.
+
+But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny brambles that
+lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in
+ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe
+has made us acquainted....
+
+My story is about that devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The devil suffered from ennui.
+
+He is too wise to ridicule everything.
+
+He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is
+not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp
+scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell
+the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we
+were to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like
+ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But we had better
+leave that alone; we are not children that break their best toys in
+order to discover what is in them.
+
+The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the darkness of an autumn
+night: he felt lonely and whistled softly as he looked around himself
+in search of a distraction. He whistled an old song--my father’s
+favourite song,--
+
+    “When, in autumnal days,
+    A leaf from its branch is torn
+    And on high by the wind is borne.”
+
+And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves and among the
+black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds slowly crawled over the
+heaven and with their cold tears watered the narrow dwellings of the
+dead. The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the
+strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the
+speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the
+crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound passed over the
+churchyard....
+
+The devil was whistling, and he thought:
+
+“I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No doubt, the dampness
+goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism
+ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel
+comfortable. How, if I called one of them up and had a talk with him?
+It would be a little distraction for me, and, very likely, for him
+also. I will call him! Somewhere around here they have buried an old
+friend of mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was alive
+... why not renew our acquaintance? People of his kind are dreadfully
+exacting. I shall find out whether the grave satisfies him completely.
+But where is his grave?”
+
+And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything, wandered for a
+long time about the cemetery, before he found the author’s grave....
+
+“Oh there!” he called out as he knocked with his claws at the heavy
+stone under which his acquaintance was put away.
+
+“Get up!”
+
+“What for?” came the dull answer from below.
+
+“I need you.”
+
+“I won’t get up.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Who are you, anyway?”
+
+“You know me.”
+
+“The censor?”
+
+“Ha, ha, ha! No!”
+
+“Maybe a secret policeman?”
+
+“No, no!”
+
+“Not a critic, either?”
+
+“I am the devil.”
+
+“Well, I’ll be out in a minute.”
+
+The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a
+skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind
+that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire
+connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric
+light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones
+in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry,
+rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its
+cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. “I hope you are
+well!” said the devil.
+
+“How can I be?” curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low
+voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.
+
+“Oh, excuse my greeting!” the devil said pleasantly.
+
+“Never mind!... But why have you raised me?”
+
+“I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very
+bad.
+
+“I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?” asked the devil.
+
+“Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime.”
+
+“Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold.”
+
+“I should say I did! They had poured enough cold water over me all my
+life.”
+
+They walked beside each other over the narrow path, between graves and
+crosses. Two blue beams fell from the author’s eyes upon the ground
+and lit the way for the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them,
+and the wind freely passed between the author’s bare ribs and through
+his breast where there was no longer a heart.
+
+“We are going to town?” he asked the devil.
+
+“What interests you there?”
+
+“Life, my dear sir,” the author said impassionately.
+
+“What! It still has a meaning for you?”
+
+“Indeed it has!”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“How am I to say it? A man measures all by the quantity of his effort,
+and if he carries a common stone down from the summit of Ararat, that
+stone becomes a gem to him.”
+
+“Poor fellow!” smiled the devil.
+
+“But also happy man!” the author retorted coldly.
+
+The devil shrugged his shoulders.
+
+They left the churchyard, and before them lay a street,--two rows of
+houses, and between them was darkness in which the miserable lamps
+clearly proved the want of light upon earth.
+
+“Tell me,” the devil spoke after a pause, “how do you like your
+grave?”
+
+“Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very quiet there.”
+
+“Is it not damp down there in the Fall?” asked the devil.
+
+“A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance comes from
+those various idiots who ramble over the cemetery and accidentally
+stumble on my grave. I don’t know how long I have been lying in my
+grave, for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the concept
+of time does not exist for me.”
+
+“You have been in the ground four years,--it will soon be five,” said
+the devil.
+
+“Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at my grave during
+that time. Those accursed people make me nervous. One, you see,
+straight away denied the fact of my existence: he read my name on the
+tombstone and said confidently: ‘There never was such a man! I have
+never read him, though I remember such a name: when I was a boy, there
+lived a man of that name who had a broker’s shop in our street.’ How
+do you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen years in the
+most popular periodicals, and three times during my lifetime my books
+came out in separate editions.”
+
+“There were two more editions since your death,” the devil informed
+him.
+
+“Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them said: ‘Oh, that’s that
+fellow!’ ‘Yes, that is he!’ answered the other. ‘Yes, they used to
+read him in the auld lang syne.’ ‘They read a lot of them.’ ‘What was
+it he preached?’ ‘Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness, and so
+forth.’ ‘Oh, yes, I remember.’ ‘He had a heavy tongue.’ ‘There is a
+lot of them in the ground:--yes, Russia is rich in talents’ ... And
+those asses went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the
+temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that, yet it hurts me.
+And oh, how I wanted to give them a piece of my mind!”
+
+“You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!” smiled the
+devil.
+
+“No, that would not have done. On the verge of the twentieth century
+it would be absurd for dead people to scold, and, besides, it would be
+hard on the materialists.”
+
+The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.
+
+This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a bridegroom at
+all weddings and a corpse at all burials, and now that all is dead in
+him, his egotism is still alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of
+importance is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves
+applause and recognition.... How annoying people are! The devil was on
+the point of proposing to the author to return to his grave, when an
+idea flashed through his evil head. They had just reached a square,
+and heavy masses of buildings surrounded them on all sides. The dark,
+wet sky hung low over the square; it seemed as though it rested on the
+roofs and murkily looked at the dirty earth.
+
+“Say,” said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards the author,
+“don’t you want to know how your wife is getting on?”
+
+“I don’t know whether I want to,” the author spoke slowly.
+
+“I see, you are a thorough corpse!” called out the devil to annoy him.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know?” said the author and jauntily shook his bones. “I
+don’t mind seeing her; besides, she will not see me, or if she will,
+she cannot recognize me!”
+
+“Of course!” the devil assured him.
+
+“You know, I only said so because she did not like for me to go away
+long from home,” explained the author.
+
+And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became as transparent
+as glass. The author saw the inside of large apartments, and it was so
+light and cosy in them.
+
+“Elegant appointments!” he grated his bones approvingly: “Very fine
+appointments! If I had lived in such rooms, I would be alive now.”
+
+“I like it, too,” said the devil and smiled. “And it is not
+expensive--it only costs some three thousands.”
+
+“Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest work brought me 815
+roubles, and I worked over it a whole year. But who lives here?”
+
+“Your wife,” said the devil.
+
+“I declare! That is good ... for her.”
+
+“Yes, and here comes her husband.”
+
+“She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed! Her husband, you
+say? What a fine looking fellow! Rather a bourgeois phiz,--kind, but
+somewhat stupid! He looks as if he might be cunning,--well, just the
+face to please a woman.”
+
+“Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?” the devil proposed and
+looked maliciously at the author. But he was taken up with the scene
+before him.
+
+“What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently satisfied with
+life. Tell me, does she love him?”
+
+“Oh, yes, very much!”
+
+“And who is he?”
+
+“A clerk in a millinery shop.”
+
+“A clerk in a millinery shop,” the author repeated slowly and did not
+utter a word for some time. The devil looked at him and smiled a merry
+smile.
+
+“Do you like that?” he asked.
+
+The author spoke with an effort:
+
+“I had some children.... I know they are alive.... I had some children
+... a son and a daughter.... I used to think then that my son would
+turn out in time a good man....”
+
+“There are plenty of good men, but what the world needs is perfect
+men,” said the devil coolly and whistled a jolly march.
+
+“I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ... and my son....”
+
+The author’s empty skull shook sadly.
+
+“Just look how he is embracing her! They are living an easy life!”
+exclaimed the devil.
+
+“Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?”
+
+“No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich.”
+
+“My wife? Where did she get the money from?”
+
+“From the sale of your books!”
+
+“Oh!” said the author and shook his bare and empty skull. “Oh! Then it
+simply means that I have worked for a certain clerk?”
+
+“I confess it looks that way,” the devil chimed in merrily.
+
+The author looked at the ground and said to the devil: “Take me back
+to my grave!”
+
+... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung in the sky, and the
+author rattled his bones as he marched rapidly to his grave.... The
+devil walked behind him and whistled merrily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is surfeited with
+literature, and even the people that write only to please him, are
+rarely to his taste. In the present case my reader is also
+dissatisfied because I have said nothing about hell. As my reader is
+justly convinced that after death he will find his way there, he would
+like to know something about hell during his lifetime. Really, I can’t
+tell anything pleasant to my reader on that score, because there is no
+hell, no fiery hell which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is
+something else and infinitely more terrible.
+
+The moment the doctor will have said about you to your friends: “He is
+dead!” you will enter an immeasurable, illuminated space, and that is
+the space of the consciousness of your mistakes.
+
+You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable life
+rotates about you like a wheel.
+
+It moves painfully slow, and passes before you from your first
+conscious step to the last moment of your life.
+
+You will see all that you have hidden from yourself during your
+lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your existence: you will think
+over anew all your past thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of
+yours,--all your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!
+
+And to increase your torments, you will know that on that narrow and
+stupid road which you have traversed, others are marching, and pushing
+each other, and hurrying, and lying.... And you understand that they
+are doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is to live
+such a wretched, soulless life.
+
+And though you see them hastening on towards their destruction, you
+are in no way able to warn them: you will not move nor cry, and your
+helpless desire to aid them will tear your soul to pieces.
+
+Your life passes before you, and you see it from the start, and there
+is no end to the work of your conscience, and there will be no end ...
+and to the horror of your torments there will never be an end ...
+never!
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN[31]
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+
+    [31] From _A Mainsail Haul_, by John Masefield [Copyright
+    1913 by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the
+    Author and the Publishers.]
+
+Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was a man who never
+throve. Nothing he put his hand to ever prospered, and as his state
+worsened, his friends fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night
+when he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in two or
+three days and the money he couldn’t scrape together, he cried out, “I
+wish I could sell my soul to the devil like that man the old books
+tell about.”
+
+Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and, while it chimed, a
+sparkle began to burn about the room, and the air, all at once, began
+to smell of brimstone, and a voice said:
+
+“Will these terms suit you?”
+
+He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment there. He picked
+it up and read it through; and being in despair, and not knowing what
+he was doing, he answered, “Yes,” and looked round for a pen.
+
+“Take and sign,” said the voice again, “but first consider what it is
+you do; do nothing rashly. Consider.”
+
+So he thought awhile; then “Yes,” he said, “I’ll sign,” and with that
+he groped for the pen.
+
+“Blood from your left thumb and sign,” said the voice.
+
+So he pricked his left thumb and signed.
+
+“Here is your earnest money,” said the voice, “nine and twenty silver
+pennies. This day twenty years hence I shall see you again.”
+
+Now early next morning our friend came to himself and felt like one of
+the drowned. “What a dream I’ve had,” he said. Then he woke up and saw
+the nine and twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of
+brimstone.
+
+So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he had sold his soul
+to the devil for twenty years of heart’s-desire; and whatever fears he
+may have had as to what might come at the end of those twenty years,
+he found comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a
+good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could eat, drink,
+merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be care-free, heart at
+ease and jib-sheet to windward.
+
+So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in great state, having
+his heart’s desire in all things; but, when his twenty years were
+nearly run through, there was no wretcheder man in all the world than
+that poor fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches,
+everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool, where he signed
+on as A. B., aboard a Black Ball packet, a tea clipper, bound to the
+China seas.
+
+They made a fine passage out, and when our friend had only three days
+more, they were in the Indian Ocean lying lazy, becalmed.
+
+Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being dead calm, all he
+had to do was just to think of things; the ship of course having no
+way on her.
+
+So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning and weeping
+till, just twenty minutes or so before eight bells were made, up came
+the Captain for a turn on deck.
+
+He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our friend crying
+at the wheel. “Hello, my man,” he says, “why, what’s all this? Ain’t
+you well? You’d best lay aft for a dose o’salts at four bells
+tonight.”
+
+“No, Cap’n,” said the man, “there’s no salts’ll ever cure my
+sickness.”
+
+“Why, what’s all this?” says the old man. “You must be sick if it’s as
+bad as all that. But come now; your cheek is all sunk, and you look as
+if you ain’t slept well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you
+anything on your mind?”
+
+“Captain,” he answers very solemn, “I have sold my soul to the devil.”
+
+“Oh,” said the old man, “why, that’s bad. That’s powerful bad. I never
+thought them sort of things ever happened outside a book.”
+
+“But,” said our friend, “that’s not the worst of it, Captain. At this
+time three days hence the devil will fetch me home.”
+
+“Good Lord!” groaned the old man. “Here’s a nice hurrah’s nest to
+happen aboard my ship. But come now,” he went on, “did the devil give
+you no chance--no saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a
+moment.”
+
+“Yes, Captain,” said our friend, “just when I made the deal, there
+came a whisper in my ear. And,” he said, speaking very quietly, so as
+not to let the mate hear, “if I can give the devil three jobs to do
+which he cannot do, why, then, Captain,” he says, “I’m saved, and that
+deed of mine is cancelled.”
+
+Well, at this the old man grinned and said, “You just leave things to
+me, my son. _I’ll_ fix the devil for you. Aft there, one o’ you, and
+relieve the wheel. Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below,
+and be quite easy in your mind, for I’ll deal with the devil for you.
+You rest and be easy.”
+
+And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one after that, and the
+one after that was the day the Devil was due.
+
+Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called
+all hands aft.
+
+“Men,” he said, “I’ve got an all-hands job for you this forenoon.”
+
+“Mr. Mate,” he cried, “get all hands on to the main-tops’l halliards
+and bowse the sail stiff up and down.”
+
+So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old
+John Chantyman piped up--
+
+    There’s a Black Ball clipper
+    Comin’ down the river.
+
+And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands jammed
+in the sheave.
+
+“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now get my dinghy off o’ the
+half-deck and let her drag alongside.”
+
+So they did that, too.
+
+“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now forrard with you, to the
+chain-locker, and rouse out every inch of chain you find there.”
+
+So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up and flaked along
+the deck all clear for running.
+
+“Now, Chips,” says the old man to the carpenter, “just bend the spare
+anchor to the end of that chain, and clear away the fo’c’s’le rails
+ready for when we let go.”
+
+So they did this, too.
+
+“Now,” said the old man, “get them tubs of slush from the galley. Pass
+that slush along there, doctor. Very well that. Now turn to, all
+hands, and slush away every link in that chain a good inch thick in
+grease.”
+
+So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man meant.
+
+“Very well that,” cries the old man. “Now get below all hands! Chips,
+on to the fo’c’s’le head with you and stand by! I’ll keep the deck,
+Mr. Mate! Very well that.”
+
+So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill o’ baccy to leeward
+of the capstan, and the old man walked the weather-poop looking for a
+sign of hell-fire.
+
+It was still dead calm--but presently, towards six bells, he raised a
+black cloud away to leeward, and saw the glimmer of the lightning in
+it; only the flashes were too red, and came too quick.
+
+“Now,” says he to himself, “stand by.”
+
+Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward, right alongside, and
+there came a red flash, and a strong sulphurous smell, and then a loud
+peal of thunder as the devil steps aboard.
+
+“Mornin’, Cap’n,” says he.
+
+“Mornin’, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “and what in blazes do you
+want aboard _my_ ship?”
+
+“Why, Captain,” said the devil, “I’ve come for the soul of one of your
+hands as per signed agreement: and, as my time’s pretty full up in
+these wicked days, I hope you won’t keep me waiting for him longer
+than need be.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “the man you come for is down
+below, sleeping, just at this moment. It’s a fair pity to call him up
+till it’s right time. So supposin’ I set you them three tasks. How
+would that be? Have you any objections?”
+
+“Why, no,” said the devil, “fire away as soon as you like.”
+
+“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, “you see that main-tops’l yard? Suppose
+you lay out on that main-tops’l yard and take in three reefs
+singlehanded.”
+
+“Ay, ay, sir,” the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines, into the
+top, up the topmast rigging and along the yard.
+
+Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he hailed the deck:
+
+“Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!”
+
+“I will not,” said the old man, “nary a lower.”
+
+“Come up your sheets, then,” cries the devil. “This main-topsail’s
+stiff up-and-down. How’m I to take in three reefs when the sail’s
+stiff up-and-down?”
+
+“Why,” said the old man, “_you can’t do it_. Come out o’ that! Down
+from aloft, you hoof-footed son. That’s one to me.”
+
+“Yes,” says the devil, when he got on deck again, “I don’t deny it,
+Cap’n. That’s one to you.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the old man, going towards the rail, “suppose
+you was to step into that little boat alongside there. Will you
+please?”
+
+“Ay, ay, sir,” he said, and he slid down the forrard fall, got into
+the stern sheets, and sat down.
+
+“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the skipper, taking a little salt spoon from
+his vest pocket, “supposin’ you bail all the water on that side the
+boat on to this side the boat, using this spoon as your dipper.”
+
+Well!--the devil just looked at him.
+
+“Say!” he said at length, “which of the New England States d’ye hail
+from anyway?”
+
+“Not Jersey, anyway,” said the old man. “That’s two up, alright; ain’t
+it, sonny?”
+
+“Yes,” growls the devil, as he climbs aboard. “That’s two up. Two to
+you and one to play. Now, what’s your next contraption?”
+
+“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, looking very innocent, “you see, I’ve
+ranged my chain ready for letting go anchor. Now Chips is forrard
+there, and when I sing out, he’ll let the anchor go. Supposin’ you
+stopper the chain with them big hands o’ yourn and keep it from
+running out clear. Will you, please?”
+
+So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together, and gets
+away forrard by the bitts, and stands by.
+
+“All ready, Cap’n,” he says.
+
+“All ready, Chips?” asked the old man.
+
+“All ready, sir,” replies Chips.
+
+“Then, stand by--Let _go_ the anchor,” and clink, clink, old Chips
+knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain
+into a five mile deep of God’s sea. As I said, they were in the Indian
+Ocean.
+
+Well--there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and
+the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a
+bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.
+
+So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the
+last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he
+put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.
+
+But the chain gave such a _Yank_ when it came-to, that the big link
+carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole,
+in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no
+devil now. The devil’s dead.
+
+As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles
+burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo’c’s’le scuttle
+and banged thereon with a hand-spike.
+
+“Rouse out, there, the port watch!” he called, “an’ get my dinghy
+inboard.”
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+According to a German legend, the devil is master of all arts, and
+certainly he has given sufficient proof of his musical talent. Certain
+Church Fathers ascribed, not without good reason, the origin of music
+to Satan. “The Devil,” says Mr. Huneker in his diabolical story “The
+Supreme Sin” (1920), “is the greatest of all musicians,” and Rowland
+Hill long ago admitted the fact that the devil has all the good tunes.
+Perhaps his greatest composition is the _Sonata del Diavolo_, which
+Tartini wrote down in 1713. This diabolical master-piece is the
+subject of Gérard de Nerval’s story _La Sonate du Diable_ (1830).
+While the devil plays all instruments equally well, he seems to prefer
+the violin. Satan appears as fiddler in the poem “Der Teufel mit der
+Geige,” which has been ascribed to the Swiss anti-Papist Pamphilus
+Gengenbach of the sixteenth century. In Leanu’s _Faust_ (1836)
+Mephistopheles takes the violin out of the hands of one of the
+musicians at a peasant-wedding and plays a diabolical _czardas_, which
+fills the hearts of all who hear it with voluptuousness. An opera _Un
+Violon du Diable_ was played in Paris in 1849. _The Devil’s Violin_,
+an extravaganza in verse by Benjamin Webster, was performed the same
+year in London. In his story “Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire” Baudelaire presents the Demon of Love as holding in his left
+hand a violin “which without doubt served to sing his pleasures and
+pains.” The devil also appears as limping fiddler in a California
+legend, which appeared under the title “The Devil’s Fiddle” in a
+Californian magazine in 1855. Death, the devil’s first cousin, if not
+his _alter ego_, has the souls, in the Dance of Death, march off to
+hell to a merry tune on his violin. Death appears as a musician also
+in the Piper of Hamlin. In this legend, well known to the English
+world through Browning’s poem “Pied Piper of Hamelin” (1843) and Miss
+Peabody’s play _The Piper_ (1909), the rats are the human souls, which
+Death charms with his music into following him. In the Middle Ages the
+soul was often represented as leaving the body in the form of a mouse.
+The soul of a good man comes out of his mouth as a white mouse, while
+at the death of a sinner the soul escapes as a black mouse, which the
+devil catches and brings to hell. Mephistopheles, it will be recalled,
+calls himself “the lord of rats and mice” (_Faust_, 1, 1516).
+Devil-Death has inherited this wind instrument from the goat-footed
+Pan.
+
+“The Devil is more busy in the convents,” we are told by J. K.
+Huysmans in his novel _En route_ (1895), “than in the cities, as he
+has a harder job on hand.”
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+This story of the devil Belphagor, who was sent by his infernal chief
+Pluto up to earth, where he married an earthly wife, but finally left
+her in disgust to go back to hell, is also of mediaeval origin. It was
+first printed by Giovanni Brevio in 1545, and appeared for the second
+time with the name of Machiavelli in 1549, twenty-two years after the
+death of the diabolical statesman. The two authors did not borrow from
+each other, but had a common source in a mediaeval Latin manuscript,
+which seems to have first fallen into the hands of Italians, but was
+later brought to France where it has been lost. The tale of the
+marriage of the devil appeared in several other Italian versions
+during the sixteenth century. Among the Italian novelists, who retold
+it for the benefit of their married friends, may be mentioned
+Giovan-Francesco Straparola, Francesco Sansovino, and Gabriel
+Chappuys. In England this story was no less popular. Barnabe Riche
+inserted it in his collection of narratives in 1581, and we meet it
+again later in the following plays: _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_,
+ascribed to Ulpian Fulwell (1599); _The Devil and his Dame_ by P. M.
+Houghton (1600); _Machiavel and the Devil_ by Daborne and Henslowe
+(1613); _The Devil is an Ass_ by Ben Jonson (1616); and _Belphagor, or
+the Marriage of the Devil_ (1690). In France the story was treated in
+verse by La Fontaine (1694), and in Germany it served the Nuremberg
+poet Hans Sachs as the subject for a farce (1557).
+
+The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is authority for the statement that
+Machiavelli’s own married life had nothing to do with the plot of his
+story.
+
+“The notion of this story is ingenious, and might have been made
+productive of entertaining incident, had Belphagor been led by his
+connubial connections from one crime to another. But Belphagor is only
+unfortunate, and in no respect guilty; nor did anything occur during
+his abode on earth that testified to the power of woman in leading us
+to final condemnation. The story of the peasant and the possession of
+the princesses bears no reference to the original idea with which the
+tale commences, and has no connection with the object of the infernal
+deputy’s terrestrial sojourn” (J. C. Dunlop, _History of Fiction_). To
+this criticism Mr. Thomas Roscoe replies that “part of the humour of
+the story seems to consist in Belphagor’s earthly career being cut
+short before he had served the full term of his apprenticeship. But
+from the follies and extravagances into which he had already plunged,
+we are now authorized to believe that, even if he had been able longer
+to support the asperities of the lady’s temper, he must, from the
+course he was pursuing, have been led from crime to crime, or at least
+from folly to folly, to such a degree that he would infallibly have
+been condemned” (T. Roscoe, _Italian Novelists_).
+
+The demon of Machiavelli offers no features of a deep psychology, but
+he distinguishes himself from the other demons of his period by his
+elegant manners. Like creator, like creature.
+
+Belphagor, the god of the Moabites, like all other pagan gods, joined
+the infernal forces of Satan when driven off the earth by the Church
+Triumphant.
+
+The parliament of devils, which we find in this story, was taken from
+the mystery-plays where the ruler of hell is represented as holding
+occasional receptions when he listens to the reports of their recent
+achievements on his behalf, and consults their opinion on matters of
+state. Satan, who has always wished to rival God, has instituted the
+infernal council in imitation of the celestial council described in
+the Book of Job. The source for the parliament of devils is the
+apocryphal book _Evangelium Nicodemi_. An early metrical tract under
+the title of the _Parlement of Devils_ was printed two or three times
+in London about 1520. A “Pandemonium” is also found in Tasso, Milton,
+and Chateaubriand. The _Parlement of Foules_ (14th century) is but a
+modification of the _Parlement of Devils_, for the devil and the fool
+were originally identical in person and may be traced back to the
+demonic clown of the ancient heathen cult (cf. the present writer’s
+book, _The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_, p. 37). A far echo
+is Thomas Chatterton’s poem _The Parliament of Sprites_.
+
+This story recalls to us the saying that the heart of a beautiful
+woman is the most beloved hiding-place of at least seven devils.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+By his interest in popular legends the first of the great American
+writers shows his sympathy with the Romantic movement, which prevailed
+in his time in all the countries of Europe. His devil, however, has
+not been imported from the lands across the Atlantic, but is a part of
+the superstitions of the New World. The author himself did not believe
+in “Old Scratch.” The real devils for him were the slave-traders and
+the witch-hunters of Salem fame. It is interesting now to read a
+contemporary critic of Washington Irving’s devil-story: “If Mr. Irving
+believes in the existence of Tom Walker’s master, we can scarcely
+conceive how he can so earnestly jest about him; at all events, we
+would counsel him to beware lest his own spells should prove fatal to
+him” (_Eclectic Review_, 1825). Few people in those days had the
+courage to take Old Nick good-naturedly. “Even the clever Madame de
+Staël,” said Goethe, “was greatly scandalized that I kept the devil in
+such good-humour.”
+
+The devil appears in many colours, principally, however, in black and
+red. It is a common belief in Scotland that the devil is a black man,
+as may also be seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story “Thrawn Janet.”
+There is no warrant in the biblical tradition for a black devil.
+Satan, however, appeared as an Ethiopian as far back as the days of
+the Church Fathers. The black colour presumably is intended to suggest
+his place of abode, whereas red denotes the scorching fires of hell.
+The devil was considered as a sort of eternal Salamander. In the New
+Testament he is described as a fiery fiend. Red was considered by
+Oriental nations as a diabolical colour. In Egypt red hair and red
+animals of all kinds were considered infernal. The Apis was also
+red-coloured. Satan’s red beard recalls the Scandinavian god Donar or
+Thor, who is of Phoenician origin. Judas was always represented in
+mediaeval mystery-plays with a red beard; and down to the present day
+red hair is the mark of a suspicious character. The devil also appears
+as yellow, and even blue, but never as white or green. The yellow
+devil is but a shade less bright than his fiery brother. The blue
+devil is a sulphur-constitutioned individual. He is the demon of
+melancholy, and fills us with “the blues.” As the spirit of darkness
+and death, the devil cannot assume the colours of white or green,
+which are the symbols of light and life. The devil’s dragon-tail is,
+according to Sir Walter Scott, of biblical tradition, coming from a
+literal interpretation of a figurative expression.
+
+A few interesting remarks on the expression “The Devil and Tom Walker”
+current in certain parts of this country as a caution to usurers will
+be found in Dr. Blondheim’s article “The Devil and Doctor Foster” in
+_Modern Language Notes_ for 1918.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+Wilhelm Hauff, the author of this book, ranks honourably among the
+members of the Romantic School in Germany. As the work of a man of
+only twenty-two years, just out of the university, the book is a
+credit to its author. It must be admitted, however, that it was not
+altogether original with him. The idea was taken from E. Th. A.
+Hoffmann,--Devil-Hoffmann, as he was called by his contemporaries,--who
+in his short-story “Der Teufel in Berlin” also has the devil travel
+incognito in Germany; and the title was borrowed from Jean Paul
+Richter, who also claimed to edit _Selections from the Devil’s Papers_
+(_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, 1789_). There were others, too,
+who claimed to have been honoured by his Satanic Majesty to edit his
+“journal.” J. R. Beard, a Unitarian minister, published in 1872 an
+_Autobiography of Satan_. Another autobiography of Satan is said to
+have been found among the posthumous works of Leonid Andréev, author
+of that original diabolical work _Anathema, a tragedy_ (Engl. tr.
+1910). This book has just appeared in English under the title _Satan’s
+Diary_. Frédéric Soulié’s _Les Mémoires du Diable_ (1837/8) consist of
+memoirs not of the devil himself, but of other people, which the Count
+de Luizzi, the human partner to the diabolical pact, is very anxious
+to know. Hauff’s book consists of a series of papers, which are but
+loosely connected. In certain passages we hear nothing of the
+autobiographer. The Suavian writer apparently could digest the
+Diabolical only in homeopathic doses. His Satan, moreover, is a very
+youthful and quite harmless devil. He is nothing but a personified
+echo of the author’s student-days. The book by Hauff is perhaps the
+most popular personification of the devil in German literature.
+
+The passage presented here shows the phantastic element of the book at
+its best. The short introductory synopsis will give an idea of its
+satirical aspect. The humorous aspect has pretty nearly been lost in
+translation. Professor Brander Matthews has aptly said: “The German
+humour is like the simple Italian wines--it will not stand export.”
+
+Of all the peoples, the Germans seem to have had the most kindly
+feelings towards the devil. This is because they knew him better. To
+judge from the many bridges and cathedrals, which the demon, according
+to legends, has built in Germany, he must have been a frequent visitor
+to that country. In Frankfort, where with his own hands our author
+received the memoirs from the autobiographer, there is a gilded cock
+above the bridge in memory of the bargain the bridge-builder once made
+with Satan to give him the first living thing that should cross the
+river. The day the bridge was finished, a cock fluttered from a
+woman’s market-basket and ran over the bridge. A claw-like hand
+reached down and claimed the prize.
+
+The distinguished personage, whose adventures form the subject of this
+book, does not figure in it under his own name, nor does he appear
+here in the gala attire of tail, horns and cloven foot with which he
+graces the revels on the Blocksberg. He borrows for the nonce a tall,
+gentlemanly figure, surmounted by delicate features, dresses well, is
+fastidious about his ring and linen, travels post and stops at the
+best hotels. He begins his earthly career by studying at the renowned
+university of ----. As he can boast of abundant means, a handsome
+wardrobe and the name of Herr von Barbe, it is no wonder that on the
+first evening he should be politely received, the next morning have a
+confidential friend, and the second evening embrace “brothers till
+death.” He becomes much puzzled at the extraordinary manners of the
+students, and at their language, so different from that of every
+rational German. He remarks: “Over a glass of beer they often fell
+into singularly transcendental investigations, of which I understood
+little or nothing. However, I observed the principal words, and when
+drawn into a conversation, replied with a grave air--‘Freedom,
+Fatherland, Nationality.’” He attends the lectures of a celebrated
+professor, whose profundity of thought and terseness of style are so
+astounding, that the German world set him down as possessed; the
+critical student, however, differs somewhat from that conclusion,
+observing--
+
+“I have borne a great deal in the world. I have even entered into
+swine,” (“The devil,” said Luther, “knows Scripture well and he uses
+it in argument”) “but into such a philosopher? No, indeed! I had
+rather be excused.”
+
+The episode here reprinted occurred in a hotel in Frankfort, where our
+incognito is known as Herr von Natas (which, it will be noticed, is
+his more familiar name read backwards). His brilliant powers of
+conversation, his adroit flattery, courteous gallantry, and elegant,
+though wayward flights of imagination, soon rendered him the delight
+of the whole _table d’hôte_. All guests, including our author, were
+fascinated by the mysterious stranger. But we will let the author
+himself tell his story.
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN’S EVE
+
+BY NIKOLÁI VASILÉVICH GÓGOL
+
+
+This story, taken from _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_, a series of
+sketches of the life of the Ukrainian peasants, offers a good
+illustration of the author’s art, which was a combination of the
+romantic and realistic elements. In these pages Gógol wished to record
+the myths and legends still current among the plain folk of his
+beloved Ukrainia. The devil naturally enough peeps out here and there
+through the pages of this book. Gógol’s devil is a product of the
+Russian soil, “the spirit of mischief and cunning, whom Russian
+literature is always trying to outplay and overcome” (Mme. Jarintzow,
+_Russian Poets and Poems_).
+
+According to European superstition St. John’s Eve is the only evening
+in the year when his Satanic Majesty reveals himself in his proper
+shape to the eyes of men. If you wish to behold his Highness face to
+face, stand on St. John’s Eve at midnight near a mustard-plant. It is
+suggested by Sir James Frazer in his _Golden Bough_ that, in the
+chilly air of the upper world, this prince from a warmer clime may be
+attracted by the warmth of the mustard.
+
+It is believed in many parts of Europe that treasures can be found on
+St. John’s Eve by means of the fern-seed. Even without the use of this
+plant treasures are sometimes said to bloom or burn in the earth, or
+to reveal their presence by a bluish flame on Midsummer Eve. As
+guardian of treasures the devil is the successor of the gnome.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+_The Devil’s Wager_ is Thackeray’s earliest attempt at story-writing,
+was contributed to a weekly literary paper with the imposing title
+_The National Standard, and Journal of Literature, Science, Music,
+Theatricals, and the Fine Arts_, of which he was proprietor and
+editor, and was reprinted in the _Paris Sketch Book_ (1840). The story
+first ended with the very Thackerayesque touch: “The moral of this
+story will be given in several successive numbers.” In the _Paris
+Sketch Book_ the last three words are changed into “the second
+edition.” This comical tale was illustrated by an excellent wood-cut,
+representing the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after him
+the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is wound round
+Sir Roger’s neck.
+
+In the “Advertisement to the First Edition” of his _Paris Sketch
+Book_, Thackeray admits the French origin of this as well as of his
+other devil-story, _The Painter’s Bargain_, to be found in the same
+volume. It was Thackeray’s good fortune to live in Paris during the
+wildest and most brilliant years of Romanticism; and while his
+attitude towards this movement and its leaders, as presented in the
+_Paris Sketch Book_, is not wholly sympathetic, he is indebted to it
+for his interest in supernatural subjects. The Romanticism of
+Thackeray has been denied with great obstinacy and almost passion, for
+like Heinrich Heine, the chief of German Romantic ironists, he poked
+fun at this movement. But “to laugh at what you love,” as Mr. George
+Saintsbury has pointed out in his _History of the French Novel_, “is
+not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself.”
+
+Mercurius makes a pun on the familiar quotation “rara avis” from
+Horace (_Sat._ 2, 2. 26), where it means a rare bird. This expression
+is commonly applied to a singular person. It is also found in the
+_Satires_ of Juvenal (VI, 165).
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity. Satan,
+contending with God for the possession of the human race, was supposed
+to have developed a passion for catching souls. At the death of every
+man a real fight takes place over his soul between an angel, who
+wishes to lead it to heaven, and a devil, who attempts to drag it to
+hell (Jude 9). In order to assure the soul for himself in advance,
+Satan attempts to purchase it from the owner while he is still
+living--_vivente corpore_, as he tells the _restaurateur_ in Poe’s
+story. As prince of this world he can easily grant even the most
+extravagant wishes of man in exchange for his soul. Office, wealth and
+pleasure are mainly the objects for which a man enters into a pact
+with the Evil One. Count de Luizzi in Frédéric Soulié’s _Les Mémoires
+du Diable_ sells his soul to the devil for an uncommon consideration.
+It is not wealth or pleasure that tempts him. What he wants in
+exchange for his soul is to know the past lives of his fellowmen and
+women, “a thing,” as Mr. Saintsbury well remarks, “which a person of
+sense and taste would do anything, short of selling himself to the
+devil, _not_ to know.” The devil fulfils every wish of his contractor
+for a stipulated period of time, at the expiration of which the soul
+becomes his. Pope Innocent VIII, in his fatal bull “Summis
+desiderantes” of the year 1484, officially recognized the possibility
+of a compact with the devil. Increase Mather, the New England
+preacher, also affirms that many men have made “cursed covenants with
+the prince of darkness.”
+
+St. Theophilus, of Cilicia, in the sixth century, was the first to
+make the notable discovery that a man could enter into a pact of this
+nature. The price he set for his soul was a bishopric. This story has
+been superseded during the Renaissance period by a similar legend
+concerning the German Dr. Faustus. Other famous personages reputed to
+have sold their souls to the devil for one consideration or another
+are Don Juan in Spain, Twardowski in Poland, Merlin in England, and
+Robert le Diable in France. Socrates, Apuleius, Scaliger and
+Cagliostro are also said to have entered into compacts with him.
+
+In devil-contracts the Evil One insists that his human negotiator sign
+the deed with his own blood, while the man never requires the devil to
+sign it even in ink. The human party to the transaction has always had
+full confidence in the word of the fiend. There is a universal belief
+that the devil invariably fulfils his engagement. In no single
+instance of folk-lore has Satan tried to evade the fulfilment of his
+share in the agreement. But the man, in violation of the written pact,
+has often cheated the devil out of his legal due by technical
+quibbles. “It is peculiar to the German tradition,” says Gustav
+Freytag, “that the devil endeavours to fulfil zealously and honestly
+his part of the contract; the deceiver is man.” In regard to fidelity
+to his word, the father of lies has always set an example to his
+victims. “You men,” said Satan, “are cheats; you make all sorts of
+promises so long as you need me, and leave me in the lurch as soon as
+you have got what you wanted.” Mediaeval man had no scruples about his
+breach of contract with the devil. He always considered the legal
+document signed with his own blood as “a scrap of paper.” “But still
+the pact is with the enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter,
+and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war. We are
+very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow
+observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which God
+decrees conditionally and the devil delights in” (H. D. Taylor,
+_Mediaeval Mind_). We now can understand why in Eugene Field’s story
+“Daniel and the Devil” it seems to Satan so strange that he should be
+asked for a written guarantee that he too would fulfil his part of the
+contract. Apparently this was the first time that the devil had any
+transactions with an American business man, who has not even faith in
+Old Nick.
+
+Reference is made in this story by the devil himself to the popular
+saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted. Even the
+devout George Herbert wrote--
+
+    “We paint the devil black, yet he
+    Hath some good in him all agree.”
+
+This story recalls to us the proverb: “Talk of the devil, and he will
+either come or send.”
+
+Washington Irving, as we have seen, thinks that he is not always very
+obliging.
+
+Satan, the father of lies, is said to be the patron of lawyers. The
+men of the London bar formed a “Temple” corps, which was dubbed “The
+Devil’s Own.” The tavern of the lawyers on Fleet Street in London was
+called “The Devil.”
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality than the
+external world, had many visions, especially of the devil. The two
+seem to have been on a familiar footing. The devil, we must admit,
+filled Poe’s imagination even if we will not go so far as to agree
+with his critics that he had Satan substituted for soul. His
+contemporaries, as is well known, would say of him: “He hath a demon,
+yea, seven devils are entered into him.” His detractors actually
+regarded this unhappy poet as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades
+(cf. _North American Review_, 1856; _Edinburgh Review_, 1858; _Dublin
+University Magazine_, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the
+_New York Times_ declared Poe to have been “grub-staked by demons.”
+
+The story “Bon-Bon” offers a specimen of Poe’s grimly grotesque
+humour. It first appeared in the _Broadway Journal_ of August, 1835.
+
+The devil of this most un-American of all American authors is not the
+child of New World fancy, but part of European imagination. The
+scenery of the story is aptly laid in the land of Robert le Diable.
+
+Poe’s description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in accord with
+the universally accredited conception of his ordinary appearance. His
+brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only
+discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. The devil
+is very proud of this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and
+from that time on, it has been his greatest ambition to be a
+gentleman, in outer appearance at least; and to his credit it must be
+said that he has so well succeeded in his efforts to resemble a
+gentleman that it is now very hard to tell the two apart. The devil is
+accredited in popular imagination with long ears, a long (sometimes
+upturned) nose, a wide mouth, and teeth of a lion. It is on account of
+his fangs that Satan has been called a lion by the biblical writers.
+But although the prince of darkness can assume any form in the heavens
+above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, he has
+never appeared as a lion. This, I believe, is out of deference to
+Judah, whom his father also called a lion. Hairiness is a pretty
+general characteristic of the devil. His hairy skin he probably
+inherited from the ancient fauns and satyrs. Esau is believed to have
+been a hairy demon. “Old Harry” is a corruption of “Old Hairy.” As a
+rule, Old Nick is not pictured as bald, but has a head covered with
+locks like serpents. These snaky tresses, which already “Monk” Lewis
+wound around the devil’s head, are borrowed, according to Sir Walter
+Scott, from the shield of Minerva. His face, however, is usually
+hairless. A beard has rarely been accorded to Satan. His red beard on
+the mediaeval stage probably came from Donar, whom, as Jacob Grimm
+says, the modern notions of the devil so often have in the background.
+Long bearded devils are nowhere normal except in the representations
+of the Eastern Church of the monarch of hell as counterpart of the
+monarch of heaven. The eyeless devil is original with our writer. His
+disciple Baudelaire in his story _Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire_ presents the second of these three Tempters as an eyeless
+monster. The mediaeval devil had saucer eyes. According to a Russian
+legend, the all-seeing spirit of evil is all covered with eyes. The
+cadaverous aspect of the devil is traditional. With but one remarkable
+exception (the Egyptian Typhon), demons are always represented lean.
+“A devil,” said Caesarius of Heisterbach of the thirteenth century,
+“is usually so thin as to cast no shadow” (_Dialogus Miraculorum_,
+iii). This characteristic is a heritage of the ancient hunger-demon,
+who, himself a shadow, casts no shadow. In the course of the
+centuries, however, the devil has gained flesh. His faded suit of
+black cloth recalls the mediaeval devil who appeared “in his fethers
+all ragged and rent.”
+
+It is not altogether improbable that the ecclesiastical appearance of
+the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as the author
+believes. While Satan cannot be said to be “one of those who take to
+the ministry mostly,” he often likes to slip into priestly robes. In
+the “Temptation of Jesus” by Lucas van Leyden the devil is habited as
+a monk with a pointed cowl.
+
+In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence of
+Adalbert von Chamisso, whose _Peter Schlemihl_ (1814) sells his shadow
+to the devil. In his story _The Fisherman and His Soul_ Oscar Wilde
+considers the shadow of the body as the body of the soul.
+
+That the devils in hell eat the damned consigned there for punishment
+is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This idea probably is of
+Oriental origin. The seven Assyrian evil spirits have a predilection
+for human flesh and blood. Ghouls and vampires belong to this class of
+demons.
+
+The devil’s pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented
+by another tine, as is commonly assumed. It is the ancient sign of
+fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm by the Hindus in
+India and the Zuñi and Aztec Indians of North America and Mexico. A
+related symbol is the trident of Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was
+recently carried in a children’s May Day parade through Central Park
+in New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER’S DEVIL
+
+
+The term “Printer’s Devil” is usually accounted for by the fact that
+Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed in his printing
+shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was popularly thought to be an
+imp of Satan. This expression may have a deeper significance. It may
+owe its origin to the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing
+press, was believed to have connections with the Evil One. It will be
+remembered that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries,
+even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science, every
+invention of material benefit to man, was believed to have been
+secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors deemed the human
+mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything
+beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the
+close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place
+and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of
+the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_.) Sacred days, as is well known,
+are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil
+has also employed them in books of magic. This is but another instance
+of the mimicry by “God’s Ape” of the sanctities of the Church.
+
+In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour prevails,
+the printer’s devil is the librarian of hell. The books over which he
+has charge must be as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore. For
+nearly every book written without priestly command was associated in
+the good old days with the devil. The assertion that Satan hates
+nothing so much as writing or printer’s ink apparently is a very great
+calumny. He has often even been accused of stealing manuscripts in
+order to prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally
+rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph Görres, the
+defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil, provoked by his
+interference in Satanic affairs (he is the author of _Die christliche
+Mystik_, which is a rich source for diabolism, diabolical possession
+and exorcism), had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however,
+found some time afterwards in his bookcase, and the devil was
+completely exonerated.
+
+The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting in
+the light of the present agitation for unbound books and a eulogy of
+the old Franklin Square Library.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
+
+BY FERNÁN CABALLERO
+
+
+Fernán Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia Böhl von Faber,
+Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by birth, daughter of the
+literary historian Johann Böhl von Faber, the Johannes of Campe’s
+_Robinson_ (1779). Her father initiated her early into Spanish
+literature, which he interpreted for her in the spirit of the Romantic
+movement of those early days. The interest in mediaeval traditions,
+which she owes to this early training, increased when, later, she went
+to Catholic Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists
+in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of that
+province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval legends. In
+her stories we find perhaps the purest expression of mediaevalism in
+modern times. Fernán Caballero gradually drifted to the extreme Right
+in all questions of religion, art and life. She hated every liberal
+expression in matters of faith or art with the fanaticism of a
+Torquemada. This author not only shared the somewhat general Catholic
+view that all Protestants were eternally damned, but she naïvely
+believed that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).
+
+The story of woman’s triumph over the Devil is well characteristic of
+the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly called.
+
+The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in the work
+of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called _El Diablo cojuelo_
+(1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed both title and plot for his
+novel _Le Diable boiteux_ (1707). Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle,
+into which he had been confined by a magician, entertains his
+deliverer with the secret sights of a big city at midnight, by
+unroofing the houses of the Spanish capital and showing him the life
+that was going on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from
+the East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in local
+traditions. From that country it spread over the whole of Europe. The
+Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special prayers evil spirits
+could be reduced into obedience and confined in black bottles. The
+tradition forms a part of the Solomonic lore, and is frequently told
+in esoteric works. In the cabalistic book _Vinculum Spirituum_, which
+is of Eastern origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of
+a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle
+of black glass three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of
+their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (_alias_ Belial) the
+second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle
+into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the
+Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in the well, descended into it,
+broke the bottle, and freed the demons (cf. also _The Little Key of
+Rabbi Solomon, containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72
+Spirits with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi
+Solomon, carefully copied by “Raphael,”_ London, 1879). This legend is
+also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the Djinn in the _Arabian
+Nights_, which was also treated by the German poet Klopstock in his
+poem “Wintermärchen” (1776).
+
+The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of the
+sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells was, according
+to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and witches. The devil in
+Poe’s story “The Devil in the Belfry” (1839) was, indeed, very
+courageous in invading the belfry.
+
+The concluding part of the story is identical with the Machiavellian
+tale of Belphagor.
+
+This tale of the Devil’s mother-in-law first appeared in the volume
+_Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces_ (Seville, 1859), which was
+translated the same year into French by Germond de Lavigne under the
+title _Nouvelles andalouses_. An English translation under the title
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ appeared in 1881. This particular story was
+rendered again into English two years later and included in _Tales
+from Twelve Tongues_, translated by a British Museum Librarian
+[Richard Garnett?], London, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American _confrère’s_
+predilection for the devil. He found his models in the diabolical
+scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted to the Latin world.
+“Baudelaire,” said Théophile Gautier, his master and friend, “had a
+singular prepossession for the devil as a tempter, in whom he saw a
+dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity.” To
+Baudelaire, the trier of men’s souls, the Tempter, was as real a
+person as he was to Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal
+to do with the direction of human destinies. “C’est le Diable qui
+tient les fils qui nous remuent!” Men are mere puppets in the hands of
+the devil. “Baudelaire’s motto,” as Mr. James Huneker has well
+remarked, “might be the reverse of Browning’s lines: The Devil is in
+his heaven. All’s wrong with the world.”
+
+Baudelaire’s devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings. Each
+author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.
+
+The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to free him
+from that great modern monster, _Ennui_, which selects as its prey the
+most highly gifted natures. The boredom of life--this was, indeed, as
+this unhappy poet admits, the source of all his maladies and of all
+his miseries. He called it the “foulest of vices” and hoped to escape
+from it “by dreaming of the superlative emotional adventure, by
+indulging in infinite, indeterminate desire” (Irving Babbit). His
+preface to the _Flowers of Evil_, in which he addresses the reader,
+ends with the following statement in regard to the nature of this
+modern beast of prey: “Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
+the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents--the yelling,
+howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul menagerie
+of our vices--there is one which is the most foul, the most wicked,
+the most unclean of all. This vice, although it uses neither
+extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry, would willingly make a
+ruin of the earth, and swallow up all the world in a yawn. This is
+_Ennui!_ who, with his eye moistened by an involuntary tear, dreams of
+scaffolds while smoking his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate
+monster, hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!”
+
+In Gorky’s story “The Devil” the devil himself suffers from _ennui_.
+
+But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan’s word, and,
+therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to
+him. He had little faith in the father of lies. In his book called
+_Artificial Paradises_ (1860) Baudelaire expressed the thought that
+the devil would say to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as
+he did in the olden days to our first parents, “If you taste of the
+fruit, you will be as the gods,” and that the devil no more kept his
+word with them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the
+god, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than the
+beast.
+
+The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat goes back to
+far antiquity. Goat-formed deities and spirits of the woods existed in
+the religions of India, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. The Assyrian god
+was often associated with the goat, which was supposed to possess the
+qualities for which he was worshipped. The he-goat was also the sacred
+beast of Donar or Thor, who was brought to Scandinavia by the
+Phoenicians. (On the relation of satyrs to goats see also James G.
+Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, vol. VIII, pp. 1 _sqq._) At the revels on
+the Blocksberg Satan always appeared as a black buck.
+
+_Le bon diable_, which is a favourite phrase in France, points to his
+simplicity of mind rather than generosity of spirit. It generally
+expresses the half-contemptuous pity with which the giants, these huge
+beings with weak minds, were regarded.
+
+The idea that Satan would gamble for a human soul is of mediaeval
+origin and may have been taken by Baudelaire from Gérard de Nerval,
+who in his mystery play _Le Prince des Sots_ (1830) has the devil play
+at dice with an angel, with human souls as stakes. As a dice-player
+Satan resembles Wuotan. Mr. H. G. Wells in _The Undying Fire_ (1919)
+has Diabolus play chess with the Deity in Heaven.
+
+The devil in this story falls back into speaking Hebrew when the days
+of his ancient celestial glory are brought back to his mind. In Louis
+Ménard’s _Le Diable au café_ the devil calls Hebrew a dead language,
+and as a modern prefers to be called by the French equivalent of his
+original Hebrew name. In the Middle Ages the devil’s favourite
+language was Latin. Marlowe’s Mephistopheles also speaks this
+language. Satan is known to be a linguist. “It is the Devil by his
+several languages,” said Ben Jonson.
+
+According to popular belief the devil is a learned scholar and a
+profound thinker. He has all science, philosophy, and theology at his
+tongue’s end.
+
+The Shavian devil in contradistinction to the Baudelairian fiend does
+bitterly complain that he is so little appreciated on earth. Walter
+Scott’s devil (in “Wandering Willie’s Tale,” 1824) also complains that
+he has been “sair miscaa’d in the world.”
+
+The preacher to whom our author refers is the Jesuit Ravignan, who
+declared that the disbelief in the devil was one of the most cunning
+devices of the great enemy himself. (La plus grande force du diable,
+c’est d’être parvenu à se faire nier.) Baudelaire’s disciple J. K.
+Huysmans similarly expresses in his novel _Là-Bas_ (1891) the view
+that “the greatest power of Satan lies in the fact that he gets men to
+deny him.” (Cf. the present writer’s essay “The Satanism of Huysmans”
+in _The Open Court_ for April, 1920.) The devil mocks at this
+theological dictum in Pierre Veber’s story “L’Homme qui vendit son âme
+au Diable” (1918). In Perkins’s story “The Devil-Puzzlers” the devil
+expresses his satisfaction over his success in this regard.
+
+The story “The Generous Gambler” first appeared in the _Figaro_ of
+February, 1864, was reprinted under the title of “Le Diable” in the
+_Revue du Dix-Neuvième Siècle_ of June, 1866, and was finally included
+in _Poèmes en Prose_. This story has also been translated into English
+by Joseph T. Shipley.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+Daudet and Maupassant furnish the best proof of the assertion made in
+the Introduction to this book that even the Naturalists who, as a
+rule, disdained the phantastic plots of the Romanticists, whose
+imagination was rigorously earth-bound, felt themselves nevertheless
+attracted by devil-lore. Although most of Daudet’s subjects are chosen
+from contemporary French life, this short-story treats a devil-legend
+of the seventeenth century. This story as “The Pope’s Mule” and “The
+Elixir of the Reverend Père Gaucher” obviously has no other object but
+to poke fun at the Catholic Church. It belongs to the literary type
+known as the Satirical Supernatural.
+
+This story is characteristic of Daudet’s art, containing as it does
+all of his delicacy and daintiness of pathos, of raillery, of humour.
+It originally appeared in that delightful group of stories _Lettres de
+Mon Moulin_ (1869).
+
+The horns and tail of his Satanic majesty peep out as vividly in this
+book as the disguised devils in Ingoldsby’s _Legend of the North
+Countrie_.
+
+Although hating all men, the devil has a special hatred for the
+priests, and he delights in bringing them to fall. Satan loathes the
+priests, because, as Anatole France says, they teach that “God takes
+delight in seeing His creatures languish in penitence and abstain from
+His most precious gifts” (_Les Dieux ont soif_, p. 278).
+
+It is evident from this story that the popular belief that the devil
+avoids holy edifices is not based on facts. Here the devil not only
+enters the church, but even performs the duties of a sacristan at the
+foot of the altar. According to mediaeval tradition the devil has his
+agents even in the churches. In the administration of hell where the
+tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the
+church has been assigned to the fiend with the poetic name of
+Tutevillus. It is his duty to attend all services in order to listen
+to the gossips and to write down every word they say. After death
+these women are entertained in hell with their own speeches, which
+this diabolical church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has
+it that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a beam,
+on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail, right over two
+village gossips, who chattered so much during the Blessed Mass that he
+soon filled every corner of the parchment on both sides. Poor
+Tutevillus worked so hard that the sweat ran in great drops down his
+brow, and he was ready to sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased
+not to sin with their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left
+whereon to record their foul words. So having considered for a little
+while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized the
+other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch the
+parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength, jerking back
+his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving such a fierce jerk
+that he suddenly lost his balance and fell head over heels from the
+beam to the floor of the church. (From “The Vision of Saint Simon of
+Blewberry” in F. O. Mann’s collection of mediaeval tales.)
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+Through Asmodeus the devil became associated with humour and
+gallantry. Asmodeus sharpened his wits in his conversations with the
+wisest of kings. It will be recalled that this demon was the familiar
+spirit of Solomon, whose throne, according to Jewish legend, he
+occupied for three years. Perhaps it was not Solomon after all but
+this diabolical usurper who gathered around himself a thousand wives.
+It is said that Asmodeus is as dangerous to women as Lilith is to men.
+He loves to decoy young girls in the shape of a handsome young man.
+His love for the beautiful Sarah is too well known to need any
+comment. He is a fastidious devil, and will not have the object of his
+passion subject to the embrace of any other mortal or immortal.
+
+Reference is made by the author to Albert Réville’s epitome of Georg
+Roskoff’s _Geschichte des Teufels_ (Leipzig, 1869), a standard work on
+the history of the devil. The review by this French Protestant first
+appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for 1870, and was translated
+into English the following year. A second edition appeared six years
+later. Roskoff’s book, on the other hand, has never appeared in
+translation.
+
+It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval
+schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations:
+_An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones_. Whether
+a demon buzzing in the air devours our good intentions. This will
+correspond to our saying that hell is paved with good intentions. _An
+averia carrucae capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia._ Whether
+the carriers of a [bishop’s] carriage caught in a forbidden district
+should be punished. We can well understand how even the devil might be
+puzzled by such questions.
+
+Professor Brander Matthews aptly calls this story “diabolically
+philosophical.”
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL’S ROUND
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+The modern devil is an accomplished gentleman. He is the most
+all-round being in creation. Mynheer van Belzébuth, as he is called in
+this story, is indeed the greatest gambler that there is upon or under
+the earth. On the golf-field as at the roulette-table he is hard to
+beat. It was the devil who invented cards, and they are, therefore,
+called the Devil’s Bible, and it was also he who taught the Roman
+soldiers how to cast lots for the raiment of Christ (John xix, 24).
+Dice are also called the devil’s bones.
+
+The devil carries the souls in a sack on his back also in the legend
+of St. Medard. It is told that this saint, while promenading one day
+on the shore of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw Satan carrying a bag full of
+damned souls on his back. The heart of this saint was filled with
+compassion for the poor souls and he quickly slit the devil’s bag
+open, whereupon the souls scrambled for liberty:
+
+    “Away went the Quaker--away went the Baker,
+    Away went the Friar--that fine fat Ghost,
+      Whose marrow Old Nick Had intended to pick
+    Dressed like a Woodcock, and served on toast!
+
+    “Away went the nice little Cardinal’s Niece
+    And the pretty Grisettes, and the Dons from Spain,
+      And the Corsair’s crew, And the coin-cliping Jew,
+    And they scamper’d, like lamplighters, over the plain!”
+
+The Witches’ Sabbath is the annual reunion of Satan and his
+worshippers on earth. The witches, mounted on goats and broomsticks,
+flock to desolate heaths and hills to hold high revel with their
+devil.
+
+Beelzebub swears in this story by the horns of his grandfather. While
+the devil is known to have a grandmother, there has never been found a
+trace of his grandfather. Satan has probably been adopted by the
+grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon. The horns have
+been inherited by Satan from Dionysos. This Greek god had bull-feet
+and bull’s horns.
+
+The reader, who is interested in the origin of the European Carnival
+(Shrove Tuesday) customs, is referred to the editor’s monograph _The
+Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_ (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co.,
+1920).
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+No greater proof of the permanence and persistence of the devil as a
+character in literature can be adduced than the fact that this writer,
+in whom we find the purest expression of Naturalism, for whom the
+visible world was absolutely all that there is, was attracted by a
+devil-legend. But on this point he had a good example in his
+god-father and master Gustave Flaubert, who, though a realist of
+realists, showed deep interest in the Tempter of St. Anthony.
+
+This legend of the fraudulent bargain between a sprite and a farmer as
+to alternate upper- and under-ground crops, with which “the great
+vision of the guarded mount” is here connected, is of Northern origin,
+but has travelled South as far as Arabia. It will be found in Grimm’s
+_Fairy Tales_ (No. 189); Thiele’s _Danish Legends_ (No. 122), and T.
+Sternberg’s _The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (p. 140).
+Rabelais used it as a French legend, and in its Oriental form it
+served as a subject for a poem by the German Friedrich Rückert (“Der
+betrogene Teufel”). In all these versions the agreement is entered
+into between the devil (in the Northampshire form it is a bogie or
+some other field spirit) and a peasant. It was reserved for Maupassant
+to make St. Michael get the better of Satan on earth as in heaven.
+
+According to this legend the devil broke his leg when, in his flight
+from St. Michael, he jumped off the roof of the castle into which he
+had been lured by the saint. The traditional explanation for the
+devil’s broken leg is his fall from heaven. “I beheld Satan as
+lightning fall from heaven” (Luke x, 18). All rebellious deities, who
+were universally supposed to have fallen from heaven, have crooked or
+crippled legs. Hephaestos, Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken
+leg. This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning
+flashes. The devil’s mother in the mediaeval German mystery-plays
+walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian demon Aeshma daeva, also had
+a lame foot. In Le Sage’s book _Le Diable boiteux_ Asmodeus appears as
+a limping gentleman, who uses two sticks as crutches. According to
+rabbinical tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to meet
+King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil inherited the
+goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius and the horse-foot
+from Loki. The Ethiopic devil’s right foot is a claw, and his left a
+hoof.
+
+The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy.
+Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. “If we were
+all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil,” observed an old
+Scotch woman to her minister, “it wad be muckle better for us.”
+
+The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to St. Michael.
+The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast played a conspicuous part in
+the wars of the sons of William the Conqueror. Maupassant uses it as
+the background for several of the chapters of his novel _Notre Coeur_
+(1890). The mountain also figures in his story “Le Horla” (1886).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+The following two stories by Richard Garnett have been taken from his
+book _The Twilight of the Gods_, which was first published anonymously
+in 1888, and in a “new and augmented edition,” with the author’s name,
+in 1902. The title recalls Richard Wagner’s opera _Götterdämmerung_,
+but may have been directly suggested by Elémir Bourges, whose novel
+_Le Crépuscule des dieux_ appeared four years earlier than Garnett’s
+collection of stories. In his book Richard Garnett plays havoc with
+all religions. The demons, naturally enough, fare worse at his hands
+than the gods. _The Twilight of the Gods_ is a panorama of human folly
+and farce. Franz Cumont has said that human folly is a more
+interesting study than ancient wisdom. The author finds a great joy in
+pointing out all the mysterious cobwebs which have collected on the
+ceiling of man’s brain in the course of the ages. Mr. Arthur Symons
+rightly calls this book “a Punch and Judy show of the comedy of
+civilization.”
+
+The story of “The Demon Pope” is based upon a legend of a compact
+between a Pope and the devil. It is believed that Gerbert, who later
+became Pope Silvester II, sold his soul to Satan in order to acquire a
+knowledge of physics, arithmetic and music. The fullest account of
+this legend will be found in J. J. Dollinger’s _Fables Respecting the
+Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Engl. Translation, 1871). _The History of
+the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ by Paul Carus (1900) contains the
+following passages on this legend:
+
+     “An English Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury, says of
+     Pope Sylvester II., who was born in France, his secular name
+     being Gerbert, that he entered the cloister when still a
+     boy. Full of ambition, he flew to Spain where he studied
+     astrology and magic among the Saracens. There he stole a
+     magic-book from a Saracen philosopher, and returned flying
+     through the air to France. Now he opened a school and
+     acquired great fame, so that the king himself became one of
+     his disciples. Then he became Bishop of Rheims, where he had
+     a magnificent clock and an organ constructed. Having raised
+     the treasure of Emperor Octavian which lay hidden in a
+     subterrenean vault at Rome, he became Pope. As Pope he
+     manufactured a magic head which replied to all his
+     questions. This head told him that he would not die until he
+     had read Mass in Jerusalem. So the Pope decided never to
+     visit the Holy Land. But once he fell sick, and, asking his
+     magic head, was informed that the church’s name in which he
+     had read Mass the other day was ‘The Holy Cross of
+     Jerusalem.’ The Pope knew at once that he had to die. He
+     gathered all the cardinals around his bed, confessed his
+     crime, and, as a penance, ordered his body to be cut up
+     alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church as
+     unclean.
+
+     “Sigabert tells the story of the Pope’s death in a different
+     way. There is no penance on the part of the Pope, and the
+     Devil takes his soul to hell. Others tell us that the Devil
+     constantly accompanied the Pope in the shape of a black dog,
+     and this dog gave him the equivocal prophecy.
+
+     “The historical truth of the story is that Gerbert was
+     unusually gifted and well educated. He was familiar with the
+     wisdom of the Saracens, for Borell, Duke of Hither Spain,
+     carried him as a youth to his country where he studied
+     mathematics and astronomy. He came early in contact with the
+     most influential men of his time, and became Pope in 999. He
+     was liberal enough to denounce some of his unworthy
+     predecessors as ‘monsters of more than human iniquity,’ and
+     as ‘Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God and playing the
+     part of the Devil’ (the text inadvertently reads: and
+     playing the part of God); but at the same time he pursued an
+     independent and vigorous papal policy, foreshadowing in his
+     aims both the pretensions of Gregory the Great and the
+     Crusades.”
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating--and the most dangerous--character in the
+infernal world is this _Mater tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness. “A
+lady devil,” says Daniel Defoe, “is about as dangerous a creature as
+one could meet.” When Lucifer fails to bring a man to his fall, he
+hands the case over to his better half, and it is said that no man has
+ever escaped the siren seductions of this Diabo-Lady. A poem, _The
+Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, appeared in London in 1777.
+
+According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna is the mother
+or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or grandmother of Grendel, the
+Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became Satan’s mother or grandmother by
+adoption. A mother was a necessary part of the devil’s equipment.
+Having set his mind to equal Christ in every detail of his life, Satan
+had to get a mother somehow. In his story “The Vision Malefic” (1920)
+Mr. Huneker tells of the appearance of this counterfeit Madonna on a
+Christmas Eve to the organist of a Roman Catholic church in New York.
+Partly out of devotion to her and partly also because he could not
+obtain the sacramental blessing of the Church, Satan was forced to
+remain single. In the story “Devil-Puzzlers” by Fred B. Perkins the
+demon Apollyon appears as an old bachelor. “I have a mother, but no
+wife,” he tells the charming Mrs. Hicok. The synagogue was more
+lenient towards the devil. The rabbis did not hesitate to perform the
+marriage ceremony for the diabolical pair. According to Jewish
+tradition the chief of the fallen angels married Lilith, Adam’s first
+wife. She is said to have been in her younger days a woman of great
+beauty, but with a heart of ice. Now, of course, she is a regular
+hell-hag. If we can trust Rossetti, who painted her Majesty’s
+portrait, she still is a type of beauty whose fascination is fatal.
+This woman was created by the Lord to be the help-meet of Adam, but
+mere man had no attraction for this superwoman. She is said to have
+started the fight for woman’s emancipation from man, and contested
+Adam’s right to be the head of the family. Their married life was very
+brief. Their incompatibility of character was too great. One fine
+morning Adam found that his erstwhile angelical wife had deserted him
+and run away with Lucifer, whom she had formerly known in heaven.
+
+The King-Devil apparently always succeeded somehow or other in
+breaking the chains with which, according to legend, he had repeatedly
+been bound and sealed in the lowest depths of hell. From antediluvian
+times the demons appear to have been attracted by the daughters of men
+and to have come frequently up to earth to pay court to them. The only
+devil who must always remain in hell is the stoker, Brendli by name.
+The fires of hell must not be allowed to go out.
+
+The anatomically melancholic Burton also tells of a devil who was in
+love with a mortal maiden. Jacques Cazotte tells the story of
+Beelzebub as a woman in love with an earth-born man.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+This writer has a great sympathy for devil-lore, and many of his
+characters show the cloven hoof. An analyst of illusions, he has a
+profound interest in the greatest of illusions. An assailant of every
+form of superstition, he has a tender affection for the greatest of
+superstitions. An exponent of the radical and ironical spirit in
+French literature, he feels irresistibly drawn to the eternal Denier
+and Mocker.
+
+The story of the Florentine painter Spinello Spinelli, to whom Lucifer
+appeared in a dream to ask him in what place he had beheld him under
+so brutish a form as he had painted him, is told in Giorgio Vasari’s
+_Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (1550),
+which is the basis of the history of Italian art. It was treated by
+Barrili in his novel _The Devil’s Portrait_ (1882; Engl. tr. 1885),
+from whom Anatole France may have got the idea for his story. But
+there is also a mediaeval French legend about a monk (_Du moine qui
+contrefyt l’ymage du Diable, qui s’en corouça_), who was forced by the
+indignant devil to paint him in a less ugly manner.
+
+The devil is very sensitive in regard to his appearance. On a number
+of occasions he expressed his bitter resentment at the efforts of a
+certain class of artists to represent him in a hideous form (cf. M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_). Daniel Defoe has well remarked
+that the devil does not think that the people would be terrified half
+so much if they were to converse face to face with him. “Really,” this
+biographer of Satan goes on to say, “it were enough to fright the
+devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several
+figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men.” It
+makes us, indeed, wonder why the devil was always represented in a
+hideous and horrid form. Rationally conceived, the devil should by
+right be the most fascinating object in creation. One of his essential
+functions, temptation, is destroyed by his hideousness. To do the work
+of temptation a demon might be expected to approach his intended
+victim in the most fascinating form he could command. This fact is an
+additional proof that the devil was for the early Christians but the
+discarded pagan god, whom they wished to represent as ugly and as
+repulsive as they could.
+
+The earliest known representation of the devil in human form is found
+on an ivory diptych of the time of Charles the Bald (9th century).
+Many artists have since then painted his Majesty’s portrait.
+Schongauer, Dürer, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, Van
+Dyck, Breughel and other masters on canvas vied with each other to
+present us with a real likeness of Satan. None has, however, equalled
+the power of Gustave Doré in the portrayal of the Diabolical. This
+Frenchman was at his best as an artist of the infernal (Dante’s “Great
+Dis” and Milton’s “Satan at the gates of Hell”).
+
+Modern artists frequently represent the devil as a woman. Félicien
+Rops, Max Klinger, and Franz Stuck may be cited as illustrations.
+Apparently the devil has in modern times changed sex as well as custom
+and costume. Victor Hugo has said:
+
+    “Dieu s’est fait homme; soit.
+        Le diable s’est fait femme.”
+
+“Lucifer,” as well as the other stories which form the volume _The
+Well of St. Claire_, is told by the abbé Jérôme Coignard on the edge
+of Santa Clara’s well at Siena. The book was first published serially
+in the _Echo de Paris_ (1895). It has just been rendered into Spanish
+(_El Pozo de Santa Clara_).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage’s _Le Diable boiteux_. It
+will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs of the houses of
+Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.
+
+The fate of a Russian author was, indeed, a very sad affair. “In all
+lands have the writers drunk of life’s cup of bitterness, have they
+been bruised by life’s sharp corners and torn by life’s pointed
+thorns. Chill penury, public neglect, and ill health have been the lot
+of many an author in countries other than Russia. But in the land of
+the Czars men of letters had to face problems and perils which were
+peculiarly their own, and which have not been duplicated in any other
+country on the globe.... Every man of letters was under suspicion. The
+government of Russia treated every author as its natural enemy, and
+made him feel frequently the weight of its heavy hand. The wreath of
+laurels on the brow of almost every poet was turned by the tyrants of
+his country into a crown of thorns.” (From the present writer’s essay
+“The Gloom and Glory of Russian Literature” in _The Open Court_ for
+July, 1918.)
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+_POSTCRIPT_
+
+
+For the benefit of the gentle reader, who is about to shed a tear or
+two over the demise of the devil, the following episode from Anatole
+France’s _My Friend’s Book_ is retold here:
+
+Pierre Nozière (Anatole France) takes his baby-girl to a Punch and
+Judy show, the culmination point of which always consists of the duel
+to the death between Punch and the Devil. The terrible battle ends, of
+course, with the death of the Devil. The spectators applaud the heroic
+act of Punch, but Pierre Nozière is not happy over the result of the
+fight. He thinks that it is rather a pity that the Devil has been
+slain. Paying no heed to Suzanne sitting by his side, he goes on
+musing:
+
+     “The Devil being dead, good-bye to sin! Perhaps Beauty, the
+     Devil’s ally, would have to go, too. Perhaps we should never
+     more behold the flowers that enchant us, and the eyes for
+     love of which we would lay down our lives. What, if that is
+     so, what in the world would become of us? Should we still be
+     able to practise virtue? I doubt it. Punch did not
+     sufficiently bear in mind that Evil is the necessary
+     counterpart of Good, as darkness is of light, that virtue
+     wholly consists of effort, and that if there is no more any
+     Devil to fight against, the Saints will remain as much out
+     of work as the Sinners. Life will be mortally dull. I tell
+     you that when he killed the Devil, Punch committed an act of
+     grave imprudence.
+
+     “Well, Pulchinello came on and made his bow, the curtain
+     fell, and all the little boys and girls went home; but still
+     I sat on deep in meditation. Mam’zelle Suzanne, perceiving
+     my thoughtful mien, concluded that I was in trouble.... Very
+     gently and tenderly she takes hold of my hand and asks me
+     why I am unhappy. I confess that I am sorry that Punch has
+     slain the Devil. Then she puts her little arms round my
+     neck, and putting her lips to my ears, she whispers:
+
+     “‘I tell you somefin: Punch, he killed the nigger, but he
+     has not killed him for good.’”
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+[List of authors and titles contained in the Notes. Names are
+alphabeted after omission of _de_ or _von_, and titles are entered
+without their initial article. Each title is followed by the author’s
+name in parentheses.]
+
+_Ambrosio, or the Monk_ (Lewis), 296
+
+_Anathema_ (Andréev), 286
+
+_Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Burton), 318
+
+Andréev, Leonid, 286
+
+_Artificial Paradises_ (Baudelaire), 304
+
+_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren_ (Richter), 286
+
+_Autobiography of Satan_ (Beard), 286
+
+
+Barham, Richard Harris (307)
+
+Barrili, Anton Giulio, 319
+
+Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 279, 296, 303-06
+
+Beard, J. R., 286
+
+_Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil_ (Machiavelli), 281-83, 301
+
+_Belphagor_ (an English play), 281
+
+_Betrogener Teufel_ (Rückert), 313
+
+_Bon-Bon_ (Poe), 295-97
+
+Bourges, Elémir, 315
+
+Brevio, Giovanni, 282
+
+Browning, Robert, 280, 303
+
+Burton, Richard, 318
+
+
+Caballero, Fernán, 300-02
+
+Caesarius of Heisterbach, 296-97
+
+Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 300
+
+Carus, Paul, 315
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 318
+
+Chamisso, Adalbert, 297
+
+Chappuys, Gabriel, 281
+
+Chateaubriand, François Auguste René, 283
+
+Chatterton, Thomas, 283
+
+_Christliche Mystik_ (Görres), 299
+
+Conway, Moncure Daniel, 298, 318
+
+_Crépuscule des Dieux_ (Bourges), 315
+
+Cumont, Franz, 315
+
+
+Daborne, Robert, 281
+
+_Daniel and the Devil_ (Field), 294
+
+_Danish Legends_ (Thiele), 313
+
+Dante Alighieri, 320
+
+Daudet, Alphonse, 307-08
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 317, 319
+
+_Demon Pope_ (Garnett), 315-16
+
+_Demonology and Devil-Lore_ (Conway), 298, 319
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft_ (W. Scott), 285, 296
+
+Deulin, Charles, 311-12
+
+_Devil_ (Gorky), 304, 321
+
+_Devil; his Origin, Greatness and Decadence_ (Réville), 309
+
+_Devil and his Dame_ (Houghton), 281
+
+_Devil and the Old Man_ (Masefield), 322-23
+
+_Devil and Tom Walker_ (Irving), 284-85
+
+_Devil in a Nunnery_ (Mann), 279-80
+
+_Devil in Germany_ (Freytag), 293
+
+_Devil in the Belfry_ (Poe), 301
+
+_Devil is an Ass_ (Jonson), 281
+
+_Devil-Puzzlers_ (Perkins), 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Devil’s Fiddle_, 279
+
+_Devil’s Mother-in-Law_ (Caballero), 300-02
+
+_Devil’s Portrait_ (Barrili), 319
+
+_Devil’s Round_ (Deulin), 311-12
+
+_Devil’s Violin_ (Webster), 279
+
+_Devil’s Wager_ (Thackeray), 290-91
+
+_Diable_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Diable au café_ (Ménard), 305
+
+_Diable boiteux_ (Le Sage), 300, 314, 321
+
+_Diablo cojuelo_ (Guevara), 300
+
+_Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, 317
+
+_Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (Sternberg), 313
+
+_Dialogus Miraculorum_ (Caesarius), 297
+
+_Dieux ont soif_ (France), 307
+
+Dollinger, J. J., 315
+
+_Du moine qui countrefyt l’ymage du Diable_, 319
+
+Dunlop, J. C., 282
+
+
+_Elixir of the Reverend Père Gaucher_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_En Route_ (Huysmans), 280
+
+_Evangelium Nicodemi_, 283
+
+_Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ (Gógol), 289
+
+
+_Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Dollinger), 315
+
+_Fairy Tales_ (Grimm), 313
+
+_Faust_ (Goethe), 280
+
+_Faust_ (Lenau), 279
+
+_Faustus_ (Marlowe), 305
+
+Field, Eugene, 294
+
+_Fisherman and his Soul_ (Wilde), 297
+
+Flaubert, Gustave, 313
+
+_Flowers of Evil_ (Baudelaire), 303
+
+France, Anatole, 307, 319-20, 322-23
+
+Frazer, James George, 289, 301, 304
+
+Freytag, Gustav, 293
+
+_From the Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+Fulwell, Ulpian, 281
+
+
+Goethe, Wolfgang, 280, 284
+
+Gógol, Nikolái Vasilévich, 289
+
+_Golden Bough_ (Frazer), 289, 304
+
+Gorky, Maxím, 304, 321
+
+Görres, Joseph, 299
+
+_Götterdämmerung_ (Wagner), 315
+
+_Grim, the Collier of Croydon_ (Fulwell), 281
+
+Grimm, Jacob, 296, 313
+
+Guevara, Luis Velez, 300
+
+
+Hauff, Wilhelm, 286-88
+
+Heine, Heinrich, 290
+
+Henslowe, Philip, 281
+
+Herbert, George, 294
+
+Hill, Rowland, 279
+
+_History of Fiction_ (Dunlop), 282
+
+_History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ (Carus), 315-16
+
+_History of the French Novel_ (Saintsbury), 290-91, 292
+
+Hoffmann, E. Th. A., 286
+
+_Homme qui vendit son âme au Diable_ (Veber), 306
+
+Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 291
+
+_Horla_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+Houghton, P. M., 281
+
+Hugo, Victor, 320
+
+Huneker, James, 279, 303, 317
+
+Huysmans, Joris Karl, 280, 306
+
+
+_Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels_ (Barham), 307
+
+Irving, Washington, 284-85, 294
+
+_Italian Novelists_ (Roscoe), 282
+
+
+Jarintzow, Mme., 289
+
+Jonson, Ben, 281, 305
+
+
+Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 301
+
+
+_Là-Bas_ (Huysmans), 306
+
+La Fontaine, Jean, 281
+
+Lavigne, Germond, 302
+
+_Legend of Mont St.-Michel_ (Maupassant), 313-14
+
+Lenau, Nikolaus, 279
+
+Le Sage, Alain, 300, 314, 321
+
+Lewis, (“Monk”) Matthew, 296
+
+_Lettres de mon Moulin_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Little Key of Rabbi Solomon_, 301
+
+_Lucifer_ (France), 319-20
+
+
+_Machiavel and the Devil_ (Daborne and Henslowe), 281
+
+Machiavelli, Niccolò, 281-83, 301
+
+_Madam Lucifer_ (Garnett), 317-18
+
+_Man and Superman_ (Shaw), 305
+
+Mann, Francis Oscar, 279-80, 308
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 305
+
+Masefield, John, 322-23
+
+Maupassant, Guy, 307, 313-14
+
+_Mediaeval Mind_ (Taylor), 293
+
+_Mémoires du Diable_ (Soulié), 286, 292
+
+_Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+Ménard, Louis, 305
+
+Milton, John, 283, 320
+
+_My Friend’s Book_ (France), 322-23
+
+
+Nerval [Labrunie], Gérard, 279, 305
+
+_Notre Coeur_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+_Nouvelles andalouses_ (Caballero), 301
+
+
+_Origin of German Carnival Comedy_ (Rudwin), 283, 312
+
+
+_Painter’s Bargain_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Paris Sketch Book_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Parlement of Devils_, 283
+
+_Parlement of Foules_, 283
+
+Parliament of Sprites (Chatterton), 283
+
+Peabody, Josephine Preston, 280
+
+Perkins, Frederick Beecher, 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Peter Schlemihl_ (Chamisso), 297
+
+_Pied Piper of Hamelin_ (Browning), 280
+
+_Piper_ (Peabody), 280
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 292, 295-97, 301, 303
+
+_Poèmes en Prose_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Pope’s Mule_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Pozo de Santa Clara_ (France), 320
+
+_Prince des Sots_ (Nerval), 305
+
+_Printer’s Devil_, 289-99
+
+
+Rabelais, François, 313
+
+Réville, Albert, 309
+
+Riche, Barnabe, 281
+
+Richter, Jean Paul, 286
+
+_Robinson der Jüngers_ (Campe), 300
+
+Roscoe, Thomas, 282
+
+Roskoff, Georg, 309
+
+Rückert, Friedrich, 313
+
+Rudwin, Maximilian J., 283, 306, 312, 321
+
+_Russian Poets and Poems_ (Jarintzow), 289
+
+
+Sachs, Hans, 281
+
+_St. John’s Eve_ (Gógol), 289
+
+Saintsbury, George, 290, 292
+
+Sansovino, Francesco, 281
+
+_Satan’s Diary_ (Andréev), 286
+
+_Satanism of Huysmans_ (Rudwin), 306
+
+_Satires_ (Horace), 291
+
+Schmidt, Julian, 300
+
+Scott, Walter, 285, 296, 305
+
+_Selections from the Devil’s Papers_ (Richter), 286
+
+Shakespeare, William, 295
+
+Shaw, George Bernard, 305
+
+Shipley, Joseph T., 306
+
+_Sonata del Diavolo_ (Tartini), 279
+
+_Sonate du Diable_ (Nerval), 279
+
+Soulié, Frédéric, 286, 292
+
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ (Caballero), 302
+
+Staël, Madame, 284
+
+Sternberg, T., 313
+
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, 284
+
+Straparola, Giovan-Francesco, 281
+
+_Supreme Sin_ (Huneker), 279
+
+Symons, Arthur, 315
+
+
+_Tales from Twelve Tongues_ (Garnett?), 302
+
+Tartini, Giuseppe, 279
+
+Tasso, Torquato, 283
+
+Taylor, H. D., 293
+
+_Temptation of St. Anthony_ (Flaubert), 313
+
+_Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire_ (Baudelaire), 279, 296
+
+_Teufel in Berlin_ (Hoffmann), 286
+
+_Teufel mit der Geige_ (Gengenbach), 279
+
+_Teutonic Mythology_ (Grimm), 296
+
+Thackeray, William Makepeace, 290-94
+
+Thiele, Just Mathias, 313
+
+_Thrawn Janet_ (Stevenson), 284
+
+_Three Low Masses_ (Daudet), 307-08
+
+_Twilight of the Gods_ (Garnett), 315
+
+
+_Undying Fire_ (Wells), 305
+
+
+Vasari, Giorgio, 310
+
+Veber, Pierre, 306
+
+_Vinculum Spirituum_, 301
+
+_Violon du Diable_, 279
+
+_Vision Malefic_ (Huneker), 317
+
+_Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry_ (Mann), 308
+
+_Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (Vasari), 319
+
+
+Wagner, Richard, 315
+
+_Wandering Willie’s Tale_ (Scott), 305
+
+Webster, Benjamin, 279
+
+_Well of St. Claire_ (France), 320
+
+Wells, H. G., 305
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 297
+
+_Wintermärchen_ (Klopstock), 301
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Devil Stories
+       An Anthology
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Maximilian J. Rudwin
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVIL STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL STORIES
+
+AN ANTHOLOGY
+
+SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL COMMENTS
+
+BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+    _"Mortal, mock not at the Devil,
+      Life is short and soon will fail,
+    And the 'fire everlasting'
+      Is no idle fairy-tale."_
+                               --HEINE.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+ALFRED � A � KNOPF
+
+MCMXXI
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL LORE
+
+ANTHOLOGIES OF DIABOLICAL LITERATURE EDITED BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+I. DEVIL STORIES [First Series]
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+  DEVIL PLAYS
+  DEVIL ESSAYS
+  DEVIL LEGENDS
+  THE BOOK OF LADY LILITH
+  ANTHOLOGY OF SATANIC VERSE
+  BIBLIOGRAPHIA DIABOLICA
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN_
+
+
+The Prophet and Disputation
+Scenes in the Religious Drama
+of the German Middle Ages.
+
+The Devil Scenes in the Religious
+Drama of the German Middle
+Ages.
+
+The Devil in the German Religious
+Plays of the Middle
+Ages and the Reformation.
+[Hesperia: Johns Hopkins
+Studies in Modern Philology,
+No. 6.]
+
+The Origin of the German Carnival
+Comedy.
+
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+The Devil in Modern French
+Literature.
+
+
+
+
+TO ALL STUDENTS OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN LITERATURE
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The preparation of this book would have been out of the question
+without the co-operation of authors and publishers. Proper
+acknowledgment has been given on the first page of each selection to
+the publishers who have granted us permission to reprint it. We take
+this opportunity to express once more our deep appreciation of the
+courtesies extended to us by all the parties concerned in the material
+between the covers of this book. Special thanks are offered to Mr.
+John Masefield for his permission to republish his story, and to
+Messrs. Arthur Symons and Leo Wiener and to Miss Isabel F. Hapgood for
+their permission to use their translations of the foreign stories
+which we have selected. To Professor Henry Alfred Todd and Dr. Dorothy
+Scarborough, of Columbia University, who have kindly read portions of
+the manuscript, the editor is indebted for a number of helpful
+suggestions. He adds his thanks to Professor Raymond Weeks, also of
+Columbia University, who called his attention to the Daudet story, and
+to his former colleague, Professor Otto A. Greiner, of Purdue
+University, who was good enough to read part of the proofs.
+
+                                             THE PUBLISHER.
+                                                THE EDITOR.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY 1
+  _A Mediaeval Tale By Francis Oscar Mann_
+
+BELPHAGOR, OR THE MARRIAGE OF THE DEVIL (1549) 14
+  _From the Italian of Niccol� Machiavelli_
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER (1824) 28
+  _By Washington Irving_
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN (1828) 46
+  _From the German of Wilhelm Hauff_
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE (1830) 56
+  _From the Russian of Nikol�i Vasil�vich G�gol_
+  _Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood_
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER (1833) 79
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN (1834) 93
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+BON-BON (1835) 112
+  _By Edgar Allan Poe_
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL (1836) 136
+  _Anonymous_
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW (1859) 149
+  _From the Spanish by Fern�n Caballero_
+  _Translated by J. H. Ingram_
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER (1864) 162
+  _From the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire_
+  _Translated by Arthur Symons_
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES (1869) 167
+  _A Christmas Story From the French of Alphonse Daudet_
+  _Translated by Robert Routeledge_
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS (1871) 179
+  _By Frederick Beecher Perkins_
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND (1874) 203
+  _A Tale of Flemish Golf From the French of Charles Deulin_
+  _Translated by Isabel Bruce_
+  _With an introductory note by Andrew Lang_
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL (1888) 222
+  _From the French of Guy de Maupassant_
+
+THE DEMON POPE (1888) 228
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+MADAM LUCIFER (1888) 242
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+LUCIFER (1895) 250
+  _From the French of Anatole France_
+  _Translated by Alfred Allinson_
+
+THE DEVIL (1899) 257
+  _From the Russian of Max�m Gorky_
+  _Translated by Leo Wiener_
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN (1905) 268
+  _By John Masefield_
+
+NOTES 279
+
+INDEX 325
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Of all the myths which have come down to us from the East, and of all
+the creations of Western fancy and belief, the Personality of Evil has
+had the strongest attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the
+greatest enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence. So
+large a place has Satan taken in our imagination, and we might also
+say in our heart, that his expulsion therefrom, no matter what
+philosophy may teach us, must for ever remain an impossibility. As a
+character in imaginative literature Lucifer has not his equal in
+heaven above or on the earth beneath. In contrast to the idea of Good,
+which is the more exalted in proportion to its freedom from
+anthropomorphism, the idea of Evil owes to the presence of this
+element its chief value as a poetic theme. The discrowned archangel
+may have been inferior to St. Michael in military tactics, but he
+certainly is his superior in matters literary. The fair angels--all
+frankness and goodness--are beyond our comprehension, but the fallen
+angels, with all their faults and sufferings, are kin to us.
+
+There is a legend that the Devil has always had literary aspirations.
+The German theosophist Jacob B�hme relates that when Satan was asked
+to explain the cause of God's enmity to him and his consequent
+downfall, he replied: "I wanted to be an author." Whether or not the
+Devil has ever written anything over his own signature, he has
+certainly helped others compose their greatest works. It is a
+significant fact that the greatest imaginations have discerned an
+attraction in Diabolus. What would the world's literature be if from
+it we eliminated Dante's _Divine Comedy_, Calder�n's _Marvellous
+Magician_, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Goethe's _Faust_, Byron's _Cain_,
+Vigny's _Eloa_, and Lermontov's _Demon_? Sorry indeed would have been
+the plight of literature without a judicious admixture of the
+Diabolical. Without the Devil there would simply be no literature,
+because without his intervention there would be no plot, and without a
+plot the story of the world would lose its interest. Even now, when
+the belief in the Devil has gone out of fashion, and when the very
+mention of his name, far from causing men to cross themselves, brings
+a smile to their faces, Satan has continued to be a puissant personage
+in the realm of letters. As a matter of fact, Beelzebub has perhaps
+received his greatest elaboration at the hands of writers who believed
+in him just as little as Shakespeare did in the ghost of Hamlet's
+father.
+
+Commenting on Anatole France's _The Revolt of the Angels_, an American
+critic has recently written: "It is difficult to rehabilitate
+Beelzebub, not because people are of one mind concerning Beelzebub,
+but because they are of no mind at all." How this demon must have
+laughed when he read these lines! Why, he needs no rehabilitation. The
+Devil has never been absent from the world of letters, just as he has
+never been missing from the world of men. Since the days of Job, Satan
+has taken a deep interest in the affairs of the human race; and while
+most writers content themselves with recording his activities on this
+planet, there never have been lacking men of sufficient courage to
+call upon the prince of darkness in his proper dominions in order to
+bring back to us, for our instruction and edification, a report of his
+work there. The most distinguished poet his infernal Highness has ever
+entertained at his court, it will be recalled, was Dante. The mark
+which the scorching fires of hell left on Dante's face, was to his
+contemporaries sufficient proof of the truth of his story.
+
+The subject-matter of literature may always have been in a state of
+flux, but the Devil has been present in all the stages of literary
+evolution. All schools of literature in all ages and in all languages
+set themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, to represent and
+interpret the Devil, and each school has treated him in its own
+characteristic manner.
+
+The Devil is an old character in literature. Perhaps he is as old as
+literature itself. He is encountered in the story of the paradisiacal
+sojourn of our first ancestors, and from that day on, Satan has
+appeared unfailingly, in various forms and with various functions, in
+all the literatures of the world. His person and his power continued
+to develop and to multiply with the advance of the centuries, so that
+in the Middle Ages the world fairly pullulated with demons. From his
+minor place in the biblical books, the Devil grew to a position of
+paramount importance in mediaeval literature. The Reformation, which
+was a movement of progress in so many respects, left his position
+intact. Indeed, it rather increased his power by withdrawing from the
+saints the right of intercession in behalf of the sinners. Neither the
+Renaissance of ancient learning nor the institution of modern science
+could prevail against Satan. As a matter of fact, the growth of the
+interest in the Devil has been on a level with the development of the
+spirit of philosophical inquiry. French classicism, to be sure,
+occasioned a setback for our hero. As a member of the Christian
+hierarchy of supernatural personages, the Devil could not help but be
+affected by the ban under which Boileau placed Christian
+supernaturalism. But even the eighteenth century, a period so inimical
+to the Supernatural, produced two master-devils in fiction: Le Sage's
+Asmodeus and Cazotte's Beelzebub--worthy members of the august company
+of literary Devils.
+
+But as if to make amends for its long lack of appreciation of the
+Devil's literary possibilities, France, in the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, brought about a distinct reaction in his favour.
+The sympathy extended by that country of revolutionary progress to all
+victims and to all rebels, whether individuals or classes or nations,
+could not well be denied to the celestial outlaw. The fighters for
+political, social, intellectual, and emotional liberty on earth, could
+not withhold their admiration from the angel who demanded freedom of
+thought and independence of action in heaven. The rebel of the
+Empyrean was hailed as the first martyr in the cause of liberty, and
+his rehabilitation in heaven was demanded by the rebels on earth.
+Satan became the symbol of the restless, hapless nineteenth century.
+Through his mouth that age uttered its protest against the monarchs
+of heaven and earth. The Romantic generation of 1830 thought the world
+more than ever out of joint, and who was better fitted than the Devil
+to express their dissatisfaction with the celestial government of
+terrestrial affairs? Satan is the eternal Malcontent. To Hamlet,
+Denmark seemed gloomy; to Satan, the whole world appears dark. The
+admiration of the Romanticists for Satan was mixed with pity and
+sympathy--so much his melancholy endeared him to their sympathies, so
+kindred it seemed to their human weakness. The Romanticists felt a
+deep admiration for solitary grandeur. This "knight of the doleful
+countenance," laden with a curse and drawing misfortune in his train,
+was the ideal Romantic hero. Was he not indeed the original _beau
+t�n�breux_? Thus Satan became the typical figure of that period and
+its poetry. It has been well remarked that if Satan had not existed,
+the Romanticists would have invented him. The Devil's influence on the
+Romantic School was so strong and so sustained that soon it was named
+after him. The terms Romantic and Satanic came to be wellnigh
+synonymous. The interest which the French Romanticists showed in the
+Devil, moreover, passed beyond the boundaries of France and the limits
+of the nineteenth century. The Symbolists, for whom the mysteries of
+Erebus had a potent attraction, were simply obsessed by Satan. But
+even the Naturalists, who certainly were not haunted by phantoms,
+often succumbed to his charms. Foreign writers turning for inspiration
+to France, where the literature of the last century reached its
+highest perfection, were also caught in the French enthusiasm for the
+Devil.
+
+Needless to say that this Devil is not the evil spirit of mediaeval
+dogma. The Romantic Devil is an altogether new species of the _genus
+diaboli_. There are fashions in Devils as in dresses, and what is a
+Devil in one country or one century may not pass muster in another. It
+is related that after the glory of Greece had departed, a mariner,
+voyaging along her coast by night, heard from the woods the cry:
+"Great Pan is dead!" But Pan was not dead; he had fallen asleep to
+awake again as Satan. In like manner, when the eighteenth century
+believed Satan to be dead, he was, as a matter of fact, only
+recuperating his energies for a fresh start in a new form. His new
+avatar was Prometheus. Satan continued to be the enemy of God, but he
+was no longer the enemy of man. Instead of a demon of darkness he
+became a god of grace. This champion of celestial combat was not
+actuated by hatred and envy of man, as Christianity was thought to
+teach us, but by love and pity for humankind. The strongest expression
+of this idea of the Devil in modern literature has been given by
+August Strindberg, whose Lucifer is a compound of Prometheus, Apollo
+and Christ. However, this interpretation of the Devil, whatever value
+it may have from the point of view of originality, is aesthetically as
+well as theologically not acceptable. Such a revaluation of an old
+value offends our intellect while it touches our heart. All successful
+treatment of the Devil in literature and art must be made to
+correspond with the norm of popular belief. In art we are all
+orthodox, whatever our views may be in religion. This new conception
+of Satan will be found chiefly in poetry, while the popular concept
+has been continued in prose. But even here a gradual evolution of the
+idea of the Devil will be observed. The nineteenth century Demon is an
+improvement on his _confr�re_ of the thirteenth. He differs from his
+older brother as a cultivated flower from a wild blossom. The Devil as
+a human projection is bound to partake in the progress of human
+thought. Says Mephistopheles:
+
+    "Culture, which the whole world licks,
+    Also unto the Devil sticks."
+
+The Devil advances with the progress of civilization, because he is
+what men make him. He has benefited by the modern levelling tendency
+in characterization. Nowadays supernatural personages, like their
+human creators, are no longer painted either as wholly white or as
+wholly black, but in various shades of grey. The Devil, as Renan has
+aptly remarked, has chiefly benefited by this relativist point of
+view. The Spirit of Evil is better than he was, because evil is no
+longer so bad as it was. Satan, even in the popular mind, is no longer
+a villain of the deepest dye. At his worst he is the general
+mischief-maker of the universe, who loves to stir up the earth with
+his pitch-fork. In modern literature the Devil's chief function is
+that of a satirist. This fine critic directs the shafts of his sarcasm
+against all the faults and foibles of men. He spares no human
+institution. In religion, art, society, marriage--everywhere his
+searching eye can detect the weak spots. The latest demonstration of
+the Devil's ability as a satirist of men and morals is furnished by
+Mark Twain in his posthumous romance _The Mysterious Stranger_.
+
+The Devil Lore Series, which opens with this book of Devil Stories, is
+to serve as documentary evidence of man's abiding interest in the
+Devil. It will be a sort of portrait-gallery of the literary
+delineations of Satan. The Anthologies of Diabolical Literature may be
+considered, I trust, without any risk of offence to any theological or
+philosophical prepossession. To those alike who accept and who reject
+the belief in the Devil's spiritual entity apart from man's, there
+must be profit and pleasure in the contemplation of his literary
+incarnations. As regards the Devil's fitness as a literary character,
+all intelligent men and women, believers and unbelievers, may be
+assumed to have but one opinion.
+
+This Series is wholly devoted to the Christian Devil with the total
+disregard of his cousins in the other faiths. There will, however, be
+found a strong Jewish element in Christian demonology. It must be
+borne in mind that our literature has become saturated through
+Christian channels with the traditions of the parent creed.
+
+This collection has been limited to twenty tales. Within the bounds
+thus set, an effort has been made to have this book as representative
+of national and individual conceptions of the Devil as possible. The
+tales have been taken from many times and tongues. Selection has been
+made not only among writers, but also among the stories of each
+writer. In two instances, however, where the choice was not so easy,
+an author is represented by two specimens from his pen.
+
+The stories have been arranged in chronological order to show the
+constant and continuous appeal on the part of the Devil to our
+story-writers. The mediaeval tale, although published last, was
+placed first. For obvious reasons, this story has not been given in
+its original form, but in its modernized version. While this is not
+meant to be a nursery-book, it has been made _virginibus puerisque_,
+and for this reason, selections from Boccaccio, Rabelais and Balzac
+could not find their way into these pages. Moreover, as this volume
+was limited to narratives in prose, devil's tales in verse by Chaucer,
+Hans Sachs and La Fontaine could not be considered, either.
+Nevertheless this collection is sufficiently comprehensive to please
+all tastes in Devils. The reader will find between the covers of this
+book Devils fascinating and fearful, Devils powerful and picturesque,
+Devils serious and humorous, Devils pathetic and comic, Devils
+phantastic and satiric, Devils gruesome and grotesque. I have tried,
+though, to keep them all in good humour throughout the book, and can
+accordingly assure the reader that he need fear no harm from an
+intimate acquaintance with the diabolical company to which he is
+herewith introduced.
+
+                                       MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY[1]
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+    [1] Taken by permission from _The Devil in a Nunnery and
+    other Mediaeval Tales_, by Francis Oscar Mann, published by
+    P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1914.
+
+Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see on a seven days'
+journey. Neither was it any less pleasant in the days of our Lord King
+Edward, the third of that name, he who fought and put the French to
+shameful discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another
+hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he now sleeps in the
+great Church at Westminster.
+
+Buckinghamshire is full of smooth round hills and woodlands of
+hawthorn and beech, and it is a famous country for its brooks and
+shaded waterways running through the low hay meadows. Upon its hills
+feed a thousand sheep, scattered like the remnants of the spring snow,
+and it was from these that the merchants made themselves fat purses,
+sending the wool into Flanders in exchange for silver crowns. There
+were many strong castles there too, and rich abbeys, and the King's
+Highway ran through it from North to South, upon which the pilgrims
+went in crowds to worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.
+Thereon also rode noble knights and stout men-at-arms, and these you
+could follow with the eye by their glistening armour, as they wound
+over hill and dale, mile after mile, with shining spears and shields
+and fluttering pennons, and anon a trumpet or two sounding the same
+keen note as that which rang out dreadfully on those bloody fields of
+France. The girls used to come to the cottage doors or run to hide
+themselves in the wayside woods to see them go trampling by; for
+Buckinghamshire girls love a soldier above all men. Nor, I warrant
+you, were jolly friars lacking in the highways and the by-ways and
+under the hedges, good men of religion, comfortable of penance and
+easy of life, who could tip a wink to a housewife, and drink and crack
+a joke with the good man, going on their several ways with tight
+paunches, skins full of ale and a merry salutation for every one. A
+fat pleasant land was this Buckinghamshire; always plenty to eat and
+drink therein, and pretty girls and lusty fellows; and God knows what
+more a man can expect in a world where all is vanity, as the Preacher
+truly says.
+
+There was a nunnery at Maids Moreton, two miles out from Buckingham
+Borough, on the road to Stony Stratford, and the place was called
+Maids Moreton because of the nunnery. Very devout creatures were the
+nuns, being holy ladies out of families of gentle blood. They
+punctually fulfilled to the letter all the commands of the pious
+founder, just as they were blazoned on the great parchment Regula,
+which the Lady Mother kept on her reading-desk in her little cell. If
+ever any of the nuns, by any chance or subtle machination of the Evil
+One, was guilty of the smallest backsliding from the conduct that
+beseemed them, they made full and devout confession thereof to the
+Holy Father who visited them for this purpose. This good man loved
+swan's meat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed to
+provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and whatsoever
+penance he laid upon them they performed to the utmost, and with due
+contrition of heart.
+
+From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently carried out the
+services of Holy Mother Church. After dinner, one read aloud to them
+from the Rule, and again after supper there was reading from the life
+of some notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample
+for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage. For the rest, they
+tended their herb garden, reared their chickens, which were famous for
+miles around, and kept strict watch over their haywards and
+swineherds. If time was when they had nothing more important on hand,
+they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages imaginable for the
+Bishop, the Bishop's Chaplain, the Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot
+and other godly men of religion round about, who were forced often to
+bleed themselves for their health's sake and their eternal salvation,
+so that these venerable men in process of time came to have by them
+great chests full of these useful articles. If little tongues wagged
+now and then as the sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who
+shall blame them, _Eva peccatrice_? Not I; besides, some of them were
+something stricken in years, and old women are garrulous and hard to
+be constrained from chattering and gossiping. But being devout women
+they could have spoken no evil.
+
+One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at supper, the
+Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged up and down the hall at
+the long trestled tables. The Abbess had just said "_Gratias_" and
+the sisters had sung "_Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula
+saeculorum, Amen_," when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and, with
+many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the hands, sidled himself
+up upon the dais, and, permission having been given him, spoke to the
+Lady Mother thus:
+
+"Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who asks refreshment
+and a night's lodging." It is true he spoke softly, but little pink
+ears are sharp of hearing, and nuns, from their secluded way of life,
+love to hear news of the great world.
+
+"Send him away," said the Abbess. "It is not fit that a man should lie
+within this house."
+
+"Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he should starve of
+hunger and exhaustion on his way to do penance and worship at the Holy
+Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban."
+
+"What kind of pilgrim is he?"
+
+"Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears of a reverend and
+gracious aspect, a young man well spoken and well disposed. Madam
+knows it waxeth late, and the ways are dark and foul."
+
+"I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages and good
+works, to faint and starve by the wayside. Let him sleep with the
+haywards."
+
+"But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance and conversation;
+saving your reverence, I would not wish to ask him to eat and sleep
+with churls."
+
+"He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter and eat of our poor
+table."
+
+"Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command. He hath with him,
+however, an instrument of music and would fain cheer you with
+spiritual songs."
+
+A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches of the great
+hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.
+
+"Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light juggler, a singer
+of vain songs, a mocker. I would not have these quiet halls disturbed
+by wanton music and unholy words. God forbid." And she crossed
+herself.
+
+"Madam, I will answer for it."
+
+The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went down the middle of
+the hall, his keys rattling at his belt. A little buzz of conversation
+rose from the sisters and went up to the oak roof-trees, like the
+singing of bees. The Abbess told her beads.
+
+The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God knows what manner of
+man he was; I cannot tell you. He certainly was lean and lithe like a
+cat, his eyes danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks
+and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit's that lives on roots and
+ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went like the tune of a May game,
+and he screwed and twisted his scarlet-jerkined body in time with
+them. In his left hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his
+right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones of those
+who heard it, and teased every delicate nerve in the body. Such a tune
+would have tickled the ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go
+pilgrimaging certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the young nuns
+tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they showed their red gums,
+it is hard to tell. Even the Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though
+she tried to frown a moment later.
+
+The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal devil in his
+legs making the nuns think of the games the village folk play all
+night in the churchyard on Saint John's Eve.
+
+"Gracious Mother," he cried, bowing deeply and in comely wise, "allow
+a poor pilgrim on his way to confess and do penance at the shrine of
+Saint Alban to take food in your hall, and to rest with the haywards
+this night, and let me thereof make some small recompense with a few
+sacred numbers, such as your pious founder would not have disdained to
+hear."
+
+"Young man," returned the Abbess, "right glad am I to hear that God
+has moved thy heart to godly works and to go on pilgrimages, and
+verily I wish it may be to thy soul's health and to the respite of thy
+pains hereafter. I am right willing that thou shouldst refresh thyself
+with meat and rest at this holy place."
+
+"Madam, I thank thee from my heart, but as some slight token of
+gratitude for so large a favour, let me, I pray thee, sing one or two
+of my divine songs, to the uplifting of these holy Sisters' hearts."
+
+Another burst of chatter, louder than before, from the benches in the
+hall. One or two of the younger Sisters clapped their plump white
+hands and cried, "Oh!" The Lady Abbess held up her hand for silence.
+
+"Verily, I should be glad to hear some sweet songs of religion, and I
+think it would be to the uplifting of these Sisters' hearts. But,
+young man, take warning against singing any wanton lines of vain
+imagination, such as the ribalds use on the highways, and the idlers
+and haunters of taverns. I have heard them in my youth, although my
+ears tingle to think of them now, and I should think it shame that any
+such light words should echo among these sacred rafters or disturb the
+slumber of our pious founder, who now sleeps in Christ. Let me remind
+you of what saith Saint Jeremie, _Onager solitarius, in desiderio
+animae suae, attraxit ventum amoris_; the wild ass of the wilderness,
+in the desire of his heart, snuffeth up the wind of love; whereby that
+holy man signifies that vain earthly love, which is but wind and air,
+and shall avail nothing at all, when this weak, impure flesh is
+sloughed away."
+
+"Madam, such songs as I shall sing, I learnt at the mouth of our holy
+parish priest, Sir Thomas, a man of all good learning and purity of
+heart."
+
+"In that case," said the Abbess, "sing in God's name, but stand at the
+end of the hall, for it suits not the dignity of my office a man
+should stand so near this dais."
+
+Whereon the pilgrim, making obeisance, went to the end of the hall,
+and the eyes of all the nuns danced after his dancing legs, and their
+ears hung on the clear, sweet notes he struck out of his cithern as he
+walked. He took his place with his back against the great hall door,
+in such attitude as men use when they play the cithern. A little
+trembling ran through the nuns, and some rose from their seats and
+knelt on the benches, leaning over the table, the better to see and
+hear him. Their eyes sparkled like dew on meadowsweet on a fair
+morning.
+
+Certainly his fingers were bewitched or else the devil was in his
+cithern, for such sweet sounds had never been heard in the hall since
+the day when it was built and consecrated to the service of the
+servants of God. The shrill notes fell like a tinkling rain from the
+high roof in mad, fantastic trills and dying falls that brought all
+one's soul to one's lips to suck them in. What he sang about, God only
+knows; not one of the nuns or even the holy Abbess herself could have
+told you, although you had offered her a piece of the True Cross or a
+hair of the Blessed Virgin for a single word. But a divine yearning
+filled all their hearts; they seemed to hear ten thousand thousand
+angels singing in choruses, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia; they floated
+up on impalpable clouds of azure and silver, up through the blissful
+paradises of the uppermost heaven; their nostrils were filled with the
+odours of exquisite spices and herbs and smoke of incense; their eyes
+dazzled at splendours and lights and glories; their ears were full of
+gorgeous harmonies and all created concords of sweet sounds; the very
+fibres of being were loosened within them, as though their souls would
+leap forth from their bodies in exquisite dissolution. The eyes of the
+younger nuns grew round and large and tender, and their breath almost
+died upon their velvet lips. As for the old nuns, the great, salt
+tears coursed down their withered cheeks and fell like rain on their
+gnarled hands. The Abbess sat on her dais with her lips apart, looking
+into space, ten thousand thousand miles away. But no one saw her and
+she saw no one; every one had forgotten every one else in that
+delicious intoxication.
+
+Then with a shrill cry, full of human yearnings and desire, the
+minstrel came to a sudden stop--
+
+    "Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
+      And the small rain will down rain?
+    Christ, if my love were in my arms,
+      And I in my bed again."
+
+Silence!--not one of the holy Sisters spoke, but some sighed; some put
+their hands over their hearts, and one put her hand in her hood, but
+when she felt her hair shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again
+sharply, as though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, "O Jesu."
+
+Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to speak in a cracked,
+high voice, quickly and monotonously, as though she spoke in a dream.
+Her eyes were wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. "God knows,"
+she said, "I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all those who be maids
+here, to be mindful of the woods. For they are green, but they are
+deep and dark, and it is merry in the springtime with the thick turf
+below and the good boughs above, all alone with your heart's
+darling--all alone in the green wood. But God help me, he would not
+stay any more than snow at Easter. I thought just now that I was back
+with him in the woods. God keep all those that be maids from the green
+woods."
+
+The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate,
+was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though
+she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely
+shoulders rise and fall. "Blessed Virgin," she cried. "Ah, ye ask too
+much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know," and her grey eyes
+filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the
+table, and sobbed aloud.
+
+Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig
+dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters
+privily mocked, "It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have
+held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into
+mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into
+earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips
+again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy
+Mother! Holy Mother!"
+
+"He must come oftener," said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little
+nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a
+plum. "I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of
+apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every
+time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in
+the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring
+again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples."
+
+Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her
+arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself.
+
+      "Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay."
+
+She moaned to herself, "I have seen the village women go to the well,
+carrying their babies with them, and they laugh as they go by on the
+way. Their babies hold them tight round the neck, and their mothers
+comfort them, saying, 'Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my
+sweeting.' Christ and the blessed Saints know that I have never felt a
+baby's little hand in my bosom--and now I shall die without it, for I
+am old and past the age of bearing children."
+
+      "Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay."
+
+"I have heard them on a May morning, with their pipes and tabors and
+jolly, jolly music," cried Sister Helen; "I have seen them too, and my
+heart has gone with them to bring back the white hawthorn from the
+woods. 'A man and a maid to a hawthorn bough,' as it says in the song.
+They sing outside my window all Saint John's Eve so that I cannot say
+my prayers for the wild thoughts they put into my brain, as they go
+dancing up and down in the churchyard; I cannot forget the pretty
+words they say to each other, 'Sweet love, a kiss'; 'kiss me, my love,
+nor let me go'; 'As I went through the garden gate'; 'A bonny black
+knight, a bonny black knight, and what will you give to me? A kiss,
+and a kiss, and no more than a kiss, under the wild rose tree.' Oh,
+Mary Mother, have pity on a poor girl's heart, I shall die, if no one
+love me, I shall die."
+
+"In faith, I am truly sorry, William," said Sister Agnes, who was
+gaunt and hollow-eyed with long vigils and overfasting, for which the
+good father had rebuked her time after time, saying that she
+overtasked the poor weak flesh. "I am truly sorry that I could not
+wait. But the neighbours made such a clamour, and my father and mother
+buffeted me too sorely. It is under the oak tree, no more than a foot
+deep, and covered with the red and brown leaves. It was a pretty sight
+to see the red blood on its neck, as white as whalebone, and it
+neither cried nor wept, so I put it down among the leaves, the pretty
+poppet; and it was like thee, William, it was like thee. I am sorry I
+did not wait, and now I'm worn and wan for thy sake, this many a long
+year, and all in vain, for thou never comst. I am an old woman now,
+and I shall soon be quiet and not complain any more."
+
+Some of the Sisters were sobbing as if their hearts would break; some
+sat quiet and still, and let the tears fall from their eyes unchecked;
+some smiled and cried together; some sighed a little and trembled like
+aspen leaves in a southern wind. The great candles in the hall were
+burning down to their sockets. One by one they spluttered out. A
+ghostly, flickering light fell upon the legend over the broad dais,
+"_Connubium mundum sed virginitas paradisum complet_"--"Marriage
+replenisheth the World, but virginity Paradise."
+
+"Dong, dong, dong." Suddenly the great bell of the Nunnery began to
+toll. With a cry the Abbess sprang to her feet; there were tear stains
+on her white cheeks, and her hand shook as she pointed fiercely to the
+door.
+
+"Away, false pilgrim," she cried. "Silence, foul blasphemer! _Retro
+me, Satanas._" She crossed herself again and again, saying _Pater
+Noster_.
+
+The nuns screamed and trembled with terror. A little cloud of blue
+smoke arose from where the minstrel had stood. There was a little
+tongue of flame, and he had disappeared. It was almost dark in the
+hall. A few sobs broke the silence. The dying light of a single candle
+fell on the form of the Lady Mother.
+
+"Tomorrow," she said, "we shall fast and sing _Placebo_ and _Dirige_
+and the _Seven Penitential Psalms_. May the Holy God have mercy upon
+us for all we have done and said and thought amiss this night. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOL� MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+We read in the ancient archives of Florence the following account, as
+it was received from the lips of a very holy man, greatly respected by
+every one for the sanctity of his manners at the period in which he
+lived. Happening once to be deeply absorbed in his prayers, such was
+their efficacy, that he saw an infinite number of condemned souls,
+belonging to those miserable mortals who had died in their sins,
+undergoing the punishment due to their offences in the regions below.
+He remarked that the greater part of them lamented nothing so bitterly
+as their folly in having taken wives, attributing to them the whole of
+their misfortunes. Much surprised at this, Minos and Rhadamanthus,
+with the rest of the infernal judges, unwilling to credit all the
+abuse heaped upon the female sex, and wearied from day to day with its
+repetition, agreed to bring the matter before Pluto. It was then
+resolved that the conclave of infernal princes should form a committee
+of inquiry, and should adopt such measures as might be deemed most
+advisable by the court in order to discover the truth or falsehood of
+the calumnies which they heard. All being assembled in council, Pluto
+addressed them as follows: "Dearly beloved demons! though by celestial
+dispensation and the irreversible decree of fate this kingdom fell to
+my share, and I might strictly dispense with any kind of celestial or
+earthly responsibility, yet, as it is more prudent and respectful to
+consult the laws and to hear the opinion of others, I have resolved to
+be guided by your advice, particularly in a case that may chance to
+cast some imputation upon our government. For the souls of all men
+daily arriving in our kingdom still continue to lay the whole blame
+upon their wives, and as this appears to us impossible, we must be
+careful how we decide in such a business, lest we also should come in
+for a share of their abuse, on account of our too great severity; and
+yet judgment must be pronounced, lest we be taxed with negligence and
+with indifference to the interests of justice. Now, as the latter is
+the fault of a careless, and the former of an unjust judge, we,
+wishing to avoid the trouble and the blame that might attach to both,
+yet hardly seeing how to get clear of it, naturally enough apply to
+you for assistance, in order that you may look to it, and contrive in
+some way that, as we have hitherto reigned without the slightest
+imputation upon our character, we may continue to do so for the
+future."
+
+The affair appearing to be of the utmost importance to all the princes
+present, they first resolved that it was necessary to ascertain the
+truth, though they differed as to the best means of accomplishing this
+object. Some were of opinion that they ought to choose one or more
+from among themselves, who should be commissioned to pay a visit to
+the world, and in a human shape endeavour personally to ascertain how
+far such reports were grounded in truth. To many others it appeared
+that this might be done without so much trouble merely by compelling
+some of the wretched souls to confess the truth by the application of
+a variety of tortures. But the majority being in favour of a journey
+to the world, they abided by the former proposal. No one, however,
+being ambitious of undertaking such a task, it was resolved to leave
+the affair to chance. The lot fell upon the arch-devil Belphagor, who,
+previous to the Fall, had enjoyed the rank of archangel in a higher
+world. Though he received his commission with a very ill grace, he
+nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto's imperial mandate, and
+prepared to execute whatever had been determined upon in council. At
+the same time he took an oath to observe the tenor of his
+instructions, as they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and
+ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were to the following
+effect:--_Imprimis_, that the better to promote the object in view, he
+should be furnished with a hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly,
+that he should make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the
+world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he should enter
+into the marriage state; and lastly, that he should live with his wife
+for the space of ten years. At the expiration of this period, he was
+to feign death and return home, in order to acquaint his employers, by
+the fruits of experience, what really were the respective conveniences
+and inconveniences of matrimony. The conditions further ran, that
+during the said ten years he should be subject to all kinds of
+miseries and disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty,
+prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall, unless, indeed,
+he could contrive by his own skill and ingenuity to avoid them. Poor
+Belphagor having signed these conditions and received the money,
+forthwith came into the world, and having set up his equipage, with a
+numerous train of servants, he made a very splendid entrance into
+Florence. He selected this city in preference to all others, as being
+most favourable for obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and
+having assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he took a
+house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because he was unable to
+explain the instructions under which he acted, he gave out that he was
+a merchant, who having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria,
+and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo, whence he had lastly
+set out for Italy, with the intention of marrying and settling there,
+as one of the most polished and agreeable countries he knew.
+
+Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently about thirty
+years of age, and he lived in a style of life that showed he was in
+pretty easy circumstances, if not possessed of immense wealth. Being,
+moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted the notice
+of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and
+small incomes. The former of these were soon offered to him, from
+among whom Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl of the name of Onesta,
+a daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had also three sons, all grown up,
+and three more daughters, also nearly marriageable. Though of a noble
+family and enjoying a good reputation in Florence, his father-in-law
+was extremely poor, and maintained as poor an establishment.
+Roderigo, therefore, made very splendid nuptials, and omitted nothing
+that might tend to confer honour upon such a festival, being liable,
+under the law which he received on leaving his infernal abode, to feel
+all kinds of vain and earthly passions. He therefore soon began to
+enter into all the pomps and vanities of the world, and to aim at
+reputation and consideration among mankind, which put him to no little
+expense. But more than this, he had not long enjoyed the society of
+his beloved Onesta, before he became tenderly attached to her, and was
+unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now,
+along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had
+brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of
+pride, that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her; for
+her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss
+to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became
+infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo's
+attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an
+ascendancy over him and rule him with a rod of iron. Not content with
+this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with
+all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most
+indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her
+father, her brothers, her friends, and relatives, the duty of the
+matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some
+time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the
+follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her
+taste for dress, and every article of the newest fashion, in which
+our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual
+habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was
+obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in
+portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish
+one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with
+silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater's
+establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his
+fortune was soon consumed. At length the Carnival season was at hand;
+the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as
+usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to
+vie with each other in the splendour of their parties, and the Lady
+Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance,
+insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their
+feasts. For the reasons above stated, he submitted to her will; nor,
+indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult
+it might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of
+preserving the peace and comfort of his household, and of awaiting
+quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case,
+inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height
+of asperity by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to
+act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the
+house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable
+life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered in consequence of
+having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs it is impossible to
+express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with
+him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than
+longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself,
+amidst this turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the
+ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of
+the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being
+still in good credit, in order to support his rank he resorted to
+bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against
+him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy
+speculators in that market. Just as his case became extremely
+delicate, there arrived sudden tidings both from East and West that
+one of his wife's brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo's
+profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich
+cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he
+himself was lost. No sooner did this affair transpire than his
+creditors assembled, and supposing it must be all over with him,
+though their bills had not yet become due, they resolved to keep a
+strict watch over him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his
+part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling how deeply
+he was bound by the Stygian law, determined at all hazards to make his
+escape. So taking horse one morning early, as he luckily lived near
+the Prato gate, in that direction he went off. His departure was soon
+known; the creditors were all in a bustle; the magistrates were
+applied to, and the officers of justice, along with a great part of
+the populace, were dispatched in pursuit. Roderigo had hardly
+proceeded a mile before he heard this hue and cry, and the pursuers
+were soon so close at his heels that the only resource he had left was
+to abandon the highroad and take to the open country, with the hope of
+concealing himself in the fields. But finding himself unable to make
+way over the hedges and ditches, he left his horse and took to his
+heels, traversing fields of vines and canes, until he reached
+Peretola, where he entered the house of Matteo del Bricca, a labourer
+of Giovanna del Bene. Finding him at home, for he was busily providing
+fodder for his cattle, our hero earnestly entreated him to save him
+from the hands of his adversaries close behind, who would infallibly
+starve him to death in a dungeon, engaging that if Matteo would give
+him refuge, he would make him one of the richest men alive, and afford
+him such proofs of it before he took his leave as would convince him
+of the truth of what he said; and if he failed to do this, he was
+quite content that Matteo himself should deliver him into the hands of
+his enemies.
+
+Now Matteo, although a rustic, was a man of courage, and concluding
+that he could not lose anything by the speculation, he gave him his
+hand and agreed to save him. He then thrust our hero under a heap of
+rubbish, completely enveloping him in weeds; so that when his pursuers
+arrived they found themselves quite at a loss, nor could they extract
+from Matteo the least information as to his appearance. In this
+dilemma there was nothing left for them but to proceed in the pursuit,
+which they continued for two days, and then returned, jaded and
+disappointed, to Florence. In the meanwhile, Matteo drew our hero from
+his hiding-place, and begged him to fulfil his engagement. To this
+his friend Roderigo replied: "I confess, brother, that I am under
+great obligations to you, and I mean to return them. To leave no doubt
+upon your mind, I will inform you who I am;" and he proceeded to
+acquaint him with all the particulars of the affair: how he had come
+into the world, and married, and run away. He next described to his
+preserver the way in which he might become rich, which was briefly as
+follows: As soon as Matteo should hear of some lady in the
+neighbourhood being said to be possessed, he was to conclude that it
+was Roderigo himself who had taken possession of her; and he gave him
+his word, at the same time, that he would never leave her until Matteo
+should come and conjure him to depart. In this way he might obtain
+what sum he pleased from the lady's friends for the price of
+exorcizing her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan, Roderigo
+disappeared.
+
+Not many days elapsed before it was reported in Florence that the
+daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei, a lady married to Buonajuto
+Tebalducci, was possessed by the devil. Her relations did not fail to
+apply every means usual on such occasions to expel him, such as making
+her wear upon her head St. Zanobi's cap, and the cloak of St. John of
+Gualberto; but these had only the effect of making Roderigo laugh. And
+to convince them that it was really a spirit that possessed her, and
+that it was no flight of the imagination, he made the young lady talk
+Latin, hold a philosophical dispute, and reveal the frailties of many
+of her acquaintance. He particularly accused a certain friar of having
+introduced a lady into his monastery in male attire, to the no small
+scandal of all who heard it, and the astonishment of the brotherhood.
+Messer Ambrogio found it impossible to silence him, and began to
+despair of his daughter's cure. But the news reaching Matteo, he lost
+no time in waiting upon Ambrogio, assuring him of his daughter's
+recovery on condition of his paying him five hundred florins, with
+which to purchase a farm at Peretola. To this Messer Ambrogio
+consented; and Matteo immediately ordered a number of masses to be
+said, after which he proceeded with some unmeaning ceremonies
+calculated to give solemnity to his task. Then approaching the young
+lady, he whispered in her ear: "Roderigo, it is Matteo that is come.
+So do as we agreed upon, and get out." Roderigo replied: "It is all
+well; but you have not asked enough to make you a rich man. So when I
+depart I will take possession of the daughter of Charles, king of
+Naples, and I will not leave her till you come. You may then demand
+whatever you please for your reward; and mind that you never trouble
+me again." And when he had said this, he went out of the lady, to the
+no small delight and amazement of the whole city of Florence.
+
+It was not long again before the accident that had happened to the
+daughter of the king of Naples began to be buzzed about the country,
+and all the monkish remedies having been found to fail, the king,
+hearing of Matteo, sent for him from Florence. On arriving at Naples,
+Matteo, after a few ceremonies, performed the cure. Before leaving the
+princess, however, Roderigo said: "You see, Matteo, I have kept my
+promise and made a rich man of you, and I owe you nothing now. So,
+henceforward you will take care to keep out of my way, lest as I have
+hitherto done you some good, just the contrary should happen to you in
+future." Upon this Matteo thought it best to return to Florence, after
+receiving fifty thousand ducats from his majesty, in order to enjoy
+his riches in peace, and never once imagined that Roderigo would come
+in his way again. But in this he was deceived; for he soon heard that
+a daughter of Louis, king of France, was possessed by an evil spirit,
+which disturbed our friend Matteo not a little, thinking of his
+majesty's great authority and of what Roderigo had said. Hearing of
+Matteo's great skill, and finding no other remedy, the king dispatched
+a messenger for him, whom Matteo contrived to send back with a variety
+of excuses. But this did not long avail him; the king applied to the
+Florentine council, and our hero was compelled to attend. Arriving
+with no very pleasant sensations at Paris, he was introduced into the
+royal presence, when he assured his majesty that though it was true he
+had acquired some fame in the course of his demoniac practice, he
+could by no means always boast of success, and that some devils were
+of such a desperate character as not to pay the least attention to
+threats, enchantments, or even the exorcisms of religion itself. He
+would, nevertheless, do his majesty's pleasure, entreating at the same
+time to be held excused if it should happen to prove an obstinate
+case. To this the king made answer, that be the case what it might, he
+would certainly hang him if he did not succeed. It is impossible to
+describe poor Matteo's terror and perplexity on hearing these words;
+but at length mustering courage, he ordered the possessed princess to
+be brought into his presence. Approaching as usual close to her ear,
+he conjured Roderigo in the most humble terms, by all he had ever done
+for him, not to abandon him in such a dilemma, but to show some sense
+of gratitude for past services and to leave the princess. "Ah! thou
+traitorous villain!" cried Roderigo, "hast thou, indeed, ventured to
+meddle in this business? Dost thou boast thyself a rich man at my
+expense? I will now convince the world and thee of the extent of my
+power, both to give and to take away. I shall have the pleasure of
+seeing thee hanged before thou leavest this place." Poor Matteo
+finding there was no remedy, said nothing more, but, like a wise man,
+set his head to work in order to discover some other means of
+expelling the spirit; for which purpose he said to the king, "Sire, it
+is as I feared: there are certain spirits of so malignant a character
+that there is no keeping any terms with them, and this is one of them.
+However, I will make a last attempt, and I trust that it will succeed
+according to our wishes. If not, I am in your majesty's power, and I
+hope you will take compassion on my innocence. In the first place, I
+have to entreat that your majesty will order a large stage to be
+erected in the centre of the great square, such as will admit the
+nobility and clergy of the whole city. The stage ought to be adorned
+with all kinds of silks and with cloth of gold, and with an altar
+raised in the middle. Tomorrow morning I would have your majesty, with
+your full train of lords and ecclesiastics in attendance, seated in
+order and in magnificent array, as spectators of the scene at the said
+place. There, after having celebrated solemn mass, the possessed
+princess must appear; but I have in particular to entreat that on one
+side of the square may be stationed a band of men with drums,
+trumpets, horns, tambours, bagpipes, cymbals, and kettle-drums, and
+all other kinds of instruments that make the most infernal noise. Now,
+when I take my hat off, let the whole band strike up, and approach
+with the most horrid uproar towards the stage. This, along with a few
+other secret remedies which I shall apply, will surely compel the
+spirit to depart."
+
+These preparations were accordingly made by the royal command; and
+when the day, being Sunday morning, arrived, the stage was seen
+crowded with people of rank and the square with the people. Mass was
+celebrated, and the possessed princess conducted between two bishops,
+with a train of nobles, to the spot. Now, when Roderigo beheld so vast
+a concourse of people, together with all this awful preparation, he
+was almost struck dumb with astonishment, and said to himself, "I
+wonder what that cowardly wretch is thinking of doing now? Does he
+imagine I have never seen finer things than these in the regions
+above--ay! and more horrid things below? However, I will soon make him
+repent it, at all events." Matteo then approaching him, besought him
+to come out; but Roderigo replied, "Oh, you think you have done a fine
+thing now! What do you mean to do with all this trumpery? Can you
+escape my power, think you, in this way, or elude the vengeance of the
+king? Thou poltroon villain, I will have thee hanged for this!" And
+as Matteo continued the more to entreat him, his adversary still
+vilified him in the same strain. So Matteo, believing there was no
+time to be lost, made the sign with his hat, when all the musicians
+who had been stationed there for the purpose suddenly struck up a
+hideous din, and ringing a thousand peals, approached the spot.
+Roderigo pricked up his ears at the sound, quite at a loss what to
+think, and rather in a perturbed tone of voice he asked Matteo what it
+meant. To this the latter returned, apparently much alarmed: "Alas!
+dear Roderigo, it is your wife; she is coming for you!" It is
+impossible to give an idea of the anguish of Roderigo's mind and the
+strange alteration which his feelings underwent at that name. The
+moment the name of "wife" was pronounced, he had no longer presence of
+mind to consider whether it were probable, or even possible, that it
+could be her. Without replying a single word, he leaped out and fled
+in the utmost terror, leaving the lady to herself, and preferring
+rather to return to his infernal abode and render an account of his
+adventures, than run the risk of any further sufferings and vexations
+under the matrimonial yoke. And thus Belphagor again made his
+appearance in the infernal domains, bearing ample testimony to the
+evils introduced into a household by a wife; while Matteo, on his
+part, who knew more of the matter than the devil, returned
+triumphantly home, not a little proud of the victory he had achieved.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER[2]
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+    [2] Courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers, New York &
+    London.
+
+A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet,
+winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
+Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp or morass. On one side
+of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
+rises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow
+a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
+gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
+treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
+bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of
+the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
+kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
+landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
+stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
+money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
+he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
+ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
+wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
+there hanged for a pirate.
+
+About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent
+in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
+there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of
+Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself: they were so miserly
+that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
+lay hands on, she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
+alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying
+about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the
+conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
+property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone, and
+had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of
+sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
+traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as
+articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a
+thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
+pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he
+would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
+and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
+
+The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a
+tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.
+Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
+face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to
+words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely
+wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and
+clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his
+way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
+
+One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
+neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward,
+through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.
+The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some
+of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat
+for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and
+quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green
+surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering
+mud: there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the
+tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake; where the trunks of pines
+and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators
+sleeping in the mire.
+
+Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
+forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
+precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a
+cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the
+sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck rising
+on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm
+piece of ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of
+the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during
+their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of
+fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used
+as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
+of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the
+level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks
+and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the
+dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
+
+It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
+fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would
+have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for
+the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
+down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the
+savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil
+spirit.
+
+Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of
+the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen
+hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving
+with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
+turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something
+hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull,
+with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on
+the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
+been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
+taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
+
+"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt from
+it.
+
+"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes,
+and beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the
+stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard
+nor seen any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on
+observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the
+stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a
+rude half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his
+body; but his face was neither black nor copper-colour, but swarthy
+and dingy, and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to
+toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that
+stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his
+shoulder.
+
+He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
+
+"What are you doing on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse
+growling voice.
+
+"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer, "no more your grounds than
+mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."
+
+"Deacon Peabody be d--d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he
+will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those of
+his neighbours. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
+
+Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
+of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
+core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
+high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
+scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed
+wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
+around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
+great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The
+one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been
+hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
+rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it
+was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
+
+"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of
+triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
+winter."
+
+"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's
+timber?"
+
+"The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged
+to me long before one of your whitefaced race put foot upon the soil."
+
+"And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.
+
+"Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries;
+the black miner in others. In this neighbourhood I am known by the
+name of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated
+this spot, and in honour of whom they now and then roasted a white
+man, by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
+exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the
+persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and
+prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand-master of the Salem
+witches."
+
+"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom,
+sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."
+
+"The same, at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil
+nod.
+
+Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;
+though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
+think that to meet with such a singular personage, in this wild,
+lonely place, would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a
+hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with
+a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
+
+It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest
+conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told
+him of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate, under the
+oak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
+under his command, and protected by his power, so that none could find
+them but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place
+within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for
+him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
+conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed
+them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to
+think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money was
+in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger
+paused. "What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?"
+said Tom. "There's my signature," said the black man, pressing his
+finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets
+of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into
+the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and
+so on, until he totally disappeared.
+
+When Tom reached home, he found the black print of a finger burnt, as
+it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
+
+The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
+Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
+papers with the usual flourish, that "A great man had fallen in
+Israel."
+
+Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
+and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom,
+"who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
+no illusion.
+
+He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
+an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was
+awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to
+comply with the black man's terms, and secure what would make them
+wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself
+to the Devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
+flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and
+bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she
+talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her.
+
+At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and
+if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same
+fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort
+towards the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When
+she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke
+something of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing at
+the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
+terms: she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it
+was she forbore to say.
+
+The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron
+heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight
+came, but she did not make her appearance: morning, noon, night
+returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
+safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
+silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
+Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
+she was never heard of more.
+
+What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
+pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
+confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
+way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
+slough; others, more charitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
+household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
+surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
+the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
+was said a great black man, with an ax on his shoulder, was seen late
+that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in
+a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
+
+The most current and probable story, however, observes, that Tom
+Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property,
+that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During
+a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no
+wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was
+nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he
+flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a
+neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
+twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to flit about, his
+attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows hovering about
+a cypress-tree. He looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check
+apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture
+perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy; for
+he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the
+household valuables.
+
+"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly to himself,
+"and we will endeavour to do without the woman."
+
+As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and
+sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
+the checked apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and
+liver tied up in it!
+
+Such, according to this most authentic old story, was all that was to
+be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the
+black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but
+though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil,
+yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must
+have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of
+cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair,
+that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of
+the woodman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged
+his shoulders, as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
+"Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of
+it!"
+
+Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of
+his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like
+gratitude towards the black woodman, who, he considered, had done him
+a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance
+with him, but for some time without success; the old black-legs played
+shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for
+calling for: he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his
+game.
+
+At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the
+quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the
+promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
+woodman's dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the
+swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances with
+great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
+
+By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
+haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's
+treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
+generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but
+there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
+inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
+means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
+Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he
+should fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused: he
+was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not
+tempt him to turn slave-trader.
+
+Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but
+proposed, instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil being
+extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
+his peculiar people.
+
+To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
+
+"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
+man.
+
+"I'll do it tomorrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
+
+"You shall lend money at two per cent. a month."
+
+"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
+
+"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchants to
+bankruptcy"--
+
+"I'll drive them to the d--l," cried Tom Walker.
+
+"You are the usurer for my money!" said black-legs with delight. "When
+will you want the rhino?"
+
+"This very night."
+
+"Done!" said the devil.
+
+"Done!" said Tom Walker.--So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
+
+A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a
+counting-house in Boston.
+
+His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a
+good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the time
+of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time
+of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills,
+the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for
+speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
+for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with
+maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where,
+but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great
+speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country,
+had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making
+sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the
+dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients
+were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the
+consequent cry of "hard times."
+
+At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as
+usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
+and adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber;
+the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short,
+every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
+sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
+
+Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and acted like a
+"friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
+security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
+hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
+squeezed his customers closer and closer: and sent them at length, dry
+as a sponge, from his door.
+
+In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty
+man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'Change. He built himself, as
+usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of
+it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a
+carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the
+horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and
+screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the
+souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
+
+As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
+things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the
+next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black
+friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
+He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He
+prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force
+of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during
+the week, by the clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians
+who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck
+with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in
+their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious
+as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his
+neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
+became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the
+expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In
+a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
+
+Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
+lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
+might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a
+small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
+counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
+people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green
+spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to
+drive some usurious bargain.
+
+Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and
+that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled
+and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed
+that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which
+case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was
+determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This,
+however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take
+such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the
+authentic old legend; which closes his story in the following manner.
+
+One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
+thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his
+white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of
+foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an
+unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatest
+friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months'
+indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
+day.
+
+"My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish," said the
+land-jobber. "Charity begins at home," replied Tom; "I must take care
+of myself in these hard times."
+
+"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.
+
+Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The devil take me," said he, "if
+I have made a farthing!"
+
+Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped
+out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which
+neighed and stamped with impatience.
+
+"Tom, you're come for," said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank
+back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
+coat-pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage
+he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The
+black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the
+lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the
+thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and
+stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down
+the street; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning-gown
+fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the
+pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black
+man, he had disappeared.
+
+Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who
+lived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of the
+thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
+along the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure,
+such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the
+fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp towards
+the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in
+that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
+
+The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
+shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and
+tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement
+of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have
+been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's
+effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
+his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to
+cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with
+chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his
+half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire
+and was burnt to the ground.
+
+Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
+griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
+to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd's
+money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and old
+Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
+horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
+troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
+into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent
+throughout New England, of "The Devil and Tom Walker."
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen
+other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl
+of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at
+the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of
+departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had
+slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and
+played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of
+nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have
+woven new chains around us.
+
+This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for
+our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend
+Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his
+apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would
+certainly be in time for tea and supper.
+
+The enjoyment of his society had already become such a necessity, that
+this piece of information made us helpless and ill at ease.
+
+The conversation turned naturally on our absent friend and his
+striking, brilliant apparition among us. It was strange, but I could
+not get it out of my head that I had already met with him in my walk
+through life, but in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was,
+it still forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I
+called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection of a man who
+in his whole demeanour, but more especially in his glance, had the
+greatest resemblance to him. The one of whom I now speak was a foreign
+physician, who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived at
+first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd of worshippers
+collected around him. The thought of this man was always a melancholy
+one, for it was asserted that some serious misfortune always followed
+his visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled
+him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the same person.
+
+I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea that incessantly
+haunted me, and how unpleasant it was to identify so horrible a being
+as the stranger who had so afflicted my native city, with our mutual
+friend who had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will
+seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that all my
+neighbours were full of precisely the same idea, and that all fancied
+they had seen our agreeable companion in some entirely different
+shape.
+
+"You are enough to make one downright melancholy," said Baroness von
+Thingen, who sat near me; "you make our friend Natas out to be the
+Wandering Jew, or God knows what more!"
+
+A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had joined our circle
+some days before, and passed his time in quiet, silent enjoyment,
+enlivened by an occasional deep conference with the Rhine wine, had
+kept smiling to himself during what he called our "comparative
+anatomy," and twirling his huge snuff-box between his fingers with
+such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like a coach-wheel.
+
+"I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to make," exclaimed he
+at last. "Under your favour, gracious lady, I do not look upon him as
+being precisely the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very strange
+mortal. As long as he was present, the thought would, it is true, now
+and then flash up in my mind, 'You have seen this man before, but pray
+where was it?' but these recollections were driven away as if by magic
+whenever he fastened upon me those dark wandering eyes of his."
+
+"So was it with me--and with me--and with me," exclaimed we all in
+astonishment.
+
+"Hem! hem!" smiled the Professor. "Even now the scales seem to fall
+from my eyes, and I see that he is the very same person I saw in
+Stuttgart twelve years ago."
+
+"What, you have seen him then, and in what circumstances?" asked Lady
+von Thingen eagerly, and almost blushed at the eagerness she
+displayed.
+
+The Professor took a pinch of snuff, shook the superfluous grains off
+his waistcoat, and answered--"It may be now about twelve years since I
+was forced by a law-suit to spend some months in Stuttgart. I lived at
+one of the best hotels, and generally dined with a large company at
+the table d'h�te. Once upon a time I made my first appearance at table
+after a lapse of several days, during which I had been forced to keep
+my room. The company were talking very eagerly about a certain Signor
+Barighi, who for some time past had been delighting the other visitors
+with his lively wit, and his fluency in all languages. All were
+unanimous in his praise, but they could not exactly agree as to his
+occupation; some making him out a diplomatist, others a teacher of
+languages, a third party a distinguished political exile, and a fourth
+a spy of the police. The door opened, all seemed silent, even
+confused, at having carried on the dispute in so loud a tone; I judged
+that the person spoken of must be among us, and saw--"
+
+"Who, pray?"
+
+"Under favour, the same person who has amused us so agreeably for some
+days past. There was nothing supernatural in this, to be sure, but
+listen a moment; for two days Signor Barighi, as the stranger was
+called, had given a new relish to our meals by his brilliant
+conversation, when mine host interrupted us suddenly--'Gentlemen,'
+said he, 'prepare yourself for an unique entertainment which will be
+provided for you tomorrow.'
+
+"We asked what this meant, and a grey headed captain, who had presided
+at the hotel table many years, informed us of the joke as
+follows--Exactly opposite this dining room, an old bachelor lives,
+solitary and alone, in a large deserted house; he is a retired
+Counsellor of State--lives on a handsome premium, and has an enormous
+fortune besides. He is, however, a downright fool, and has some of the
+strangest peculiarities; thus, for instance, he often gives himself
+entertainments on a scale of extravagant luxury. He orders covers for
+twelve, from the hotel, he has excellent wines in his cellar, and one
+or the other of our waiters has the honour to attend table. You think,
+perhaps, that at these feasts he feeds the hungry, and gives drink to
+the thirsty--no such thing; on the chairs lie old yellow leaves of
+parchment, from the family record, and the old hunks is as jovial as
+if he had the merriest set of fellows around him; he talks and laughs
+with them, and the whole thing is said to be so fearful to look upon,
+that the youngest waiters are always sent over, for whoever has been
+to one such supper will enter the deserted house no more.
+
+"The day before yesterday he had a supper, and our new waiter, Frank,
+there, calls heaven and earth to witness that nobody shall ever induce
+him to go there a second time. The next day after the entertainment
+comes the Counsellor's second freak. Early in the morning he leaves
+the city, and comes back the morning after; not, however, to his own
+house, which during this time is fast locked and bolted, but into this
+hotel. Here he treats people he has been in the habit of seeing for a
+whole year, as strangers; dines, and afterwards places himself at one
+of the windows, and examines his own house across the way from top to
+bottom.
+
+"'Who does that house opposite belong to?' he then asks the host.
+
+"The other regularly bows and answers, 'It belongs to the Counsellor
+of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency's service.'"
+
+"But, Professor," here observed I, "what has this silly Hasentreffer
+of yours to do with our Natas?"
+
+"A moment's patience, Doctor," answered the Professor, "the light will
+soon break in upon you. Hasentreffer then examines the house, and learns
+that it belongs to Hasentreffer. 'Oh, what!' he asks, 'the same that was
+a student with me at Tibsingen'--then throws open the window, stretches
+his powdered head out, and calls out--'Ha-asentreffer--Ha-asentreffer!'
+
+"Of course no one answers, but he remarks: 'The old fellow would never
+forgive me if I was not to look in on him for a moment,' then takes up
+his hat and cane, unlocks his own house, goes in, and all goes on
+after as before.
+
+"All of us," the Professor proceeded in his story, "were greatly
+astonished at this singular story, and highly delighted at the idea of
+the next day's merriment. Signor Barighi, however, obliged us to
+promise that we would not betray him, as he said he was preparing a
+capital joke to play off on the Counsellor.
+
+"We all met at the table d'h�te earlier than usual, and besieged the
+windows. An old tumble down carriage, drawn by two blind steeds, came
+crawling down the street; it stopped before the hotel. There's
+Hasentreffer, there's Hasentreffer, was echoed by every mouth; and we
+were filled with extravagant merriment when we saw the little man get
+out, neatly powdered, dressed in an iron grey surtout with a huge
+meerschaum in hand. An escort of at least ten servants followed him
+in, and in this guise he entered the dining-room.
+
+"We sat down at once. I have seldom laughed as much as I did then; for
+the old chap insisted, with the greatest coolness, that he came direct
+from Carrel, and that he had six days before been extremely well
+entertained at the Swan Inn at Frankfort. Barighi must have
+disappeared before the dessert, for when the Counsellor left the
+table, and the other guests, full of curiosity, imitated his example,
+Barighi was nowhere to be seen.
+
+"The Counsellor took his seat at the window; we all followed his
+example and watched his movements. The house opposite seemed desolate
+and uninhabited. Grass grew on the threshold, the shutters were
+closed, and on some of them birds seemed to have built their nests.
+
+"'A fine house that, opposite,' said the old man to our host, who kept
+standing behind him in the third position. 'Who does it belong to?'
+
+"'To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency's
+service.'
+
+"'Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a fellow-student with me,'
+exclaimed he; 'he would never forgive me if I was not to inform him that
+I was here.' He opened the window,--'Ha-asentreffer--Hasentreffer!' cried
+he, in a hoarse voice. But who can paint our terror, when opposite, in
+the empty house, which we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a
+window-shutter was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it
+peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his chintz
+morning-gown and white nightcap, under which a few thin grey locks
+were visible; this, this exactly, was his usual morning costume. Down
+to the minutest wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the
+street was precisely the same as the one that stood by our side. But
+a panic seized us, when the figure in the morning-gown called out
+across the street, in just the same hoarse voice, 'What do you want?
+who are you calling to, hey?'
+
+"'Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?' said the one on our
+side of the way, pale as death, in a trembling voice, and quaking as
+he leaned against the window for support.
+
+"'I'm the man,' squeaked the other, and nodded his head in a friendly
+way; 'have you any commands for me?'
+
+"'But I'm the man too,' said our friend mournfully, 'how can it be
+possible?'
+
+"'You are mistaken, my dear friend,' answered he across the way, 'you
+are the thirteenth, be good enough just to step across the street to
+my house, and let me twist your neck for you! it is by no means
+painful.'
+
+"'Waiter! my hat and stick,' said the Counsellor, pale as death, and
+his voice escaped in mournful tones from his hollow chest. 'The devil
+is in my house and seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you,
+gentlemen,' added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon
+left the room.
+
+"'What does this mean?' we asked each other; 'are we all beside
+ourselves?'
+
+"The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking quietly out of the
+window, while our good silly old friend crossed the street at his
+usual formal pace. At the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys
+out of his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door--he of the
+morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in.
+
+"The latter now withdrew from the window, and we saw him go forward to
+meet our acquaintance at the room-door.
+
+"Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear, and trembled.
+'Gentlemen,' said the former, 'God pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of
+those two must be the devil in human shape.' We laughed at our host,
+and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of Barighi's; but
+our host assured us that no one could have obtained access to the
+house except he was in possession of the Counsellor's very
+artificially contrived keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table
+not ten minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could he have
+disguised himself so completely in so short a time, even supposing him
+to have known how to unlock a strange house? He added, that the two
+were so fearfully like one another, that he who had lived in the
+neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish the true one from
+the counterfeit. 'But, for God's sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the
+horrid shrieks opposite?'
+
+"We rushed to the window--terrible and fearful voices rang across from
+the empty house; we fancied we saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his
+image in the morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On a
+sudden all was quiet.
+
+"We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed to cross over
+to the house--we all agreed to it. We crossed the street--the huge
+bell at the old man's door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard
+in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith's--the door was
+broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide
+silent staircase--all the doors were fastened; at length one was
+opened. In a splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey
+frock-coat torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible
+disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.
+
+"Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found, neither in
+Stuttgart nor elsewhere."
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE[3]
+
+BY NIKOL�I VASIL�VICH G�GOL
+
+
+    [3] From _St. John's Eve and Other Stories_, translated by
+    Isabel F. Hapgood from the Russian of N. V. G�gol.
+    (Copyright, 1886, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. By permission of
+    the Publishers.)
+
+Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day
+of his death, he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were
+times, when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he
+would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to
+recognize it. Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for
+us simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are
+scribblers, or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the
+usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort
+of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C
+book, every month, or even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed
+this same story out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot
+about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom
+I have mentioned, and one of whose tales you have already read, I
+think, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and,
+opening it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich was on the
+point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected
+that he had forgotten to wind thread about them, and stick them
+together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand
+something about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I
+undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when all at once he
+caught me by the hand, and stopped me.
+
+"Stop! tell me first what you are reading."
+
+I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.
+
+"What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich? These were your very
+words."
+
+"Who told you that they were my words?"
+
+"Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: _Related by such
+and such a sacristan_."
+
+"Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a
+Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? _'Twas just the same as though one
+hadn't his wits about him!_ Listen, I'll tell it to you on the spot."
+
+We moved up to the table, and he began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten
+rolls and makovniki[4] with honey in the other world!) could tell a
+story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't
+stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for
+the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a
+tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you
+snatch your cap, and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old
+mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when the frost was
+crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow
+panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb,
+drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her
+foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.
+
+    [4] Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.
+
+The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something,
+lighted us within our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us
+children, collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not
+crawled off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great age.
+But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
+the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and
+Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some
+deed of old which always sent a shiver through our frames, and made
+our hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes such terror took
+possession of us in consequence of them, that, from that evening on,
+Heaven knows what a marvel everything seemed to us. If you chanced to
+go out of the cottage after nightfall for anything, you imagine that a
+visitor from the other world has lain down to sleep in your bed; and I
+should not be able to tell this a second time were it not that I had
+often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the
+bed, for the Evil One rolled up in a ball! But the chief thing about
+grandfather's stories was, that he never had lied in his life; and
+whatever he said was so, was so.
+
+I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that
+there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can
+even read civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a
+simple prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and
+would show all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people
+laugh at everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad
+in the world! What then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to
+love me if it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once
+he said something about witches; ... What then? Along comes one of
+these head-breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to
+God that I have lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to
+whom it would be easier to lie in confession than it would for our
+brothers and equals to take snuff, and those people would deny the
+existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and
+they won't even tell what it was! There's no use in talking about
+them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
+hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half
+a score of miserable izb�s, unplastered, badly thatched, were
+scattered here and there about the fields. There was not an enclosure
+or a decent shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the
+wealthy lived: and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why,
+a hole in the ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke
+could you tell that a God-created man lived there. You ask, why they
+lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a
+wandering, Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign
+lands; it was rather because there was no reason for setting up a
+well-ordered khata[5]. How many people were wandering all over the
+country,--Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that
+their own countrymen might make a descent, and plunder everything.
+Anything was possible.
+
+    [5] Wooden house.
+
+In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
+appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about,
+got drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was
+not a hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, and he seemed to
+have dropped from the sky, and went flying about the street of the
+village, of which no trace now remains, and which was not more than a
+hundred paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks
+he met; then there were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka
+flowed like water.... He would address the pretty girls, and give them
+ribbons, earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do
+with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about
+accepting his presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through
+unclean hands. My grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at the time,
+in which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often had his
+carouses, said that no consideration on the face of the earth would
+have induced her to accept a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid
+accepting? Fear seized on every one when he knit his bristly brows,
+and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet, God knows
+whither: but if you accept, then the next night some fiend from the
+swamp, with horns on his head, comes to call, and begins to squeeze
+your neck, when there is a string of beads upon it; or bite your
+finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag you by the hair, if
+ribbons are braided in it. God have mercy, then, on those who owned
+such gifts! But here was the difficulty: it was impossible to get rid
+of them; if you threw them into the water, the diabolical ring or
+necklace would skim along the surface, and into your hand.
+
+There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember
+rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed
+memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to Church, even on
+Easter, he determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.
+Well, he hardly escaped with his life. "Hark ye, pannotche!"[6] he
+thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of
+meddling in other people's, if you don't want that goat's throat of
+yours stuck together with boiling kutya."[7] What was to be done with
+this unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented himself with
+announcing that any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk
+would be counted a Catholic, an enemy of Christ's church, not a member
+of the human race.
+
+    [6] Sir.
+
+    [7] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins,
+    which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial
+    masses.
+
+In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer
+whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered
+either his father or mother. The church starost,[8] it is true, said
+that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my
+grandfather's aunt would not hear to that, and tried with all her
+might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them
+about as much as we need last year's snow. She said that his father
+had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only
+knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as
+a eunuch, had made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths
+and maidens about his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only
+had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue
+crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by his side, a whip in one
+hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpass
+all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter
+had was a grey svitka with more holes in it than there are gold pieces
+in a Jew's pocket. And that was not the worst of it, but this: that
+Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have
+chanced to see. My deceased grandfather's aunt used to say--and you
+know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call
+anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this Cossack
+maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just
+bathed in God's dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and coquets
+with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such as our
+maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow
+pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched
+as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight
+of which the youth smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs
+of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as
+young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs
+interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons), fell in curls over her
+kuntush.[9] Eh! may I never intone another alleluia in the choir, if I
+would not have kissed her, in spite of the grey which is making its
+way all through the old wool which covers my pate, and my old woman
+beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know what happens when
+young men and maids live side by side. In the twilight the heels of
+red boots were always visible in the place where Pid�rka chatted with
+her Petrus. But Korzh would never have suspected anything out of the
+way, only one day--it is evident that none but the Evil One could have
+inspired him--Petrus took it into his head to kiss the Cossack
+maiden's rosy lips with all his heart in the passage, without first
+looking well about him; and that same Evil One--may the son of a dog
+dream of the holy cross!--caused the old greybeard, like a fool, to
+open the cottage-door at that same moment. Korzh was petrified,
+dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky
+kisses had completely stunned him. It surprised him more than the blow
+of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik generally
+drives out his intoxication for lack of fusees and powder.
+
+    [8] Elder.
+
+    [9] Upper garment in Little Russia.
+
+Recovering himself, he took his grandfather's hunting-whip from the
+wall, and was about to belabour Peter's back with it, when Pid�rka's
+little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other,
+and, grasping his father's legs with his little hands, screamed out,
+"Daddy, daddy! don't beat Petrus!" What was to be done? A father's
+heart is not made of stone. Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he
+led him quietly from the house. "If you ever show yourself in my
+cottage again, or even under the windows, look out, Petr�! by Heaven,
+your black moustache will disappear; and your black locks, though
+wound twice about your ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name
+is not Terentii Korzh." So saying, he gave him a little taste of his
+fist in the nape of his neck, so that all grew dark before Petrus, and
+he flew headlong. So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow seized
+upon our doves; and a rumour was rife in the village, that a certain
+Pole, all embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre, spurs, and
+pockets jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan
+Taras goes through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh's
+house. Now, it is well known why the father is visited when there is a
+black-browed daughter about. So, one day, Pid�rka burst into tears,
+and clutched the hand of her Ivas. "Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly
+to Petrus, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him all: I
+would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his white face,
+but my fate decrees not so. More than one towel have I wet with
+burning tears. I am sad, I am heavy at heart. And my own father is my
+enemy. I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not love. Tell him they
+are preparing a wedding, but there will be no music at our wedding:
+ecclesiastics will sing instead of pipes and kobzas.[10] I shall not
+dance with my bridegroom: they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be
+my dwelling,--of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross will
+stand upon the roof."
+
+    [10] Eight-stringed musical instrument.
+
+Petr� stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent
+child lisped out Pid�rka's words to him. "And I, unhappy man, thought
+to go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my
+beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us. I will have a
+wedding, too, dear little fish, I, too; but no ecclesiastics will be
+at that wedding. The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over
+me; the smooth field will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my
+roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash
+the Cossack's bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. But what am I?
+Of whom, to whom, am I complaining? 'Tis plain, God willed it so. If I
+am to be lost, then so be it!" and he went straight to the tavern.
+
+My late grandfather's aunt was somewhat surprised on seeing Petrus in
+the tavern, and at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and she
+stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy,
+about half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his
+woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter
+than wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground. "You have
+sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him. He looked
+round--Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like a brush, his
+eyes like those of a bull. "I know what you lack: here it is." Then
+he jingled a leather purse which hung from his girdle, and smiled
+diabolically. Petr� shuddered. "He, he, he! yes, how it shines!" he
+roared, shaking out ducats into his hand: "he, he, he! and how it
+jingles! And I only ask one thing for a whole pile of such
+shiners."--"It is the Evil One!" exclaimed Petr�:--"Give them here! I
+am ready for anything!" They struck hands upon it. "See here, Petr�,
+you are ripe just in time: tomorrow is St. John the Baptist's day.
+Only on this one night in the year does the fern blossom. Delay not. I
+will await thee at midnight in the Bear's ravine."
+
+I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the woman brings
+their corn, with as much anxiety as Petrus awaited the evening. And,
+in fact, he looked to see whether the shadows of the trees were not
+lengthening, if the sun were not turning red towards setting; and, the
+longer he watched, the more impatient he grew. How long it was!
+Evidently, God's day had lost its end somewhere. And now the sun is
+gone. The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark.
+It grows colder in the fields. It gets dusky, and more dusky, and at
+last quite dark. At last! With heart almost bursting from his bosom,
+he set out on his way, and cautiously descended through the dense
+woods into the deep hollow called the Bear's ravine. Basavriuk was
+already waiting there. It was so dark, that you could not see a yard
+before you. Hand in hand they penetrated the thin marsh, clinging to
+the luxuriant thorn-bushes, and stumbling at almost every step. At
+last they reached an open spot. Petr� looked about him: he had never
+chanced to come there before. Here Basavriuk halted.
+
+"Do you see, before you stand three hillocks? There are a great many
+sorts of flowers upon them. But may some power keep you from plucking
+even one of them. But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look
+not round, no matter what may seem to be going on behind thee."
+
+Petr� wanted to ask--and behold, he was no longer there. He approached
+the three hillocks--where were the flowers? He saw nothing. The wild
+steppe-grass darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance.
+But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole bed of
+flowers, all wonderful, all strange: and there were also the simple
+fronds of fern. Petr� doubted his senses, and stood thoughtfully
+before them, with both hands upon his sides.
+
+"What prodigy is this? one can see these weeds ten times in a day:
+what marvel is there about them? was not devil's-face laughing at me?"
+
+Behold! the tiny flower-bud crimsons, and moves as though alive. It is
+a marvel, in truth. It moves, and grows larger and larger, and flashes
+like a burning coal. The tiny star flashes up, something bursts
+softly, and the flower opens before his eyes like a flame, lighting
+the others about it. "Now is the time," thought Petr�, and extended
+his hand. He sees hundreds of shaggy hands reach from behind him, also
+for the flower; and there is a running about from place to place, in
+the rear. He half shut his eyes, plucked sharply at the stalk, and the
+flower remained in his hand. All became still. Upon a stump sat
+Basavriuk, all blue like a corpse. He moved not so much as a finger.
+His eyes were immovably fixed on something visible to him alone: his
+mouth was half open and speechless. All about, nothing stirred. Ugh!
+it was horrible!--But then a whistle was heard, which made Petr�'s
+heart grow cold within him; and it seemed to him that the grass
+whispered, and the flowers began to talk among themselves in delicate
+voices, like little silver bells; the trees rustled in waving
+contention;--Basavriuk's face suddenly became full of life and his
+eyes sparkled. "The witch has just returned," he muttered between his
+teeth. "See here, Petr�: a beauty will stand before you in a moment;
+do whatever she commands; if not--you are lost for ever." Then he
+parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick, and before him stood a tiny
+izb�, on chicken's legs, as they say. Basavriuk smote it with his
+fist, and the wall trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them,
+and with a whine, transforming itself into a cat, flew straight at his
+eyes. "Don't be angry, don't be angry, you old Satan!" said Basavriuk,
+employing such words as would have made a good man stop his ears.
+Behold, instead of a cat, an old woman with a face wrinkled like a
+baked apple, and all bent into a bow: her nose and chin were like a
+pair of nut-crackers. "A stunning beauty!" thought Petr�; and cold
+chills ran down his back. The witch tore the flower from his hand,
+bent over, and muttered over it for a long time, sprinkling it with
+some kind of water. Sparks flew from her mouth, froth appeared on her
+lips.
+
+"Throw it away," she said, giving it back to Petr�.
+
+Petr� threw it, and what wonder was this? the flower did not fall
+straight to the earth, but for a long while twinkled like a fiery ball
+through the darkness, and swam through the air like a boat: at last it
+began to sink lower, and fell so far away, that the little star,
+hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible. "Here!" croaked
+the old woman, in a dull voice: and Basavriuk, giving him a spade,
+said, "Dig here, Petr�: here you will find more gold than you or Korzh
+ever dreamed of."
+
+Petr� spat on his hands, seized the spade, applied his foot, and
+turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time.... There was
+something hard: the spade clinked, and would go no farther. Then his
+eyes began to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried to
+seize it; but the chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther,
+and deeper still: and behind him he heard a laugh, more like a
+serpent's hiss. "No, you shall not see the gold until you procure
+human blood," said the witch, and led up to him a child of six,
+covered with a white sheet, indicating by a sign that he was to cut
+off his head. Petr� was stunned. A trifle, indeed, to cut off a man's
+or even an innocent child's head for no reason whatever! In wrath he
+tore off the sheet enveloping his head, and behold! before him stood
+Ivas. And the poor child crossed his little hands, and hung his
+head.... Petr� flew upon the witch with the knife like a madman, and
+was on the point of laying hands on her....
+
+"What did you promise for the girl?" ... thundered Basavriuk; and like
+a shot he was on his back. The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame
+flashed from the earth; it illumined it all inside, and it was as if
+moulded of crystal; and all that was within the earth became visible,
+as if in the palm of the hand. Ducats, precious stones in chests and
+kettles, were piled in heaps beneath the very spot they stood on. His
+eyes burned, ... his mind grew troubled.... He grasped the knife like
+a madman, and the innocent blood spurted into his eyes. Diabolical
+laughter resounded on all sides. Misshaped monsters flew past him in
+herds. The witch, fastening her hands in the headless trunk, like a
+wolf, drank its blood.... All went round in his head. Collecting all
+his strength, he set out to run. Everything turned red before him. The
+trees seemed steeped in blood, and burned and groaned. The sky glowed
+and glowered.... Burning point, like lightning, flickered before his
+eyes. Utterly exhausted, he rushed into his miserable hovel, and fell
+to the ground like a log. A death-like sleep overpowered him.
+
+Two days and two nights did Petr� sleep, without once awakening. When
+he came to himself, on the third day, he looked long at all the
+corners of his hut; but in vain did he endeavour to recollect; his
+memory was like a miser's pocket, from which you cannot entice a
+quarter of a kopek. Stretching himself, he heard something clash at
+his feet. He looked--two bags of gold. Then only, as if in a dream, he
+recollected that he had been seeking some treasure, that something had
+frightened him in the woods.... But at what price he had obtained it,
+and how, he could by no means understand.
+
+Korzh saw the sacks,--and was mollified. "Such a Petrus, quite unheard
+of! yes, and did I not love him? Was he not to me as my own son?" And
+the old fellow carried on his fiction until it reduced him to tears.
+Pid�rka began to tell him some passing gipsies had stolen Ivas; but
+Petr� could not even recall him--to such a degree had the Devil's
+influence darkened his mind! There was no reason for delay. The Pole
+was dismissed, and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls were baked,
+towels and handkerchiefs embroidered; the young people were seated at
+table; the wedding-loaf was cut; banduras, cymbals, pipes, kobzi,
+sounded, and pleasure was rife....
+
+A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the present day. My
+grandfather's aunt used to tell--what doings!--how the maidens--in
+festive head-dresses of yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which
+they bound gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the
+seams with red silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers; in morocco
+shoes, with high iron heels--danced the gorlitza as swimmingly as
+peacocks, and as wildly as the whirlwind; how the youths--with their
+ship-shaped caps upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, with a
+little slit at the nape where the hair-net peeped through, and two
+horns projecting, one in front and another behind, of the very finest
+black lambskin; in kuntushas of the finest blue silk with red
+borders--stepped forward one by one, their arms akimbo in stately
+form, and executed the gopak; how the lads--in tall Cossack caps, and
+light cloth svitkas, girt with silver embroidered belts, their short
+pipes in their teeth--skipped before them, and talked nonsense. Even
+Korzh could not contain himself, as he gazed at the young people, from
+getting gay in his old age. Bandura in hand, alternately puffing at
+his pipe and singing, a brandy-glass upon his head, the greybeard
+began the national dance amid loud shouts from the merry-makers. What
+will not people devise in merry mood! They even began to disguise
+their faces. They did not look like human beings. They are not to be
+compared with the disguises which we have at our weddings nowadays.
+What do they do now? Why, imitate gipsies and Moscow pedlars. No! then
+one used to dress himself as a Jew, another as the Devil: they would
+begin by kissing each other, and end by seizing each other by the
+hair.... God be with them! you laughed till you held your sides. They
+dressed themselves in Turkish and Tartar garments. All upon them
+glowed like a conflagration ... and then they began to joke and play
+pranks.... Well, then away with the saints!
+
+An amusing thing happened to my grandfather's aunt, who was at this
+wedding. She was dressed in a voluminous Tartar robe, and, wineglass
+in hand, was entertaining the company. The Evil One instigated one man
+to pour vodka over her from behind. Another, at the same moment,
+evidently not by accident, struck a light, and touched it to her; ...
+the flame flashed up; poor aunt, in terror, flung her robe from her,
+before them all.... Screams, laughter, jests, arose, as if at a fair.
+In a word, the old folks could not recall so merry a wedding.
+
+Pid�rka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman and lady. There was
+plenty of everything, and everything was handsome.... But honest
+people shook their heads when they looked at their way of living.
+"From the Devil no good can come," they unanimously agreed. "Whence,
+except from the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth? Where
+else could he get such a lot of gold? Why, on the very day that he got
+rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?" Say, if you can, that
+people imagine things! In fact, a month had not passed, and no one
+would have recognized Petrus. Why, what had happened to him? God
+knows. He sits in one spot, and says no word to any one: he thinks
+continually, and seems to be trying to recall something. When Pid�rka
+succeeds in getting him to speak, he seems to forget himself, carries
+on a conversation, and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently
+glances at the sacks, "Stop, stop! I have forgotten," he cries, and
+again plunges into revery, and again strives to recall something.
+Sometimes when he has sat long in a place, it seems to him as though
+it were coming, just coming back to mind, ... and again all fades
+away. It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern: they bring him
+vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to him. Some one comes
+along, and strikes him on the shoulder; ... but beyond that everything
+is veiled in darkness before him. The perspiration streams down his
+face, and he sits exhausted in the same place.
+
+What did not Pid�rka do? She consulted the sorceress; and they poured
+out fear, and brewed stomach-ache,[11]--but all to no avail. And so
+the summer passed. Many a Cossack had mowed and reaped: many a
+Cossack, more enterprising than the rest, had set off upon an
+expedition. Flocks of ducks were already crowding our marshes, but
+there was not even a hint of improvement.
+
+    [11] "To pour out fear," is done with us in case of fear;
+    when it is desired to know what caused it, melted lead or wax
+    is poured into water and the object whose form it assumes is
+    the one which frightened the sick person; after this, the
+    fear departs. _S�nvashnitza_ is brewed for giddiness, and
+    pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is burned,
+    thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled
+    with water, which is placed on the patient's stomach: after
+    an incantation, he is given a spoonful of this water to
+    drink.
+
+It was red upon the steppes. Ricks of grain, like Cossacks' caps,
+dotted the fields here and there. On the highway were to be
+encountered wagons loaded with brushwood and logs. The ground had
+become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had
+the snow begun to besprinkle the sky, and the branches of the trees
+were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the
+red-breasted finch hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish
+Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with
+huge sticks, chased wooden tops upon the ice; while their fathers lay
+quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in
+their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to
+take the air, and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the
+snow began to melt, and the ice rind slipped away: but Petr� remained
+the same; and, the longer it went on, the more morose he grew. He sat
+in the middle of the cottage as though nailed to the spot, with the
+sacks of gold at his feet. He grew shy, his hair grew long, he became
+terrible; and still he thought of but one thing, still he tried to
+recall something, and got angry and ill-tempered because he could not
+recall it. Often, rising wildly from his seat, he gesticulates
+violently, fixes his eyes on something as though desirous of catching
+it: his lips move as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten
+word--and remain speechless. Fury takes possession of him: he gnaws
+and bites his hands like a man half crazy, and in his vexation tears
+out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he falls into
+forgetfulness, as it were, and again begins to recall, and is again
+seized with fury and fresh tortures.... What visitation of God is
+this?
+
+Pid�rka was neither dead nor alive. At first it was horrible to her to
+remain alone in the cottage; but, in course of time, the poor woman
+grew accustomed to her sorrow. But it was impossible to recognize the
+Pid�rka of former days. No blush, no smile: she was thin and worn with
+grief, and had wept her bright eyes away. Once, some one who evidently
+took pity on her, advised her to go to the witch who dwelt in the
+Bear's ravine, and enjoyed the reputation of being able to cure every
+disease in the world. She determined to try this last remedy: word by
+word she persuaded the old woman to come to her. This was St. John's
+Eve, as it chanced. Petr� lay insensible on the bench, and did not
+observe the new-comer. Little by little he rose, and looked about him.
+Suddenly he trembled in every limb, as though he were on the scaffold:
+his hair rose upon his head, ... and he laughed such a laugh as
+pierced Pid�rka's heart with fear. "I have remembered, remembered!"
+he cried in terrible joy; and, swinging a hatchet round his head, he
+flung it at the old woman with all his might. The hatchet penetrated
+the oaken door two vershok.[12] The old woman disappeared; and a child
+of seven in a white blouse, with covered head, stood in the middle of
+the cottage.... The sheet flew off. "Ivas!" cried Pid�rka, and ran to
+him; but the apparition became covered from head to foot with blood,
+and illumined the whole room with red light.... She ran into the
+passage in her terror, but, on recovering herself a little, wished to
+help him; in vain! the door had slammed to behind her so securely that
+she could not open it. People ran up, and began to knock: they broke
+in the door, as though there were but one mind among them. The whole
+cottage was full of smoke; and just in the middle, where Petrus had
+stood, was a heap of ashes, from which smoke was still rising. They
+flung themselves upon the sacks: only broken potsherds lay there
+instead of ducats. The Cossacks stood with staring eyes and open
+mouths, not daring to move a hair, as if rooted to the earth, such
+terror did this wonder inspire in them.
+
+    [12] Three inches and a half.
+
+I do not remember what happened next. Pid�rka took a vow to go upon a
+pilgrimage, collected the property left her by her father, and in a
+few days it was as if she had never been in the village. Whither she
+had gone, no one could tell. Officious old women would have dispatched
+her to the same place whither Petr� had gone; but a Cossack from Kiev
+reported that he had seen, in a cloister, a nun withered to a mere
+skeleton, who prayed unceasingly; and her fellow-villagers recognized
+her as Pid�rka, by all the signs,--that no one had ever heard her
+utter a word; that she had come on foot, and had brought a frame for
+the ikon of God's mother, set with such brilliant stones that all were
+dazzled at the sight.
+
+But this was not the end, if you please. On the same day that the Evil
+One made way with Petrus, Basavriuk appeared again; but all fled from
+him. They knew what sort of a bird he was,--none else than Satan, who
+had assumed human form in order to unearth treasures; and, since
+treasures do not yield to unclean hands, he seduced the young. That
+same year, all deserted their earth huts, and collected in a village;
+but, even there, there was no peace, on account of that accursed
+Basavriuk. My late grandfather's aunt said that he was particularly
+angry with her, because she had abandoned her former tavern, and tried
+with all his might to revenge himself upon her. Once the village
+elders were assembled in the tavern, and, as the saying goes, were
+arranging the precedence at the table, in the middle of which was
+placed a small roasted lamb, shame to say. They chattered about this,
+that, and the other,--among the rest about various marvels and strange
+things. Well, they saw something; it would have been nothing if only
+one had seen it, but all saw it; and it was this: the sheep raised his
+head; his goggling eyes became alive and sparkled; and the black,
+bristling moustache, which appeared for one instant, made a
+significant gesture at those present. All, at once, recognized
+Basavriuk's countenance in the sheep's head: my grandfather's aunt
+thought it was on the point of asking for vodka.... The worthy elders
+seized their hats, and hastened home.
+
+Another time, the church starost himself, who was fond of an
+occasional private interview with my grandfather's brandy-glass, had
+not succeeded in getting to the bottom twice, when he beheld the glass
+bowing very low to him. "Satan take you, let us make the sign of the
+cross over you!" ... And the same marvel happened to his better half.
+She had just begun to mix the dough in a huge kneading-trough, when
+suddenly the trough sprang up. "Stop, stop! where are you going?"
+Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went skipping all about the
+cottage.... You may laugh, but it was no laughing-matter to your
+grandfathers. And in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the
+village with holy water, and chase the Devil through the streets with
+his brush; and my late grandfather's aunt long complained, that, as
+soon as it was dark, some one came knocking at her door, and
+scratching at the wall.
+
+Well! All appears to be quiet now, in the place where our village
+stands; but it was not so very long ago--my father was still
+alive--that I remember how a good man could not pass the ruined
+tavern, which a dishonest race had long managed for their own
+interest. From the smoke-blackened chimneys, smoke poured out in a
+pillar, and rising high in the air, as if to take an observation,
+rolled off like a cap, scattering burning coals over the steppe; and
+Satan (the son of a dog should not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully
+in his lair, that the startled ravens rose in flocks from the
+neighbouring oak-wood, and flew through the air with wild cries.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save
+church-yard ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of
+graves, and all eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the pool.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking stars, and the wicked and
+devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+good men astray.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owl, as he flappeth
+along lazily; or the magician, as he rideth on his infernal
+broomstick, whistling through the air like the arrows of a Yorkshire
+archer.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that two
+beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse
+with each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the
+heathens feigned), but of demons; and the second, with whom he held
+company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir
+Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre,
+Villacerf and autre lieux. But the great die as well as the humble;
+and nothing remained of brave Roger now, but his coffin and his
+deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had
+bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was
+stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking
+into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo,
+would groan and roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatory, being
+bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and
+roast in saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through
+the clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for
+want of a single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the demon. "You were on earth so wicked, that
+not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame a
+creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
+subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honour, as am I also:" and to show his authority,
+he lashed with his tail the ribs of the wretched Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for
+my sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail,
+by her prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that
+every day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks
+which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor
+carcass, were now not applied above once a week; the roasting had
+ceased, the boiling had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept
+up, to remind me of my situation."
+
+"A gentle stew," said the demon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been
+a blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the demon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of the
+prayer." And hereat the wretched spirit began to weep and whine
+piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the
+tail of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the demon; "but I know of no
+remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without a doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth,
+except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+saved."
+
+"Aves with them are _rarae_ aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that no
+one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what has a
+poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup
+of cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year,
+that none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the demon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
+Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
+banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the demon: "with the baron or the
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that
+it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
+visitors. Her fair cheek rested in her white arm, and her white arm
+on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported
+by sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book
+of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
+amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed
+for ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. "The jade is at her old
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villainous
+page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle
+(for a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of
+his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. "What's
+o'clock?" said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is he
+come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the
+love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a
+year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single
+ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee tomorrow, uncle."
+
+"Tonight, or never."
+
+"Well, tonight be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
+her the prayer-book, from under the table; but he had no sooner
+touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. "It
+was hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own particular
+pitchfork." And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid
+of her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the demon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
+and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+    "Now the toils of day are over,
+      And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+    Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+      The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+    "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+      Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+    And summoning the stars to guard
+      The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the
+song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratia plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+    "The faithful night! Now all things lie
+      Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+    In pious hope I hither hie,
+      And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+    "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+      (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+    Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+      My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron. "Upon my soul, this is too bad!" and he
+thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But _she_ only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to the
+lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
+words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar,
+Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will
+come the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
+page sung away till morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and
+Mercurius slunk silently out of the window. "Had I hanged that knave
+Edward, as I did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung
+mine ave, and I should have been by this time an angel in heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedlar, who shall,
+finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair
+Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying,
+we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much
+for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he
+would not, and he could not cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the
+brother might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
+there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
+signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk," and the
+gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master.
+Mercurius was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid
+countenance into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him
+wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a
+person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of
+the company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
+which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honour to act as his counsellor and
+attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the demon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?" But Sir Randal looked very
+blank at this proposition. "I mean life spiritual, Randal," said Sir
+Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing
+all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so
+popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his
+first appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with
+him, and used his utmost eloquence and endeavours to convert the
+devil; the knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the
+men-at-arms forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded
+round the two strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse.
+The ghostly man, however, had little chance in the controversy, and
+certainly little learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him.
+"Father Peter," said he, "our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want
+of a single ave: wilt thou say it for him?" "Willingly, my lord," said
+the monk, "with my book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to
+read, without which aid it appeared that the holy father could not
+manage the desired prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his
+devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father
+Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent
+ditty:--
+
+    "Some love the matin-chimes, which tell
+      The hour of prayer to sinner:
+    But better far's the mid-day bell,
+      Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+    For when I see a smoking fish,
+      Or capon drowned in gravy,
+    Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+      Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+    "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+      Whereon I sit so jolly;
+    A smiling rosy country wench
+      My saint and patron holy.
+    I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+      I press her ringlets wavy.
+    And in her willing ear I speak
+      A most religious ave.
+
+    "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+      And holy saints forgiving;
+    For sure he leads a right good life
+      Who thus admires good living.
+    Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+      Our blood celestial ichor:
+    Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+      They may not change our liquor!"
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
+an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms,
+and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most
+melodious and emphatic glee. "I am sorry, fair uncle," hiccupped Sir
+Randal, "that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a
+more orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
+another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last
+confessor." And he wished his nephew a surly goodnight, as he prepared
+to quit the room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
+his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humour. He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
+his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods,
+and the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two
+in Champagne found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the
+court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage
+and cloister, until they reached the door of the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer;
+his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead
+of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew;
+and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his
+wager with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period, had
+the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little
+chance with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his
+soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight; "and
+thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
+of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
+alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee; however, thou
+mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
+will stand without for five minutes when it will be time to commence
+our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's room
+more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he
+stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his
+long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver
+rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I am,"
+said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from
+pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who
+was inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago that
+the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy
+wicked compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy miserable
+brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he may escape from
+paying the awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath deceived
+me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
+return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a
+saint), "I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated,
+and sped hither to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the Saint, 'hath but
+one day more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject
+of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying
+an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy monk,
+"I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body and
+soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger, fiercely;
+"pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. "Amen!"
+said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it
+was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do not
+fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: _but this time
+the devil had not his tail round his neck_. "I will let thee off thy
+bet," said he to the demon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the demon, politely, "that our ways
+separate here." Sir Roger sailed gaily upwards: while Mercurius having
+bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth,
+and perhaps lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the
+devil dashed him against the iron spikes and buttresses of the
+church.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
+came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
+butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerable for cutlets) to quit
+the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair
+creature's name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as
+ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the
+painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any
+of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in
+numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
+Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge,
+who was by this time the offspring of their affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
+lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+household; baker's bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father,
+unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and
+swore that his daughter, and the dauber, her husband, should have no
+more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and
+crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do
+without: but in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish,
+and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a
+kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they,
+in course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great
+warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a
+washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and
+arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a second
+father in _her uncle_,--a base pun, which showed that her mind was
+corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple Griskinissa
+of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humour
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
+foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear,
+and the peach-colour on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and
+crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck
+fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair,
+wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once
+so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of
+his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck,
+and cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the
+neighbours could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings;
+bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the
+floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering
+through the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and
+Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the
+brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a
+picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced
+a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and
+swore in the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of genius!" cried
+he, "was I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be
+bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the
+world, or sold only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has
+misled me; cursed be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or
+steal, let me sell myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil,
+I should not be more wretched than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder
+of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
+"Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze;
+when, as sure as I'm living, a little imp spurted out from the hole
+upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily
+manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to
+be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then
+he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the
+poor painter what he wanted with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself
+at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out, with his
+heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the
+allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
+am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me
+a little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and with one of Mr. Macready's
+best looks, said,--
+
+    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+    Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but
+felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
+of his new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
+how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
+the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
+the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of
+an article which, in itself, is a supposition--a valueless, windy,
+uncertain property of yours, called by some poet of your own, I think,
+an _animula_, _vagula_, _blandula_--bah! there is no use beating about
+the bush--I mean _a soul_. Come, let me have it; you know you will
+sell it some other way, and not get such good pay for your
+bargain!"--and, having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his
+fob a sheet as big as a double _Times_, only there was a different
+_stamp_ in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
+to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
+found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
+skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over
+the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven
+years, and at the end of that time was to become the property of
+the--; =provided= that during the course of the seven years, every
+single wish which he might form should be gratified by the other of
+the contracting parties; otherwise the deed became null and nonavenue,
+and Gambouge should be left "to go to the--his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with
+poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at
+this day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask
+will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me,
+it is the best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like
+scandal. But if you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and
+out of the course of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of
+this you are the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but
+whether up the chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture
+or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of
+delight, as, heaven forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be,
+if he were allowed an opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon. "I wonder whether this be a reality or a
+dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means
+to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I
+could see a capon and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so;
+and lo! there was a _restaurateur's_ boy at the door, supporting a
+tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a
+tall amber-coloured flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did _ask for_ these things."
+But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on
+his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew they were for
+old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived
+on the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
+the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning
+his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+inevitable bill which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the back-bone, "what a
+dinner! what wine!--and how gaily served up too!" There were silver
+forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver
+dish. "Why the money for this dish and these spoons," cried Simon,
+"would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH"--and here Simon
+whistled, and turned round to see that no one was peeping--"I wish
+the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought Simon
+to himself; "why should not I _take them_?" and take them he did.
+"Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I would as
+soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout,
+and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he
+was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the
+pawnbroker--that establishment which is called in France the Mont de
+Pi�t�. "I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon,
+"with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. "I can give you
+nothing upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Caf� Morisot,' Rue de la
+Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper." And, so
+saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he
+wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for
+crime--_when crime is found out!_--otherwise, conscience takes matters
+much more easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
+virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is no
+reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have
+half the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. "Give
+me half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these
+pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
+"seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
+gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
+less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
+up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon
+it was inscribed the simple number, 152. "A gambling-house," thought
+Gambouge. "I WISH I had half the money that is now on the table, up
+stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of _rouge et noir_. Gambouge's five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was
+more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
+round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after
+Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
+thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
+the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, "now it is that I
+begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about merit," he cried; "talk
+about fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of
+_zeroes_." And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
+received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
+lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds upon the table. Suffice it to say,
+that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
+bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had
+been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a
+prince for half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had
+a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He
+repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
+_restaurateur's_ plate. "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an
+action like this of a man who has a property like mine!" So he went
+back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable. "My
+friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most sacred:
+I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy money. In the
+name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully sold
+thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
+that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I will never sell it at
+all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of
+five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is
+the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
+months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I _stole_ that
+plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
+houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer
+the thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did
+wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
+"sign me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote
+according to Gambouge's dictation: "Received, for thirteen ounces of
+plate, twenty pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou
+art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds'
+worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a
+convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money,
+or I will bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
+up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now
+returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner,
+and restored the plate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a
+profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown
+rich, grew likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father.
+He fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And
+I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre,
+in similar circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
+than ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he
+went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and _vice vers�_: in fact,
+she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a
+cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be
+supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the most
+miserable dog in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point of
+drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and during a
+considerable number of hours in each day, he thus dissipated,
+partially, his domestic chagrin. O philosophy! we may talk of thee:
+but, except at the bottom of the wine-cup, where thou liest like
+truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
+was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes,
+and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six
+years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as
+that which we have described at the commencement of this history. He
+had grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to
+mass, and had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to
+consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole
+matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
+desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no other
+than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that
+bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church
+comfortably together, and entered afterwards a _caf�_, where they sat
+down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his
+button-hole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the
+marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.
+"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and
+began reading the papers of the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux anglais?
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of _The Times_ to
+Mr. Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled, politely, and examined the proffered page. "It is
+enormous," he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is."
+
+Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked
+at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. "Come, M. l'Abb�,"
+he said; "the heat and glare of this place are intolerable."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The stranger rose with them. "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abb� here, who
+will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it
+necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at
+church_, as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper
+signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
+live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had
+consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers
+of the Palais. But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his
+poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted
+could give him a pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
+all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee. "My friend," said he, "I have it! Eureka!--I have found
+it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit
+college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and
+tell his Holiness you will double all if he will give you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome
+_ventre � terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition,
+and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in
+due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise. Diabolus! your
+contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe
+on the road to salvation." In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the
+hand of his confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the
+cheeks of these good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them holding his sides, and lashing his tail
+about, as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+_that_?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner. "M. l'Abb�
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper
+may pass current _here_, it is not worth twopence in our country. What
+do I care about the Pope's absolution? You might just as well be
+absolved by your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abb�, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
+which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, "go
+thy ways, old fellow, that _cock won't fight_." And he retired up the
+chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
+scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed,
+or a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine
+than to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
+such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
+under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night
+or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and
+cursed his stars that he ever had married the butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in
+the city of Paris--he gaily presided at one end of his table, while
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other
+extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+appear. The old ladies screamed and hoped he would not appear naked;
+the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
+company. "I will not show my _credentials_," he said, blushing, and
+pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the
+person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months
+to come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit
+the bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honour, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying
+his hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will you
+be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
+anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who,
+in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest
+and fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. "Simon!" said she,
+"is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to
+obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract has
+to run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half
+a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her
+caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which
+falls from her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I
+will deliver myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G----, when flogged by Lord B----, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus
+did now. "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--ten
+more--a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy
+water, but don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs.
+Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly. "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every
+person in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped
+down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and
+lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty
+pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped
+Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through
+the keyhole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. "You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been asleep
+these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box on the
+ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
+Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
+and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+    Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,
+    Je suis plus savant que Balzac--
+    Plus sage que Pibrac;
+    Mon bras seul faisant l'attaque
+    De la nation cossaque,
+    La mettroit au sac;
+    De Charon je passerois le lac
+    En dormant dans son bac;
+    J'irois au fier Eac,
+    Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac,
+    Presenter du tabac.
+                       --_French Vaudeville._
+
+That Pierre Bon-Bon was a _restaurateur_ of uncommon qualifications,
+no man who, during the reign of ----, frequented the little _caf�_ in
+the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at
+liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree,
+skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more
+especially undeniable. His _p�t�s � la fois_ were beyond doubt
+immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays _sur la
+Nature_--his thoughts _sur l'Ame_--his observations _sur l'Esprit_? If
+his _omelettes_--if his _fricandeaux_ were inestimable, what
+_litt�rateur_ of that day would not have given twice as much for an
+"_Id�e de Bon-Bon_" as for all the trash of all the "_Id�es_" of all
+the rest of the _savants_? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no
+other man had ransacked--had read more than any other would have
+entertained a notion of reading--had understood more than any other
+would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although,
+while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to
+assert "that his _dicta_ evinced neither the purity of the Academy,
+nor the depth of the Lyceum"--although, mark me, his doctrines were by
+no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that
+they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of
+their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them
+abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon--but let this go no further--it is to
+Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The
+former was indeed not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an
+Aristotelian--nor did he, like the modern Leibnitz, waste those
+precious hours which might be employed in the invention of a
+_fricass�e_ or, _facili gradu_, the analysis of a sensation, in
+frivolous attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of
+ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was Ionic--Bon-Bon was equally
+Italic. He reasoned _a priori_--He reasoned _a posteriori_. His ideas
+were innate--or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond--he
+believed in Bossarion. Bon-Bon was emphatically a--Bon-Bonist.
+
+I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of _restaurateur_. I
+would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in
+fulfilling his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a
+proper estimation of their dignity and importance. Far from it. It
+was impossible to say in which branch of his profession he took the
+greater pride. In his opinion the powers of the intellect held
+intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. I am not
+sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the Chinese, who hold
+that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all events were
+right, he thought, who employed the same word for the mind and the
+diaphragm.[13] By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of
+gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the
+metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings--and what great man
+has not a thousand?--if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they
+were failings of very little importance--faults indeed which, in other
+tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.
+As regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it
+in this history but for the remarkable prominency--the extreme _alto
+relievo_--in which it jutted out from the plane of his general
+disposition. He could never let slip an opportunity of making a
+bargain.
+
+    [13] [Greek: Phrenes].
+
+Not that he was avaricious--no. It was by no means necessary to the
+satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own
+proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected--a trade of any
+kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances--a triumphant smile
+was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a
+knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.
+
+At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humour so peculiar
+as the one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark.
+At the epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity _not_ attracted
+observation, there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon
+reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon
+was found to differ widely from the downright grin with which he would
+laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown
+out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made
+in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of
+unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations
+implanted by the author of all evil for wise purposes of his own.
+
+The philosopher had other weaknesses--but they are scarcely worthy our
+serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary
+profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle.
+Whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid
+proof, of such profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far
+as I can learn, did not think the subject adapted to minute
+investigation;--nor do I. Yet in the indulgence of a propensity so
+truly classical, it is not to be supposed that the _restaurateur_
+would lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont to
+characterize, at one and the same time, his _essais_ and his
+_omelettes_. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted
+hour, and there were appropriate moments for the C�tes du Rh�ne. With
+him Sauternes was to M�doc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport
+with a syllogism in sipping St. P�ray, but unravel an argument over
+Clos-Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had
+it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the
+peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded--but this was by
+no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, _that_ trait of mind in
+the philosophic Bon-Bon _did_ begin at length to assume a character of
+strange intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with
+the _diablerie_ of his favourite German studies.
+
+To enter the little _caf�_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre was, at the
+period of our tale, to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius. Bon-Bon
+was a man of genius. There was not a _sous-cuisinier_ in Rouen who
+could not have told you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat
+knew it, and forbore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of
+genius. His large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the
+approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a
+sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of
+the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true
+that much of this habitual respect might have been attributed to the
+personal appearance of the metaphysician. A distinguished exterior
+will, I am constrained to say, have its way even with a beast; and I
+am willing to allow much in the outward man of the _restaurateur_
+calculated to impress the imagination of the quadruped. There is a
+peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the little great--if I may be
+permitted so equivocal an expression--which mere physical bulk alone
+will be found at all times inefficient in creating. If, however,
+Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his head was
+diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the rotundity
+of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon
+the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
+his acquirements--in its immensity a fitting habitation for his
+immortal soul.
+
+I might here--if it so pleased me--dilate upon the matter of
+habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external
+metaphysician. I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short,
+combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped
+white flannel cap and tassels--that his pea-green jerkin was not after
+the fashion of those worn by the common class of _restaurateurs_ at
+that day--that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning
+costume permitted--that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that
+barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the
+garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured
+velvet of Genoa--that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously
+filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the
+exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding
+and embroidery--that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
+material called _aimable_--that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form
+a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson
+devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the
+morning--and that his _tout ensemble_ gave rise to the remarkable
+words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, "that it was
+difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,
+or the rather a very Paradise of perfection." I might, I say,
+expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,--but I forbear; merely
+personal details may be left to historical novelists,--they are
+beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.
+
+I have said that "to enter the _caf�_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre
+was to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius"--but then it was only
+the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_.
+A sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one
+side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _p�t�_. On
+the back were visible in large letters _Oeuvres de Bon-Bon_. Thus was
+delicately shadowed forth the twofold occupation of the proprietor.
+
+Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building
+presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique
+construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the _caf�_.
+In a corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An
+array of curtains, together with a canopy _� la grecque_, gave it an
+air at once classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonally
+opposite, appeared, in direct family communion, the properties of the
+kitchen and the _biblioth�que_. A dish of polemics stood peacefully
+upon the dresser. Here lay an ovenful of the latest ethics--there a
+kettle of duodecimo _m�langes_. Volumes of German morality were hand
+and glove with the gridiron--a toasting-fork might be discovered by
+the side of Eusebius--Plato reclined at his ease in the
+frying-pan--and contemporary manuscripts were filed away upon the
+spit.
+
+In other respects the _Caf� de Bon-Bon_ might be said to differ little
+from the usual _restaurants_ of the period. A large fireplace yawned
+opposite the door. On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard
+displayed a formidable array of labelled bottles.
+
+It was here, about twelve o'clock one night, during the severe winter
+of ----, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having listened for some time to
+the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity--that
+Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked
+the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific
+mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of
+blazing fagots.
+
+It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or
+twice during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to
+its centre with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies
+of the wall, and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully
+the curtains of the philosopher's bed, and disorganized the economy of
+his _p�t�_-pans and papers. The huge folio sign that swung without,
+exposed to the fury of the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a
+moaning sound from its stanchions of solid oak.
+
+It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his
+chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a
+perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity
+of his meditations. In attempting _des oeufs � la Princesse_, he had
+unfortunately perpetrated an _omelette � la Reine_; the discovery of a
+principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew;
+and last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable
+bargains which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing
+to a successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these
+unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some
+degree of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is
+so well calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate
+vicinity the large black water-dog we have spoken of before, and
+settling himself uneasily in his chair, he could not help casting a
+wary and unquiet eye toward those distant recesses of the apartment
+whose inexorable shadows not even the red fire-light itself could more
+than partially succeed in overcoming. Having completed a scrutiny
+whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible to himself, he drew
+close to his seat a small table covered with books and papers, and
+soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous
+manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.
+
+He had been thus occupied for some minutes, when "I am in no hurry,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon," suddenly whispered a whining voice in the
+apartment.
+
+"The devil!" ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning
+the table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.
+
+"Very true," calmly replied the voice.
+
+"Very true!--what is very true?--how came you here?" vociferated the
+metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at
+full length upon the bed.
+
+"I was saying," said the intruder, without attending to the
+interrogatories,--"I was saying that I am not at all pushed for
+time--that the business, upon which I took the liberty of calling, is
+of no pressing importance--in short, that I can very well wait until
+you have finished your Exposition."
+
+"My Exposition!--there now!--how do _you_ know?--how came _you_ to
+understand that I was writing an Exposition--good God!"
+
+"Hush!" replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising
+quickly from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an
+iron lamp that depended overhead swung convulsively back from his
+approach.
+
+The philosopher's amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the
+stranger's dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure,
+exceedingly lean, but much above the common height, were rendered
+minutely distinct by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted
+tight to the skin, but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a
+century ago. These garments had evidently been intended for a much
+shorter person than their present owner. His ankles and wrists were
+left naked for several inches. In his shoes, however, a pair of very
+brilliant buckles gave the lie to the extreme poverty implied by the
+other portions of his dress. His head was bare, and entirely bald,
+with the exception of the hinder-part, from which depended a _queue_
+of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles, with side glasses,
+protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and at the same
+time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their colour or their
+conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a
+shirt; but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
+precision around the throat, and the ends, hanging down formally side
+by side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an
+ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and
+demeanour might have very well sustained a conception of that nature.
+Over his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an
+instrument resembling the _stylus_ of the ancients. In a breast-pocket
+of his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with
+clasps of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned
+outwardly from the person as to discover the words "_Rituel
+Catholique_" in white letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy
+was interestingly saturnine--even cadaverously pale. The forehead was
+lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of contemplation. The
+corners of the mouth were drawn down into an expression of the most
+submissive humility. There was also a clasping of the hands, as he
+stepped towards our hero--a deep sigh--and altogether a look of such
+utter sanctity as could not have failed to be unequivocally
+prepossessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the countenance of the
+metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory survey of his
+visitor's person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted
+him to a seat.
+
+There would however be a radical error in attributing this
+instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher to any one of
+those causes which might naturally be supposed to have had an
+influence. Indeed, Pierre Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to
+understand of his disposition, was of all men the least likely to be
+imposed upon by any speciousness of exterior deportment. It was
+impossible that so accurate an observer of men and things should have
+failed to discover, upon the moment, the real character of the
+personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To say no more,
+the conformation of his visitor's feet was sufficiently remarkable--he
+maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hat--there was a
+tremulous swelling about the hinder-part of his breeches--and the
+vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. Judge, then, with what
+feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself thrown thus at once
+into the society of a person for whom he had at all times entertained
+the most unqualified respect. He was, however, too much of the
+diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in
+regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to appear at
+all conscious of the high honour he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by
+leading his guest into conversation, to elicit some important ethical
+ideas, which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated
+publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same time
+immortalize himself--ideas which, I should have added, his visitor's
+great age, and well-known proficiency in the science of morals, might
+very well have enabled him to afford.
+
+Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit
+down, while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the
+fire, and place upon the now re-established table some bottles of
+Mousseaux. Having quickly completed these operations, he drew his
+chair _vis-�-vis_ to his companion's, and waited until the latter
+should open the conversation. But plans even the most skilfully
+matured are often thwarted in the outset of their application--and
+the _restaurateur_ found himself _nonplussed_ by the very first words
+of his visitor's speech.
+
+"I see you know me, Bon-Bon," said he; "ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hi!
+hi! hi--ho! ho! ho!--hu! hu! hu!"--and the Devil, dropping at once the
+sanctity of his demeanour, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from
+ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and,
+throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and
+uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches,
+joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off a tangent,
+stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.
+
+Not so the philosopher: he was too much a man of the world either to
+laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation
+of the cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see
+the white letters which formed the words "_Rituel Catholique_" on the
+book in his guest's pocket, momently changing both their colour and
+their import, and in a few seconds, in place of the original title,
+the words "_Registre des Condamn�s_" blaze forth in characters of red.
+This startling circumstance, when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor's
+remark, imparted to his manner an air of embarrassment which probably
+might not otherwise have been observed.
+
+"Why, sir," said the philosopher, "why, sir, to speak sincerely--I
+believe you are--upon my word--the d--dest--that is to say, I think--I
+imagine--I _have_ some faint--some _very_ faint idea--of the
+remarkable honour--"
+
+"Oh!--ah!--yes!--very well!" interrupted his Majesty; "say no more--I
+see how it is." And hereupon, taking off his green spectacles, he
+wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited
+them in his pocket.
+
+If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his
+amazement was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented
+itself to view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of
+curiosity to ascertain the colour of his guest's, he found them by no
+means black, as he had anticipated--nor grey, as might have been
+imagined--nor yet hazel nor blue--nor indeed yellow nor red--nor
+purple--nor white--nor green--nor any other colour in the heavens
+above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In
+short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no
+eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having
+existed at any previous period--for the space where eyes should
+naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level
+of flesh.
+
+It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some
+inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon; and the reply of
+his Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.
+
+"Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon--eyes! did you say?--oh!--ah!--I perceive! The
+ridiculous prints, eh, which are in circulation, have given you a
+false idea of my personal appearance. Eyes!--true. Eyes, Pierre
+Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place--_that_, you would say,
+is the head?--right--the head of a worm. To _you_, likewise, these
+optics are indispensable--yet I will convince you that my vision is
+more penetrating than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner--a
+pretty cat--look at her--observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you behold
+the thoughts--the thoughts, I say--the ideas--the reflections--which
+are being engendered in her pericranium? There it is now--you do not!
+She is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of
+her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of
+ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of
+metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of
+my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance,
+liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron or a pitchfork. To
+you, I allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavour,
+Bon-Bon, to use them well; _my_ vision is the soul."
+
+Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and
+pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without
+scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.
+
+"A clever book that of yours, Pierre," resumed his Majesty, tapping
+our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his
+glass after a thorough compliance with his visitor's injunction. "A
+clever book that of yours, upon my honour. It's a work after my own
+heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be
+improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That
+philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as
+much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a
+blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and
+for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity.
+I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral
+truth I am alluding?"
+
+"Cannot say that I--"
+
+"Indeed!--why it was I who told Aristotle that, by sneezing, men
+expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis."
+
+"Which is--hiccup!--undoubtedly the case," said the metaphysician,
+while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseaux, and
+offering his snuff-box to the fingers of his visitor.
+
+"There was Plato, too," continued his Majesty, modestly declining the
+snuff-box and the compliment it implied--"there was Plato, too, for
+whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew
+Plato, Bon-Bon?--ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at
+Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for
+an idea. I bade him write down that '[Greek: ho nous estin aulos].' He
+said that he would do so, and went home, while I stepped over to the
+pyramids. But my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even
+to aid a friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind the
+philosopher's chair as he was inditing the '[Greek: aulos].'
+
+"Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down.
+So the sentence now reads '[Greek: ho nous estin augos],' and is, you
+perceive, the fundamental doctrine in his metaphysics."
+
+"Were you ever at Rome?" asked the _restaurateur_, as he finished his
+second bottle of Mousseaux, and drew from the closet a larger supply
+of Chambertin.
+
+"But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time," said the
+Devil, as if reciting some passage from a book--"there was a time when
+occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft
+of all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the
+people, and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive
+power--at that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon--at that time _only_ I was in
+Rome, and I have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of
+its philosophy."[14]
+
+    [14] Ils �crivaient sur la philosophie (_Cicero_,
+    _Lucretius_, _Seneca_), mais c'�tait la philosophie
+    grecque.--_Condorcet._
+
+"What do you think of--what do you think of--hiccup!--Epicurus?"
+
+"What do I think of _whom_?" said the Devil, in astonishment; "you
+surely do not mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of
+Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir?--I am Epicurus! I am the same
+philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated
+by Diogenes Laertes."
+
+"That's a lie!" said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a
+little into his head.
+
+"Very well!--very well, sir!--very well, indeed, sir!" said his
+Majesty, apparently much flattered.
+
+"That's a lie!" repeated the _restaurateur_, dogmatically; "that's
+a--hiccup!--a lie!"
+
+"Well, well, have it your own way!" said the Devil, pacifically, and
+Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at an argument, thought it his duty
+to conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.
+
+"As I was saying," resumed the visitor--"as I was observing a little
+while ago, there are some very _outr�_ notions in that book of yours,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug
+about the soul? Pray, sir, what _is_ the soul?"
+
+"The--hiccup!--soul," replied the metaphysician, referring to his MS.,
+"is undoubtedly--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Indubitably--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Indisputably--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Evidently--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Incontrovertibly--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Hiccup!--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"And beyond all question, a--"
+
+"No, sir, the soul is no such thing!" (Here the philosopher, looking
+daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third
+bottle of Chambertin.)
+
+"Then--hiccup!--pray, sir--what--what is it?"
+
+"That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon," replied his
+Majesty, musingly. "I have tasted--that is to say, I have known some
+very bad souls, and some too--pretty good ones." Here he smacked his
+lips, and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in
+his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.
+
+He continued:
+
+"There was the soul of Cratinus--passable: Aristophanes--racy:
+Plato--exquisite--not _your_ Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your
+Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus--faugh! Then let me
+see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius.
+Then there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus
+Flaccus,--dear Quinty! as I called him when he sang a _saeculare_ for
+my amusement, while I toasted him, in pure good humour, on a fork. But
+they want _flavour_, these Romans. One fat Greek is worth a dozen of
+them, and besides will _keep_, which cannot be said of a Quirite. Let
+us taste your Sauterne."
+
+Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the _nil admirari_, and
+endeavoured to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however,
+conscious of a strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail.
+Of this, although extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher
+took no notice:--simply kicking the dog, and requesting him to be
+quiet. The visitor continued:
+
+"I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;--you know I am
+fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso,
+to my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong
+twang of Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus--and
+Titus Livius was positively Polybius and none other."
+
+"Hiccup!" here replied Bon-Bon, and his Majesty proceeded:
+
+"But if I _have_ a _penchant_, Monsieur Bon-Bon--if I _have_ a
+_penchant_, it is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is
+not every dev--I mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to
+_choose_ a philosopher. Long ones are _not_ good; and the best, if not
+carefully shelled, are apt to be a little rancid on account of the
+gall."
+
+"Shelled!!"
+
+"I mean taken out of the carcass."
+
+"What do you think of a--hiccup!--physician?"
+
+"_Don't_ mention them!--ugh! ugh!" (Here his Majesty retched
+violently.) "I never tasted but one--that rascal Hippocrates!--smelt
+of asafoetida--ugh! ugh! ugh!--caught a wretched cold washing him in
+the Styx--and after all he gave me the cholera-morbus."
+
+"The--hiccup!--wretch!" ejaculated Bon-Bon, "the--hiccup!--abortion of
+a pill-box!"--and the philosopher dropped a tear.
+
+"After all," continued the visitor, "after all, if a dev--if a
+gentleman wishes to _live_, he must have more talents than one or two;
+and with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Why we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know
+that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to
+keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death,
+unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is _not_ good), they
+will--smell--you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be
+apprehended when the souls are consigned to us in the usual way."
+
+"Hiccup!--hiccup!--good God! how _do_ you manage?"
+
+Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the
+Devil half started from his seat;--however, with a slight sigh, he
+recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: "I
+tell you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we _must_ have no more swearing."
+
+The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough
+comprehension and acquiescence, and the visitor continued:
+
+"Why, there are _several_ ways of managing. The most of us starve:
+some put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits
+_vivente corpore_, in which case I find they keep very well."
+
+"But the body!--hiccup!--the body!!"
+
+"The body, the body--well, what of the body?--oh! ah! I perceive. Why,
+sir, the body is not _at all_ affected by the transaction. I have made
+innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never
+experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and Nero,
+and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and--and a thousand
+others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter
+part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why isn't
+there A--, now, whom you know as well as I? Is _he_ not in possession
+of all his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener
+epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who--but, stay! I have his
+agreement in my pocket-book."
+
+Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a
+number of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the
+letters _Machi_--_Maza_--_Robesp_--with the words _Caligula_,
+_George_, _Elizabeth_. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of
+parchment, and from it read aloud the following words:
+
+"In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary
+to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d'or,
+I, being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the
+bearer of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the
+shadow called my soul. (Signed) A...."[15] (Here His Majesty repeated
+a name which I do not feel myself justified in indicating more
+unequivocally.)
+
+    [15] Query.--_Arouet?_
+
+"A clever fellow that," resumed he; "but, like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon,
+he was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a
+shadow! Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hu! hu! hu! Only think of a
+_fricass�ed_ shadow!"
+
+"_Only_ think--hiccup!--of a _fricass�ed_ shadow!" exclaimed our hero,
+whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of
+His Majesty's discourse. "Only think of a--hiccup!--_fricass�ed_
+shadow!! Now, damme!--hiccup!--humph! If _I_ would have been such
+a--hiccup!--nincompoop! _My_ soul, Mr.--humph!"
+
+"_Your_ soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?"
+
+"Yes, sir--hiccup!--_my_ soul is--"
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"_No_ shadow, damme!"
+
+"Did you mean to say--"
+
+"Yes, sir, _my_ soul is--hiccup!--humph!--yes, sir."
+
+"Did you not intend to assert--"
+
+"_My_ soul is--hiccup!--peculiarly qualified for--hiccup!--a--"
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"Stew."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"_Souffl�e._"
+
+"Eh!"
+
+"_Fricass�e._"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"_Rago�t_ and _fricandeau_--and see here, my good fellow! I'll let you
+have it--hiccup!--a bargain." Here the philosopher slapped His Majesty
+upon the back.
+
+"Couldn't think of such a thing," said the latter calmly, at the same
+time rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.
+
+"Am supplied at present," said His Majesty.
+
+"Hic-cup!--e-h?" said the philosopher.
+
+"Have no funds on hand."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Besides, very unhandsome in me--"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"To take advantage of--"
+
+"Hic-cup!"
+
+"Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation."
+
+Here the visitor bowed and withdrew--in what manner could not
+precisely be ascertained--but in a well-concerted effort to discharge
+a bottle at "the villain," the slender chain was severed that depended
+from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of
+the lamp.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL
+
+
+As I was sitting in my armchair and preparing an essay on the Devil in
+literature, sleep overpowered me; the pen fell from my hands, and my
+head reclined upon the desk. I had been thinking so much about the
+Devil in my waking hours, that the same idea pursued me after I had
+fallen asleep. I heard a gentle rap at the door, and having bawled out
+as usual, "Come in," a little gentleman entered, wrapped in a large
+blue cloth cloak, with a slouched hat, and goggles over his eyes.
+After bowing and scraping with considerable ceremony, he took off his
+hat, and threw his cloak over the back of a chair, when I immediately
+perceived that my visitor was no mortal. His face was hideously ugly;
+the skin appearing very much like wet paper, and the forehead covered
+with those cabalistic signs whose wondrous significance is best known
+to those who correct the press. On the end of his long hooked nose
+there seemed to me to be growing, like a carbuncle, the first letter
+of the alphabet, glittering with ink and ready to print. I observed,
+also, that each of his fingers and toes, or rather claws, was in the
+same manner terminated by one of the letters of the alphabet; and as
+he slashed round his tail to brush a fly off his nose, I noticed that
+the letter Z formed the extremity of that useful member. While I was
+looking with no small astonishment and some trepidation at my
+extraordinary visitor, he took occasion to inform me that he had
+taken liberty to call, as he was afraid I might forget him in the
+treatise which I was writing--an omission which he assured me would
+cause him no little mortification. "In me," says he, "you behold the
+prince and patron of printers' devils. My province is to preside over
+the hell of books; and if you will only take the trouble to accompany
+me a little way, I will show you some of the wonders of that world."
+As my imagination had lately been much excited by perusing Dante's
+_Inferno_, I was delighted with an adventure which promised to turn
+out something like his wonderful journey, and I readily consented to
+visit my new friend's dominions, and we sallied forth together. As we
+pursued our way, my conductor endeavoured to give me some information
+respecting the world I was about to enter, in order to prepare me for
+the wonders I should encounter there. "You must know," remarked he,
+"that books have souls as well as men; and the moment any work is
+published, whether successful or not, its soul appears in precisely
+the same form in another world; either in this domain, which is
+subject to me, or in a better region, over which I have no control. I
+have power only to exhibit the place of punishment for bad books,
+periodicals, pamphlets, and, in short, publications of every kind."
+
+We now arrived at the mouth of a cavern, which I did not remember to
+have ever noticed before, though I had repeatedly passed the spot in
+my walks. It looked to me more like the entrance to a coalmine than
+anything else, as the sides were entirely black. Upon examining them
+more closely, I found that they were covered with a black fluid which
+greatly resembled printer's ink, and which seemed to corrode and wear
+away the rocks of the cavern wherever it touched them. "We have lately
+received a large supply of political publications," said my companion;
+"and hell is perfectly saturated with their maliciousness. We carry on
+a profitable trade upon the earth, by retailing this ink to the
+principal political editors. Unfortunately, it is not found to answer
+very well for literary publications, though they have tried it with
+considerable success in printing the London _Quarterly_ and several of
+the other important reviews."
+
+The cavern widened as we advanced, and we came presently into a vast
+open plain, which was bounded on one side by a wall so high that it
+seemed to reach the very heavens. As we approached the wall I observed
+a vast gateway before us, closed up by folding doors. The gates opened
+at our approach, and we entered. I found myself in a warm sandy
+valley, bounded on one side by a steep range of mountains. A feeble
+light shone upon it, much like that of a sick chamber, and the air
+seemed confined and stifling like that of the abode of illness. My
+ears were assailed by a confused whining noise, as if all the litters
+of new-born puppies, kittens with their eyes unopened, and babes just
+come to light, in the whole world, were brought into one spot, and
+were whelping, mewing, and squalling at once. I turned in mute wonder
+to my guide for explanation; and he informed me that I now beheld the
+destined abode of all still-born and abortive publications; and the
+infantine noises which I heard were only their feeble wailing for the
+miseries they had endured in being brought into the world. I now saw
+what the feebleness of the light had prevented my observing before,
+that the soil was absolutely covered with books of every size and
+shape, from the little diamond almanac up to the respectable quarto. I
+saw folios there. These books were crawling about and tumbling over
+each other like blind whelps, uttering, at the same time, the most
+mournful cries. I observed one, however, which remained quite still,
+occasionally groaning a little, and appeared like an overgrown toad
+oppressed with its own heaviness. I drew near, and read upon the back,
+"_Resignation_, a Novel." The cover flew open, and the title-page
+immediately began to address me. I walked off, however, as fast as
+possible, only distinguishing a few words about "the injustice and
+severity of critics;" "bad taste of the public;" "very well
+considering;" "first effort;" "feminine mind," &c. &c. I presently
+discovered a very important-looking little book, stalking about among
+the rest in a great passion, kicking the others out of the way, and
+swearing like a trooper; till at length, apparently exhausted with its
+efforts, it sunk down to rise no more. "Ah ha!" exclaimed my little
+diabolical friend, "here is a new comer; let's see who he is;" and
+coming up, he turned it over with his foot so that we could see the
+back of it, upon which was printed "_The Monikins_, by the Author of,
+&c. &c." I noticed that the book had several marks across it, as if
+some one had been flogging the unfortunate work. "It is only the marks
+of the scourge," said my companion, "which the critics have used
+rather more severely, I think, than was necessary." I expected, after
+all the passion I had seen, and the great importance of feeling,
+arrogance, and vanity the little work had manifested, that it would
+have some pert remarks to make to us; but it was so much exhausted
+that it could not say a word. At the bottom of the valley was a small
+pond of a milky hue, from which there issued a perfume very much like
+the smell of bread and butter. An immense number of thin, prettily
+bound manuscript books were soaking in this pond of milk, all of
+which, I was informed, were _Young Ladies' Albums_, which it was
+necessary to souse in the slough, to prevent them from stealing
+passages from the various works about them. As soon as I heard what
+they were, I ran away with all my speed, having a mortal dread of
+these books.
+
+We had now traversed the valley, and, approaching the barrier of
+mountains, we found a passage cut through, which greatly resembled the
+Pausilipo, near Naples; it was closed on the side towards the valley,
+only with a curtain of white paper, upon which were printed the names
+of the principal reviews, which my conductor assured me were enough to
+prevent any of the unhappy works we had seen from coming near the
+passage.
+
+As we advanced through the mountains, occasional gleams of light
+appeared before us, and immediately vanished, leaving us in darkness.
+My guide, however, seemed to be well acquainted with the way, and we
+went on fearlessly till we emerged into an open field, lighted up by
+constant flashes of lightning, which glared from every side; the air
+was hot, and strongly impregnated with sulphur. "Each department of my
+dominions," said the Devil, "receives its light from the works which
+are sent there. You are now surrounded by the glittering but
+evanescent coruscations of the more recent novels. This department of
+hell was never very well supplied till quite lately, though Fielding,
+Smollett, Maturin, and Godwin, did what they could for us. Our
+greatest benefactors have been Disraeli, Bulwer, and Victor Hugo; and
+this glare of light, so painful to our eyes, proceeds chiefly from
+their books." There was a tremendous noise like the rioting of an army
+of drunken men, with horrible cries and imprecations, and fiend-like
+laughing, which made my blood curdle; and such a scrambling and
+fighting among the books, as I never saw before. I could not imagine
+at first what could be the cause of this, till I discovered at last a
+golden hill rising up like a cone in the midst of the plane, with just
+room enough for one book on the summit; and I found that the novels
+were fighting like so many devils for the occupation of this place.
+One work, however, had gained possession of it, and seemed to maintain
+its hold with a strength and resolution which bade defiance to the
+rest. I could not at first make out the name of this book, which
+seemed to stand upon its golden throne like the Prince of Hell; but
+presently the whole arch of the heavens glared with new brilliancy,
+and the magic name of _Vivian Grey_ flashed from the book in letters
+of scorching light. I was much afraid, however, that _Vivian_ would
+not long retain his post; for I saw _Pelham_ and _Peregrine Pickle_,
+and the terrible _Melmoth_ with his glaring eyes, coming together to
+the assault, when a whirlwind seized them all four and carried them
+away to a vast distance, leaving the elevation vacant for some other
+competitor. "There is no peace to the wicked, you see," said my
+Asmodeus. "These books are longing for repose, and they can get none
+on account of the insatiable vanity of their authors, whose desire for
+distinction made them careless of the sentiments they expressed and
+the principles they advocated. The great characteristic of works of
+this stamp is action, intense, painful action. They have none of that
+beautiful serenity which shines in Scott and Edgeworth; and they are
+condemned to illustrate, by an eternity of contest here, the restless
+spirit with which they are inspired."
+
+While I was looking on with fearful interest in the mad combat before
+me, the horizon seemed to be darkened, and a vast cloud rose up in the
+image of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stretched from the east to the
+west till he covered the firmament. In his talons he carried an open
+book, at the sight of which the battle around me was calmed; the
+lightnings ceased to flash, and there was an awful stillness. Then
+suddenly there glared from the book a sheet of fire, which rose in
+columns a thousand feet high, and filled the empyrean with intense
+light; the pillars of flame curling and wreathing themselves into
+monstrous letters, till they were fixed in one terrific glare, and I
+read--"BYRON." Even my companion quailed before the awful light, and I
+covered my face with my hands. When I withdrew them, the cloud and the
+book had vanished, and the contest was begun again--"You have seen the
+Prince of this division of hell," said my guide.
+
+We now began rapidly to descend into the bowels of the earth; and,
+after sinking some thousand feet, I found myself on terra firma again,
+and walking a little way, we came to a gate of massive ice, over which
+was written in vast letters--"My heritage is despair." We passed
+through, and immediately found ourselves in a vast basin of lead,
+which seemed to meet the horizon on every side. A bright light shone
+over the whole region; but it was not like the genial light of the
+sun. It chilled me through; and every ray that fell upon me seemed
+like the touch of ice. The deepest silence prevailed; and though the
+valley was covered with books, not one moved or uttered a sound. I
+drew near to one, and I shivered with intense cold as I read upon
+it--"Voltaire." "Behold," said the demon, "the hell of infidel books;
+the light which emanates from them is the light of reason, and they
+are doomed to everlasting torpor." I found it too cold to pursue my
+investigations any farther in this region, and I gladly passed on from
+the leaden gulf of Infidelity.
+
+I had no sooner passed the barrier which separated this department
+from the next, than I heard a confused sound like the quacking of
+myriads of ducks and geese, and a great flapping of wings; of which I
+soon saw the cause. "You are in the hell of newspapers," said my
+guide. And sure enough, when I looked up I saw thousands of newspapers
+flying about with their great wooden back-bones, and the padlock
+dangling like a bobtail at the end, flapping their wings and hawking
+at each other like mad. After circling about in the air for a little
+while, and biting and tearing each other as much as they could, they
+plumped down, head first, into a deep black-looking pool, and were
+seen no more. "We place these newspapers deeper in hell than the
+Infidel publications," said the Devil; "because they are so much more
+extensively read, and thereby do much greater mischief. It is a kind
+of pest of which there is no end; and we are obliged to allot the
+largest portion of our dominions to containing them."
+
+We now came to an immense pile of a leaden hue, which I found at last
+to consist of old worn-out type, which was heaped up to form the wall
+of the next division. A monstrous u, turned bottom upwards (in this
+way [Symbol: inverted U]) formed the arch of a gateway through which
+we passed; and then traversed a draw-bridge, which was thrown across a
+river of ink, upon whose banks millions of horrible little demons were
+sporting. I presently saw that they were employed in throwing into the
+black stream a quantity of books which were heaped up on the shore. As
+I looked down into the stream, I saw that they were immediately
+devoured by the most hideous and disgusting monsters which were
+floundering about there. I looked at one book, which had crawled out
+after being thrown into the river; it was dripping with filth, but I
+distinguished on the back the words--_Don Juan_. It had hardly climbed
+up the bank, however, when one of the demons gave it a kick, and sent
+it back into the stream, where it was immediately swallowed. On the
+back of some of the books which the little imps were tossing in, I saw
+the name of--_Rochester_, which showed me the character of those which
+were sent into this division of the infernal regions.
+
+Beyond this region rose up a vast chain of mountains, which we were
+obliged to clamber over. After toiling for a long time, we reached the
+summit, and I looked down upon an immense labyrinth built upon the
+plain below, in which I saw a great number of large folios, stalking
+about in solemn pomp, each followed by a number of small volumes and
+pamphlets, like so many pages or footmen watching the beck of their
+master. "You behold here," said the demon, "all the false works upon
+theology which have been written since the beginning of the Christian
+era. They are condemned to wander about to all eternity in the
+hopeless maze of this labyrinth, each folio drawing after it all the
+minor works to which it gave origin." A faint light shone from these
+ponderous tomes; but it was like the shining of a lamp in a thick
+mist, shorn of its rays, and illuminating nothing around it. And if my
+companion had not held a torch before me, I should not have discerned
+the outlines of this department of the Infernal world. As my eye
+became somewhat accustomed to the feeble light, I discovered beyond
+the labyrinth a thick mist, which appeared to rise from some river or
+lake. "That," said my companion, "is the distinct abode of German
+Metaphysical works, and other treatises of a similar unintelligible
+character. They are all obliged to pass through a press; and if there
+is any sense in them, it is thus separated from the mass of nonsense
+in which it is imbedded, and is allowed to escape to a better world.
+Very few of the works, however, are found to be materially diminished
+by passing through the press." We had now crossed the plain, and stood
+near the impenetrable fog, which rose up like a wall before us. In
+front of it was the press managed by several ugly little demons, and
+surrounded by an immense number of volumes of every size and shape,
+waiting for the process which all were obliged to undergo. As I was
+watching their operations, I saw two very respectable German folios,
+with enormous clasps, extended like arms, carrying between them a
+little volume, which they were fondling like a pet child with marks of
+doting affection. These folios proved to be two of the most abstruse,
+learned, and incomprehensible of the metaphysical productions of
+Germany; and the bantling which they seemed to embrace with so much
+affection, was registered on the back--"_Records of a School_." I did
+not find that a single ray of intelligence had been extracted from
+either of the two after being subjected to the press. As soon as the
+volumes had passed through the operation of yielding up all the little
+sense they contained, they plunged into the intense fog, and
+disappeared for ever.
+
+We next approached the verge of a gulf, which appeared to be
+bottomless; and there was dreadful noise, like the war of the
+elements, and forked flames shooting up from the abyss, which reminded
+me of the crater of Vesuvius. "You have now reached the ancient limits
+of hell," said the demon, "and you behold beneath your feet the
+original chaos on which my domains are founded. But within a few years
+we have been obliged to build a yet deeper division beyond the gulf,
+to contain a class of books that were unknown in former times." "Pray,
+what class can be found," I asked, "worse than those which I have
+already seen, and for which it appears hell was not bad enough?" "They
+are American re-prints of English publications," replied he, "and they
+are generally works of such a despicable character, that they would
+have found their way here without being republished; but even where
+the original work was good, it is so degenerated by the form under
+which it re-appears in America, that its merit is entirely lost, and
+it is only fit for the seventh and lowest division of hell."
+
+I now perceived a bridge spanning over the gulf, with an arch that
+seemed as lofty as the firmament. We hastily passed over, and found
+that the farthest extremity of the bridge was closed by a gate, over
+which was written three words. "They are the names of the three furies
+who reign over this division," said my guide. I of course did not
+contradict him; but the words looked very much like some I had seen
+before; and the more I examined them, the more difficult was it to
+convince myself that the inscription was not the same thing as the
+sign over a certain publishing house in Philadelphia.
+
+"These," said the Devil, "are called the three furies of the hell of
+books; not from the mischief they do there to the works about them,
+but for the unspeakable wrong they did to the same works upon the
+earth, by re-printing them in their hideous brown paper editions." As
+soon as they beheld me, they rushed towards me with such piteous
+accents and heart-moving entreaties, that I would intercede to save
+them from their torment, that I was moved with the deepest compassion,
+and began to ask my conductor if there were no relief for them. But he
+hurried me away, assuring me that they only wanted to sell me some of
+their infernal editions, and the idea of owning any such property was
+so dreadful that it woke me up directly.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW[16]
+
+BY FERN�N CABALLERO
+
+
+    [16] From _Spanish Fairy Tales_. By Fern�n Caballero.
+    Translated by J. H. Ingram. (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
+    Co., 1881. By permission of the Publishers.)
+
+In a town, named Villaga�anes, there was once an old widow uglier than
+the sergeant of Utrera, who was considered as ugly as ugly could be;
+drier than hay; older than foot-walking, and more yellow than the
+jaundice. Moreover, she had so crossgrained a disposition that Job
+himself could not have tolerated her. She had been nicknamed "Mother
+Holofernes," and she had only to put her head out of doors to put all
+the lads to flight. Mother Holofernes was as clean as a new pin, and
+as industrious as an ant, and in these respects suffered no little
+vexation on account of her daughter Panfila, who was, on the contrary,
+so lazy, and such an admirer of the Quietists, that an earthquake
+would not move her. So it came to pass that Mother Holofernes began
+quarrelling with her daughter almost from the day that the girl was
+born.
+
+"You are," she said, "as flaccid as Dutch tobacco, and it would take a
+couple of oxen to draw you out of your room. You fly work as you would
+the pest, and nothing pleases you but the window, you shameless girl.
+You are more amorous than Cupid himself, but, if I have any power, you
+shall live as close as a nun."
+
+On hearing all this, Panfila got up, yawned, stretched herself, and
+turning her back on her mother, went to the street door. Mother
+Holofernes, without paying attention to this, began to sweep with most
+tremendous energy, accompanying the noise of the broom with a
+monologue of this tenor:--
+
+"In my time girls had to work like men."
+
+The broom gave the accompaniment of _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And lived as secluded as nuns."
+
+And the broom went _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+"Now they are a pack of fools."--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"Of idlers."--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And think of nothing but husbands.--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And are a lot of good-for-nothings."
+
+The broom following with its chorus.
+
+By this time she had nearly reached the street door, when she saw her
+daughter making signs to a youth; and the handle of the broom, as the
+handiest implement, descended upon the shoulders of Panfila, and
+effected the miracle of making her run. Next, Mother Holofernes,
+grasping the broom, made for the door; but scarcely had the shadow of
+her head appeared, than it produced the customary effect, and the
+aspirant disappeared so swiftly that it seemed as if he must have had
+wings on his feet.
+
+"Drat that fellow!" shouted the mother; "I should like to break all
+the bones in his body."
+
+"What for? Why should I not think of getting married?"
+
+"What are you saying? You get married, you fool! not while I live!"
+
+"Why were you married, madam? and my grandmother? and my great
+grandmother?"
+
+"Nicely I have been repaid for it, by you, you sauce-box! And
+understand me, that if I chose to get married, and your grandmother
+also, and your great grandmother also, I do not intend that you shall
+marry; nor my granddaughter, nor my great granddaughter! Do you hear
+me?"
+
+In these gentle disputes the mother and daughter passed their lives,
+without any other result than that the mother grumbled more and more
+every day, and the daughter became daily more and more desirous of
+getting a husband.
+
+Upon one occasion, when Mother Holofernes was doing the washing, and
+as the lye was on the point of boiling, she had to call her daughter
+to help her lift the caldron, in order to pour its contents on to the
+tub of clothes. The girl heard her with one ear, but with the other
+was listening to a well-known voice which sang in the street:--
+
+    "I would like to love thee,
+      Did thy mother let me woo!
+    May the demon meddle
+      In all she tries to do!"
+
+The sound outside being more attractive for Panfila than the caldron
+within, she did not hasten to her mother, but went to the window.
+Mother Holofernes, meanwhile, seeing that her daughter did not come,
+and that time was passing, attempted to lift the caldron by herself,
+in order to pour the water upon the linen; and as the good woman was
+small, and not very strong, it turned over, and burnt her foot. On
+hearing the horrible groans Mother Holofernes made, her daughter went
+to her.
+
+"Wretch, wretch!" cried the enraged Mother Holofernes to her daughter,
+"may you love Barabbas! And as for marrying--may Heaven grant you may
+marry the Evil One himself!"
+
+Sometime after this accident an aspirant presented himself: he was a
+little man, young, fair, red-haired, well-mannered, and had
+well-furnished pockets. He had not a single fault, and Mother
+Holofernes was not able to find any in all her arsenal of negatives.
+As for Panfila, it wanted little to send her out of her senses with
+delight. So the preparations for the wedding were made, with the usual
+grumbling accompaniment on the part of the bridegroom's future
+mother-in-law. Everything went on smoothly straightforward, and
+without a break--like a railroad--when, without knowing why, the
+popular voice--a voice which is as the personification of
+conscience,--began to rise in a murmur against the stranger, despite
+the fact that he was affable, humane, and liberal; that he spoke well
+and sang better; and freely took the black and horny hands of the
+labourers between his own white and beringed fingers. They began to
+feel neither honoured nor overpowered by so much courtesy; his
+reasoning was always so coarse, although forcible and logical.
+
+"By my faith!" said Uncle Blas; "why does this ill-faced gentleman
+call me Mr. Blas, as if that would make me any better? What does it
+look like to you?"
+
+"Well, as for me," said Uncle Gil, "did he not come to shake hands
+with me as if we had some plot between us? Did he not call me citizen?
+I, who have never been out of the village, and never want to go."
+
+As for Mother Holofernes, the more she saw of her future son-in-law,
+the less regard she had for him. It seemed to her that between that
+innocent red hair and the cranium were located certain protuberances
+of a very curious kind; and she remembered with emotion that
+malediction she had uttered against her daughter on that ever
+memorable day on which her foot was injured and her washing spoilt.
+
+At last, the wedding day arrived. Mother Holofernes had made pastry
+and reflections--the former sweet, the latter bitter; a great _olla
+podrida_ for the food, and a dangerous project for supper; she had
+prepared a barrel of wine that was generous, and a line of conduct
+that was not. When the bridal pair were about to retire to the nuptial
+chamber, Mother Holofernes called her daughter aside, and said: "When
+you are in your room, be careful to close the door and windows; shut
+all the shutters, and do not leave a single crevice open but the
+keyhole of the door. Take with you this branch of consecrated olive,
+and beat your husband with it as I advise you; this ceremony is
+customary at all marriages, and signifies that the woman is going to
+be master, and is followed in order to sanction and establish the
+rule."
+
+Panfila, for the first time obedient to her mother, did everything
+that she had prescribed.
+
+No sooner did the bridegroom espy the branch of consecrated olive in
+the hands of his wife, than he attempted to make a precipitous
+retreat. But when he found the doors and windows closed, and every
+crevice stopped up, seeing no other means of escape than by passing
+through the keyhole, he crept into that; this spruce, red-and-white,
+and well-spoken bachelor being, as Mother Holofernes had suspected,
+neither more nor less than the Evil One himself, who, availing himself
+of the right given him by the anathema launched against Panfila by her
+mother, thought to amuse himself with the pleasures of a marriage, and
+encumber himself with a wife of his own, whilst so many husbands were
+supplicating him to take theirs off their hands.
+
+But this gentleman, despite his reputation for wisdom, had met with a
+mother-in-law who knew more than he did; and Mother Holofernes was not
+the only specimen of that genus. Therefore, scarcely had his lordship
+entered into the keyhole, congratulating himself upon having, as
+usual, discovered a method of escape, than he found himself in a
+phial, which his foreseeing mother-in-law had ready on the other side
+of the door; and no sooner had he got into it than the provident old
+dame sealed the vessel hermetically. In a most tender voice, and with
+most humble supplications, and most pathetic gestures, her son-in-law
+addressed her, and desired that she would grant him his liberty. But
+Mother Holofernes was not to be deceived by the demon, nor
+disconcerted by orations, nor imposed upon by honeyed words; she took
+charge of the bottle and its contents, and went off to a mountain. The
+old lady vigorously climbed to the summit of this mountain, and there,
+on its most elevated crest, in a rocky and secluded spot, deposited
+the phial, taking leave of her son-in-law with a shake of her closed
+fist as a farewell greeting.
+
+And there his lordship remained for ten years. What years those ten
+were! The world was as quiet as a pool of oil. Everybody attended to
+his own affairs, without meddling in those of other people. Nobody
+coveted the position, nor the wife, nor the property of other persons;
+theft became a word without signification; arms rusted; powder was
+only consumed in fireworks; prisons stood empty; finally, in this
+decade of the golden age, only one single deplorable event occurred
+... the lawyers died from hunger and quietude.
+
+Alas! that so happy a time should have an end! But everything has an
+end in this world, even the discourses of the most eloquent fathers of
+the country. At last the much-to-be-envied decade came to a
+termination in the following way.
+
+A soldier named Bri�nes had obtained permission for a few days' leave
+to enable him to visit his native place, which was Villaga�anes. He
+took the road which led to the lofty mountain upon whose summit the
+son-in-law of Mother Holofernes was cursing all mothers-in-law, past,
+present, and future, promising as soon as ever he regained his power
+to put an end to that class of vipers, and by a very simple
+method--the abolition of matrimony. Much of his time was spent in
+composing and reciting satires against the invention of washing linen,
+the primal cause of his present trouble.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the mountain, Bri�nes did not care to go round
+the mountain like the road, but wished to go straight ahead, assuring
+the carriers who were with him, that if the mountain would not go to
+the right-about for him he would pass over its summit, although it
+were so high that he should knock his head against the sky.
+
+When he reached the summit, Bri�nes was struck with amazement on
+seeing the phial borne like a pimple on the nose of the mountain. He
+took it up, looked through it, and on perceiving the demon, who with
+years of confinement and fasting, the sun's rays, and sadness, had
+dwindled and become as dried as a prune, exclaimed in surprise:--
+
+"Whatever vermin is this? What a phenomenon!"
+
+"I am an honourable and meritorious demon," said the captive, humbly
+and courteously. "The perversity of a treacherous mother-in-law, into
+whose clutches I fell, has held me confined here during the last ten
+years; liberate me, valiant warrior, and I will grant any favour you
+choose to solicit."
+
+"I should like my demission from the army," said Bri�nes.
+
+"You shall have it; but uncork, uncork quickly, for it is a most
+monstrous anomaly to have thrust into a corner, in these revolutionary
+times, the first revolutionist in the world."
+
+Bri�nes drew the cork out slightly, and a noxious vapour issued from
+the bottle and ascended to his brain. He sneezed, and immediately
+replaced the stopper with such a violent blow from his hand that the
+cork was suddenly depressed, and the prisoner, squeezed down, gave a
+shout of rage and pain.
+
+"What are you doing, vile earthworm, more malicious and perfidious
+than my mother-in-law?" he exclaimed.
+
+"There is another condition," responded Bri�nes, "that I must add to
+our treaty; it appears to me that the service I am going to do you is
+worth it."
+
+"And what is this condition, tardy liberator?" inquired the demon.
+
+"I should like for thy ransom four dollars daily during the rest of my
+life. Think of it, for upon that depends whether you stay in or come
+out."
+
+"Miserable avaricious one!" exclaimed the demon, "I have no money."
+
+"Oh!" replied Bri�nes, "what an answer from a great lord like you!
+Why, friend, that is the Minister of War's answer! If you can't pay me
+I cannot help you."
+
+"Then you do not believe me," said the demon, "only let me out, and I
+will aid you to obtain what you want as I have done for many others.
+Let me out, I say, let me out."
+
+"Gently," responded the soldier, "there is nothing to hurry about.
+Understand me that I shall have to hold you by the tail until you have
+performed your promise to me; and if not, I have nothing more to say
+to you."
+
+"Insolent, do you not trust me then!" shouted the demon.
+
+"No," responded Bri�nes.
+
+"What you desire is contrary to my dignity," said the captive, with
+all the arrogance that a being of his size could express.
+
+"Now I must go," said Bri�nes.
+
+"Good-bye," said the demon, in order not to say _adieu_.
+
+But seeing that Bri�nes went off, the captive made desperate jumps in
+the phial, shouting loudly to the soldier.
+
+"Return, return, dear friend," he said; and muttered to himself, "I
+should like a four-year-old bull to overtake you, you soulless fool!"
+and then he shouted, "Come, come, beneficent fellow, liberate me, and
+hold me by the tail, or by the nose, valiant warrior;" and then
+muttered to himself, "Some one will avenge me, obstinate soldier; and
+if the son-in-law of Mother Holofernes is not able to do it, there are
+those who will burn you both, face to face, in the same bonfire, or I
+have little influence."
+
+On hearing the demon's supplications Bri�nes returned and uncorked the
+bottle. Mother Holofernes's son-in-law came forth like a chick from
+its shell, drawing out his head first and then his body, and lastly
+his tail, which Bri�nes seized; and the more the demon tried to
+contract it the firmer he held it.
+
+After the ex-captive, who was somewhat cramped, had occasionally
+stopped to stretch his arms and legs, they took the road to court, the
+demon grumbling and following the soldier, who carried the tail well
+secured in his hands.
+
+On their arrival they went to court, and the demon said to his
+liberator:--
+
+"I am going to put myself into the body of the princess, who is
+extremely beloved by her father, and I shall give her pains that no
+doctor will be able to cure; then you present yourself and offer to
+cure her, demanding for your recompense four dollars daily, and your
+discharge. I will then leave her to you, and our accounts will be
+settled."
+
+Everything happened as arranged and foreseen by the demon, but Bri�nes
+did not wish to let go his hold of the tail, and he said:--
+
+"Well devised, sir, but four dollars are a ransom unworthy of you, of
+me, and of the service that we have undertaken. Find some method of
+showing yourself more generous. To do this will give you honour in the
+world, where, pardon my frankness, you do not enjoy the best of
+characters."
+
+"Would that I could get rid of you!" said the demon to himself, "but I
+am so weak and so numbed that I am not able to go alone. I must have
+patience! that which men call a virtue. Oh, now I understand why so
+many fall into my power for not having practised it. Forward then for
+Naples, for it is necessary to submit in order to liberate my tail. I
+must go and submit to the arbitration of fate for the satisfaction of
+this new demand."
+
+Everything succeeded according to his wish. The princess of Naples
+fell a victim to convulsive pains and took to her bed. The king was
+greatly afflicted. Bri�nes presented himself with all the arrogance
+his knowledge that he would receive the demon's aid could give him.
+The king was willing to make use of his services, but stipulated that
+if within three days he had not cured the princess, as he confidently
+promised to, he should be hanged. Bri�nes, certain of a favourable
+result, did not raise the slightest objection.
+
+Unfortunately, the demon heard this arrangement made, and gave a leap
+of delight at seeing within his hands the means of avenging himself.
+
+The demon's leap caused the princess such pain that she begged them to
+take the doctor away.
+
+The following day this scene was repeated. Bri�nes then knew that the
+demon was at the bottom of it, and intended to let him be hanged. But
+Bri�nes was not a man to lose his head.
+
+On the third day, when the pretended doctor arrived, they were
+erecting the gallows in front of the very palace door. As he entered
+the princess's apartment, the invalid's pains were redoubled and she
+began to cry out that they should put an end to that impostor.
+
+"I have not exhausted all my resources yet," said Bri�nes gravely,
+"deign, your Royal Highness, to wait a little while." He then went out
+of the room and gave orders in the princess's name that all the bells
+of the city should be rung.
+
+When he returned to the royal apartment, the demon, who has a mortal
+hatred of the sound of bells, and is, moreover, inquisitive, asked
+Bri�nes what the bells were ringing for.
+
+"They are ringing," responded the soldier, "because of the arrival of
+your mother-in-law, whom I have ordered to be summoned."
+
+Scarcely had the demon heard that his mother-in-law had arrived, than
+he flew away with such rapidity that not even a sun's ray could have
+caught him. Proud as a peacock, Bri�nes was left in victorious
+possession of the field.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER[17]
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+    [17] From _The English Review_, November 1918. By permission
+    of the Editor and Mr. Arthur Symons.
+
+Yesterday, across the crowd of the boulevard, I found myself touched
+by a mysterious Being I had always desired to know, and who I
+recognized immediately, in spite of the fact that I had never seen
+him. He had, I imagined, in himself, relatively as to me, a similar
+desire, for he gave me, in passing, so significant a sign in his eyes
+that I hastened to obey him. I followed him attentively, and soon I
+descended behind him into a subterranean dwelling, astonishing to me
+as a vision, where shone a luxury of which none of the actual houses
+in Paris could give me an approximate example. It seemed to me
+singular that I had passed so often that prodigious retreat without
+having discovered the entrance. There reigned an exquisite, an almost
+stifling atmosphere, which made one forget almost instantaneously all
+the fastidious horrors of life; there I breathed a sombre sensuality,
+like that of opium-smokers when, set on the shore of an enchanted
+island, over which shone an eternal afternoon, they felt born in them,
+to the soothing sounds of melodious cascades, the desire of never
+again seeing their households, their women, their children, and of
+never again being tossed on the decks of ships by storms.
+
+There were there strange faces of men and women, gifted with so fatal
+a beauty that I seemed to have seen them years ago and in countries
+which I failed to remember, and which inspired in me that curious
+sympathy and that equally curious sense of fear that I usually
+discover in unknown aspects. If I wanted to define in some fashion or
+other the singular expression of their eyes, I would say that never
+had I seen such magic radiance more energetically expressing the
+horror of _ennui_ and of desire--of the immortal desire of feeling
+themselves alive.
+
+As for mine host and myself, we were already, as we sat down, as
+perfect friends as if we had always known each other. We drank
+immeasurably of all sorts of extraordinary wines, and--a thing not
+less bizarre--it seemed to me, after several hours, that I was no more
+intoxicated than he was.
+
+However, gambling, this superhuman pleasure, had cut, at various
+intervals, our copious libations, and I ought to say that I had gained
+and lost my soul, as we were playing, with an heroical carelessness
+and light-heartedness. The soul is so invisible a thing, often useless
+and sometimes so troublesome, that I did not experience, as to this
+loss, more than that kind of emotion I might have, had I lost my
+visiting card in the street.
+
+We spent hours in smoking cigars, whose incomparable savour and
+perfume give to the soul the nostalgia of unknown delights and sights,
+and, intoxicated by all these spiced sauces, I dared, in an access of
+familiarity which did not seem to displease him, to cry, as I lifted
+a glass filled to the brim with wine: "To your immortal health, Old
+He-Goat!"
+
+We talked of the universe, of its creation and of its future
+destruction; of the leading ideas of the century--that is to say, of
+Progress and Perfectibility--and, in general, of all kinds of human
+infatuations. On this subject his Highness was inexhaustible in his
+irrefutable jests, and he expressed himself with a splendour of
+diction and with a magnificence in drollery such as I have never found
+in any of the most famous conversationalists of our age. He explained
+to me the absurdity of different philosophies that had so far taken
+possession of men's brains, and deigned even to take me in confidence
+in regard to certain fundamental principles, which I am not inclined
+to share with any one.
+
+He complained in no way of the evil reputation under which he lived,
+indeed, all over the world, and he assured me that he himself was of
+all living beings the most interested in the destruction of
+_Superstition_, and he avowed to me that he had been afraid,
+relatively as to his proper power, once only, and that was on the day
+when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the rest of the human
+herd, cry in his pulpit: "My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when
+you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of
+the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!"
+
+The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally on the subject
+of Academies, and my strange host declared to me that he didn't
+disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pens, the words, and the
+consciences of pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in
+person, in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings.
+
+Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he had any news of
+God--who has not his hours of impiety?--especially as the old friend
+of the Devil. He said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a
+deeper shade of sadness: "We salute each other when we meet." But, for
+the rest, he spoke in Hebrew.
+
+It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long an audience to
+a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it.
+
+Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous personage, sung
+by so many poets, and served by so many philosophers who work for his
+glory's sake without being aware of it, said to me: "I want you to
+remember me always, and to prove to you that I--of whom one says so
+much evil--am often enough _bon diable_, to make use of one of your
+vulgar locutions. So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you
+have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to
+have gained, if your fate had been fortunate--that is to say, the
+possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life,
+this bizarre affection of _ennui_, which is the source of all your
+maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by
+you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your
+vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come
+to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made
+the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as
+you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without
+lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot, and where the
+women are as scented as the flowers." With this he rose up and said
+good-bye to me with a charming smile.
+
+If it had not been for the shame of humiliating myself before so
+immense an assembly, I might have voluntarily fallen at the feet of
+this generous Gambler, to thank him for his unheard-of munificence.
+But, little by little, after I had left him, an incurable defiance
+entered into me; I dared no longer believe in so prodigious a
+happiness; and as I went to bed, making over again my nightly prayer
+by means of all that remained in me in the matter of faith, I repeated
+in my slumber: "My God, my Lord, my God! Do let the Devil keep his
+word with me!"
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES[18]
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+    [18] From _The Fig and the Idler, an Algerian Legend, and
+    Other Stories_, by Alphonse Daudet. London, T. Fisher Unwin,
+    1892. (By permission of the Publisher.)
+
+I
+
+"Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?"
+
+"Yes, your reverence, two magnificent turkeys, stuffed with truffles.
+I should know something about it, for I myself helped to fill them.
+One would have said their skin would crack as they were roasting, it
+is that stretched...."
+
+"Jesu-Maria! I who like truffles so much!... Quick, give me my
+surplice, Garrigou.... And have you seen anything else in the kitchen
+besides the turkeys?"
+
+"Yes, all kinds of good things.... Since noon, we have done nothing
+but pluck pheasants, hoopoes, barn-fowls, and woodcocks. Feathers were
+flying about all over.... Then they have brought eels, gold carp, and
+trout out of the pond, besides...."
+
+"What size were the trout, Garrigou?"
+
+"As big as that, your reverence.... Enormous!"
+
+"Oh heavens! I think I see them.... Have you put the wine in the
+vessels?"
+
+"Yes, your reverence, I have put the wine in the vessels.... But la!
+it is not to be compared to what you will drink presently, when the
+midnight mass is over. If you only saw that in the dining hall of the
+ch�teau! The decanters are all full of wines glowing with every
+colour!... And the silver plate, the chased _epergnes_, the flowers,
+the lustres!... Never will such another midnight repast be seen. The
+noble marquis has invited all the lords of the neighbourhood. At least
+forty of you will sit down to table, without reckoning the farm
+bailiff and the notary.... Oh, how lucky is your reverence to be one
+of them!... After a mere sniff of those fine turkeys, the scent of
+truffles follows me everywhere.... Yum!"
+
+"Come now, come now, my child. Let us keep from the sin of gluttony,
+on the night of the Nativity especially.... Be quick and light the
+wax-tapers and ring the first bell for the mass; for it's nearly
+midnight and we must not be behind time."
+
+This conversation took place on a Christmas night in the year of grace
+one thousand six hundred and something, between the Reverend Dom
+Balagu�re (formerly Prior of the Barnabites, now paid chaplain of the
+Lords of Trinquelague), and his little clerk Garrigou, or at least him
+whom he took for his little clerk Garrigou, for you must know that the
+devil had on that night assumed the round face and soft features of
+the young sacristan, in order the more effectually to lead the
+reverend father into temptation, and make him commit the dreadful sin
+of gluttony. Well then, while the supposed Garrigou (hum!) was with
+all his might making the bells of the baronial chapel chime out, his
+reverence was putting on his chasuble in the little sacristy of the
+ch�teau; and with his mind already agitated by all these gastronomic
+descriptions, he kept saying to himself as he was robing:
+
+"Roasted turkeys, ... golden carp, ... trout as big as that!..."
+
+Out of doors, the soughing night wind was carrying abroad the music of
+the bells, and with this, lights began to make their appearance on the
+dark sides of Mount Ventoux, on the summit of which rose the ancient
+towers of Trinquelague. The lights were borne by the families of the
+tenant farmers, who were coming to hear the midnight mass at the
+ch�teau. They were scaling the hill in groups of five or six together,
+and singing; the father in front carrying a lantern, and the women
+wrapped up in large brown cloaks, beneath which their little children
+snuggled and sheltered. In spite of the cold and the lateness of the
+hour these good folks were marching blithely along, cheered by the
+thought that after the mass was over there would be, as always in
+former years, tables set for them down in the kitchens. Occasionally
+the glass windows in some lord's carriage, preceded by torch-bearers,
+would glisten in the moon-light on the rough ascent; or perhaps a mule
+would jog by with tinkling bells, and by the light of the misty
+lanterns the tenants would recognize their bailiff and would salute
+him as he passed with:
+
+"Good evening, Master Arnoton."
+
+"Good evening. Good evening, my friend."
+
+The night was clear, and the stars were twinkling with frost; the
+north wind was nipping, and at times a fine small hail, that slipped
+off one's garments without wetting them, faithfully maintained the
+tradition of Christmas being white with snow. On the summit of the
+hill, as the goal towards which all were wending, gleamed the ch�teau,
+with its enormous mass of towers and gables, and its chapel steeple
+rising into the blue-black sky. A multitude of little lights were
+twinkling, coming, going, and moving about at all the windows; they
+looked like the sparks one sees running about in the ashes of burnt
+paper.
+
+After you had passed the drawbridge and the postern gate, it was
+necessary, in order to reach the chapel, to cross the first court,
+which was full of carriages, footmen and sedan chairs, and was quite
+illuminated by the blaze of torches and the glare of the kitchen
+fires. Here were heard the click of turnspits, the rattle of
+sauce-pans, the clash of glasses and silver plate in the commotion
+attending the preparation of the feast; while over all rose a warm
+vapour smelling pleasantly of roast meat, piquant herbs, and complex
+sauces, and which seemed to say to the farmers, as well as to the
+chaplain and to the bailiff, and to everybody:
+
+"What a good midnight repast we are going to have after the mass!"
+
+
+II
+
+Ting-a-ring!--a--ring!
+
+The midnight mass is beginning in the chapel of the ch�teau, which is
+a cathedral in miniature, with groined and vaulted roofs, oak
+wood-work as high as the walls, expanded draperies, and tapers all
+aglow. And what a lot of people! What grand dresses! First of all,
+seated in the carved stalls that line the choir, is the Lord of
+Trinquelague in a coat of salmon-coloured silk, and about him are
+ranged all the noble lords who have been invited.
+
+On the opposite side, on velvet-covered praying-stools, the old
+dowager marchioness in flame-coloured brocade, and the youthful Lady
+of Trinquelague wearing a lofty head-dress of plaited lace in the
+newest fashion of the French court, have taken their places. Lower
+down, dressed in black, with punctilious wigs, and shaven faces, like
+two grave notes among the gay silks and the figured damasks, are seen
+the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton, and the notary Master Ambroy. Then come
+the stout major-domos, the pages, the horsemen, the stewards, Dame
+Barbara, with all her keys hanging at her side on a real silver ring.
+At the end, on the forms, are the lower class, the female servants,
+the cotter farmers and their families; and lastly, down there, near
+the door, which they open and shut very carefully, are messieurs the
+scullions, who enter in the interval between two sauces, to take a
+little whiff of mass; and these bring the smell of the repast with
+them into the church, which now is in high festival and warm from the
+number of lighted tapers.
+
+Is it the sight of their little white caps that so distracts the
+celebrant? Is it not rather Garrigou's bell? that mad little bell
+which is shaken at the altar foot with an infernal impetuosity that
+seems all the time to be saying: "Come, let us make haste, make
+haste.... The sooner we shall have finished, the sooner shall we be at
+table." The fact is that every time this devil's bell tinkles the
+chaplain forgets his mass, and thinks of nothing but the midnight
+repast. He fancies he sees the cooks bustling about, the stoves
+glowing with forge-like fires, the two magnificent turkeys, filled,
+crammed, marbled with truffles....
+
+Then again he sees, passing along, files of little pages carrying
+dishes enveloped in tempting vapours, and with them he enters the
+great hall now prepared for the feast. Oh delight! there is the
+immense table all laden and luminous, peacocks adorned with their
+feathers, pheasants spreading out their reddish-brown wings,
+ruby-coloured decanters, pyramids of fruit glowing amid green boughs,
+and those wonderful fish Garrigou (ah well, yes, Garrigou!) had
+mentioned, laid on a couch of fennel, with their pearly scales
+gleaming as if they had just come out of the water, and bunches of
+sweet-smelling herbs in their monstrous snouts. So clear is the vision
+of these marvels that it seems to Dom Balagu�re that all these
+wondrous dishes are served before him on the embroidered altar-cloth,
+and two or three times instead of the _Dominus vobiscum_, he finds
+himself saying the _Benedicite_. Except these slight mistakes, the
+worthy man pronounces the service very conscientiously, without
+skipping a line, without omitting a genuflexion; and all goes
+tolerably well until the end of the first mass; for you know that on
+Christmas Day the same officiating priest must celebrate three
+consecutive masses.
+
+"That's one done!" says the chaplain to himself with a sigh of
+relief; then, without losing a moment, he motioned to his clerk, or to
+him whom he supposed to be his clerk, and...
+
+"Ting-a-ring ... Ting-a-ring, a-ring!"
+
+Now the second mass is beginning, and with it begins also Dom
+Balagu�re's sin. "Quick, quick, let us make haste," Garrigou's bell
+cries out to him in its shrill little voice, and this time the unhappy
+celebrant, completely given over to the demon of gluttony, fastens
+upon the missal and devours its pages with the eagerness of his
+over-excited appetite. Frantically he bows down, rises up, merely
+indicates the sign of the cross and the genuflexions, and curtails all
+his gestures in order to get sooner finished. Scarcely has he
+stretched out his arms at the gospel, before he is striking his breast
+at the _Confiteor_. It is a contest between himself and the clerk as
+to who shall mumble the faster. Versicles and responses are hurried
+over and run one into another. The words, half pronounced, without
+opening the mouth, which would take up too much time, terminate in
+unmeaning murmurs.
+
+"_Oremus ps ... ps ... ps...._"
+
+"_Mea culpa ... pa ... pa...._"
+
+Like vintagers in a hurry pressing grapes in the vat, these two paddle
+in the mass Latin, sending splashes in every direction.
+
+"_Dom ... scum!..._" says Balagu�re.
+
+"_... Stutuo!..._" replies Garrigou; and all the time the cursed
+little bell is tinkling there in their ears, like the jingles they put
+on post-horses to make them gallop fast. You may imagine at that speed
+a low mass is quickly disposed of.
+
+"That makes two," says the chaplain quite panting; then without taking
+time to breathe, red and perspiring, he descends the altar steps
+and...
+
+"Ting-a-ring!... Ting-a-ring!..."
+
+Now the third mass is beginning. There are but a few more steps to be
+taken to reach the dining-hall; but, alas! the nearer the midnight
+repast approaches the more does the unfortunate Balagu�re feel himself
+possessed by mad impatience and gluttony. The vision becomes more
+distinct; the golden carps, the roasted turkeys are there, there!...
+He touches them, ... he ... oh heavens! The dishes are smoking, the
+wines perfume the air; and with furiously agitated clapper, the little
+bell is crying out to him:
+
+"Quick, quick, quicker yet!"
+
+But how could he go quicker? His lips scarcely move. He no longer
+pronounces the words; ... unless he were to impose upon Heaven
+outright and trick it out of its mass.... And that is precisely what
+he does, the unfortunate man!... From temptation to temptation; he
+begins by skipping a verse, then two. Then the epistle is too long--he
+does not finish it, skims over the gospel, passes before the _Credo_
+without going into it, skips the _Pater_, salutes the _Preface_ from a
+distance, and by leaps and bounds thus hurls himself into eternal
+damnation, constantly followed by the vile Garrigou (_vade retro,
+Satanas!_), who seconds him with wonderful skill, sustains his
+chasuble, turns over the leaves two at a time, elbows the
+reading-desks, upsets the vessels, and is continually sounding the
+little bell louder and louder, quicker and quicker.
+
+You should have seen the scared faces of all who were present, as they
+were obliged to follow this mass by mere mimicry of the priest,
+without hearing a word; some rise when others kneel, and sit down when
+the others are standing up, and all the phases of this singular
+service are mixed up together in the multitude of different attitudes
+presented by the worshippers on the benches....
+
+"The _abb�_ goes too fast.... One can't follow him," murmured the old
+dowager, shaking her head-dress in confusion. Master Arnoton with
+great steel spectacles on his nose is searching in his prayer-book to
+find where the dickens they are. But at heart all these good folks,
+who themselves are thinking about feasting, are not sorry that the
+mass is going on at this post haste; and when Dom Balagu�re with
+radiant face turns towards those present and cries with all his might:
+"_Ite, missa est_," they all respond to him a "_Deo gratias_" in but
+one voice, and that as joyous and enthusiastic, as if they thought
+themselves already seated at the midnight repast and drinking the
+first toast.
+
+
+III
+
+Five minutes afterwards the crowd of nobles were sitting down in the
+great hall, with the chaplain in the midst of them. The ch�teau,
+illuminated from top to bottom, was resounding with songs, with
+shouts, with laughter, with uproar; and the venerable Dom Balagu�re
+was thrusting his fork into the wing of a fowl, and drowning all
+remorse for his sin in streams of regal wine and the luscious juices
+of the viands. He ate and drank so much, the dear, holy man, that he
+died during the night of a terrible attack, without even having had
+time to repent; and then in the morning when he got to heaven, I leave
+you to imagine how he was received.
+
+He was told to withdraw on account of his wickedness. His fault was so
+grievous that it effaced a whole lifetime of virtue.... He had robbed
+them of a midnight mass.... He should have to pay for it with three
+hundred, and he should not enter into Paradise until he had celebrated
+in his own chapel these three hundred Christmas masses in the presence
+of all those who had sinned with him and by his fault....
+
+... And now this is the true legend of Dom Balagu�re as it is related
+in the olive country. At the present time the ch�teau of Trinquelague
+no longer exists, but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount
+Ventoux, amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles in the
+wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation; there are birds'
+nests at the corners of the altar, and in the recesses of the lofty
+windows, from which the stained glass has long ago disappeared. It
+seems, however, that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
+wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to the masses and
+to the midnight repasts, see this phantom of a chapel illuminated by
+invisible tapers that burn in the open air, even in snow and wind. You
+may laugh at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
+Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared to me that one
+Christmas night, when he was a little tipsy, he lost his way on the
+hill of Trinquelague; and this is what he saw.... Till eleven
+o'clock, nothing. All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly,
+about midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple, an old,
+old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues off. Very soon
+Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and uncertain shadows moving in
+the road that climbs the hill. They passed on beneath the chapel
+porch, and murmured:
+
+"Good evening, Master Arnoton!"
+
+"Good evening, good evening, my friends!" ...
+
+When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very courageous,
+silently approached, and when he looked through the broken door, a
+singular spectacle met his gaze. All those he had seen pass were
+seated round the choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old
+seats still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
+lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in flowered jackets such as
+our grandfathers had; all with an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From
+time to time the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
+were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit round the
+tapers, the flames of which rose straight and ill-defined, as if they
+were burning behind a veil; and what amused Garrigue very much was a
+certain personage with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
+his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was quite entangled,
+and kept itself upright by noiselessly flapping its wings....
+
+At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure was on his
+knees in the middle of the choir, desperately shaking a clapperless
+and soundless bell, whilst a priest, clad in ancient gold, was coming
+and going before the altar, reciting prayers of which not a word was
+heard.... Most certainly this was Dom Balagu�re in the act of saying
+his third low mass.
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS[19]
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+    [19] By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers. New
+    York and London.
+
+It will not do at all to disbelieve in the existence of a personal
+devil. It is not so many years ago that one of our profoundest divines
+remarked with indignation upon such disbelief. "No such person?" cried
+the doctor with energy. "Don't tell me! I can hear his tail snap and
+crack about amongst the churches any day!"
+
+And if the enemy is, in truth, still as vigorously active among the
+sons of God as he was in the days of Job (that is to say, in the time
+of Solomon, when, as the critics have found out, the Book of Job was
+written), then surely still more is he vigilant and sly in his tricks
+for foreclosing his mortgages upon the souls of the wicked.
+
+And once more: still more than ever is his personal appearance
+probable in these latter days. The everlasting tooting of the wordy
+Cumming has proclaimed the end of all things for a quarter of a
+century; and he will surely see his prophecy fulfilled if he can only
+keep it up long enough. But, though we discredit the sapient
+Second-Adventist as to the precise occasion of the diabolic avatar,
+has there not been a strange coincidence between his noisy
+declarations, and other evidences of an approximation of the spiritual
+to the bodily sphere of life? Is not this same quarter of a century
+that of the Spiritists? Has it not witnessed the development of Od?
+And of clairvoyance? And have not the doctrines of ghosts, and
+re-appearances of the dead, and of messages from them, risen into a
+prominence entirely new, and into a coherence and semblance at least
+of fact and fixed law such as was never known before? Yea, verily. Of
+all times in the world's history, to reject out of one's beliefs
+either good spirits or bad, angelology or diabology, chief good being,
+or chief bad being, this is the most improper.
+
+Dr. Hicok was trebly liable to the awful temptation, under which he
+had assuredly fallen, over and above the fact that he was a prig,
+which makes one feel the more glad that he was so handsomely come up
+with in the end; such a prig that everybody who knew him, invariably
+called him (when he wasn't by) Hicok-alorum. This charming surname had
+been conferred on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got into
+a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky ways of dodging out
+of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok knew too much to know _that_; and
+so he acquired his fine title to teach him one thing more.
+
+Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,--
+
+  1. He was foreign-born.
+  2. He was a Scotchman.
+  3. He was a physician and surgeon.
+
+The way in which these causes operated was as follows (I wish it were
+allowable to use Artemas Ward's curiously satisfactory vocable
+"thusly:" like Mrs. Wiggle's soothing syrup, it "supplies a real
+want"):--
+
+Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing moral stamina of a
+native American, and therefore was comparatively easily beset by sin.
+Being, secondly, a Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited,
+with a conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other folks
+sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly sure of his utter
+mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics, or, as he used to call
+it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization, _dialektik_. Now, in the latter
+two, the Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are simply
+imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence of God, has
+been joined with an equally complete conviction of the exact opposite.
+Let not man, therefore, put those traits asunder--not so much by
+reason of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses would
+try to convince a Scotchman--or anybody else, for that matter.
+
+Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen of this
+profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing materialists, or
+else implicit and extreme Calvinistic Presbyterians, "of the large
+blue kind." And they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
+self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not Majendie say to
+his students, "Gentlemen, disease is a subject which physicians know
+nothing about"?
+
+So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal devil, and
+believed in his own ability to get the upper hand of that individual
+in a tournament of the wits. Ah, he learned better by terrible
+experience! The doctor was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair,
+a freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows and
+eyelashes, which made him look as if he had finished off his toilet
+with just a light flourish from the dredging-box. He was erect of
+carriage, and of a prompt, ridiculous alertness of step and motion,
+very much like that of Major Wellington De Boots. And his face
+commonly wore a kind of complacent serenity such as the Hindoos
+ascribe to Buddha. I know a little snappish dentist's-goods dealer up
+town, who might be mistaken for Hicok-alorum any day.
+
+Well, well--what had the doctor done? Why--it will sound absurd,
+probably, to some unbelieving people--but really Dr. Hicok confessed
+the whole story to me himself: he had made a bargain with the Evil
+One! And indeed he was such an uncommonly disagreeable-looking fellow,
+that, unless on some such hypothesis, it is impossible to imagine how
+he could have prospered as he did. He gained patients, and cured them
+too; made money; invested successfully; bought a brown-stone front--a
+house, not a wiglet--then bought other real estate; began to put his
+name on charity subscription lists, and to be made vice-president of
+various things.
+
+Chiefest of all,--it must have been by some superhuman aid that Dr.
+Hicok married his wife, the then and present Mrs. Hicok. Dear me! I
+have described the doctor easily enough. But how infinitely more
+difficult it is to delineate Beauty than the Beast: did you ever think
+of it? All I can say is, that she is a very lovely woman now; and she
+must have been, when the doctor married her, one of the loveliest
+creatures that ever lived--a lively, graceful, bright-eyed brunette,
+with thick fine long black hair, pencilled delicate eyebrows, little
+pink ears, thin high nose, great astonished brown eyes, perfect
+teeth, a little rosebud of a mouth, and a figure so extremely
+beautiful that nobody believed she did not pad--hardly even the
+artists who--those of them at least who work faithfully in the
+life-school--are the very best judges extant of truth in costume and
+personal beauty. But, furthermore, she was good, with the innocent
+unconscious goodness of a sweet little child; and of all feminine
+charms--even beyond her supreme grace of motion--she possessed the
+sweetest, the most resistless--a lovely voice; whose tones, whether in
+speech or song, were perfect in sweetness, and with a strange
+penetrating sympathetic quality and at the same time with the most
+wonderful half-delaying completeness of articulation and modulation,
+as if she enjoyed the sound of her own music. No doubt she did; but it
+was unconsciously, like a bird. The voice was so sweet, the great
+loveliness and kindness of soul it expressed were so deep, that, like
+every exquisite beauty, it rayed forth a certain sadness within the
+pleasure it gave. It awakened infinite, indistinct emotions of beauty
+and perfection--infinite longings.
+
+It's of no use to tell me that such a spirit--she really ought not to
+be noted so low down as amongst human beings--that such a spirit could
+have been made glad by becoming the yoke-fellow of Hicok-alorum, by
+influences exclusively human. No!--I don't believe it--I won't believe
+it--it can't be believed. I can't convince you, of course, for you
+don't know her; but if you did, along with the rest of the evidence,
+and if your knowledge was like mine, that from the testimony of my
+own eyes and ears and judgment--you would know, just as I do, that
+the doctor's possession of his wife was the key-stone of the arch of
+completed proof on which I found my absolute assertion that he had
+made that bargain.
+
+He certainly had! A most characteristic transaction too; for while,
+after the usual fashion, it was agreed by the "party of the first
+part,"--viz., Old Scratch--that Dr. Hicok should succeed in whatever
+he undertook during twenty years, and by the party of the second part,
+that at the end of that time the D---- should fetch him in manner and
+form as is ordinarily provided, yet there was added a peculiar clause.
+This was, that, when the time came for the doctor to depart, he should
+be left entirely whole and unharmed, in mind, body, and estate,
+provided he could put to the Devil three consecutive questions, of
+which either one should be such that that cunning spirit could not
+solve it on the spot.
+
+So for twenty years Dr. Hicok lived and prospered, and waxed very
+great. He did not gain one single pound avoirdupois however, which may
+perchance seem strange, but is the most natural thing in the world.
+Who ever saw a little, dry, wiry, sandy, freckled man, with white
+eyebrows, that did grow fat? And besides, the doctor spent all his
+leisure time in hunting up his saving trinity of questions; and hard
+study, above all for such a purpose, is as sure an anti-fattener as
+Banting.
+
+He knew the Scotch metaphysicians by heart already, _ex-officio_ as it
+were; but he very early gave up the idea of trying to fool the Devil
+with such mud-pie as that. Yet be it understood, that he found cause
+to except Sir William Hamilton from the muddle-headed crew. He chewed
+a good while, and pretty hopefully, upon the Quantification of the
+Predicate; but he had to give that up too, when he found out how small
+and how dry a meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
+Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload more of old
+casuists, Romanist and Protestant.
+
+He exhausted the learning of the Development Theory. He studied and
+experimented up to the existing limits of knowledge on the question of
+the Origin of Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
+could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at the end of
+our noses on that, as well as most other questions. He hammered his
+way through the whole controversy on the Freedom of the Will. He
+mastered the whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and of
+two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American college
+professors on the other, on the question of Protection or Free Trade.
+He made, with vast pains, an extensive collection of the questions
+proposed at debating societies and college-students' societies with
+long Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr. Hicok had got the
+idea, that, from the spontaneous activity of so many free young
+geniuses, many wondrous and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having,
+however, tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all these
+innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were only seventeen questions
+debated! The doctor read me a curious little memorandum of his
+conclusions on this unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed
+some day.
+
+He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted little
+Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat the Devil out of his
+soul, can accomplish an amazing deal in twenty years. He even went so
+far as to take into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
+the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in that case, would be
+the mortification of having stooped to an inadequate adversary--a
+foeman unworthy of his steel. So he weighed such queries as the old
+scholastic _brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
+intentiones?_ and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More
+silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, _An averia carrucae
+capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?_
+
+He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and among the chips
+from his workshop is a really clever theory of conundrums. He has a
+classification and discussion of them, all his own, and quite
+ingenious and satisfactory, which divides them into answerable and
+unanswerable, and, under each of these, into resemblant and
+differential.
+
+For instance: let the four classes be distinguished with the initials
+of those four terms, A. R., A. D., U. R., and U. D.; you will find
+that the Infinite Possible Conundrum (so to speak) can always be
+reduced under one of those four heads. Using symbols, as they do in
+discussing syllogism--indeed, by the way, a conundrum is only a
+jocular variation in the syllogism, an intentional fallacy for fun
+(read Whately's _Logic_, Book III., and see if it isn't so)--using
+symbols, I say, you have these four "figures:"--
+
+I. (A. R.) Why is A like B? (answerable): as, Why is a gentleman who
+gives a young lady a young dog, like a person who rides rapidly up
+hill? A. Because he gives a gallop up (gal-a-pup).
+
+_Sub-variety_; depending upon a violation of something like the
+"principle of excluded middle," a very fallacy of a fallacy; such as
+the ancient "nigger-minstrel!" case, Why is an elephant like a brick?
+A. Because neither of them can climb a tree.
+
+II. (A. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (answerable) usually put thus: What
+is the difference between A and B? (Figure I., if worded in the same
+style, would become: What is the similarity between A and B?): as,
+What is the difference between the old United-States Bank and the
+Fulton Ferry-boat signals in thick weather? A. One is a fog whistle,
+and the other is a Whig fossil.
+
+III. (U. R.) Why is A like B? (unanswerable): as Charles Lamb's
+well-known question, Is that your own hare, or a wig?
+
+IV. (U. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (unanswerable): i. e., What is the
+difference, &c, as, What is the difference between a fac simile and a
+sick family; or between hydraulics and raw-hide licks?
+
+But let me not diverge too far into frivolity. All the hopefully
+difficult questions Dr. Hicok set down and classified. He compiled a
+set of rules on the subject, and indeed developed a whole philosophy
+of it, by which he struck off, as soluble, questions or classes of
+them. Some he thought out himself; others were now and then answered
+in some learned book, that led the way through the very heart of one
+or another of his biggest mill-stones.
+
+So it was really none too much time that he had; and, in truth, he did
+not actually decide upon his three questions, until just a week before
+the fearful day when he was to put them.
+
+It came at last, as every day of reckoning surely comes; and Dr.
+Hicok, memorandum in hand, sat in his comfortable library about three
+o'clock on one beautiful warm summer afternoon, as pale as a sheet,
+his heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp's biggest steam-hammer at
+Essen, his mouth and tongue parched and feverish, a pitcher of cold
+water at hand from which he sipped and sipped, though it seemed as if
+his throat repelled it into "the globular state," or dispersed it into
+steam, as red-hot iron does. Around him were the records of the vast
+army of doubters and quibblers in whose works he had been hunting, as
+a traveller labours through a jungle, for the deepest doubts, the most
+remote inquiries.
+
+Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than reason, which
+makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know
+to be true, Dr. Hicok would say to himself, "I know I've got him!" And
+then his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly, and
+with so deadly a faintness, as the other side of his awful case loomed
+before him, and he thought, "But if--?" He would not finish _that_
+question; he could not. The furthest point to which he could bring
+himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence in
+the inevitable.
+
+There was a ring at the street-door. The servant brought in a card, on
+a silver salver.
+
+  +-----------------+
+  | MR. APOLLO LYON |
+  +-----------------+
+
+"Show the gentleman in," said the doctor. He spoke with difficulty;
+for the effort to control his own nervous excitement was so immense an
+exertion, that he hardly had the self-command and muscular energy even
+to articulate.
+
+The servant returned, and ushered into the library a handsome,
+youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman, pale, with large
+melancholy black eyes, and dressed in the most perfect and quiet
+style.
+
+The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree of steadiness
+and politeness that did him the greatest credit.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" he said: "I am happy"--but it struck him that he
+wasn't, and he stopped short.
+
+"Very right, my dear sir," replied the guest, in a voice that was
+musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient in tone. "Very right;
+how hollow those formulas are! I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I
+am glad to see _you_, doctor. Now, that is really the fact."
+
+No doubt! "Divil doubt him!" as an Irishman would say. So is a cat
+glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something like these thoughts arose in
+the doctor's mind; he smiled as affably as he could, and requested the
+visitor to be seated.
+
+"Thanks!" replied he, and took the chair which the doctor moved up to
+the table for him. He placed his hat and gloves on the table. There
+was a brief pause, as might happen if any two friends sat down at
+their ease for a chat on matters and things in general. The visitor
+turned over a volume or two that lay on the table.
+
+"The Devil," he read from one of them; "His Origin, Greatness, and
+Decadence. By the Rev. A. R�ville, D.D."
+
+"Ah!" he commented quietly. "A Frenchman, I observe. If it had been an
+Englishman, I should fancy he wrote the book for the sake of the rhyme
+in the title. Do you know, doctor, I fancy that incredulity of his
+will substitute one dash for the two periods in the reverend
+gentleman's degree! I know no one greater condition of success in some
+lines of operation, than to have one's existence thoroughly
+disbelieved in."
+
+The doctor forced himself to reply: "I hardly know how I came to have
+the book here. Yet he does make out a pretty strong case. I confess I
+would like to be certified that he is right. Suppose you allow
+yourself to be convinced?" And the poor fellow grinned: it couldn't be
+called a smile.
+
+"Why, really, I'll look into it. I've considered the point though, not
+that I'm sure I could choose. And you know, as the late J. Milton very
+neatly observed, one would hardly like to lose one's intellectual
+being, 'though full of pain;'" and he smiled, not unkindly but sadly,
+and then resumed: "A Bible too. Very good edition. I remember seeing
+it stated that a professional person made it his business to find
+errors of the press in one of the Bible Society's editions--this very
+one, I think; and the only one he could discover was a single 'wrong
+font.' Very accurate work--very!"
+
+He had been turning over the leaves indifferently as he spoke, and
+laid the volume easily back. "Curious old superstition that," he
+remarked, "that certain personages were made uncomfortable by this
+work!" And he gave the doctor a glance, as much as to ask, in the most
+delicate manner in the world, "Did you put that there to scare me
+with?"
+
+I think the doctor blushed a little. He had not really expected, you
+know,--still, in case there should be any prophylactic influence--? No
+harm done, in any event; and that was precisely the observation made
+by the guest.
+
+"No harm done, my dear fellow!" he said, in his calm, quiet, musical
+voice. No good, either, I imagine they both of them added to
+themselves.
+
+There is an often repeated observation, that people under the pressure
+of an immeasurable misery or agony seem to take on a preternaturally
+sharp vision for minute details, such as spots in the carpet, and
+sprigs in the wall-paper, threads on a sleeve, and the like. Probably
+the doctor felt this influence. He had dallied a little, too, with the
+crisis; and so did his visitor--from different motives, no doubt; and,
+as he sat there, his eye fell on the card that had just been brought
+to him.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said; "but might I ask a question about your
+card?"
+
+"Most certainly, doctor: what is it?"
+
+"Why--it's always a liberty to ask questions about a gentleman's name,
+and we Scotchmen are particularly sensitive on the point; but I have
+always been interested in the general subject of patronomatology."
+
+The other, by a friendly smile and a deprecating wave of the hand,
+renewed his welcome to the doctor's question.
+
+"Well, it's this: How did you come to decide upon that form of
+name--Mr. Apollo Lyon?"
+
+"Oh! just a little fancy of mine. It's a newly-invented variable card,
+I believe they call it. There's a temporary ink arrangement. It struck
+me it was liable to abuse in case of an assumption of _aliases_; but
+perhaps that's none of my business. You can easily take off the upper
+name, and another one comes out underneath. I'm always interested in
+inventions. See."
+
+And as the text, "But they have sought out many inventions," passed
+through Dr. Hicok's mind, the other drew forth a white handkerchief,
+and, rubbing the card in a careless sort of way, laid it down before
+the doctor. Perhaps the strain on the poor doctor's nerves was
+unsteadying him by this time: he may not have seen right; but he
+seemed to see only one name, as if compounded from the former two.
+
+  +------------+
+  |  APOLLYON  |
+  +------------+
+
+And it seemed to be in red ink instead of black; and the lines seemed
+to creep and throb and glow, as if the red were the red of fire,
+instead of vermilion. But red is an extremely trying colour to the
+eyes. However, the doctor, startled as he was, thought best not to
+raise any further queries, and only said, perhaps with some
+difficulty, "Very curious, I'm sure!"
+
+"Well, doctor," said Mr. Lyon, or whatever his name was, "I don't want
+to hurry you, but I suppose we might as well have our little business
+over?"
+
+"Why, yes. I suppose you wouldn't care to consider any question of
+compromises or substitutes?"
+
+"I fear it's out of the question, really," was the reply, most kindly
+in tone, but with perfect distinctness.
+
+There was a moment's silence. It seemed to Dr. Hicok as if the beating
+of his heart must fill the room, it struck so heavily, and the blood
+seemed to surge with so loud a rush through the carotids up past his
+ears. "Shall I be found to have gone off with a rush of blood to the
+head?" he thought to himself. But--it can very often be done by a
+resolute effort--he gathered himself together as it were, and with one
+powerful exertion mastered his disordered nerves. Then he lifted his
+memorandum, gave one glance at the sad, calm face opposite him, and
+spoke.
+
+"You know they're every once in a while explaining a vote, as they
+call it, in Congress. It don't make any difference, I know; but it
+seems to me as if I should put you more fully in possession of my
+meaning, if I should just say a word or two, about the reasons for my
+selection."
+
+The visitor bowed with his usual air of pleasant acquiescence.
+
+"I am aware," said Dr. Hicok, "that my selection would seem thoroughly
+commonplace to most people. Yet nobody knows better than you do, my
+dear sir, that the oldest questions are the newest. The same vitality
+which is so strong in them, as to raise them as soon as thought
+begins, is infinite, and maintains them as long as thought endures.
+Indeed, I may say to you frankly, that it is by no means on novelty,
+but rather on antiquity, that I rely."
+
+The doctor's hearer bowed with an air of approving interest. "Very
+justly reasoned," he observed. The doctor went on--
+
+"I have, I may say--and under the circumstances I shall not be
+suspected of conceit--made pretty much the complete circuit of
+unsolved problems. They class exactly as those questions do which we
+habitually reckon as solved: under the three subjects to which they
+relate--God, the intelligent creation, the unintelligent creation.
+Now, I have selected my questions accordingly--one for each of those
+divisions. Whether I have succeeded in satisfying the conditions
+necessary will appear quickly. But you see that I have not stooped to
+any quibbling, or begging either. I have sought to protect myself by
+the honourable use of a masculine reason."
+
+"Your observations interest me greatly," remarked the audience. "Not
+the less so, that they are so accurately coincident with my own
+habitual lines of thought--at least, so far as I can judge from what
+you have said. Indeed, suppose you had called upon me to help you
+prepare insoluble problems. I was bound, I suppose, to comply to the
+best of my ability; and, if I had done so, those statements of yours
+are thus far the very preface I supplied--I beg your pardon--should
+have supplied--you with. I fancy I could almost state the questions.
+Well?"--
+
+All this was most kind and complimentary; but somehow it did not
+encourage the doctor in the least. He even fancied that he detected a
+sneer, as if his interlocutor had been saying, "Flutter away, old
+bird! That was _my bait_ that you have been feeding on: you're safe
+enough; it is my net that holds you."
+
+"_First Question_," said Dr. Hicok, with steadiness: "Reconcile the
+foreknowledge and the fore-ordination of God with the free will of
+man?"
+
+"I thought so, of course," remarked the other. Then he looked straight
+into the doctor's keen little grey eyes with his deep melancholy black
+ones, and raised his slender fore-finger. "Most readily. The
+reconciliation is _your own conscience_, doctor! Do what you know to
+be right, and you will find that there is nothing to reconcile--that
+you and your Maker have no debates to settle!"
+
+The words were spoken with a weighty solemnity and conviction that
+were even awful. The doctor had a conscience, though he had found
+himself practically forced, for the sake of success, to use a good
+deal of constraint with it--in fact, to lock it up, as it were, in a
+private mad-house, on an unfounded charge of lunacy. But the obstinate
+thing would not die, and would not lose its wits; and now all of a
+sudden, and from the very last quarter where it was to be expected,
+came a summons before whose intensity of just requirement no bolts
+could stand. The doctor's conscience walked out of her prison, and
+came straight up to the field of battle, and said--
+
+"Give up the first question."
+
+And he obeyed.
+
+"I confess it," he said. "But how could I have expected a great basic
+truth both religiously and psychologically so, from--from _you_?"
+
+"Ah! my dear sir," was the reply, "you have erred in _that_ line of
+thought, exactly as many others have. The truth is one and the same,
+to God, man, and devil."
+
+"_Second Question_," said Dr. Hicok. "Reconcile the development
+theory, connection of natural selection and sexual relation, with the
+responsible immortality of the soul."
+
+"Unquestionably," assented the other, as if to say, "Just as I
+expected."
+
+"No theory of creation has any logical connection with any doctrine of
+immortality. What was the motive of creation?--_that_ would be a
+question! If you had asked me _that_! But the question, 'Where did men
+come from?' has no bearing on the question, 'Have they any duties now
+that they are here?' The two are reconciled, because they do not
+differ. You can't state any inconsistency between a yard measure and a
+fifty-six pound weight."
+
+The doctor nodded; he sat down; he took a glass of water, and pressed
+his hand to his heart. "Now, then," he said to himself, "once more! If
+I have to stand this fifteen minutes I shall be in _some_ other
+world!"
+
+The door from the inner room opened; and Mrs. Hicok came singing in,
+carrying balanced upon her pretty pink fore-finger something or other
+of an airy bouquet-like fabric. Upon this she was looking with much
+delight.
+
+"See, dear!" she said: "how perfectly lovely!"
+
+Both gentlemen started, and the lady started too. She had not known of
+the visit; and she had not, until this instant, seen that her husband
+was not alone.
+
+Dr. Hicok, of course, had never given her the key to his
+skeleton-closet; for he was a shrewd man. He loved her too; and he
+thought he had provided for her absence during the ordeal. She had
+executed her shopping with unprecedented speed.
+
+Why the visitor started, would be difficult to say. Perhaps her voice
+startled him. The happy music in it was enough like a beautified
+duplicate of his own thrilling sweet tones, to have made him
+acknowledge her for a sister--from heaven. He started, at any rate.
+
+"Mr. Lyon, my wife," said the doctor, somewhat at a loss. Mr. Lyon
+bowed, and so did the lady.
+
+"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure," she said. "I did not know
+you were busy, dear. There is a thunder-shower coming up. I drove home
+just in season."
+
+"Oh!--only a little wager, about some conundrums," said the doctor.
+Perhaps he may be excused for his fib. He did not want to annoy her
+unnecessarily.
+
+"Oh, do let me know!" she said, with much eagerness. "You know how I
+enjoy them!"
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "not exactly the ordinary kind. I was to
+puzzle my friend here with one out of three questions; and he has
+beaten me in two of them already. I've but one more chance."
+
+"Only one?" she asked, with a smile. "What a bright man your friend
+must be! I thought nobody could puzzle you, dear. Stay; let _me_ ask
+the other question."
+
+Both the gentlemen started again: it was quite a surprise.
+
+"But are you a married man, Mr. Lyon?" she asked, with a blush.
+
+"No, madam," was the reply, with a very graceful bow--"I have a
+mother, but no wife. Permit me to say, that, if I could believe there
+was a duplicate of yourself in existence, I would be as soon as
+possible."
+
+"Oh, what a gallant speech!" said the lady. "Thank you, sir, very
+much;" and she made him a pretty little curtsy. "Then I am quite sure
+of my question, sir. Shall I, dear?"
+
+The doctor quickly decided. "I am done for, anyhow," he reflected. "I
+begin to see that the old villain put those questions into my head
+himself. He hinted as much. I don't know but I'd rather she would ask
+it. It's better to have her kill me, I guess, than to hold out the
+carving-knife to him myself."
+
+"With all my heart, my dear," said the doctor, "if Mr. Lyon consents."
+
+Mr. Lyon looked a little disturbed; but his manner was perfect, as he
+replied that he regretted to seem to disoblige, but that he feared the
+conditions of their little bet would not allow it.
+
+"Beg your pardon, I'm sure, for being so uncivil," said the lively
+little beauty, as she whispered a few words in her husband's ear.
+
+This is what she said--
+
+"What's mine's yours, dear. Take it. Ask him--buz, buzz, buzz."
+
+The doctor nodded. Mrs. Hicok stood by him and smiled, still holding
+in her pretty pink fore-finger the frail shimmering thing just
+mentioned; and she gave it a twirl, so that it swung quite round.
+"Isn't it a love of a bonnet?" she said.
+
+"Yes," the doctor said aloud. "I adopt the question."
+
+"_Third Question. Which is the front side of this?_"
+
+And he pointed to the bonnet. It must have been a bonnet, because Mrs.
+Hicok called it so. I shouldn't have known it from the collection of
+things in a kaleidoscope, bunched up together.
+
+The lady stood before him, and twirled the wondrous fabric round and
+round, with the prettiest possible unconscious roguish look of
+defiance. The doctor's very heart stood still.
+
+"Put it on, please," said Mr. Lyon, in the most innocent way in the
+world.
+
+"Oh, no!" laughed she. "I know I'm only a woman, but I'm not _quite_
+so silly! But I'll tell you what: you men put it on, if you think that
+will help you!" And she held out the mystery to him.
+
+Confident in his powers of discrimination, Mr. Lyon took hold of the
+fairy-like combination of sparkles and threads and feathers and
+flowers, touching it with that sort of timid apprehension that
+bachelors use with a baby. He stood before the glass over the
+mantelpiece. First he put it across his head with one side in front,
+and then with the other. Then he put it lengthways of his head, and
+tried the effect of tying one of the two couples of strings under each
+of his ears. Then he put it on, the other side up; so that it swam on
+his head like a boat, with a high mounted bow and stern. More than
+once he did all this, with obvious care and thoughtfulness.
+
+Then he came slowly back, and resumed his seat. It was growing very
+dark, though they had not noticed it; for the thunder-shower had been
+hurrying on, and already its advanced guard of wind, heavy laden with
+the smell of the rain, could be heard, and a few large drops splashed
+on the window.
+
+The beautiful wife of the doctor laughed merrily to watch the growing
+discomposure of the visitor, who returned the bonnet, with
+undiminished courtesy, but with obvious constraint of manner.
+
+He looked down; he drummed on the table; he looked up; and both the
+doctor and the doctor's wife were startled at the intense sudden anger
+in the dark, handsome face. Then he sprang up, and went to the window.
+He looked out a moment, and then said--
+
+"Upon my word, that is going to be a very sharp squall! The clouds are
+_very_ heavy. If I'm any judge, something will be struck. I can feel
+the electricity in the air."
+
+While he still spoke, the first thunder-bolt crashed overhead. It was
+one of those close, sudden, overpoweringly awful explosions from
+clouds very heavy and very near, where the lightning and the thunder
+leap together out of the very air close about you, even as if you were
+in them. It was an unendurable burst of sound, and of the intense
+white sheety light of very near lightning. Dreadfully frightened, the
+poor little lady clung close to her husband. He, poor man, if possible
+yet more frightened, exhausted as he was by what he had been enduring,
+fainted dead away. Don't blame him: a cast-iron bull-dog might have
+fainted.
+
+Mrs. Hicok, thinking that her husband was struck dead by the
+lightning, screamed terribly. Then she touched him; and, seeing what
+was really the matter, administered cold water from the pitcher on the
+table. Shortly he revived.
+
+"Where is he?" he said.
+
+"I don't know, love. I thought you were dead. He must have gone away.
+Did it strike the house?"
+
+"Gone away? Thank God! Thank _you_, dear!" cried out the doctor.
+
+Not knowing any adequate cause for so much emotion, she answered him--
+
+"Now, love, don't you ever say women are not practical again. That was
+a practical question, you see. But didn't it strike the house? What a
+queer smell. Ozone: isn't that what you were telling me about? How
+funny, that lightning should have a smell!"
+
+"I believe there's no doubt of it," observed Dr. Hicok.
+
+Mr. Apollo Lyon had really gone, though just how or when, nobody could
+say.
+
+"My dear," said Dr. Hicok, "I do so like that bonnet of yours! I don't
+wonder it puzzled him. It would puzzle the Devil himself. I firmly
+believe I shall call it your Devil-puzzler."
+
+But he never told her what the puzzle had been.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND[20]
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+    [20] From _Longman's Magazine_, vol. xiv. [Copyright 1889 by
+    Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. By permission of
+    the Publishers.]
+
+     [The following story, translated by Miss Isabel Bruce from
+     _Le Grand Choleur_ of M. Charles Deulin (_Contes du Roi
+     Gambrinus_), gives a great deal of information about French
+     and Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game
+     represents a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The
+     object is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible,
+     to a given point; but, after every three strokes, the
+     opponent is allowed to _d�choler_, or make one stroke back,
+     or into a hazard. Here the element of hockey comes in. Get
+     rid of this element, let each man hit his own ball, and, in
+     place of striking to a point--say, the cemetery gate--let
+     men "putt" into holes, and the Flemish game becomes golf. It
+     is of great antiquity. Ducange, in his Lexicon of Low Latin,
+     gives _Choulla_, French _choule_ = "Globulus ligneus qui
+     clava propellitur"--a wooden ball struck with a club. The
+     head of the club was of iron (cf. _crossare_). This is borne
+     out by a miniature in a missal of 1504, which represents
+     peasants playing _choule_ with clubs very like niblicks.
+     Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353, 1357, and
+     other dates older by a century than our earliest Scotch
+     references to golf. At present the game is played in Belgium
+     with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
+     beechwood. M. Zola (_Germinal_, p. 310) represents his
+     miners playing _chole_, or _choulle_, and says that they hit
+     drives of more than 500 yards. Experiments made at Wimbledon
+     with a Belgian club sent over by M. Charles Michel suggest
+     that M. Zola has over-estimated the distance. But M. Zola
+     and M. Deulin agree in making the players _run_ after the
+     ball. M. Henri Gaidoz adds that a similar game, called
+     _soule_, is played in various departments of France. He
+     refers to Laisnel de la Salle. The name _chole_ may be
+     connected with German _Kolbe_, and _golf_ may be the form
+     which this word would assume in a Celtic language. All this
+     makes golf very old; but the question arises, Are the
+     "holes" to which golfers play of Scotch or of Dutch origin?
+     There are several old Flemish pictures of golf; do any of
+     them show players in the act of "holing out"? There is said
+     to be such a picture at Neuch�tel.
+
+                                                     A. LANG.]
+
+
+I
+
+Once upon a time there lived at the hamlet of Coq, near
+Cond�-sur-l'Escaut, a wheelwright called Roger. He was a good fellow,
+untiring both at his sport and at his toil, and as skilful in lofting
+a ball with a stroke of his club as in putting together a cartwheel.
+Every one knows that the game of golf consists in driving towards a
+given point a ball of cherrywood with a club which has for head a sort
+of little iron shoe without a heel.
+
+For my part, I do not know a more amusing game; and when the country
+is almost cleared of the harvest, men, women, children, everybody,
+drives his ball as you please, and there is nothing cheerier than to
+see them filing on a Sunday like a flight of starlings across potato
+fields and ploughed lands.
+
+
+II
+
+Well, one Tuesday, it was a Shrove Tuesday, the wheelwright of Coq
+laid aside his plane, and was slipping on his blouse to go and drink
+his can of beer at Cond�, when two strangers came in, club in hand.
+
+"Would you put a new shaft to my club, master?" said one of them.
+
+"What are you asking me, friends? A day like this! I wouldn't give the
+smallest stroke of the chisel for a brick of gold. Besides, does any
+one play golf on Shrove Tuesday? You had much better go and see the
+mummers tumbling in the high street of Cond�."
+
+"We take no interest in the tumbling of mummers," replied the
+stranger. "We have challenged each other at golf and we want to play
+it out. Come, you won't refuse to help us, you who are said to be one
+of the finest players of the country?"
+
+"If it is a match, that is different," said Roger.
+
+He turned up his sleeves, hooked on his apron, and in the twinkling of
+an eye had adjusted the shaft.
+
+"How much do I owe you?" asked the unknown, drawing out his purse.
+
+"Nothing at all, faith; it is not worth while."
+
+The stranger insisted, but in vain.
+
+
+III
+
+"You are too honest, i'faith," said he to the wheelwright, "for me to
+be in your debt. I will grant you the fulfilment of three wishes."
+
+"Don't forget to wish what is _best_," added his companion.
+
+At these words the wheelwright smiled incredulously.
+
+"Are you not a couple of the loafers of Capelette?" he asked, with a
+wink.
+
+The idlers of the crossways of Capelette were considered the wildest
+wags in Cond�.
+
+"Whom do you take us for?" replied the unknown in a tone of severity,
+and with his club he touched an axle, made of iron, which instantly
+changed into one of pure silver.
+
+"Who are you, then," cried Roger, "that your word is as good as ready
+money?"
+
+"I am St. Peter, and my companion is St. Antony, the patron of
+golfers."
+
+"Take the trouble to walk in, gentlemen," said the wheelwright of Coq;
+and he ushered the two saints into the back parlour. He offered them
+chairs, and went to draw a jug of beer in the cellar. They clinked
+their glasses together, and after each had lit his pipe:
+
+"Since you are so good, sir saints," said Roger, "as to grant me the
+accomplishment of three wishes, know that for a long while I have
+desired three things. I wish, first of all, that whoever seats himself
+upon the elm-trunk at my door may not be able to rise without my
+permission. I like company and it bores me to be always alone."
+
+St. Peter shook his head and St. Antony nudged his client.
+
+
+IV
+
+"When I play a game of cards, on Sunday evening, at the 'Fighting
+Cock,'" continued the wheelwright, "it is no sooner nine o'clock than
+the garde-champ�tre comes to chuck us out. I desire that whoever shall
+have his feet on my leathern apron cannot be driven from the place
+where I shall have spread it."
+
+St. Peter shook his head, and St. Antony, with a solemn air, repeated:
+
+"Don't forget what is _best_."
+
+"What is best," replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly, "is to be the
+first golfer in the world. Every time I find my master at golf it
+turns my blood as black as the inside of the chimney. So I want a club
+that will carry the ball as high as the belfry of Cond�, and will
+infallibly win me my match."
+
+"So be it," said St. Peter.
+
+"You would have done better," said St. Antony, "to have asked for your
+eternal salvation."
+
+"Bah!" replied the other. "I have plenty of time to think of that; I
+am not yet greasing my boots for the long journey."
+
+The two saints went out and Roger followed them, curious to be present
+at such a rare game; but suddenly, near the Chapel of St. Antony, they
+disappeared.
+
+The wheelwright then went to see the mummers tumbling in the high
+street of Cond�.
+
+When he returned, towards midnight, he found at the corner of his door
+the desired club. To his great surprise it was only a bad little iron
+head attached to a wretched worn-out shaft. Nevertheless he took the
+gift of St. Peter and put it carefully away.
+
+
+V
+
+Next morning the Cond�ens scattered in crowds over the country, to
+play golf, eat red herrings, and drink beer, so as to scatter the
+fumes of wine from their heads and to revive after the fatigues of the
+Carnival. The wheelwright of Coq came too, with his miserable club,
+and made such fine strokes that all the players left their games to
+see him play. The following Sunday he proved still more expert; little
+by little his fame spread through the land. From ten leagues round the
+most skilful players hastened to come and be beaten, and it was then
+that he was named the Great Golfer.
+
+He passed the whole Sunday in golfing, and in the evening he rested
+himself by playing a game of matrimony at the "Fighting Cock." He
+spread his apron under the feet of the players, and the devil himself
+could not have put them out of the tavern, much less the rural
+policeman. On Monday morning he stopped the pilgrims who were going to
+worship at Notre Dame de Bon Secours; he induced them to rest
+themselves upon his _causeuse_, and did not let them go before he had
+confessed them well.
+
+In short, he led the most agreeable life that a good Fleming can
+imagine, and only regretted one thing--namely, that he had not wished
+it might last for ever.
+
+
+VI
+
+Well, it happened one day that the strongest player of Mons, who was
+called Paternostre, was found dead on the edge of a bunker. His head
+was broken, and near him was his niblick, red with blood.
+
+They could not tell who had done this business, and as Paternostre
+often said that at golf he feared neither man nor devil, it occurred
+to them that he had challenged Mynheer van Belz�buth, and that as a
+punishment for this he had knocked him on the head. Mynheer van
+Belz�buth is, as every one knows, the greatest gamester that there is
+upon or under the earth, but the game he particularly affects is golf.
+When he goes his round in Flanders one always meets him, club in hand,
+like a true Fleming.
+
+The wheelwright of Coq was very fond of Paternostre, who, next to
+himself, was the best golfer in the country. He went to his funeral
+with some golfers from the hamlets of Coq, La Cigogne, and La Queue de
+l'Ayache.
+
+On returning from the cemetery they went to the tavern to drink, as
+they say, to the memory of the dead,[21] and there they lost
+themselves in talk about the noble game of golf. When they separated,
+in the dusk of evening:
+
+    [21] _Boire la cervelle du mort._
+
+"A good journey to you," said the Belgian players, "and may St.
+Antony, the patron of golfers, preserve you from meeting the devil on
+the way!"
+
+"What do I care for the devil?" replied Roger. "If he challenged me I
+should soon beat him!"
+
+The companions trotted from tavern to tavern without misadventure; but
+the wolf-bell had long tolled for retiring in the belfry of Cond� when
+they returned each one to his own den.
+
+
+VII
+
+As he was putting the key into the lock the wheelwright thought he
+heard a shout of mocking laughter. He turned, and saw in the darkness
+a man six feet high, who again burst out laughing.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" said he, crossly.
+
+"At what? Why, at the _aplomb_ with which you boasted a little while
+ago that you would dare measure yourself against the devil."
+
+"Why not, if he challenged me?"
+
+"Very well, my master, bring your clubs. I challenge you!" said
+Mynheer van Belz�buth, for it was himself. Roger recognized him by a
+certain odour of sulphur that always hangs about his majesty.
+
+"What shall the stake be?" he asked resolutely.
+
+"Your soul?"
+
+"Against what?"
+
+"Whatever you please."
+
+The wheelwright reflected.
+
+"What have you there in your sack?"
+
+"My spoils of the week."
+
+"Is the soul of Paternostre among them?"
+
+"To be sure! and those of five other golfers; dead, like him, without
+confession."
+
+"I play you my soul against that of Paternostre."
+
+"Done!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+The two adversaries repaired to the adjoining field and chose for
+their goal the door of the cemetery of Cond�.[22] Belz�buth teed a
+ball on a frozen heap, after which he said, according to custom:
+
+    [22] They play to points, not holes.
+
+"From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three strokes will you
+run in?"
+
+"In two," replied the great golfer.
+
+And his adversary was not a little surprised, for from there to the
+cemetery was nearly a quarter of a league.
+
+"But how shall we see the ball?" continued the wheelwright.
+
+"True!" said Belz�buth.
+
+He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly in the dark
+like an immense glowworm.
+
+"Fore!" cried Roger.
+
+He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose to the sky like
+a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three strokes it crossed
+three-quarters of the distance.
+
+"That is good!" said Belz�buth, whose astonishment redoubled. "My turn
+to play now!"[23]
+
+    [23] After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back,
+    or into a hazard.
+
+With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the roofs of Coq
+nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league away. The blow was so violent
+that the iron struck fire against a pebble.
+
+"Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my aid," murmured the
+wheelwright of Coq.
+
+He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain, the club
+seemed to have acquired a new vigour. At the second stroke the ball
+went as if of itself and hit the door of the cemetery.
+
+"By the horns of my grandfather!" cried Belz�buth, "it shall not be
+said that I have been beaten by a son of that fool Adam. Give me my
+revenge."
+
+"What shall we play for?"
+
+"Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers."
+
+
+IX
+
+The devil played up, "pressing" furiously; his club blazed at each
+stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Cond� to
+Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six
+leagues from there.
+
+It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers
+followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to
+understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.
+
+In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six
+defunct golfers. Belz�buth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.
+
+"Shall we go on?" said the wheelwright of Coq.
+
+"No," replied the other; "they expect me at the Witches' Sabbath on
+the hill of Copi�mont.
+
+"That brigand," said he aside, "is capable of filching all my game."
+
+And he vanished.
+
+Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went
+to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belz�buth.
+
+
+X
+
+Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he
+little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the
+workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.
+
+"Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?"
+
+"No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted."
+
+"Then how can I serve you?"
+
+"By following me: your hour is come."
+
+"The devil," said the great golfer, "could you not wait a little till
+I have finished this wheel?"
+
+"Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a
+smoke."
+
+"In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at
+your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound."
+
+"That's good, faith; make haste."
+
+And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm
+trunk.
+
+Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work.
+At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:
+
+"Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?"
+
+The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:
+
+    "Attendez-moi sur l'orme;
+     Vous m'attendrez longtemps."
+
+"I don't think he hears me," said Death. "Ho! friend, are you ready?"
+
+    "Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent, Jean,
+     Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent,"
+
+replied the singer.
+
+"Would the brute laugh at me?" said Death to himself.
+
+And he tried to rise.
+
+To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the _causeuse_.
+He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
+
+"Let us see," he said to Roger. "What will you take to let me go? Do
+you wish me to prolong your life ten years?"
+
+    "J'ai de bon tabac dans ma tabati�re,"
+
+sang the great golfer.
+
+"Will you take twenty years?"
+
+    "Il pleut, il pleut, berg�re;
+     Rentre tes blancs moutons."
+
+"Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?--may the devil admire you!"
+
+The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo d�barquez sans naufrage."
+
+In the meanwhile the clock of Cond� had just struck four, and the
+boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a
+creature who struggled on the _causeuse_, like a devil in a holy-water
+pot, surprised and soon delighted them.
+
+Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death
+watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at
+him, singing in chorus:
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo d�barquez sans naufrage."
+
+"Will you take a hundred years?" yelled Death.
+
+"Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred
+years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am
+not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age."
+
+"Then what do you want?"
+
+"From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. 'Si
+jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!' says the proverb. I wish to
+preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to
+acquire the knowledge of an old one."
+
+"So be it," said Death; "I shall return this day a hundred years."
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo d�barquez sans naufrage."
+
+
+XI
+
+The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed perfect
+happiness, which was increased by the certainty of its not ending for
+a hundred years. Thanks to his experience, he so well understood the
+management of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
+shop.[24]
+
+    [24] _Vivre � porte close._
+
+He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had not foreseen. His
+wonderful skill at golf ended by frightening the players whom he had
+at first delighted, and was the cause of his never finding any one who
+would play against him.
+
+He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his travels over French
+Flanders, Belgium, and all the greens where the noble game of golf is
+held in honour. At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be
+admired by a new generation of golfers, after which he departed to
+return twenty years later.
+
+Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before long
+became a burden to him. Besides that, it bored him to win on every
+occasion; he was tired of passing like the Wandering Jew through
+generations, and of seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of
+his friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced to making
+new friendships which were undone by the age or death of his fellows;
+all changed around him, he only did not change.
+
+He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which condemned him to
+taste the same pleasures for ever, and he sometimes longed to know the
+calmer joys of old age. One day he caught himself at his
+looking-glass, examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
+white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the snow on the
+forehead of the old.
+
+
+XII
+
+In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise that he was no
+longer amused at anything. If sometimes in the tavern he had a fancy
+for making use of his apron to pass the night at cards: "What is the
+good of this excess?" whispered experience; "it is not sufficient to
+be unable to shorten one's days, one must also avoid making oneself
+ill."
+
+He reached the point of refusing himself the pleasure of drinking his
+pint and smoking his pipe. Why, indeed, plunge into dissipations which
+enervate the body and dull the brain?
+
+_The wretch went further and gave up golf!_ Experience convinced him
+that the game is a dangerous one, which overheats one, and is
+eminently adapted to produce colds, catarrhs, rheumatism, and
+inflammation of the lungs.
+
+Besides, what is the use, and what great glory is it to be reputed the
+first golfer in the world?
+
+Of what use is glory itself? A vain hope, vain as the smoke of a pipe.
+
+When experience had thus bereft him one by one of his delusions, the
+unhappy golfer became mortally weary. He saw that he had deceived
+himself, that delusion has its price, and that the greatest charm of
+youth is perhaps its inexperience.
+
+He thus arrived at the term agreed on in the contract, and as he had
+not had a paradise here below, he sought through his hardly-acquired
+wisdom a clever way of conquering one above.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Death found him at Coq at work in his shop. Experience had at least
+taught him that work is the most lasting of pleasures.
+
+"Are you ready?" said Death.
+
+"I am."
+
+He took his club, put a score of balls in his pocket, threw his sack
+over his shoulder, and buckled his gaiters without taking off his
+apron.
+
+"What do you want your club for?"
+
+"Why, to golf in paradise with my patron St. Antony."
+
+"Do you fancy, then, that I am going to conduct you to paradise?"
+
+"You must, as I have half-a-dozen souls to carry there, that I once
+saved from the clutches of Belz�buth."
+
+"Better have saved your own. _En route, cher Dumollet!_"
+
+The great golfer saw that the old reaper bore him a grudge, and that
+he was going to conduct him to the paradise of the lost.[25]
+
+    [25] _Noires glaives._
+
+Indeed a quarter of an hour later the two travellers knocked at the
+gate of hell.
+
+"Toc, toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"Don't open the door," cried Belz�buth; "that rascal wins at every
+turn; he is capable of depopulating my empire."
+
+Roger laughed in his sleeve.
+
+"Oh! you are not saved," said Death. "I am going to take you where you
+won't be cold either."
+
+Quicker than a beggar would have emptied a poor's box they were in
+purgatory.
+
+"Toc--toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"But he is in a state of mortal sin," cried the angel on duty. "Take
+him away from here--he can't come in."
+
+"I cannot, all the same, let him linger between heaven and earth,"
+said Death; "I shall shunt him back to Coq."
+
+"Where they will take me for a ghost. Thank you! is there not still
+paradise?"
+
+
+XIV
+
+They were there at the end of a short hour.
+
+"Toc, toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"Ah! my lad," said St. Peter, half opening the door, "I am really
+grieved. St. Antony told you long ago you had better ask for the
+salvation of your soul."
+
+"That is true, St. Peter," replied Roger with a sheepish air. "And
+how is he, that blessed St. Antony? Could I not come in for one moment
+to return the visit he once paid me?"
+
+"Why, here he comes," said St. Peter, throwing the door wide open.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye the sly golfer had flung himself into
+paradise, unhooked his apron, let it fall to the ground, and seated
+himself down on it.
+
+"Good morning, St. Antony," said he with a fine salute. "You see I had
+plenty of time to think of paradise, for here we are!"
+
+"What! _You_ here!" cried St. Antony.
+
+"Yes, I and my company," replied Roger, opening his sack and
+scattering on the carpet the souls of the six golfers.
+
+"Will you have the goodness to pack right off, all of you?"
+
+"Impossible," said the great golfer, showing his apron.
+
+"The rogue has made game of us," said St. Antony. "Come, St. Peter, in
+memory of our game of golf, let him in with his souls. Besides, he has
+had his purgatory on earth."
+
+"It is not a very good precedent," murmured St. Peter.
+
+"Bah!" replied Roger, "if we have a few good golfers in paradise,
+where is the harm?"
+
+
+XV
+
+Thus, after having lived long, golfed much and drunk many cans of
+beer, the wheelwright of Coq called the Great Golfer was admitted to
+paradise; but I advise no one to copy him, for it is not quite the
+right way to go, and St. Peter might not always be so compliant,
+though great allowances must be made for golfers.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got
+an indistinct impression of it as of a grey shadow outlined against
+the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense
+stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay
+was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a
+weird, seignorial residence, like a dream palace, strange and
+beautiful--this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying
+day.
+
+The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my
+eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a
+cameo, and as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my
+admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or
+more perfect.
+
+As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I
+wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns,
+raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which looked like rockets
+starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of
+gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of
+stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate
+architecture.
+
+As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me
+and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and
+the devil.
+
+A sceptical genius has said: "God made man in his image and man has
+returned the compliment."
+
+This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write
+the history of the local divinity of every continent, as well as the
+history of the patron saints in each one of our provinces. The negro
+has his ferocious man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan fills his
+paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical people, deified all
+the passions.
+
+Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting
+saint, modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
+
+Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant
+and victorious angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the
+victorious, the conqueror of Satan.
+
+But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and
+tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint
+and the devil.
+
+To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil, Saint Michael
+built himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an
+archangel; and only such a saint could build a residence of such
+magnificence.
+
+But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he
+surrounded his domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the
+sea.
+
+The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the
+salt marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded
+valleys and all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint
+ruled only over the sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint
+Michael was as poor as a church mouse.
+
+After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of
+affairs and began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the
+matter was by no means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.
+
+He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he
+walked across to the shore. The demon was eating his soup in front of
+his door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him,
+kissed the hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him
+refreshments.
+
+Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: "I have come here
+to propose to you a good bargain."
+
+The devil, candid and trustful, answered: "That will suit me."
+
+"Here it is. Give me all your lands."
+
+Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak: "But--"
+
+The saint continued: "Listen first. Give me all your lands. I will
+take care of all the work, the ploughing, the sowing, the fertilizing,
+everything, and we will share the crops equally. How does that suit
+you?"
+
+The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He only demanded in
+addition a few of those delicious grey mullet which are caught around
+the solitary mount. Saint Michael promised the fish.
+
+They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show that it was a
+bargain, and the saint continued: "See here, so that you will have
+nothing to complain of, choose that part of the crops which you
+prefer: the part that grows above ground or the part that stays in
+the ground." Satan cried out: "I will take all that will be above
+ground."
+
+"It's a bargain!" said the saint. And he went away.
+
+Six months later, all over the immense domain of the devil, one could
+see nothing but carrots, turnips, onions, salsify, all the plants
+whose juicy roots are good and savoury and whose useless leaves are
+good for nothing but for feeding animals.
+
+Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint Michael a swindler.
+
+But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for agriculture, went
+back to see the devil and said: "Really, I hadn't thought of that at
+all; it was just an accident, no fault of mine. And to make things
+fair with you, this year I'll let you take everything that is under
+the ground."
+
+"Very well," answered Satan.
+
+The following spring all the evil spirit's lands were covered with
+golden wheat, oats as big as beans, flax, magnificent colza, red
+clover, peas, cabbage, artichokes, everything that develops into
+grains or fruit in the sunlight.
+
+Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he completely lost his
+temper. He took back his fields and remained deaf to all the fresh
+propositions of his neighbour.
+
+A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely manor Saint Michael
+looked at the distant and fertile lands and watched the devil direct
+the work, take in his crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry,
+exasperated at his powerlessness. As he was no longer able to deceive
+Satan, he decided to wreak vengeance on him, and he went out to invite
+him to dinner for the following Monday.
+
+"You have been very unfortunate in your dealings with me," he said; "I
+know it, but I don't want any ill feeling between us, and I expect you
+to dine with me. I'll give you some good things to eat."
+
+Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted eagerly. On the day
+appointed he donned his finest clothes and set out for the castle.
+
+Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal. First there was a
+_vol-au-vent_, full of cocks' crests and kidneys, with meat-balls,
+then two big grey mullet with cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with
+chestnuts soaked in wine, some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake,
+vegetables which melted in the mouth and nice hot pancake which was
+brought on smoking and spreading a delicious odour of butter.
+
+They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady red wine, and after
+each course they whetted their appetites with some old apple brandy.
+
+The devil drank and ate to his heart's content; in fact he took so
+much that he was very uncomfortable, and began to retch.
+
+Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a voice like thunder:
+"What! before me, rascal! You dare--before me--"
+
+Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a stick, pursued
+him. They ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up
+the staircases, galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle
+to gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was running about
+madly and trying hard to escape. At last he found himself at the top
+of the last terrace, right at the top, from which could be seen the
+immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no
+longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and gave him a furious
+kick, which shot him through space like a cannon-ball.
+
+He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily before the
+town of Mortain. His horns and claws stuck deep into the rock, which
+keeps through eternity the traces of this fall of Satan.
+
+He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end of time, and as he
+looked at this fatal castle in the distance, standing out against the
+setting sun, he understood well that he would always be vanquished in
+this unequal struggle, and he went away limping, heading for distant
+countries, leaving to his enemy his fields, his hills, his valleys and
+his marshes.
+
+And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of Normandy,
+vanquished the devil.
+
+Another people would have dreamed of this battle in an entirely
+different manner.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE[26]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [26] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+"So you won't sell me your soul?" said the devil.
+
+"Thank you," replied the student, "I had rather keep it myself, if
+it's all the same to you."
+
+"But it's not all the same to me. I want it very particularly. Come,
+I'll be liberal. I said twenty years. You can have thirty."
+
+The student shook his head.
+
+"Forty!"
+
+Another shake.
+
+"Fifty!"
+
+As before.
+
+"Now," said the devil. "I know I'm going to do a foolish thing, but I
+cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away.
+I'll make you another kind of offer. We don't have any bargain at
+present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years.
+This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your
+soul, mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant. If you
+give it, we are quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to
+this?"
+
+The student reflected for some minutes. "Agreed," he said at last.
+
+Scarcely had the devil disappeared, which he did instantaneously, ere
+a messenger reined in his smoking steed at the gate of the University
+of Cordova (the judicious reader will already have remarked that
+Lucifer could never have been allowed inside a Christian seat of
+learning), and, inquiring for the student Gerbert, presented him with
+the Emperor Otho's nomination to the Abbacy of Bobbio, in
+consideration, said the document, of his virtue and learning, wellnigh
+miraculous in one so young. Such messengers were frequent visitors
+during Gerbert's prosperous career. Abbot, bishop, archbishop,
+cardinal, he was ultimately enthroned Pope on April 2, 999, and
+assumed the appellation of Silvester the Second. It was then a general
+belief that the world would come to an end in the following year, a
+catastrophe which to many seemed the more imminent from the election
+of a chief pastor whose celebrity as a theologian, though not
+inconsiderable, by no means equalled his reputation as a necromancer.
+
+The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless through the dreaded
+twelvemonth, and early in the first year of the eleventh century
+Gerbert was sitting peacefully in his study, perusing a book of magic.
+Volumes of algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy, and
+other such light reading filled his bookcase; and on a table stood an
+improved clock of his invention, next to his introduction of the
+Arabic numerals his chief legacy to posterity. Suddenly a sound of
+wings was heard, and Lucifer stood by his side.
+
+"It is a long time," said the fiend, "since I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you. I have now called to remind you of our little contract,
+concluded this day forty years."
+
+"You remember," said Silvester, "that you are not to ask anything
+exceeding my power to perform."
+
+"I have no such intention," said Lucifer. "On the contrary, I am about
+to solicit a favour which can be bestowed by you alone. You are Pope,
+I desire that you would make me a Cardinal."
+
+"In the expectation, I presume," returned Gerbert, "of becoming Pope
+on the next vacancy."
+
+"An expectation," replied Lucifer, "which I may most reasonably
+entertain, considering my enormous wealth, my proficiency in intrigue,
+and the present condition of the Sacred College."
+
+"You would doubtless," said Gerbert, "endeavour to subvert the
+foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and
+licentiousness, render the Holy See odious and contemptible."
+
+"On the contrary," said the fiend, "I would extirpate heresy, and all
+learning and knowledge as inevitably tending thereunto. I would suffer
+no man to read but the priest, and confine his reading to his
+breviary. I would burn your books together with your bones on the
+first convenient opportunity. I would observe an austere propriety of
+conduct, and be especially careful not to loosen one rivet in the
+tremendous yoke I was forging for the minds and consciences of
+mankind."
+
+"If it be so," said Gerbert, "let's be off!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lucifer, "you are willing to accompany me to the
+infernal regions!"
+
+"Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning of Plato and
+Aristotle, and give place to the darkness against which I have been
+contending all my life."
+
+"Gerbert," replied the demon, "this is arrant trifling. Know you not
+that no good man can enter my dominions? that, were such a thing
+possible, my empire would become intolerable to me, and I should be
+compelled to abdicate?"
+
+"I do know it," said Gerbert, "and hence I have been able to receive
+your visit with composure."
+
+"Gerbert," said the devil, with tears in his eyes, "I put it to
+you--is this fair, is this honest? I undertake to promote your
+interests in the world; I fulfil my promise abundantly. You obtain
+through my instrumentality a position to which you could never
+otherwise have aspired. Often have I had a hand in the election of a
+Pope, but never before have I contributed to confer the tiara on one
+eminent for virtue and learning. You profit by my assistance to the
+full, and now take advantage of an adventitious circumstance to
+deprive me of my reasonable guerdon. It is my constant experience that
+the good people are much more slippery than the sinners, and drive
+much harder bargains."
+
+"Lucifer," answered Gerbert, "I have always sought to treat you as a
+gentleman, hoping that you would approve yourself such in return. I
+will not inquire whether it was entirely in harmony with this
+character to seek to intimidate me into compliance with your demand by
+threatening me with a penalty which you well knew could not be
+enforced. I will overlook this little irregularity, and concede even
+more than you have requested. You have asked to be a Cardinal. I will
+make you Pope--"
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused his sooty hide,
+as the light of a fading ember is revived by breathing upon it.
+
+"For twelve hours," continued Gerbert. "At the expiration of that time
+we will consider the matter further; and if, as I anticipate, you are
+more anxious to divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to
+assume it, I promise to bestow upon you any boon you may ask within my
+power to grant, and not plainly inconsistent with religion or morals."
+
+"Done!" cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic words, and in
+a moment the apartment held two Pope Silvesters, entirely
+indistinguishable save by their attire, and the fact that one limped
+slightly with the left foot.
+
+"You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard," said Gerbert,
+and, taking his book of magic with him, he retreated through a masked
+door to a secret chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled,
+and muttered to himself, "Poor old Lucifer! Sold again!"
+
+If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large
+slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his
+personal appearance with some dissatisfaction.
+
+"I certainly don't look half so well without my horns," he
+soliloquized, "and I am sure I shall miss my tail most grievously."
+
+A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for the deficient
+appendages, and Lucifer now looked every inch a Pope. He was about to
+call the master of the ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the
+door was burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards, rushed
+into the room.
+
+"Down with the sorcerer!" they cried, as they seized and gagged him.
+
+"Death to the Saracen!"
+
+"Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!"
+
+"Knows Greek!"
+
+"Talks Arabic!"
+
+"Reads Hebrew!"
+
+"Burn him!"
+
+"Smother him!"
+
+"Let him be deposed by a general council," said a young and
+inexperienced Cardinal.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said an old and wary one, _sotto voce_.
+
+Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame he was doomed to
+inhabit for the next eleven hours was speedily exhausted. Bound and
+helpless, he swooned away.
+
+"Brethren," said one of the senior cardinals, "it hath been delivered
+by the exorcists that a sorcerer or other individual in league with
+the demon doth usually bear upon his person some visible token of his
+infernal compact. I propose that we forthwith institute a search for
+this stigma, the discovery of which may contribute to justify our
+proceedings in the eyes of the world."
+
+"I heartily approve of our brother Anno's proposition," said another,
+"the rather as we cannot possibly fail to discover such a mark, if,
+indeed, we desire to find it."
+
+The search was accordingly instituted, and had not proceeded far ere a
+simultaneous yell from all the seven cardinals indicated that their
+investigation had brought more light than they had ventured to expect.
+
+The Holy Father had a cloven foot!
+
+For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly stunned,
+silent, and stupefied with amazement. As they gradually recovered
+their faculties it would have become manifest to a nice observer that
+the Pope had risen very considerably in their good opinion.
+
+"This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation," said one.
+
+"I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately," said
+another.
+
+"It is written, 'the devils believe,'" said a third: "the Holy Father,
+therefore, is not a heretic at any rate."
+
+"Brethren," said Anno, "this affair, as our brother Benno well
+remarks, doth indeed call for mature deliberation. I therefore propose
+that, instead of smothering his Holiness with cushions, as originally
+contemplated, we immure him for the present in the dungeon adjoining
+hereunto, and, after spending the night in meditation and prayer,
+resume the consideration of the business tomorrow morning."
+
+"Informing the officials of the palace," said Benno, "that his
+Holiness has retired for his devotions, and desires on no account to
+be disturbed."
+
+"A pious fraud," said Anno, "which not one of the Fathers would for a
+moment have scrupled to commit."
+
+The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible Lucifer, and
+bore him carefully, almost tenderly, to the apartment appointed for
+his detention. Each would fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery,
+but each felt that the eyes of his six brethren were upon him: and
+all, therefore, retired simultaneously, each taking a key of the cell.
+
+Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately afterwards. He had
+the most confused idea of the circumstances which had involved him in
+his present scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were
+the usual concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were by no means to
+his taste, and he wished he had been made acquainted with them sooner.
+The dungeon was not only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the
+poor devil in his present form had no latent store of infernal heat to
+draw upon. His teeth chattered, he shivered in every limb, and felt
+devoured with hunger and thirst. There is much probability in the
+assertion of some of his biographers that it was on this occasion that
+he invented ardent spirits; but, even if he did, the mere conception
+of a glass of brandy could only increase his sufferings. So the long
+January night wore wearily on, and Lucifer seemed likely to expire
+from inanition, when a key turned in the lock, and Cardinal Anno
+cautiously glided in, bearing a lamp, a loaf, half a cold roast kid,
+and a bottle of wine.
+
+"I trust," he said, bowing courteously, "that I may be excused any
+slight breach of etiquette of which I may render myself culpable from
+the difficulty under which I labour of determining whether, under
+present circumstances, 'Your Holiness,' or 'Your infernal Majesty' be
+the form of address most befitting me to employ."
+
+"Bub-ub-bub-boo," went Lucifer, who still had the gag in his mouth.
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "I crave your Infernal Holiness's
+forgiveness. What a lamentable oversight!"
+
+And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he set out the
+refection, upon which the demon fell voraciously.
+
+"Why the devil, if I may so express myself," pursued Anno, "did not
+your Holiness inform us that you _were_ the devil? Not a hand would
+then have been raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my
+life for the audience now happily vouchsafed me. Whence this mistrust
+of your faithful Anno, who has served you so loyally and zealously
+these many years?"
+
+Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.
+
+"I shall never forgive myself," protested the Cardinal, "for the part
+I have borne in this unfortunate transaction. Next to ministering to
+your Majesty's bodily necessities, there is nothing I have so much at
+heart as to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty to
+remember that I believed myself to be acting in your Majesty's
+interest by overthrowing a magician who was accustomed to send your
+Majesty upon errands, and who might at any time enclose you in a box,
+and cast you into the sea. It is deplorable that your Majesty's most
+devoted servants should have been thus misled."
+
+"Reasons of State," suggested Lucifer.
+
+"I trust that they no longer operate," said the Cardinal. "However,
+the Sacred College is now fully possessed of the whole matter: it is
+therefore unnecessary to pursue this department of the subject
+further. I would now humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty,
+or rather, perhaps, your Holiness, since I am about to speak of
+spiritual things, on the important and delicate point of your
+Holiness's successor. I am ignorant how long your Holiness proposes to
+occupy the Apostolic chair; but of course you are aware that public
+opinion will not suffer you to hold it for a term exceeding that of
+the pontificate of Peter. A vacancy, therefore, must one day occur;
+and I am humbly to represent that the office could not be filled by
+one more congenial than myself to the present incumbent, or on whom he
+could more fully rely to carry out in every respect his views and
+intentions."
+
+And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances of his past
+life, which certainly seemed to corroborate his assertion. He had not,
+however, proceeded far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another
+key in the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively, "Beware of
+Benno," ere he dived under a table.
+
+Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold viands. Warned by
+the other lamp and the remains of Lucifer's repast that some colleague
+had been beforehand with him, and not knowing how many more might be
+in the field, he came briefly to the point as regarded the Papacy, and
+preferred his claim in much the same manner as Anno. While he was
+earnestly cautioning Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could
+and would cheat the very Devil himself, another key turned in the
+lock, and Benno escaped under the table, where Anno immediately
+inserted his fingers into his right eye. The little squeal consequent
+upon this occurrence Lucifer successfully smothered by a fit of
+coughing.
+
+Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham, and exhibited the
+same disgust as Benno on seeing himself forestalled. So far as his
+requests transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he
+would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal
+No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse,
+power to call up the Devil _ad libitum_, and a ring of invisibility to
+allow him free access to his mistress, who was unfortunately a married
+woman.
+
+Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way of poisoning
+Cardinal No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred the same petition as
+respected Cardinal No. 4.
+
+Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion of the
+Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, with the faculty of holding
+them together, and of unlimited non-residence. In the course of his
+harangue he made use of the phrase _non obstantibus_, of which Lucifer
+immediately took a note.
+
+What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he
+had hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and
+Lucifer, regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the
+Church spinning to the other end of the room, and split the marble
+table with a single stroke of his tail. The six crouched and huddling
+Cardinals cowered revealed to one another, and at the same time
+enjoyed the spectacle of his Holiness darting through the stone
+ceiling, which yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up
+afterwards as if nothing had happened. After the first shock of dismay
+they unanimously rushed to the door, but found it bolted on the
+outside. There was no other exit, and no means of giving an alarm. In
+this emergency the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a bright
+example to their ultramontane colleagues. "_Bisogna pazienzia_," they
+said, as they shrugged their shoulders. Nothing could exceed the
+mutual politeness of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two
+who had sought to poison each other. The Frenchman was held to have
+gravely derogated from good manners by alluding to this circumstance,
+which had reached his ears while he was under the table: and the
+Englishman swore so outrageously at the plight in which he found
+himself that the Italians then and there silently registered a vow
+that none of his nation should ever be Pope, a maxim which, with one
+exception, has been observed to this day.
+
+Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed
+in all the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he
+thought his visitor had probably had enough.
+
+"I should think so indeed," replied Lucifer. "But at the same time I
+feel myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of
+the loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is
+needless for me to devote any considerable amount of personal
+attention to ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the promised boon,
+which it will be in no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant,
+seeing that it is a work of mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be
+released, and that their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone
+suffered, be buried in oblivion."
+
+"I hoped you would carry them all off," said Gerbert, with an
+expression of disappointment.
+
+"Thank you," said the Devil. "It is more to my interest to leave them
+where they are."
+
+So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth,
+sheepish and crestfallen. If, after all, they did less mischief than
+Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire
+bewilderment by what had passed, and their utter inability to
+penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even
+with ostentation to good works. They could never quite satisfy
+themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and
+when under the latter impression habitually emitted propositions which
+Gerbert justly stigmatized as rash, temerarious, and scandalous. They
+plagued him with allusions to certain matters mentioned in their
+interviews with Lucifer, with which they naturally but erroneously
+supposed him to be conversant, and worried him by continual nods and
+titterings as they glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish this
+nuisance, and at the same time silence sundry unpleasant rumours which
+had somehow got abroad, Gerbert devised the ceremony of kissing the
+Pope's feet, which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this
+day. The stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy
+Father had lost his hoof surpasses all description, and they went to
+their graves without having obtained the least insight into the
+mystery.
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER[27]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [27] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+Lucifer sat playing chess with Man for his soul.
+
+The game was evidently going ill for Man. He had but pawns left, few
+and struggling. Lucifer had rooks, knights, and, of course, bishops.
+
+It was but natural under such circumstances that Man should be in no
+great hurry to move. Lucifer grew impatient.
+
+"It is a pity," said he at last, "that we did not fix some period
+within which the player must move, or resign."
+
+"Oh, Lucifer," returned the young man, in heart-rending accents, "it
+is not the impending loss of my soul that thus unmans me, but the loss
+of my betrothed. When I think of the grief of the Lady Adeliza, the
+paragon of terrestrial loveliness!" Tears choked his utterance;
+Lucifer was touched.
+
+"Is the Lady Adeliza's loveliness in sooth so transcendent?" he
+inquired.
+
+"She is a rose, a lily, a diamond, a morning star!"
+
+"If that is the case," rejoined Lucifer, "thou mayest reassure
+thyself. The Lady Adeliza shall not want for consolation. I will
+assume thy shape and woo her in thy stead."
+
+The young man hardly seemed to receive all the comfort from this
+promise which Lucifer no doubt designed. He made a desperate move. In
+an instant the Devil checkmated him, and he disappeared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Upon my word, if I had known what a business this was going to be, I
+don't think I should have gone in for it," soliloquized the Devil as,
+wearing his captive's semblance and installed in his apartments, he
+surveyed the effects to which he now had to administer. They included
+coats, shirts, collars, neckties, foils, cigars, and the like _ad
+libitum_; and very little else except three challenges, ten writs, and
+seventy-four unpaid bills, elegantly disposed around the
+looking-glass. To the poor youth's praise be it said, there were no
+_billets-doux_, except from the Lady Adeliza herself.
+
+Noting the address of these carefully, the Devil sallied forth, and
+nothing but his ignorance of the topography of the hotel, which made
+him take the back stairs, saved him from the clutches of two bailiffs
+lurking on the principal staircase. Leaping into a cab, he thus
+escaped a perfumer and a bootmaker, and shortly found himself at the
+Lady Adeliza's feet.
+
+The truth had not been half told him. Such beauty, such wit, such
+correctness of principle! Lucifer went forth from her presence a
+love-sick fiend. Not Merlin's mother had produced half the impression
+upon him; and Adeliza on her part had never found her lover
+one-hundredth part so interesting as he seemed that morning.
+
+Lucifer proceeded at once to the City, where, assuming his proper
+shape for the occasion, he negotiated a loan without the smallest
+difficulty. All debts were promptly discharged, and Adeliza was
+astonished at the splendour and variety of the presents she was
+constantly receiving.
+
+Lucifer had all but brought her to name the day, when he was informed
+that a gentleman of clerical appearance desired to wait upon him.
+
+"Wants money for a new church or mission, I suppose," said he. "Show
+him up."
+
+But when the visitor was ushered in, Lucifer found with discomposure
+that he was no earthly clergyman, but a celestial saint; a saint, too,
+with whom Lucifer had never been able to get on. He had served in the
+army while on earth, and his address was curt, precise, and
+peremptory.
+
+"I have called," he said, "to notify to you my appointment as
+Inspector of Devils."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lucifer, in consternation. "To the post of my old
+friend Michael!"
+
+"Too old," said the Saint laconically. "Millions of years older than
+the world. About your age, I think."
+
+Lucifer winced, remembering the particular business he was then about.
+The Saint continued:
+
+"I am a new broom, and am expected to sweep clean. I warn you that I
+mean to be strict, and there is one little matter which I must set
+right immediately. You are going to marry that poor young fellow's
+betrothed, are you? Now you know you can not take his wife, unless you
+give him yours."
+
+"Oh, my dear friend," exclaimed Lucifer, "what an inexpressibly
+blissful prospect you do open unto me!"
+
+"I don't know that," said the Saint. "I must remind you that the
+dominion of the infernal regions is unalterably attached to the person
+of the present Queen thereof. If you part with her you immediately
+lose all your authority and possessions. I don't care a brass button
+which you do, but you must understand that you cannot eat your cake
+and have it too. Good morning!"
+
+Who shall describe the conflict in Lucifer's bosom? If any stronger
+passion existed therein at that moment than attachment to Adeliza, it
+was aversion to his consort, and the two combined were wellnigh
+irresistible. But to disenthrone himself, to descend to the condition
+of a poor devil!
+
+Feeling himself incapable of coming to a decision, he sent for Belial,
+unfolded the matter, and requested his advice.
+
+"What a shame that our new inspector will not let you marry Adeliza!"
+lamented his counsellor. "If you did, my private opinion is that
+forty-eight hours afterwards you would care just as much for her as
+you do now for Madam Lucifer, neither more nor less. Are your
+intentions really honourable?"
+
+"Yes," replied Lucifer, "it is to be a Lucifer match."
+
+"The more fool you," rejoined Belial. "If you tempted her to commit a
+sin, she would be yours without any conditions at all."
+
+"Oh, Belial," said Lucifer, "I cannot bring myself to be a tempter of
+so much innocence and loveliness."
+
+And he meant what he said.
+
+"Well then, let me try," proposed Belial.
+
+"You?" replied Lucifer contemptuously; "do you imagine that Adeliza
+would look at you?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Belial, surveying himself complacently in the glass.
+
+He was humpbacked, squinting, and lame, and his horns stood up under
+his wig.
+
+The discussion ended in a wager: after which there was no retreat for
+Lucifer.
+
+The infernal Iachimo was introduced to Adeliza as a distinguished
+foreigner, and was soon prosecuting his suit with all the success
+which Lucifer had predicted. One thing protected while it baffled
+him--the entire inability of Adeliza to understand what he meant. At
+length he was constrained to make the matter clear by producing an
+enormous treasure, which he offered Adeliza in exchange for the
+abandonment of her lover.
+
+The tempest of indignation which ensued would have swept away any
+ordinary demon, but Belial listened unmoved. When Adeliza had
+exhausted herself he smilingly rallied her upon her affection for an
+unworthy lover, of whose infidelity he undertook to give her proof.
+Frantic with jealousy, Adeliza consented, and in a trice found herself
+in the infernal regions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Adeliza's arrival in Pandemonium, as Belial had planned, occurred
+immediately after the receipt of a message from Lucifer, in whose
+bosom love had finally gained the victory, and who had telegraphed his
+abdication and resignation of Madam Lucifer to Adeliza's betrothed.
+The poor young man had just been hauled up from the lower depths, and
+was beset by legions of demons obsequiously pressing all manner of
+treasures upon his acceptance. He stared, helpless and bewildered,
+unable to realize his position in the smallest degree. In the
+background grave and serious demons, the princes of the infernal
+realm, discussed the new departure, and consulted especially how to
+break it to Madam Lucifer--a commission of which no one seemed
+ambitious.
+
+"Stay where you are," whispered Belial to Adeliza; "stir not: you
+shall put his constancy to the proof within five minutes."
+
+Not all the hustling, mowing, and gibbering of the fiends would under
+ordinary circumstances have kept Adeliza from her lover's side: but
+what is all hell to jealousy?
+
+In even less time than he had promised, Belial returned, accompanied
+by Madam Lucifer. This lady's black robe, dripping with blood,
+contrasted agreeably with her complexion of sulphurous yellow; the
+absence of hair was compensated by the exceptional length of her
+nails; she was a thousand million years old, and, but for her
+remarkable muscular vigour, looked every one of them. The rage into
+which Belial's communication had thrown her was something
+indescribable; but, as her eye fell on the handsome youth, a different
+order of thoughts seemed to take possession of her mind.
+
+"Let the monster go!" she exclaimed; "who cares? Come, my love, ascend
+the throne with me, and share the empire and the treasures of thy fond
+Luciferetta."
+
+"If you don't, back you go," interjected Belial.
+
+What might have been the young man's decision if Madam Lucifer had
+borne more resemblance to Madam Vulcan, it would be wholly impertinent
+to inquire, for the question never arose.
+
+"Take me away!" he screamed, "take me away, anywhere! anywhere out of
+her reach! Oh, Adeliza!"
+
+With a bound Adeliza stood by his side. She was darting a triumphant
+glance at the discomfited Queen of Hell, when suddenly her expression
+changed, and she screamed loudly. Two adorers stood before her, alike
+in every lineament and every detail of costume, utterly
+indistinguishable, even by the eye of Love.
+
+Lucifer, in fact, hastening to throw himself at Adeliza's feet and
+pray her to defer his bliss no longer, had been thunderstruck by the
+tidings of her elopement with Belial. Fearing to lose his wife and his
+dominions along with his sweetheart, he had sped to the nether regions
+with such expedition that he had had no time to change his costume.
+Hence the equivocation which confounded Adeliza, but at the same time
+preserved her from being torn to pieces by the no less mystified Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+Perceiving the state of the case, Lucifer with true gentlemanly
+feeling resumed his proper semblance, and Madam Lucifer's talons were
+immediately inserted into his whiskers.
+
+"My dear! my love!" he gasped, as audibly as she would let him, "is
+this the way it welcomes its own Lucy-pucy?"
+
+"Who is that person?" demanded Madam Lucifer.
+
+"I don't know her," screamed the wretched Lucifer. "I never saw her
+before. Take her away; shut her up in the deepest dungeon!"
+
+"Not if I know it," sharply replied Madam Lucifer. "You can't bear to
+part with her, can't you? You would intrigue with her under my nose,
+would you? Take that! and that! Turn them both out, I say! turn them
+both out!"
+
+"Certainly, my dearest love, most certainly," responded Lucifer.
+
+"Oh, Sire," cried Moloch and Beelzebub together, "for Heaven's sake
+let your Majesty consider what he is doing. The Inspector--"
+
+"Bother the Inspector!" screeched Lucifer. "D'ye think I'm not a
+thousand times more afraid of your mistress than of all the saints in
+the calendar? There," addressing Adeliza and her betrothed, "be off!
+You'll find all debts paid, and a nice balance at the bank. Out! Run!"
+
+They did not wait to be told twice. Earth yawned. The gates of
+Tartarus stood wide. They found themselves on the side of a steep
+mountain, down which they scoured madly, hand linked in hand. But fast
+as they ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER[28]
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+    [28] Taken by permission from _The Well of St. Claire_, by
+    Anatole France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published,
+    1909, by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+     _E si compiacque tanto Spinello di farlo orribile e
+     contrafatto, che si dice (tanto pu� alcuna fiata
+     l'immaginazione) che la detta figura da lui dipinta gli
+     apparve in sogno, domandandolo dove egli l' avesse veduta si
+     brutta._[29]
+                            (_Vite de' pi� eccellenti pittori, da Messer
+                            Giorgio Vasari.--"Vita di Spinello."_)
+
+    [29] "And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and
+    portentous Production that it was commonly reported--so great
+    is always the force of fancy--that the said figure (of
+    Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-Piece
+    of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had
+    appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what
+    place he had beheld him under so brutish a form."
+
+                      _Lives of the most Excellent Painters_, by Giorgio
+                      Vasari.--"Life of Spinello."
+
+Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence, had a wholesome
+terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly in the watches of the
+night, when it is given to the powers of Darkness to prevail. And the
+worthy man's fears were not unreasonable, for in those days the Demons
+had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed them of more souls
+with a single picture than a good little Preaching Friar could do in
+thirty sermons. No doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in
+the hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost of his
+powers "that day of wrath, that day of mourning," which is to reduce
+the universe to ashes, _teste David et Sibylla_, borrowing his deepest
+voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the Archangel's last
+trump. But there! it was "all sound and fury, signifying nothing,"
+whereas a painting displayed on a Chapel wall or in the Cloister,
+showing Jesus Christ sitting on the Great White Throne to judge the
+living and the dead, spoke unceasingly to the eyes of sinners, and
+through the eyes chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or
+otherwise.
+
+It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa-Croce
+in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine
+Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse
+which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon
+Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell, and Purgatory and
+Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was
+able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was
+instructive and true, and we may say surely less profit is to be had
+of reading the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating
+such representative works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters
+took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the
+flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying
+in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love
+to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert
+carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of
+women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the
+Devils pouring molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbess, who
+had commissioned some work from him and then scamped his pay.
+
+This is why the Demons in those days were bitter enemies of the
+painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all
+the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with
+representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and
+fish, serpents' bodies and bats' wings. This sore resentment which
+they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello of Arezzo.
+
+Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of Florentine exiles,
+and his graciousness of mind matched his gentle birth; for he was the
+most skilful painter of his time. He wrought many and great works at
+Florence; and the Pisans begged him to complete Giotto's
+wall-paintings in their Campo Santo, where the dead rest beneath roses
+in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem. At last, after working long
+years in divers cities and getting much gold, he longed to see once
+more the good city of Arezzo, his mother. The men of Arezzo had not
+forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being enrolled in the
+Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia, had visited the sick
+and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him
+besides for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all
+Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honours on
+his return.
+
+Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important tasks in
+his native town. His wife would tell him:
+
+"You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leave younger men to paint
+instead of you. It is meet a man should end his days in a gentle,
+religious quiet. It is tempting God to be for ever raising new and
+worldly monuments, mere heathen towers of Babel. Quit your colours and
+your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy your peace of mind."
+
+So the good dame would preach, but he refused to listen, for his one
+thought was to increase his fortune and renown. Far from resting on
+his laurels, he arranged a price with the Wardens of Sant' Agnolo for
+a history of St. Michael, that was to cover all the Choir of the
+Church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise he
+threw himself with extraordinary ardour. Re-reading the parts of
+Scripture that were to be his inspiration, he set himself to study
+deeply every line and every word of these passages. Not content with
+drawing all day long in his workshop, he persisted in working both at
+bed and board; while at dusk, walking below the hill on whose brow
+Arezzo proudly lifts her walls and towers, he was still lost in
+thought. And we may say the story of the Archangel was already limned
+in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents in red chalk
+on the plaster of the wall. He was soon done tracing these outlines;
+then he fell to painting above the high altar the scene that was to
+outshine all the others in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein
+to glorify the leader of the hosts of Heaven for the victory he won
+before the beginning of time. Accordingly Spinello represented St.
+Michael fighting in the air against the serpent with seven heads and
+ten horns, and he figured with delight, in the bottom part of the
+picture, the Prince of the Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an
+appalling monster. The figures seemed to grow to life of themselves
+under his hand. His success was beyond his fondest hopes; so hideous
+was the countenance of Lucifer, none could escape the nightmare of its
+foulness. The face haunted the painter in the streets and even went
+home with him to his lodging.
+
+Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in his bed beside his
+wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers he saw an Angel as comely as St.
+Michael, but black; and the Angel said to him:
+
+"Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you seen me, that you
+should paint me as you have, under so ignominious a likeness?"
+
+The old painter answered, trembling, that he had never seen him with
+his eyes, never having gone down alive into Hell, like Messer Dante
+Alighieri; but that, in depicting him as he had done, he was for
+expressing in visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin.
+
+Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of San Gemignano seemed
+of a sudden to heave and stagger.
+
+"Spinello," he went on, "will you do me the pleasure to reason awhile
+with me? I am no mean Logician; He you pray to knows that."
+
+Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms:
+
+"Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me. You know of my
+enterprise, and how I forsook Heaven to become the Prince of this
+World. A tremendous adventure,--and a unique one, had not the Giants
+in like fashion assailed the god Jupiter, as yourself have seen,
+Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this Titanic war is carved
+in marble."
+
+"It is true," said Spinello, "I have seen the tomb, shaped like a
+great tun, in the Church of Santa Reparata at Florence. 'Tis a fine
+work of the Romans."
+
+"Still," returned Lucifer, smiling, "the Giants are not pictured on it
+in the shape of frogs or chameleons or the like hideous and horrid
+creatures."
+
+"True," replied the painter, "but then they had not attacked the true
+God, but only a false idol of the Pagans. 'Tis a mighty difference.
+The fact is clear, Lucifer, you raised the standard of revolt against
+the true and veritable King of Earth and Heaven."
+
+"I will not deny it," said Lucifer. "And how many sorts of sins do you
+charge me with for that?"
+
+"Seven, it is like enough," the painter answered, "and deadly sins one
+and all."
+
+"Seven!" exclaimed the Angel of Darkness; "well! the number is
+canonical. Everything goes by sevens in my history, which is close
+bound up with God's. Spinello, you deem me proud, angry and envious. I
+enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my only aim. Do
+you deem me covetous? Granted again; Covetousness is a virtue for
+Princes. For Gluttony and Lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not
+complain. Remains _Indolence_."
+
+As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms across his breast,
+and shaking his gloomy head, tossed his flaming locks:
+
+"Tell me, Spinello, do you really think I am indolent? Do you take me
+for a coward? Do you hold that in my revolt I showed a lack of
+courage? Nay! you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the
+guise of a hero, with a proud countenance. You should wrong no one,
+not even the Devil. Cannot you see that you insult Him you make prayer
+to, when you give Him for adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinello,
+you are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great mind to
+pull your ears, as they do to an ill-conditioned schoolboy."
+
+At this threat, and seeing the arm of Lucifer already stretched out
+towards him, Spinello clapped his hand to his head and began to howl
+with terror.
+
+His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what ailed him. He
+told her with chattering teeth, how he had just seen Lucifer and had
+been in terror for his ears.
+
+"I told you so," retorted the worthy dame; "I knew all those figures
+you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad."
+
+"I am not mad," protested the painter. "I saw him with my own eyes;
+and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing
+tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its
+place the shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong even the
+Devil himself."
+
+"You had best go to sleep again," scolded his wife. "You are talking
+stark nonsense, and unchristian to boot."
+
+Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back
+unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever,
+and then died.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL[30]
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+    [30] From the _National Magazine_, vol. XV. By permission of
+    the Editor and Translator.
+
+Life is a burden in the Fall,--the sad season of decay and death!
+
+The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the
+growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows--all that
+drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it
+with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in
+an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what
+purpose?...
+
+Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous
+thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who
+want to assuage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is
+the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and
+doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.
+
+But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny brambles that
+lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in
+ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe
+has made us acquainted....
+
+My story is about that devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The devil suffered from ennui.
+
+He is too wise to ridicule everything.
+
+He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is
+not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp
+scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell
+the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we
+were to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like
+ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But we had better
+leave that alone; we are not children that break their best toys in
+order to discover what is in them.
+
+The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the darkness of an autumn
+night: he felt lonely and whistled softly as he looked around himself
+in search of a distraction. He whistled an old song--my father's
+favourite song,--
+
+    "When, in autumnal days,
+    A leaf from its branch is torn
+    And on high by the wind is borne."
+
+And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves and among the
+black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds slowly crawled over the
+heaven and with their cold tears watered the narrow dwellings of the
+dead. The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the
+strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the
+speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the
+crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound passed over the
+churchyard....
+
+The devil was whistling, and he thought:
+
+"I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No doubt, the dampness
+goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism
+ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel
+comfortable. How, if I called one of them up and had a talk with him?
+It would be a little distraction for me, and, very likely, for him
+also. I will call him! Somewhere around here they have buried an old
+friend of mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was alive
+... why not renew our acquaintance? People of his kind are dreadfully
+exacting. I shall find out whether the grave satisfies him completely.
+But where is his grave?"
+
+And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything, wandered for a
+long time about the cemetery, before he found the author's grave....
+
+"Oh there!" he called out as he knocked with his claws at the heavy
+stone under which his acquaintance was put away.
+
+"Get up!"
+
+"What for?" came the dull answer from below.
+
+"I need you."
+
+"I won't get up."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Who are you, anyway?"
+
+"You know me."
+
+"The censor?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! No!"
+
+"Maybe a secret policeman?"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Not a critic, either?"
+
+"I am the devil."
+
+"Well, I'll be out in a minute."
+
+The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a
+skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind
+that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire
+connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric
+light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones
+in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry,
+rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its
+cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. "I hope you are
+well!" said the devil.
+
+"How can I be?" curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low
+voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.
+
+"Oh, excuse my greeting!" the devil said pleasantly.
+
+"Never mind!... But why have you raised me?"
+
+"I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very
+bad.
+
+"I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?" asked the devil.
+
+"Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime."
+
+"Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold."
+
+"I should say I did! They had poured enough cold water over me all my
+life."
+
+They walked beside each other over the narrow path, between graves and
+crosses. Two blue beams fell from the author's eyes upon the ground
+and lit the way for the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them,
+and the wind freely passed between the author's bare ribs and through
+his breast where there was no longer a heart.
+
+"We are going to town?" he asked the devil.
+
+"What interests you there?"
+
+"Life, my dear sir," the author said impassionately.
+
+"What! It still has a meaning for you?"
+
+"Indeed it has!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"How am I to say it? A man measures all by the quantity of his effort,
+and if he carries a common stone down from the summit of Ararat, that
+stone becomes a gem to him."
+
+"Poor fellow!" smiled the devil.
+
+"But also happy man!" the author retorted coldly.
+
+The devil shrugged his shoulders.
+
+They left the churchyard, and before them lay a street,--two rows of
+houses, and between them was darkness in which the miserable lamps
+clearly proved the want of light upon earth.
+
+"Tell me," the devil spoke after a pause, "how do you like your
+grave?"
+
+"Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very quiet there."
+
+"Is it not damp down there in the Fall?" asked the devil.
+
+"A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance comes from
+those various idiots who ramble over the cemetery and accidentally
+stumble on my grave. I don't know how long I have been lying in my
+grave, for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the concept
+of time does not exist for me."
+
+"You have been in the ground four years,--it will soon be five," said
+the devil.
+
+"Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at my grave during
+that time. Those accursed people make me nervous. One, you see,
+straight away denied the fact of my existence: he read my name on the
+tombstone and said confidently: 'There never was such a man! I have
+never read him, though I remember such a name: when I was a boy, there
+lived a man of that name who had a broker's shop in our street.' How
+do you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen years in the
+most popular periodicals, and three times during my lifetime my books
+came out in separate editions."
+
+"There were two more editions since your death," the devil informed
+him.
+
+"Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them said: 'Oh, that's that
+fellow!' 'Yes, that is he!' answered the other. 'Yes, they used to
+read him in the auld lang syne.' 'They read a lot of them.' 'What was
+it he preached?' 'Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness, and so
+forth.' 'Oh, yes, I remember.' 'He had a heavy tongue.' 'There is a
+lot of them in the ground:--yes, Russia is rich in talents' ... And
+those asses went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the
+temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that, yet it hurts me.
+And oh, how I wanted to give them a piece of my mind!"
+
+"You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!" smiled the
+devil.
+
+"No, that would not have done. On the verge of the twentieth century
+it would be absurd for dead people to scold, and, besides, it would be
+hard on the materialists."
+
+The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.
+
+This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a bridegroom at
+all weddings and a corpse at all burials, and now that all is dead in
+him, his egotism is still alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of
+importance is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves
+applause and recognition.... How annoying people are! The devil was on
+the point of proposing to the author to return to his grave, when an
+idea flashed through his evil head. They had just reached a square,
+and heavy masses of buildings surrounded them on all sides. The dark,
+wet sky hung low over the square; it seemed as though it rested on the
+roofs and murkily looked at the dirty earth.
+
+"Say," said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards the author,
+"don't you want to know how your wife is getting on?"
+
+"I don't know whether I want to," the author spoke slowly.
+
+"I see, you are a thorough corpse!" called out the devil to annoy him.
+
+"Oh, I don't know?" said the author and jauntily shook his bones. "I
+don't mind seeing her; besides, she will not see me, or if she will,
+she cannot recognize me!"
+
+"Of course!" the devil assured him.
+
+"You know, I only said so because she did not like for me to go away
+long from home," explained the author.
+
+And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became as transparent
+as glass. The author saw the inside of large apartments, and it was so
+light and cosy in them.
+
+"Elegant appointments!" he grated his bones approvingly: "Very fine
+appointments! If I had lived in such rooms, I would be alive now."
+
+"I like it, too," said the devil and smiled. "And it is not
+expensive--it only costs some three thousands."
+
+"Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest work brought me 815
+roubles, and I worked over it a whole year. But who lives here?"
+
+"Your wife," said the devil.
+
+"I declare! That is good ... for her."
+
+"Yes, and here comes her husband."
+
+"She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed! Her husband, you
+say? What a fine looking fellow! Rather a bourgeois phiz,--kind, but
+somewhat stupid! He looks as if he might be cunning,--well, just the
+face to please a woman."
+
+"Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?" the devil proposed and
+looked maliciously at the author. But he was taken up with the scene
+before him.
+
+"What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently satisfied with
+life. Tell me, does she love him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, very much!"
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"A clerk in a millinery shop."
+
+"A clerk in a millinery shop," the author repeated slowly and did not
+utter a word for some time. The devil looked at him and smiled a merry
+smile.
+
+"Do you like that?" he asked.
+
+The author spoke with an effort:
+
+"I had some children.... I know they are alive.... I had some children
+... a son and a daughter.... I used to think then that my son would
+turn out in time a good man...."
+
+"There are plenty of good men, but what the world needs is perfect
+men," said the devil coolly and whistled a jolly march.
+
+"I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ... and my son...."
+
+The author's empty skull shook sadly.
+
+"Just look how he is embracing her! They are living an easy life!"
+exclaimed the devil.
+
+"Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?"
+
+"No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich."
+
+"My wife? Where did she get the money from?"
+
+"From the sale of your books!"
+
+"Oh!" said the author and shook his bare and empty skull. "Oh! Then it
+simply means that I have worked for a certain clerk?"
+
+"I confess it looks that way," the devil chimed in merrily.
+
+The author looked at the ground and said to the devil: "Take me back
+to my grave!"
+
+... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung in the sky, and the
+author rattled his bones as he marched rapidly to his grave.... The
+devil walked behind him and whistled merrily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is surfeited with
+literature, and even the people that write only to please him, are
+rarely to his taste. In the present case my reader is also
+dissatisfied because I have said nothing about hell. As my reader is
+justly convinced that after death he will find his way there, he would
+like to know something about hell during his lifetime. Really, I can't
+tell anything pleasant to my reader on that score, because there is no
+hell, no fiery hell which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is
+something else and infinitely more terrible.
+
+The moment the doctor will have said about you to your friends: "He is
+dead!" you will enter an immeasurable, illuminated space, and that is
+the space of the consciousness of your mistakes.
+
+You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable life
+rotates about you like a wheel.
+
+It moves painfully slow, and passes before you from your first
+conscious step to the last moment of your life.
+
+You will see all that you have hidden from yourself during your
+lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your existence: you will think
+over anew all your past thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of
+yours,--all your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!
+
+And to increase your torments, you will know that on that narrow and
+stupid road which you have traversed, others are marching, and pushing
+each other, and hurrying, and lying.... And you understand that they
+are doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is to live
+such a wretched, soulless life.
+
+And though you see them hastening on towards their destruction, you
+are in no way able to warn them: you will not move nor cry, and your
+helpless desire to aid them will tear your soul to pieces.
+
+Your life passes before you, and you see it from the start, and there
+is no end to the work of your conscience, and there will be no end ...
+and to the horror of your torments there will never be an end ...
+never!
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN[31]
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+
+    [31] From _A Mainsail Haul_, by John Masefield [Copyright
+    1913 by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the
+    Author and the Publishers.]
+
+Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was a man who never
+throve. Nothing he put his hand to ever prospered, and as his state
+worsened, his friends fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night
+when he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in two or
+three days and the money he couldn't scrape together, he cried out, "I
+wish I could sell my soul to the devil like that man the old books
+tell about."
+
+Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and, while it chimed, a
+sparkle began to burn about the room, and the air, all at once, began
+to smell of brimstone, and a voice said:
+
+"Will these terms suit you?"
+
+He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment there. He picked
+it up and read it through; and being in despair, and not knowing what
+he was doing, he answered, "Yes," and looked round for a pen.
+
+"Take and sign," said the voice again, "but first consider what it is
+you do; do nothing rashly. Consider."
+
+So he thought awhile; then "Yes," he said, "I'll sign," and with that
+he groped for the pen.
+
+"Blood from your left thumb and sign," said the voice.
+
+So he pricked his left thumb and signed.
+
+"Here is your earnest money," said the voice, "nine and twenty silver
+pennies. This day twenty years hence I shall see you again."
+
+Now early next morning our friend came to himself and felt like one of
+the drowned. "What a dream I've had," he said. Then he woke up and saw
+the nine and twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of
+brimstone.
+
+So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he had sold his soul
+to the devil for twenty years of heart's-desire; and whatever fears he
+may have had as to what might come at the end of those twenty years,
+he found comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a
+good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could eat, drink,
+merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be care-free, heart at
+ease and jib-sheet to windward.
+
+So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in great state, having
+his heart's desire in all things; but, when his twenty years were
+nearly run through, there was no wretcheder man in all the world than
+that poor fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches,
+everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool, where he signed
+on as A. B., aboard a Black Ball packet, a tea clipper, bound to the
+China seas.
+
+They made a fine passage out, and when our friend had only three days
+more, they were in the Indian Ocean lying lazy, becalmed.
+
+Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being dead calm, all he
+had to do was just to think of things; the ship of course having no
+way on her.
+
+So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning and weeping
+till, just twenty minutes or so before eight bells were made, up came
+the Captain for a turn on deck.
+
+He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our friend crying
+at the wheel. "Hello, my man," he says, "why, what's all this? Ain't
+you well? You'd best lay aft for a dose o'salts at four bells
+tonight."
+
+"No, Cap'n," said the man, "there's no salts'll ever cure my
+sickness."
+
+"Why, what's all this?" says the old man. "You must be sick if it's as
+bad as all that. But come now; your cheek is all sunk, and you look as
+if you ain't slept well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you
+anything on your mind?"
+
+"Captain," he answers very solemn, "I have sold my soul to the devil."
+
+"Oh," said the old man, "why, that's bad. That's powerful bad. I never
+thought them sort of things ever happened outside a book."
+
+"But," said our friend, "that's not the worst of it, Captain. At this
+time three days hence the devil will fetch me home."
+
+"Good Lord!" groaned the old man. "Here's a nice hurrah's nest to
+happen aboard my ship. But come now," he went on, "did the devil give
+you no chance--no saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a
+moment."
+
+"Yes, Captain," said our friend, "just when I made the deal, there
+came a whisper in my ear. And," he said, speaking very quietly, so as
+not to let the mate hear, "if I can give the devil three jobs to do
+which he cannot do, why, then, Captain," he says, "I'm saved, and that
+deed of mine is cancelled."
+
+Well, at this the old man grinned and said, "You just leave things to
+me, my son. _I'll_ fix the devil for you. Aft there, one o' you, and
+relieve the wheel. Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below,
+and be quite easy in your mind, for I'll deal with the devil for you.
+You rest and be easy."
+
+And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one after that, and the
+one after that was the day the Devil was due.
+
+Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called
+all hands aft.
+
+"Men," he said, "I've got an all-hands job for you this forenoon."
+
+"Mr. Mate," he cried, "get all hands on to the main-tops'l halliards
+and bowse the sail stiff up and down."
+
+So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old
+John Chantyman piped up--
+
+    There's a Black Ball clipper
+    Comin' down the river.
+
+And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands jammed
+in the sheave.
+
+"Very well that," said the old man. "Now get my dinghy off o' the
+half-deck and let her drag alongside."
+
+So they did that, too.
+
+"Very well that," said the old man. "Now forrard with you, to the
+chain-locker, and rouse out every inch of chain you find there."
+
+So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up and flaked along
+the deck all clear for running.
+
+"Now, Chips," says the old man to the carpenter, "just bend the spare
+anchor to the end of that chain, and clear away the fo'c's'le rails
+ready for when we let go."
+
+So they did this, too.
+
+"Now," said the old man, "get them tubs of slush from the galley. Pass
+that slush along there, doctor. Very well that. Now turn to, all
+hands, and slush away every link in that chain a good inch thick in
+grease."
+
+So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man meant.
+
+"Very well that," cries the old man. "Now get below all hands! Chips,
+on to the fo'c's'le head with you and stand by! I'll keep the deck,
+Mr. Mate! Very well that."
+
+So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill o' baccy to leeward
+of the capstan, and the old man walked the weather-poop looking for a
+sign of hell-fire.
+
+It was still dead calm--but presently, towards six bells, he raised a
+black cloud away to leeward, and saw the glimmer of the lightning in
+it; only the flashes were too red, and came too quick.
+
+"Now," says he to himself, "stand by."
+
+Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward, right alongside, and
+there came a red flash, and a strong sulphurous smell, and then a loud
+peal of thunder as the devil steps aboard.
+
+"Mornin', Cap'n," says he.
+
+"Mornin', Mr. Devil," says the old man, "and what in blazes do you
+want aboard _my_ ship?"
+
+"Why, Captain," said the devil, "I've come for the soul of one of your
+hands as per signed agreement: and, as my time's pretty full up in
+these wicked days, I hope you won't keep me waiting for him longer
+than need be."
+
+"Well, Mr. Devil," says the old man, "the man you come for is down
+below, sleeping, just at this moment. It's a fair pity to call him up
+till it's right time. So supposin' I set you them three tasks. How
+would that be? Have you any objections?"
+
+"Why, no," said the devil, "fire away as soon as you like."
+
+"Mr. Devil," said the old man, "you see that main-tops'l yard? Suppose
+you lay out on that main-tops'l yard and take in three reefs
+singlehanded."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines, into the
+top, up the topmast rigging and along the yard.
+
+Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he hailed the deck:
+
+"Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!"
+
+"I will not," said the old man, "nary a lower."
+
+"Come up your sheets, then," cries the devil. "This main-topsail's
+stiff up-and-down. How'm I to take in three reefs when the sail's
+stiff up-and-down?"
+
+"Why," said the old man, "_you can't do it_. Come out o' that! Down
+from aloft, you hoof-footed son. That's one to me."
+
+"Yes," says the devil, when he got on deck again, "I don't deny it,
+Cap'n. That's one to you."
+
+"Now, Mr. Devil," said the old man, going towards the rail, "suppose
+you was to step into that little boat alongside there. Will you
+please?"
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," he said, and he slid down the forrard fall, got into
+the stern sheets, and sat down.
+
+"Now, Mr. Devil," said the skipper, taking a little salt spoon from
+his vest pocket, "supposin' you bail all the water on that side the
+boat on to this side the boat, using this spoon as your dipper."
+
+Well!--the devil just looked at him.
+
+"Say!" he said at length, "which of the New England States d'ye hail
+from anyway?"
+
+"Not Jersey, anyway," said the old man. "That's two up, alright; ain't
+it, sonny?"
+
+"Yes," growls the devil, as he climbs aboard. "That's two up. Two to
+you and one to play. Now, what's your next contraption?"
+
+"Mr. Devil," said the old man, looking very innocent, "you see, I've
+ranged my chain ready for letting go anchor. Now Chips is forrard
+there, and when I sing out, he'll let the anchor go. Supposin' you
+stopper the chain with them big hands o' yourn and keep it from
+running out clear. Will you, please?"
+
+So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together, and gets
+away forrard by the bitts, and stands by.
+
+"All ready, Cap'n," he says.
+
+"All ready, Chips?" asked the old man.
+
+"All ready, sir," replies Chips.
+
+"Then, stand by--Let _go_ the anchor," and clink, clink, old Chips
+knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain
+into a five mile deep of God's sea. As I said, they were in the Indian
+Ocean.
+
+Well--there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and
+the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a
+bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.
+
+So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the
+last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he
+put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.
+
+But the chain gave such a _Yank_ when it came-to, that the big link
+carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole,
+in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no
+devil now. The devil's dead.
+
+As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles
+burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo'c's'le scuttle
+and banged thereon with a hand-spike.
+
+"Rouse out, there, the port watch!" he called, "an' get my dinghy
+inboard."
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+According to a German legend, the devil is master of all arts, and
+certainly he has given sufficient proof of his musical talent. Certain
+Church Fathers ascribed, not without good reason, the origin of music
+to Satan. "The Devil," says Mr. Huneker in his diabolical story "The
+Supreme Sin" (1920), "is the greatest of all musicians," and Rowland
+Hill long ago admitted the fact that the devil has all the good tunes.
+Perhaps his greatest composition is the _Sonata del Diavolo_, which
+Tartini wrote down in 1713. This diabolical master-piece is the
+subject of G�rard de Nerval's story _La Sonate du Diable_ (1830).
+While the devil plays all instruments equally well, he seems to prefer
+the violin. Satan appears as fiddler in the poem "Der Teufel mit der
+Geige," which has been ascribed to the Swiss anti-Papist Pamphilus
+Gengenbach of the sixteenth century. In Leanu's _Faust_ (1836)
+Mephistopheles takes the violin out of the hands of one of the
+musicians at a peasant-wedding and plays a diabolical _czardas_, which
+fills the hearts of all who hear it with voluptuousness. An opera _Un
+Violon du Diable_ was played in Paris in 1849. _The Devil's Violin_,
+an extravaganza in verse by Benjamin Webster, was performed the same
+year in London. In his story "Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire" Baudelaire presents the Demon of Love as holding in his left
+hand a violin "which without doubt served to sing his pleasures and
+pains." The devil also appears as limping fiddler in a California
+legend, which appeared under the title "The Devil's Fiddle" in a
+Californian magazine in 1855. Death, the devil's first cousin, if not
+his _alter ego_, has the souls, in the Dance of Death, march off to
+hell to a merry tune on his violin. Death appears as a musician also
+in the Piper of Hamlin. In this legend, well known to the English
+world through Browning's poem "Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1843) and Miss
+Peabody's play _The Piper_ (1909), the rats are the human souls, which
+Death charms with his music into following him. In the Middle Ages the
+soul was often represented as leaving the body in the form of a mouse.
+The soul of a good man comes out of his mouth as a white mouse, while
+at the death of a sinner the soul escapes as a black mouse, which the
+devil catches and brings to hell. Mephistopheles, it will be recalled,
+calls himself "the lord of rats and mice" (_Faust_, 1, 1516).
+Devil-Death has inherited this wind instrument from the goat-footed
+Pan.
+
+"The Devil is more busy in the convents," we are told by J. K.
+Huysmans in his novel _En route_ (1895), "than in the cities, as he
+has a harder job on hand."
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOL� MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+This story of the devil Belphagor, who was sent by his infernal chief
+Pluto up to earth, where he married an earthly wife, but finally left
+her in disgust to go back to hell, is also of mediaeval origin. It was
+first printed by Giovanni Brevio in 1545, and appeared for the second
+time with the name of Machiavelli in 1549, twenty-two years after the
+death of the diabolical statesman. The two authors did not borrow from
+each other, but had a common source in a mediaeval Latin manuscript,
+which seems to have first fallen into the hands of Italians, but was
+later brought to France where it has been lost. The tale of the
+marriage of the devil appeared in several other Italian versions
+during the sixteenth century. Among the Italian novelists, who retold
+it for the benefit of their married friends, may be mentioned
+Giovan-Francesco Straparola, Francesco Sansovino, and Gabriel
+Chappuys. In England this story was no less popular. Barnabe Riche
+inserted it in his collection of narratives in 1581, and we meet it
+again later in the following plays: _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_,
+ascribed to Ulpian Fulwell (1599); _The Devil and his Dame_ by P. M.
+Houghton (1600); _Machiavel and the Devil_ by Daborne and Henslowe
+(1613); _The Devil is an Ass_ by Ben Jonson (1616); and _Belphagor, or
+the Marriage of the Devil_ (1690). In France the story was treated in
+verse by La Fontaine (1694), and in Germany it served the Nuremberg
+poet Hans Sachs as the subject for a farce (1557).
+
+The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is authority for the statement that
+Machiavelli's own married life had nothing to do with the plot of his
+story.
+
+"The notion of this story is ingenious, and might have been made
+productive of entertaining incident, had Belphagor been led by his
+connubial connections from one crime to another. But Belphagor is only
+unfortunate, and in no respect guilty; nor did anything occur during
+his abode on earth that testified to the power of woman in leading us
+to final condemnation. The story of the peasant and the possession of
+the princesses bears no reference to the original idea with which the
+tale commences, and has no connection with the object of the infernal
+deputy's terrestrial sojourn" (J. C. Dunlop, _History of Fiction_). To
+this criticism Mr. Thomas Roscoe replies that "part of the humour of
+the story seems to consist in Belphagor's earthly career being cut
+short before he had served the full term of his apprenticeship. But
+from the follies and extravagances into which he had already plunged,
+we are now authorized to believe that, even if he had been able longer
+to support the asperities of the lady's temper, he must, from the
+course he was pursuing, have been led from crime to crime, or at least
+from folly to folly, to such a degree that he would infallibly have
+been condemned" (T. Roscoe, _Italian Novelists_).
+
+The demon of Machiavelli offers no features of a deep psychology, but
+he distinguishes himself from the other demons of his period by his
+elegant manners. Like creator, like creature.
+
+Belphagor, the god of the Moabites, like all other pagan gods, joined
+the infernal forces of Satan when driven off the earth by the Church
+Triumphant.
+
+The parliament of devils, which we find in this story, was taken from
+the mystery-plays where the ruler of hell is represented as holding
+occasional receptions when he listens to the reports of their recent
+achievements on his behalf, and consults their opinion on matters of
+state. Satan, who has always wished to rival God, has instituted the
+infernal council in imitation of the celestial council described in
+the Book of Job. The source for the parliament of devils is the
+apocryphal book _Evangelium Nicodemi_. An early metrical tract under
+the title of the _Parlement of Devils_ was printed two or three times
+in London about 1520. A "Pandemonium" is also found in Tasso, Milton,
+and Chateaubriand. The _Parlement of Foules_ (14th century) is but a
+modification of the _Parlement of Devils_, for the devil and the fool
+were originally identical in person and may be traced back to the
+demonic clown of the ancient heathen cult (cf. the present writer's
+book, _The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_, p. 37). A far echo
+is Thomas Chatterton's poem _The Parliament of Sprites_.
+
+This story recalls to us the saying that the heart of a beautiful
+woman is the most beloved hiding-place of at least seven devils.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+By his interest in popular legends the first of the great American
+writers shows his sympathy with the Romantic movement, which prevailed
+in his time in all the countries of Europe. His devil, however, has
+not been imported from the lands across the Atlantic, but is a part of
+the superstitions of the New World. The author himself did not believe
+in "Old Scratch." The real devils for him were the slave-traders and
+the witch-hunters of Salem fame. It is interesting now to read a
+contemporary critic of Washington Irving's devil-story: "If Mr. Irving
+believes in the existence of Tom Walker's master, we can scarcely
+conceive how he can so earnestly jest about him; at all events, we
+would counsel him to beware lest his own spells should prove fatal to
+him" (_Eclectic Review_, 1825). Few people in those days had the
+courage to take Old Nick good-naturedly. "Even the clever Madame de
+Sta�l," said Goethe, "was greatly scandalized that I kept the devil in
+such good-humour."
+
+The devil appears in many colours, principally, however, in black and
+red. It is a common belief in Scotland that the devil is a black man,
+as may also be seen in Robert Louis Stevenson's story "Thrawn Janet."
+There is no warrant in the biblical tradition for a black devil.
+Satan, however, appeared as an Ethiopian as far back as the days of
+the Church Fathers. The black colour presumably is intended to suggest
+his place of abode, whereas red denotes the scorching fires of hell.
+The devil was considered as a sort of eternal Salamander. In the New
+Testament he is described as a fiery fiend. Red was considered by
+Oriental nations as a diabolical colour. In Egypt red hair and red
+animals of all kinds were considered infernal. The Apis was also
+red-coloured. Satan's red beard recalls the Scandinavian god Donar or
+Thor, who is of Phoenician origin. Judas was always represented in
+mediaeval mystery-plays with a red beard; and down to the present day
+red hair is the mark of a suspicious character. The devil also appears
+as yellow, and even blue, but never as white or green. The yellow
+devil is but a shade less bright than his fiery brother. The blue
+devil is a sulphur-constitutioned individual. He is the demon of
+melancholy, and fills us with "the blues." As the spirit of darkness
+and death, the devil cannot assume the colours of white or green,
+which are the symbols of light and life. The devil's dragon-tail is,
+according to Sir Walter Scott, of biblical tradition, coming from a
+literal interpretation of a figurative expression.
+
+A few interesting remarks on the expression "The Devil and Tom Walker"
+current in certain parts of this country as a caution to usurers will
+be found in Dr. Blondheim's article "The Devil and Doctor Foster" in
+_Modern Language Notes_ for 1918.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+Wilhelm Hauff, the author of this book, ranks honourably among the
+members of the Romantic School in Germany. As the work of a man of
+only twenty-two years, just out of the university, the book is a
+credit to its author. It must be admitted, however, that it was not
+altogether original with him. The idea was taken from E. Th. A.
+Hoffmann,--Devil-Hoffmann, as he was called by his contemporaries,--who
+in his short-story "Der Teufel in Berlin" also has the devil travel
+incognito in Germany; and the title was borrowed from Jean Paul
+Richter, who also claimed to edit _Selections from the Devil's Papers_
+(_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, 1789_). There were others, too,
+who claimed to have been honoured by his Satanic Majesty to edit his
+"journal." J. R. Beard, a Unitarian minister, published in 1872 an
+_Autobiography of Satan_. Another autobiography of Satan is said to
+have been found among the posthumous works of Leonid Andr�ev, author
+of that original diabolical work _Anathema, a tragedy_ (Engl. tr.
+1910). This book has just appeared in English under the title _Satan's
+Diary_. Fr�d�ric Souli�'s _Les M�moires du Diable_ (1837/8) consist of
+memoirs not of the devil himself, but of other people, which the Count
+de Luizzi, the human partner to the diabolical pact, is very anxious
+to know. Hauff's book consists of a series of papers, which are but
+loosely connected. In certain passages we hear nothing of the
+autobiographer. The Suavian writer apparently could digest the
+Diabolical only in homeopathic doses. His Satan, moreover, is a very
+youthful and quite harmless devil. He is nothing but a personified
+echo of the author's student-days. The book by Hauff is perhaps the
+most popular personification of the devil in German literature.
+
+The passage presented here shows the phantastic element of the book at
+its best. The short introductory synopsis will give an idea of its
+satirical aspect. The humorous aspect has pretty nearly been lost in
+translation. Professor Brander Matthews has aptly said: "The German
+humour is like the simple Italian wines--it will not stand export."
+
+Of all the peoples, the Germans seem to have had the most kindly
+feelings towards the devil. This is because they knew him better. To
+judge from the many bridges and cathedrals, which the demon, according
+to legends, has built in Germany, he must have been a frequent visitor
+to that country. In Frankfort, where with his own hands our author
+received the memoirs from the autobiographer, there is a gilded cock
+above the bridge in memory of the bargain the bridge-builder once made
+with Satan to give him the first living thing that should cross the
+river. The day the bridge was finished, a cock fluttered from a
+woman's market-basket and ran over the bridge. A claw-like hand
+reached down and claimed the prize.
+
+The distinguished personage, whose adventures form the subject of this
+book, does not figure in it under his own name, nor does he appear
+here in the gala attire of tail, horns and cloven foot with which he
+graces the revels on the Blocksberg. He borrows for the nonce a tall,
+gentlemanly figure, surmounted by delicate features, dresses well, is
+fastidious about his ring and linen, travels post and stops at the
+best hotels. He begins his earthly career by studying at the renowned
+university of ----. As he can boast of abundant means, a handsome
+wardrobe and the name of Herr von Barbe, it is no wonder that on the
+first evening he should be politely received, the next morning have a
+confidential friend, and the second evening embrace "brothers till
+death." He becomes much puzzled at the extraordinary manners of the
+students, and at their language, so different from that of every
+rational German. He remarks: "Over a glass of beer they often fell
+into singularly transcendental investigations, of which I understood
+little or nothing. However, I observed the principal words, and when
+drawn into a conversation, replied with a grave air--'Freedom,
+Fatherland, Nationality.'" He attends the lectures of a celebrated
+professor, whose profundity of thought and terseness of style are so
+astounding, that the German world set him down as possessed; the
+critical student, however, differs somewhat from that conclusion,
+observing--
+
+"I have borne a great deal in the world. I have even entered into
+swine," ("The devil," said Luther, "knows Scripture well and he uses
+it in argument") "but into such a philosopher? No, indeed! I had
+rather be excused."
+
+The episode here reprinted occurred in a hotel in Frankfort, where our
+incognito is known as Herr von Natas (which, it will be noticed, is
+his more familiar name read backwards). His brilliant powers of
+conversation, his adroit flattery, courteous gallantry, and elegant,
+though wayward flights of imagination, soon rendered him the delight
+of the whole _table d'h�te_. All guests, including our author, were
+fascinated by the mysterious stranger. But we will let the author
+himself tell his story.
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE
+
+BY NIKOL�I VASIL�VICH G�GOL
+
+
+This story, taken from _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_, a series of
+sketches of the life of the Ukrainian peasants, offers a good
+illustration of the author's art, which was a combination of the
+romantic and realistic elements. In these pages G�gol wished to record
+the myths and legends still current among the plain folk of his
+beloved Ukrainia. The devil naturally enough peeps out here and there
+through the pages of this book. G�gol's devil is a product of the
+Russian soil, "the spirit of mischief and cunning, whom Russian
+literature is always trying to outplay and overcome" (Mme. Jarintzow,
+_Russian Poets and Poems_).
+
+According to European superstition St. John's Eve is the only evening
+in the year when his Satanic Majesty reveals himself in his proper
+shape to the eyes of men. If you wish to behold his Highness face to
+face, stand on St. John's Eve at midnight near a mustard-plant. It is
+suggested by Sir James Frazer in his _Golden Bough_ that, in the
+chilly air of the upper world, this prince from a warmer clime may be
+attracted by the warmth of the mustard.
+
+It is believed in many parts of Europe that treasures can be found on
+St. John's Eve by means of the fern-seed. Even without the use of this
+plant treasures are sometimes said to bloom or burn in the earth, or
+to reveal their presence by a bluish flame on Midsummer Eve. As
+guardian of treasures the devil is the successor of the gnome.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+_The Devil's Wager_ is Thackeray's earliest attempt at story-writing,
+was contributed to a weekly literary paper with the imposing title
+_The National Standard, and Journal of Literature, Science, Music,
+Theatricals, and the Fine Arts_, of which he was proprietor and
+editor, and was reprinted in the _Paris Sketch Book_ (1840). The story
+first ended with the very Thackerayesque touch: "The moral of this
+story will be given in several successive numbers." In the _Paris
+Sketch Book_ the last three words are changed into "the second
+edition." This comical tale was illustrated by an excellent wood-cut,
+representing the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after him
+the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is wound round
+Sir Roger's neck.
+
+In the "Advertisement to the First Edition" of his _Paris Sketch
+Book_, Thackeray admits the French origin of this as well as of his
+other devil-story, _The Painter's Bargain_, to be found in the same
+volume. It was Thackeray's good fortune to live in Paris during the
+wildest and most brilliant years of Romanticism; and while his
+attitude towards this movement and its leaders, as presented in the
+_Paris Sketch Book_, is not wholly sympathetic, he is indebted to it
+for his interest in supernatural subjects. The Romanticism of
+Thackeray has been denied with great obstinacy and almost passion, for
+like Heinrich Heine, the chief of German Romantic ironists, he poked
+fun at this movement. But "to laugh at what you love," as Mr. George
+Saintsbury has pointed out in his _History of the French Novel_, "is
+not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself."
+
+Mercurius makes a pun on the familiar quotation "rara avis" from
+Horace (_Sat._ 2, 2. 26), where it means a rare bird. This expression
+is commonly applied to a singular person. It is also found in the
+_Satires_ of Juvenal (VI, 165).
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity. Satan,
+contending with God for the possession of the human race, was supposed
+to have developed a passion for catching souls. At the death of every
+man a real fight takes place over his soul between an angel, who
+wishes to lead it to heaven, and a devil, who attempts to drag it to
+hell (Jude 9). In order to assure the soul for himself in advance,
+Satan attempts to purchase it from the owner while he is still
+living--_vivente corpore_, as he tells the _restaurateur_ in Poe's
+story. As prince of this world he can easily grant even the most
+extravagant wishes of man in exchange for his soul. Office, wealth and
+pleasure are mainly the objects for which a man enters into a pact
+with the Evil One. Count de Luizzi in Fr�d�ric Souli�'s _Les M�moires
+du Diable_ sells his soul to the devil for an uncommon consideration.
+It is not wealth or pleasure that tempts him. What he wants in
+exchange for his soul is to know the past lives of his fellowmen and
+women, "a thing," as Mr. Saintsbury well remarks, "which a person of
+sense and taste would do anything, short of selling himself to the
+devil, _not_ to know." The devil fulfils every wish of his contractor
+for a stipulated period of time, at the expiration of which the soul
+becomes his. Pope Innocent VIII, in his fatal bull "Summis
+desiderantes" of the year 1484, officially recognized the possibility
+of a compact with the devil. Increase Mather, the New England
+preacher, also affirms that many men have made "cursed covenants with
+the prince of darkness."
+
+St. Theophilus, of Cilicia, in the sixth century, was the first to
+make the notable discovery that a man could enter into a pact of this
+nature. The price he set for his soul was a bishopric. This story has
+been superseded during the Renaissance period by a similar legend
+concerning the German Dr. Faustus. Other famous personages reputed to
+have sold their souls to the devil for one consideration or another
+are Don Juan in Spain, Twardowski in Poland, Merlin in England, and
+Robert le Diable in France. Socrates, Apuleius, Scaliger and
+Cagliostro are also said to have entered into compacts with him.
+
+In devil-contracts the Evil One insists that his human negotiator sign
+the deed with his own blood, while the man never requires the devil to
+sign it even in ink. The human party to the transaction has always had
+full confidence in the word of the fiend. There is a universal belief
+that the devil invariably fulfils his engagement. In no single
+instance of folk-lore has Satan tried to evade the fulfilment of his
+share in the agreement. But the man, in violation of the written pact,
+has often cheated the devil out of his legal due by technical
+quibbles. "It is peculiar to the German tradition," says Gustav
+Freytag, "that the devil endeavours to fulfil zealously and honestly
+his part of the contract; the deceiver is man." In regard to fidelity
+to his word, the father of lies has always set an example to his
+victims. "You men," said Satan, "are cheats; you make all sorts of
+promises so long as you need me, and leave me in the lurch as soon as
+you have got what you wanted." Mediaeval man had no scruples about his
+breach of contract with the devil. He always considered the legal
+document signed with his own blood as "a scrap of paper." "But still
+the pact is with the enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter,
+and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war. We are
+very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow
+observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which God
+decrees conditionally and the devil delights in" (H. D. Taylor,
+_Mediaeval Mind_). We now can understand why in Eugene Field's story
+"Daniel and the Devil" it seems to Satan so strange that he should be
+asked for a written guarantee that he too would fulfil his part of the
+contract. Apparently this was the first time that the devil had any
+transactions with an American business man, who has not even faith in
+Old Nick.
+
+Reference is made in this story by the devil himself to the popular
+saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted. Even the
+devout George Herbert wrote--
+
+    "We paint the devil black, yet he
+    Hath some good in him all agree."
+
+This story recalls to us the proverb: "Talk of the devil, and he will
+either come or send."
+
+Washington Irving, as we have seen, thinks that he is not always very
+obliging.
+
+Satan, the father of lies, is said to be the patron of lawyers. The
+men of the London bar formed a "Temple" corps, which was dubbed "The
+Devil's Own." The tavern of the lawyers on Fleet Street in London was
+called "The Devil."
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality than the
+external world, had many visions, especially of the devil. The two
+seem to have been on a familiar footing. The devil, we must admit,
+filled Poe's imagination even if we will not go so far as to agree
+with his critics that he had Satan substituted for soul. His
+contemporaries, as is well known, would say of him: "He hath a demon,
+yea, seven devils are entered into him." His detractors actually
+regarded this unhappy poet as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades
+(cf. _North American Review_, 1856; _Edinburgh Review_, 1858; _Dublin
+University Magazine_, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the
+_New York Times_ declared Poe to have been "grub-staked by demons."
+
+The story "Bon-Bon" offers a specimen of Poe's grimly grotesque
+humour. It first appeared in the _Broadway Journal_ of August, 1835.
+
+The devil of this most un-American of all American authors is not the
+child of New World fancy, but part of European imagination. The
+scenery of the story is aptly laid in the land of Robert le Diable.
+
+Poe's description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in accord with
+the universally accredited conception of his ordinary appearance. His
+brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only
+discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. The devil
+is very proud of this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and
+from that time on, it has been his greatest ambition to be a
+gentleman, in outer appearance at least; and to his credit it must be
+said that he has so well succeeded in his efforts to resemble a
+gentleman that it is now very hard to tell the two apart. The devil is
+accredited in popular imagination with long ears, a long (sometimes
+upturned) nose, a wide mouth, and teeth of a lion. It is on account of
+his fangs that Satan has been called a lion by the biblical writers.
+But although the prince of darkness can assume any form in the heavens
+above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, he has
+never appeared as a lion. This, I believe, is out of deference to
+Judah, whom his father also called a lion. Hairiness is a pretty
+general characteristic of the devil. His hairy skin he probably
+inherited from the ancient fauns and satyrs. Esau is believed to have
+been a hairy demon. "Old Harry" is a corruption of "Old Hairy." As a
+rule, Old Nick is not pictured as bald, but has a head covered with
+locks like serpents. These snaky tresses, which already "Monk" Lewis
+wound around the devil's head, are borrowed, according to Sir Walter
+Scott, from the shield of Minerva. His face, however, is usually
+hairless. A beard has rarely been accorded to Satan. His red beard on
+the mediaeval stage probably came from Donar, whom, as Jacob Grimm
+says, the modern notions of the devil so often have in the background.
+Long bearded devils are nowhere normal except in the representations
+of the Eastern Church of the monarch of hell as counterpart of the
+monarch of heaven. The eyeless devil is original with our writer. His
+disciple Baudelaire in his story _Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire_ presents the second of these three Tempters as an eyeless
+monster. The mediaeval devil had saucer eyes. According to a Russian
+legend, the all-seeing spirit of evil is all covered with eyes. The
+cadaverous aspect of the devil is traditional. With but one remarkable
+exception (the Egyptian Typhon), demons are always represented lean.
+"A devil," said Caesarius of Heisterbach of the thirteenth century,
+"is usually so thin as to cast no shadow" (_Dialogus Miraculorum_,
+iii). This characteristic is a heritage of the ancient hunger-demon,
+who, himself a shadow, casts no shadow. In the course of the
+centuries, however, the devil has gained flesh. His faded suit of
+black cloth recalls the mediaeval devil who appeared "in his fethers
+all ragged and rent."
+
+It is not altogether improbable that the ecclesiastical appearance of
+the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as the author
+believes. While Satan cannot be said to be "one of those who take to
+the ministry mostly," he often likes to slip into priestly robes. In
+the "Temptation of Jesus" by Lucas van Leyden the devil is habited as
+a monk with a pointed cowl.
+
+In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence of
+Adalbert von Chamisso, whose _Peter Schlemihl_ (1814) sells his shadow
+to the devil. In his story _The Fisherman and His Soul_ Oscar Wilde
+considers the shadow of the body as the body of the soul.
+
+That the devils in hell eat the damned consigned there for punishment
+is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This idea probably is of
+Oriental origin. The seven Assyrian evil spirits have a predilection
+for human flesh and blood. Ghouls and vampires belong to this class of
+demons.
+
+The devil's pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented
+by another tine, as is commonly assumed. It is the ancient sign of
+fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm by the Hindus in
+India and the Zu�i and Aztec Indians of North America and Mexico. A
+related symbol is the trident of Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was
+recently carried in a children's May Day parade through Central Park
+in New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL
+
+
+The term "Printer's Devil" is usually accounted for by the fact that
+Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed in his printing
+shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was popularly thought to be an
+imp of Satan. This expression may have a deeper significance. It may
+owe its origin to the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing
+press, was believed to have connections with the Evil One. It will be
+remembered that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries,
+even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science, every
+invention of material benefit to man, was believed to have been
+secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors deemed the human
+mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything
+beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the
+close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place
+and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of
+the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_.) Sacred days, as is well known,
+are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil
+has also employed them in books of magic. This is but another instance
+of the mimicry by "God's Ape" of the sanctities of the Church.
+
+In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour prevails,
+the printer's devil is the librarian of hell. The books over which he
+has charge must be as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore. For
+nearly every book written without priestly command was associated in
+the good old days with the devil. The assertion that Satan hates
+nothing so much as writing or printer's ink apparently is a very great
+calumny. He has often even been accused of stealing manuscripts in
+order to prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally
+rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph G�rres, the
+defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil, provoked by his
+interference in Satanic affairs (he is the author of _Die christliche
+Mystik_, which is a rich source for diabolism, diabolical possession
+and exorcism), had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however,
+found some time afterwards in his bookcase, and the devil was
+completely exonerated.
+
+The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting in
+the light of the present agitation for unbound books and a eulogy of
+the old Franklin Square Library.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW
+
+BY FERN�N CABALLERO
+
+
+Fern�n Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia B�hl von Faber,
+Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by birth, daughter of the
+literary historian Johann B�hl von Faber, the Johannes of Campe's
+_Robinson_ (1779). Her father initiated her early into Spanish
+literature, which he interpreted for her in the spirit of the Romantic
+movement of those early days. The interest in mediaeval traditions,
+which she owes to this early training, increased when, later, she went
+to Catholic Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists
+in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of that
+province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval legends. In
+her stories we find perhaps the purest expression of mediaevalism in
+modern times. Fern�n Caballero gradually drifted to the extreme Right
+in all questions of religion, art and life. She hated every liberal
+expression in matters of faith or art with the fanaticism of a
+Torquemada. This author not only shared the somewhat general Catholic
+view that all Protestants were eternally damned, but she na�vely
+believed that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).
+
+The story of woman's triumph over the Devil is well characteristic of
+the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly called.
+
+The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in the work
+of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called _El Diablo cojuelo_
+(1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed both title and plot for his
+novel _Le Diable boiteux_ (1707). Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle,
+into which he had been confined by a magician, entertains his
+deliverer with the secret sights of a big city at midnight, by
+unroofing the houses of the Spanish capital and showing him the life
+that was going on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from
+the East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in local
+traditions. From that country it spread over the whole of Europe. The
+Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special prayers evil spirits
+could be reduced into obedience and confined in black bottles. The
+tradition forms a part of the Solomonic lore, and is frequently told
+in esoteric works. In the cabalistic book _Vinculum Spirituum_, which
+is of Eastern origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of
+a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle
+of black glass three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of
+their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (_alias_ Belial) the
+second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle
+into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the
+Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in the well, descended into it,
+broke the bottle, and freed the demons (cf. also _The Little Key of
+Rabbi Solomon, containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72
+Spirits with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi
+Solomon, carefully copied by "Raphael,"_ London, 1879). This legend is
+also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the Djinn in the _Arabian
+Nights_, which was also treated by the German poet Klopstock in his
+poem "Winterm�rchen" (1776).
+
+The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of the
+sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells was, according
+to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and witches. The devil in
+Poe's story "The Devil in the Belfry" (1839) was, indeed, very
+courageous in invading the belfry.
+
+The concluding part of the story is identical with the Machiavellian
+tale of Belphagor.
+
+This tale of the Devil's mother-in-law first appeared in the volume
+_Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces_ (Seville, 1859), which was
+translated the same year into French by Germond de Lavigne under the
+title _Nouvelles andalouses_. An English translation under the title
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ appeared in 1881. This particular story was
+rendered again into English two years later and included in _Tales
+from Twelve Tongues_, translated by a British Museum Librarian
+[Richard Garnett?], London, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American _confr�re's_
+predilection for the devil. He found his models in the diabolical
+scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted to the Latin world.
+"Baudelaire," said Th�ophile Gautier, his master and friend, "had a
+singular prepossession for the devil as a tempter, in whom he saw a
+dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity." To
+Baudelaire, the trier of men's souls, the Tempter, was as real a
+person as he was to Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal
+to do with the direction of human destinies. "C'est le Diable qui
+tient les fils qui nous remuent!" Men are mere puppets in the hands of
+the devil. "Baudelaire's motto," as Mr. James Huneker has well
+remarked, "might be the reverse of Browning's lines: The Devil is in
+his heaven. All's wrong with the world."
+
+Baudelaire's devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings. Each
+author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.
+
+The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to free him
+from that great modern monster, _Ennui_, which selects as its prey the
+most highly gifted natures. The boredom of life--this was, indeed, as
+this unhappy poet admits, the source of all his maladies and of all
+his miseries. He called it the "foulest of vices" and hoped to escape
+from it "by dreaming of the superlative emotional adventure, by
+indulging in infinite, indeterminate desire" (Irving Babbit). His
+preface to the _Flowers of Evil_, in which he addresses the reader,
+ends with the following statement in regard to the nature of this
+modern beast of prey: "Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
+the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents--the yelling,
+howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul menagerie
+of our vices--there is one which is the most foul, the most wicked,
+the most unclean of all. This vice, although it uses neither
+extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry, would willingly make a
+ruin of the earth, and swallow up all the world in a yawn. This is
+_Ennui!_ who, with his eye moistened by an involuntary tear, dreams of
+scaffolds while smoking his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate
+monster, hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!"
+
+In Gorky's story "The Devil" the devil himself suffers from _ennui_.
+
+But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan's word, and,
+therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to
+him. He had little faith in the father of lies. In his book called
+_Artificial Paradises_ (1860) Baudelaire expressed the thought that
+the devil would say to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as
+he did in the olden days to our first parents, "If you taste of the
+fruit, you will be as the gods," and that the devil no more kept his
+word with them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the
+god, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than the
+beast.
+
+The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat goes back to
+far antiquity. Goat-formed deities and spirits of the woods existed in
+the religions of India, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. The Assyrian god
+was often associated with the goat, which was supposed to possess the
+qualities for which he was worshipped. The he-goat was also the sacred
+beast of Donar or Thor, who was brought to Scandinavia by the
+Phoenicians. (On the relation of satyrs to goats see also James G.
+Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, vol. VIII, pp. 1 _sqq._) At the revels on
+the Blocksberg Satan always appeared as a black buck.
+
+_Le bon diable_, which is a favourite phrase in France, points to his
+simplicity of mind rather than generosity of spirit. It generally
+expresses the half-contemptuous pity with which the giants, these huge
+beings with weak minds, were regarded.
+
+The idea that Satan would gamble for a human soul is of mediaeval
+origin and may have been taken by Baudelaire from G�rard de Nerval,
+who in his mystery play _Le Prince des Sots_ (1830) has the devil play
+at dice with an angel, with human souls as stakes. As a dice-player
+Satan resembles Wuotan. Mr. H. G. Wells in _The Undying Fire_ (1919)
+has Diabolus play chess with the Deity in Heaven.
+
+The devil in this story falls back into speaking Hebrew when the days
+of his ancient celestial glory are brought back to his mind. In Louis
+M�nard's _Le Diable au caf�_ the devil calls Hebrew a dead language,
+and as a modern prefers to be called by the French equivalent of his
+original Hebrew name. In the Middle Ages the devil's favourite
+language was Latin. Marlowe's Mephistopheles also speaks this
+language. Satan is known to be a linguist. "It is the Devil by his
+several languages," said Ben Jonson.
+
+According to popular belief the devil is a learned scholar and a
+profound thinker. He has all science, philosophy, and theology at his
+tongue's end.
+
+The Shavian devil in contradistinction to the Baudelairian fiend does
+bitterly complain that he is so little appreciated on earth. Walter
+Scott's devil (in "Wandering Willie's Tale," 1824) also complains that
+he has been "sair miscaa'd in the world."
+
+The preacher to whom our author refers is the Jesuit Ravignan, who
+declared that the disbelief in the devil was one of the most cunning
+devices of the great enemy himself. (La plus grande force du diable,
+c'est d'�tre parvenu � se faire nier.) Baudelaire's disciple J. K.
+Huysmans similarly expresses in his novel _L�-Bas_ (1891) the view
+that "the greatest power of Satan lies in the fact that he gets men to
+deny him." (Cf. the present writer's essay "The Satanism of Huysmans"
+in _The Open Court_ for April, 1920.) The devil mocks at this
+theological dictum in Pierre Veber's story "L'Homme qui vendit son �me
+au Diable" (1918). In Perkins's story "The Devil-Puzzlers" the devil
+expresses his satisfaction over his success in this regard.
+
+The story "The Generous Gambler" first appeared in the _Figaro_ of
+February, 1864, was reprinted under the title of "Le Diable" in the
+_Revue du Dix-Neuvi�me Si�cle_ of June, 1866, and was finally included
+in _Po�mes en Prose_. This story has also been translated into English
+by Joseph T. Shipley.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+Daudet and Maupassant furnish the best proof of the assertion made in
+the Introduction to this book that even the Naturalists who, as a
+rule, disdained the phantastic plots of the Romanticists, whose
+imagination was rigorously earth-bound, felt themselves nevertheless
+attracted by devil-lore. Although most of Daudet's subjects are chosen
+from contemporary French life, this short-story treats a devil-legend
+of the seventeenth century. This story as "The Pope's Mule" and "The
+Elixir of the Reverend P�re Gaucher" obviously has no other object but
+to poke fun at the Catholic Church. It belongs to the literary type
+known as the Satirical Supernatural.
+
+This story is characteristic of Daudet's art, containing as it does
+all of his delicacy and daintiness of pathos, of raillery, of humour.
+It originally appeared in that delightful group of stories _Lettres de
+Mon Moulin_ (1869).
+
+The horns and tail of his Satanic majesty peep out as vividly in this
+book as the disguised devils in Ingoldsby's _Legend of the North
+Countrie_.
+
+Although hating all men, the devil has a special hatred for the
+priests, and he delights in bringing them to fall. Satan loathes the
+priests, because, as Anatole France says, they teach that "God takes
+delight in seeing His creatures languish in penitence and abstain from
+His most precious gifts" (_Les Dieux ont soif_, p. 278).
+
+It is evident from this story that the popular belief that the devil
+avoids holy edifices is not based on facts. Here the devil not only
+enters the church, but even performs the duties of a sacristan at the
+foot of the altar. According to mediaeval tradition the devil has his
+agents even in the churches. In the administration of hell where the
+tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the
+church has been assigned to the fiend with the poetic name of
+Tutevillus. It is his duty to attend all services in order to listen
+to the gossips and to write down every word they say. After death
+these women are entertained in hell with their own speeches, which
+this diabolical church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has
+it that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a beam,
+on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail, right over two
+village gossips, who chattered so much during the Blessed Mass that he
+soon filled every corner of the parchment on both sides. Poor
+Tutevillus worked so hard that the sweat ran in great drops down his
+brow, and he was ready to sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased
+not to sin with their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left
+whereon to record their foul words. So having considered for a little
+while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized the
+other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch the
+parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength, jerking back
+his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving such a fierce jerk
+that he suddenly lost his balance and fell head over heels from the
+beam to the floor of the church. (From "The Vision of Saint Simon of
+Blewberry" in F. O. Mann's collection of mediaeval tales.)
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+Through Asmodeus the devil became associated with humour and
+gallantry. Asmodeus sharpened his wits in his conversations with the
+wisest of kings. It will be recalled that this demon was the familiar
+spirit of Solomon, whose throne, according to Jewish legend, he
+occupied for three years. Perhaps it was not Solomon after all but
+this diabolical usurper who gathered around himself a thousand wives.
+It is said that Asmodeus is as dangerous to women as Lilith is to men.
+He loves to decoy young girls in the shape of a handsome young man.
+His love for the beautiful Sarah is too well known to need any
+comment. He is a fastidious devil, and will not have the object of his
+passion subject to the embrace of any other mortal or immortal.
+
+Reference is made by the author to Albert R�ville's epitome of Georg
+Roskoff's _Geschichte des Teufels_ (Leipzig, 1869), a standard work on
+the history of the devil. The review by this French Protestant first
+appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for 1870, and was translated
+into English the following year. A second edition appeared six years
+later. Roskoff's book, on the other hand, has never appeared in
+translation.
+
+It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval
+schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations:
+_An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones_. Whether
+a demon buzzing in the air devours our good intentions. This will
+correspond to our saying that hell is paved with good intentions. _An
+averia carrucae capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia._ Whether
+the carriers of a [bishop's] carriage caught in a forbidden district
+should be punished. We can well understand how even the devil might be
+puzzled by such questions.
+
+Professor Brander Matthews aptly calls this story "diabolically
+philosophical."
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+The modern devil is an accomplished gentleman. He is the most
+all-round being in creation. Mynheer van Belz�buth, as he is called in
+this story, is indeed the greatest gambler that there is upon or under
+the earth. On the golf-field as at the roulette-table he is hard to
+beat. It was the devil who invented cards, and they are, therefore,
+called the Devil's Bible, and it was also he who taught the Roman
+soldiers how to cast lots for the raiment of Christ (John xix, 24).
+Dice are also called the devil's bones.
+
+The devil carries the souls in a sack on his back also in the legend
+of St. Medard. It is told that this saint, while promenading one day
+on the shore of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw Satan carrying a bag full of
+damned souls on his back. The heart of this saint was filled with
+compassion for the poor souls and he quickly slit the devil's bag
+open, whereupon the souls scrambled for liberty:
+
+    "Away went the Quaker--away went the Baker,
+    Away went the Friar--that fine fat Ghost,
+      Whose marrow Old Nick Had intended to pick
+    Dressed like a Woodcock, and served on toast!
+
+    "Away went the nice little Cardinal's Niece
+    And the pretty Grisettes, and the Dons from Spain,
+      And the Corsair's crew, And the coin-cliping Jew,
+    And they scamper'd, like lamplighters, over the plain!"
+
+The Witches' Sabbath is the annual reunion of Satan and his
+worshippers on earth. The witches, mounted on goats and broomsticks,
+flock to desolate heaths and hills to hold high revel with their
+devil.
+
+Beelzebub swears in this story by the horns of his grandfather. While
+the devil is known to have a grandmother, there has never been found a
+trace of his grandfather. Satan has probably been adopted by the
+grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon. The horns have
+been inherited by Satan from Dionysos. This Greek god had bull-feet
+and bull's horns.
+
+The reader, who is interested in the origin of the European Carnival
+(Shrove Tuesday) customs, is referred to the editor's monograph _The
+Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_ (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co.,
+1920).
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+No greater proof of the permanence and persistence of the devil as a
+character in literature can be adduced than the fact that this writer,
+in whom we find the purest expression of Naturalism, for whom the
+visible world was absolutely all that there is, was attracted by a
+devil-legend. But on this point he had a good example in his
+god-father and master Gustave Flaubert, who, though a realist of
+realists, showed deep interest in the Tempter of St. Anthony.
+
+This legend of the fraudulent bargain between a sprite and a farmer as
+to alternate upper- and under-ground crops, with which "the great
+vision of the guarded mount" is here connected, is of Northern origin,
+but has travelled South as far as Arabia. It will be found in Grimm's
+_Fairy Tales_ (No. 189); Thiele's _Danish Legends_ (No. 122), and T.
+Sternberg's _The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (p. 140).
+Rabelais used it as a French legend, and in its Oriental form it
+served as a subject for a poem by the German Friedrich R�ckert ("Der
+betrogene Teufel"). In all these versions the agreement is entered
+into between the devil (in the Northampshire form it is a bogie or
+some other field spirit) and a peasant. It was reserved for Maupassant
+to make St. Michael get the better of Satan on earth as in heaven.
+
+According to this legend the devil broke his leg when, in his flight
+from St. Michael, he jumped off the roof of the castle into which he
+had been lured by the saint. The traditional explanation for the
+devil's broken leg is his fall from heaven. "I beheld Satan as
+lightning fall from heaven" (Luke x, 18). All rebellious deities, who
+were universally supposed to have fallen from heaven, have crooked or
+crippled legs. Hephaestos, Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken
+leg. This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning
+flashes. The devil's mother in the mediaeval German mystery-plays
+walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian demon Aeshma daeva, also had
+a lame foot. In Le Sage's book _Le Diable boiteux_ Asmodeus appears as
+a limping gentleman, who uses two sticks as crutches. According to
+rabbinical tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to meet
+King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil inherited the
+goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius and the horse-foot
+from Loki. The Ethiopic devil's right foot is a claw, and his left a
+hoof.
+
+The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy.
+Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. "If we were
+all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil," observed an old
+Scotch woman to her minister, "it wad be muckle better for us."
+
+The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to St. Michael.
+The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast played a conspicuous part in
+the wars of the sons of William the Conqueror. Maupassant uses it as
+the background for several of the chapters of his novel _Notre Coeur_
+(1890). The mountain also figures in his story "Le Horla" (1886).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+The following two stories by Richard Garnett have been taken from his
+book _The Twilight of the Gods_, which was first published anonymously
+in 1888, and in a "new and augmented edition," with the author's name,
+in 1902. The title recalls Richard Wagner's opera _G�tterd�mmerung_,
+but may have been directly suggested by El�mir Bourges, whose novel
+_Le Cr�puscule des dieux_ appeared four years earlier than Garnett's
+collection of stories. In his book Richard Garnett plays havoc with
+all religions. The demons, naturally enough, fare worse at his hands
+than the gods. _The Twilight of the Gods_ is a panorama of human folly
+and farce. Franz Cumont has said that human folly is a more
+interesting study than ancient wisdom. The author finds a great joy in
+pointing out all the mysterious cobwebs which have collected on the
+ceiling of man's brain in the course of the ages. Mr. Arthur Symons
+rightly calls this book "a Punch and Judy show of the comedy of
+civilization."
+
+The story of "The Demon Pope" is based upon a legend of a compact
+between a Pope and the devil. It is believed that Gerbert, who later
+became Pope Silvester II, sold his soul to Satan in order to acquire a
+knowledge of physics, arithmetic and music. The fullest account of
+this legend will be found in J. J. Dollinger's _Fables Respecting the
+Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Engl. Translation, 1871). _The History of
+the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ by Paul Carus (1900) contains the
+following passages on this legend:
+
+     "An English Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury, says of
+     Pope Sylvester II., who was born in France, his secular name
+     being Gerbert, that he entered the cloister when still a
+     boy. Full of ambition, he flew to Spain where he studied
+     astrology and magic among the Saracens. There he stole a
+     magic-book from a Saracen philosopher, and returned flying
+     through the air to France. Now he opened a school and
+     acquired great fame, so that the king himself became one of
+     his disciples. Then he became Bishop of Rheims, where he had
+     a magnificent clock and an organ constructed. Having raised
+     the treasure of Emperor Octavian which lay hidden in a
+     subterrenean vault at Rome, he became Pope. As Pope he
+     manufactured a magic head which replied to all his
+     questions. This head told him that he would not die until he
+     had read Mass in Jerusalem. So the Pope decided never to
+     visit the Holy Land. But once he fell sick, and, asking his
+     magic head, was informed that the church's name in which he
+     had read Mass the other day was 'The Holy Cross of
+     Jerusalem.' The Pope knew at once that he had to die. He
+     gathered all the cardinals around his bed, confessed his
+     crime, and, as a penance, ordered his body to be cut up
+     alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church as
+     unclean.
+
+     "Sigabert tells the story of the Pope's death in a different
+     way. There is no penance on the part of the Pope, and the
+     Devil takes his soul to hell. Others tell us that the Devil
+     constantly accompanied the Pope in the shape of a black dog,
+     and this dog gave him the equivocal prophecy.
+
+     "The historical truth of the story is that Gerbert was
+     unusually gifted and well educated. He was familiar with the
+     wisdom of the Saracens, for Borell, Duke of Hither Spain,
+     carried him as a youth to his country where he studied
+     mathematics and astronomy. He came early in contact with the
+     most influential men of his time, and became Pope in 999. He
+     was liberal enough to denounce some of his unworthy
+     predecessors as 'monsters of more than human iniquity,' and
+     as 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God and playing the
+     part of the Devil' (the text inadvertently reads: and
+     playing the part of God); but at the same time he pursued an
+     independent and vigorous papal policy, foreshadowing in his
+     aims both the pretensions of Gregory the Great and the
+     Crusades."
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating--and the most dangerous--character in the
+infernal world is this _Mater tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness. "A
+lady devil," says Daniel Defoe, "is about as dangerous a creature as
+one could meet." When Lucifer fails to bring a man to his fall, he
+hands the case over to his better half, and it is said that no man has
+ever escaped the siren seductions of this Diabo-Lady. A poem, _The
+Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, appeared in London in 1777.
+
+According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna is the mother
+or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or grandmother of Grendel, the
+Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became Satan's mother or grandmother by
+adoption. A mother was a necessary part of the devil's equipment.
+Having set his mind to equal Christ in every detail of his life, Satan
+had to get a mother somehow. In his story "The Vision Malefic" (1920)
+Mr. Huneker tells of the appearance of this counterfeit Madonna on a
+Christmas Eve to the organist of a Roman Catholic church in New York.
+Partly out of devotion to her and partly also because he could not
+obtain the sacramental blessing of the Church, Satan was forced to
+remain single. In the story "Devil-Puzzlers" by Fred B. Perkins the
+demon Apollyon appears as an old bachelor. "I have a mother, but no
+wife," he tells the charming Mrs. Hicok. The synagogue was more
+lenient towards the devil. The rabbis did not hesitate to perform the
+marriage ceremony for the diabolical pair. According to Jewish
+tradition the chief of the fallen angels married Lilith, Adam's first
+wife. She is said to have been in her younger days a woman of great
+beauty, but with a heart of ice. Now, of course, she is a regular
+hell-hag. If we can trust Rossetti, who painted her Majesty's
+portrait, she still is a type of beauty whose fascination is fatal.
+This woman was created by the Lord to be the help-meet of Adam, but
+mere man had no attraction for this superwoman. She is said to have
+started the fight for woman's emancipation from man, and contested
+Adam's right to be the head of the family. Their married life was very
+brief. Their incompatibility of character was too great. One fine
+morning Adam found that his erstwhile angelical wife had deserted him
+and run away with Lucifer, whom she had formerly known in heaven.
+
+The King-Devil apparently always succeeded somehow or other in
+breaking the chains with which, according to legend, he had repeatedly
+been bound and sealed in the lowest depths of hell. From antediluvian
+times the demons appear to have been attracted by the daughters of men
+and to have come frequently up to earth to pay court to them. The only
+devil who must always remain in hell is the stoker, Brendli by name.
+The fires of hell must not be allowed to go out.
+
+The anatomically melancholic Burton also tells of a devil who was in
+love with a mortal maiden. Jacques Cazotte tells the story of
+Beelzebub as a woman in love with an earth-born man.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+This writer has a great sympathy for devil-lore, and many of his
+characters show the cloven hoof. An analyst of illusions, he has a
+profound interest in the greatest of illusions. An assailant of every
+form of superstition, he has a tender affection for the greatest of
+superstitions. An exponent of the radical and ironical spirit in
+French literature, he feels irresistibly drawn to the eternal Denier
+and Mocker.
+
+The story of the Florentine painter Spinello Spinelli, to whom Lucifer
+appeared in a dream to ask him in what place he had beheld him under
+so brutish a form as he had painted him, is told in Giorgio Vasari's
+_Vite de' pi� eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (1550),
+which is the basis of the history of Italian art. It was treated by
+Barrili in his novel _The Devil's Portrait_ (1882; Engl. tr. 1885),
+from whom Anatole France may have got the idea for his story. But
+there is also a mediaeval French legend about a monk (_Du moine qui
+contrefyt l'ymage du Diable, qui s'en corou�a_), who was forced by the
+indignant devil to paint him in a less ugly manner.
+
+The devil is very sensitive in regard to his appearance. On a number
+of occasions he expressed his bitter resentment at the efforts of a
+certain class of artists to represent him in a hideous form (cf. M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_). Daniel Defoe has well remarked
+that the devil does not think that the people would be terrified half
+so much if they were to converse face to face with him. "Really," this
+biographer of Satan goes on to say, "it were enough to fright the
+devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several
+figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men." It
+makes us, indeed, wonder why the devil was always represented in a
+hideous and horrid form. Rationally conceived, the devil should by
+right be the most fascinating object in creation. One of his essential
+functions, temptation, is destroyed by his hideousness. To do the work
+of temptation a demon might be expected to approach his intended
+victim in the most fascinating form he could command. This fact is an
+additional proof that the devil was for the early Christians but the
+discarded pagan god, whom they wished to represent as ugly and as
+repulsive as they could.
+
+The earliest known representation of the devil in human form is found
+on an ivory diptych of the time of Charles the Bald (9th century).
+Many artists have since then painted his Majesty's portrait.
+Schongauer, D�rer, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, Van
+Dyck, Breughel and other masters on canvas vied with each other to
+present us with a real likeness of Satan. None has, however, equalled
+the power of Gustave Dor� in the portrayal of the Diabolical. This
+Frenchman was at his best as an artist of the infernal (Dante's "Great
+Dis" and Milton's "Satan at the gates of Hell").
+
+Modern artists frequently represent the devil as a woman. F�licien
+Rops, Max Klinger, and Franz Stuck may be cited as illustrations.
+Apparently the devil has in modern times changed sex as well as custom
+and costume. Victor Hugo has said:
+
+    "Dieu s'est fait homme; soit.
+        Le diable s'est fait femme."
+
+"Lucifer," as well as the other stories which form the volume _The
+Well of St. Claire_, is told by the abb� J�r�me Coignard on the edge
+of Santa Clara's well at Siena. The book was first published serially
+in the _Echo de Paris_ (1895). It has just been rendered into Spanish
+(_El Pozo de Santa Clara_).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage's _Le Diable boiteux_. It
+will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs of the houses of
+Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.
+
+The fate of a Russian author was, indeed, a very sad affair. "In all
+lands have the writers drunk of life's cup of bitterness, have they
+been bruised by life's sharp corners and torn by life's pointed
+thorns. Chill penury, public neglect, and ill health have been the lot
+of many an author in countries other than Russia. But in the land of
+the Czars men of letters had to face problems and perils which were
+peculiarly their own, and which have not been duplicated in any other
+country on the globe.... Every man of letters was under suspicion. The
+government of Russia treated every author as its natural enemy, and
+made him feel frequently the weight of its heavy hand. The wreath of
+laurels on the brow of almost every poet was turned by the tyrants of
+his country into a crown of thorns." (From the present writer's essay
+"The Gloom and Glory of Russian Literature" in _The Open Court_ for
+July, 1918.)
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+_POSTCRIPT_
+
+
+For the benefit of the gentle reader, who is about to shed a tear or
+two over the demise of the devil, the following episode from Anatole
+France's _My Friend's Book_ is retold here:
+
+Pierre Nozi�re (Anatole France) takes his baby-girl to a Punch and
+Judy show, the culmination point of which always consists of the duel
+to the death between Punch and the Devil. The terrible battle ends, of
+course, with the death of the Devil. The spectators applaud the heroic
+act of Punch, but Pierre Nozi�re is not happy over the result of the
+fight. He thinks that it is rather a pity that the Devil has been
+slain. Paying no heed to Suzanne sitting by his side, he goes on
+musing:
+
+     "The Devil being dead, good-bye to sin! Perhaps Beauty, the
+     Devil's ally, would have to go, too. Perhaps we should never
+     more behold the flowers that enchant us, and the eyes for
+     love of which we would lay down our lives. What, if that is
+     so, what in the world would become of us? Should we still be
+     able to practise virtue? I doubt it. Punch did not
+     sufficiently bear in mind that Evil is the necessary
+     counterpart of Good, as darkness is of light, that virtue
+     wholly consists of effort, and that if there is no more any
+     Devil to fight against, the Saints will remain as much out
+     of work as the Sinners. Life will be mortally dull. I tell
+     you that when he killed the Devil, Punch committed an act of
+     grave imprudence.
+
+     "Well, Pulchinello came on and made his bow, the curtain
+     fell, and all the little boys and girls went home; but still
+     I sat on deep in meditation. Mam'zelle Suzanne, perceiving
+     my thoughtful mien, concluded that I was in trouble.... Very
+     gently and tenderly she takes hold of my hand and asks me
+     why I am unhappy. I confess that I am sorry that Punch has
+     slain the Devil. Then she puts her little arms round my
+     neck, and putting her lips to my ears, she whispers:
+
+     "'I tell you somefin: Punch, he killed the nigger, but he
+     has not killed him for good.'"
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+[List of authors and titles contained in the Notes. Names are
+alphabeted after omission of _de_ or _von_, and titles are entered
+without their initial article. Each title is followed by the author's
+name in parentheses.]
+
+_Ambrosio, or the Monk_ (Lewis), 296
+
+_Anathema_ (Andr�ev), 286
+
+_Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Burton), 318
+
+Andr�ev, Leonid, 286
+
+_Artificial Paradises_ (Baudelaire), 304
+
+_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren_ (Richter), 286
+
+_Autobiography of Satan_ (Beard), 286
+
+
+Barham, Richard Harris (307)
+
+Barrili, Anton Giulio, 319
+
+Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 279, 296, 303-06
+
+Beard, J. R., 286
+
+_Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil_ (Machiavelli), 281-83, 301
+
+_Belphagor_ (an English play), 281
+
+_Betrogener Teufel_ (R�ckert), 313
+
+_Bon-Bon_ (Poe), 295-97
+
+Bourges, El�mir, 315
+
+Brevio, Giovanni, 282
+
+Browning, Robert, 280, 303
+
+Burton, Richard, 318
+
+
+Caballero, Fern�n, 300-02
+
+Caesarius of Heisterbach, 296-97
+
+Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 300
+
+Carus, Paul, 315
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 318
+
+Chamisso, Adalbert, 297
+
+Chappuys, Gabriel, 281
+
+Chateaubriand, Fran�ois Auguste Ren�, 283
+
+Chatterton, Thomas, 283
+
+_Christliche Mystik_ (G�rres), 299
+
+Conway, Moncure Daniel, 298, 318
+
+_Cr�puscule des Dieux_ (Bourges), 315
+
+Cumont, Franz, 315
+
+
+Daborne, Robert, 281
+
+_Daniel and the Devil_ (Field), 294
+
+_Danish Legends_ (Thiele), 313
+
+Dante Alighieri, 320
+
+Daudet, Alphonse, 307-08
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 317, 319
+
+_Demon Pope_ (Garnett), 315-16
+
+_Demonology and Devil-Lore_ (Conway), 298, 319
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft_ (W. Scott), 285, 296
+
+Deulin, Charles, 311-12
+
+_Devil_ (Gorky), 304, 321
+
+_Devil; his Origin, Greatness and Decadence_ (R�ville), 309
+
+_Devil and his Dame_ (Houghton), 281
+
+_Devil and the Old Man_ (Masefield), 322-23
+
+_Devil and Tom Walker_ (Irving), 284-85
+
+_Devil in a Nunnery_ (Mann), 279-80
+
+_Devil in Germany_ (Freytag), 293
+
+_Devil in the Belfry_ (Poe), 301
+
+_Devil is an Ass_ (Jonson), 281
+
+_Devil-Puzzlers_ (Perkins), 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Devil's Fiddle_, 279
+
+_Devil's Mother-in-Law_ (Caballero), 300-02
+
+_Devil's Portrait_ (Barrili), 319
+
+_Devil's Round_ (Deulin), 311-12
+
+_Devil's Violin_ (Webster), 279
+
+_Devil's Wager_ (Thackeray), 290-91
+
+_Diable_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Diable au caf�_ (M�nard), 305
+
+_Diable boiteux_ (Le Sage), 300, 314, 321
+
+_Diablo cojuelo_ (Guevara), 300
+
+_Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, 317
+
+_Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (Sternberg), 313
+
+_Dialogus Miraculorum_ (Caesarius), 297
+
+_Dieux ont soif_ (France), 307
+
+Dollinger, J. J., 315
+
+_Du moine qui countrefyt l'ymage du Diable_, 319
+
+Dunlop, J. C., 282
+
+
+_Elixir of the Reverend P�re Gaucher_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_En Route_ (Huysmans), 280
+
+_Evangelium Nicodemi_, 283
+
+_Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ (G�gol), 289
+
+
+_Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Dollinger), 315
+
+_Fairy Tales_ (Grimm), 313
+
+_Faust_ (Goethe), 280
+
+_Faust_ (Lenau), 279
+
+_Faustus_ (Marlowe), 305
+
+Field, Eugene, 294
+
+_Fisherman and his Soul_ (Wilde), 297
+
+Flaubert, Gustave, 313
+
+_Flowers of Evil_ (Baudelaire), 303
+
+France, Anatole, 307, 319-20, 322-23
+
+Frazer, James George, 289, 301, 304
+
+Freytag, Gustav, 293
+
+_From the Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+Fulwell, Ulpian, 281
+
+
+Goethe, Wolfgang, 280, 284
+
+G�gol, Nikol�i Vasil�vich, 289
+
+_Golden Bough_ (Frazer), 289, 304
+
+Gorky, Max�m, 304, 321
+
+G�rres, Joseph, 299
+
+_G�tterd�mmerung_ (Wagner), 315
+
+_Grim, the Collier of Croydon_ (Fulwell), 281
+
+Grimm, Jacob, 296, 313
+
+Guevara, Luis Velez, 300
+
+
+Hauff, Wilhelm, 286-88
+
+Heine, Heinrich, 290
+
+Henslowe, Philip, 281
+
+Herbert, George, 294
+
+Hill, Rowland, 279
+
+_History of Fiction_ (Dunlop), 282
+
+_History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ (Carus), 315-16
+
+_History of the French Novel_ (Saintsbury), 290-91, 292
+
+Hoffmann, E. Th. A., 286
+
+_Homme qui vendit son �me au Diable_ (Veber), 306
+
+Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 291
+
+_Horla_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+Houghton, P. M., 281
+
+Hugo, Victor, 320
+
+Huneker, James, 279, 303, 317
+
+Huysmans, Joris Karl, 280, 306
+
+
+_Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels_ (Barham), 307
+
+Irving, Washington, 284-85, 294
+
+_Italian Novelists_ (Roscoe), 282
+
+
+Jarintzow, Mme., 289
+
+Jonson, Ben, 281, 305
+
+
+Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 301
+
+
+_L�-Bas_ (Huysmans), 306
+
+La Fontaine, Jean, 281
+
+Lavigne, Germond, 302
+
+_Legend of Mont St.-Michel_ (Maupassant), 313-14
+
+Lenau, Nikolaus, 279
+
+Le Sage, Alain, 300, 314, 321
+
+Lewis, ("Monk") Matthew, 296
+
+_Lettres de mon Moulin_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Little Key of Rabbi Solomon_, 301
+
+_Lucifer_ (France), 319-20
+
+
+_Machiavel and the Devil_ (Daborne and Henslowe), 281
+
+Machiavelli, Niccol�, 281-83, 301
+
+_Madam Lucifer_ (Garnett), 317-18
+
+_Man and Superman_ (Shaw), 305
+
+Mann, Francis Oscar, 279-80, 308
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 305
+
+Masefield, John, 322-23
+
+Maupassant, Guy, 307, 313-14
+
+_Mediaeval Mind_ (Taylor), 293
+
+_M�moires du Diable_ (Souli�), 286, 292
+
+_Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+M�nard, Louis, 305
+
+Milton, John, 283, 320
+
+_My Friend's Book_ (France), 322-23
+
+
+Nerval [Labrunie], G�rard, 279, 305
+
+_Notre Coeur_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+_Nouvelles andalouses_ (Caballero), 301
+
+
+_Origin of German Carnival Comedy_ (Rudwin), 283, 312
+
+
+_Painter's Bargain_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Paris Sketch Book_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Parlement of Devils_, 283
+
+_Parlement of Foules_, 283
+
+Parliament of Sprites (Chatterton), 283
+
+Peabody, Josephine Preston, 280
+
+Perkins, Frederick Beecher, 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Peter Schlemihl_ (Chamisso), 297
+
+_Pied Piper of Hamelin_ (Browning), 280
+
+_Piper_ (Peabody), 280
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 292, 295-97, 301, 303
+
+_Po�mes en Prose_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Pope's Mule_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Pozo de Santa Clara_ (France), 320
+
+_Prince des Sots_ (Nerval), 305
+
+_Printer's Devil_, 289-99
+
+
+Rabelais, Fran�ois, 313
+
+R�ville, Albert, 309
+
+Riche, Barnabe, 281
+
+Richter, Jean Paul, 286
+
+_Robinson der J�ngers_ (Campe), 300
+
+Roscoe, Thomas, 282
+
+Roskoff, Georg, 309
+
+R�ckert, Friedrich, 313
+
+Rudwin, Maximilian J., 283, 306, 312, 321
+
+_Russian Poets and Poems_ (Jarintzow), 289
+
+
+Sachs, Hans, 281
+
+_St. John's Eve_ (G�gol), 289
+
+Saintsbury, George, 290, 292
+
+Sansovino, Francesco, 281
+
+_Satan's Diary_ (Andr�ev), 286
+
+_Satanism of Huysmans_ (Rudwin), 306
+
+_Satires_ (Horace), 291
+
+Schmidt, Julian, 300
+
+Scott, Walter, 285, 296, 305
+
+_Selections from the Devil's Papers_ (Richter), 286
+
+Shakespeare, William, 295
+
+Shaw, George Bernard, 305
+
+Shipley, Joseph T., 306
+
+_Sonata del Diavolo_ (Tartini), 279
+
+_Sonate du Diable_ (Nerval), 279
+
+Souli�, Fr�d�ric, 286, 292
+
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ (Caballero), 302
+
+Sta�l, Madame, 284
+
+Sternberg, T., 313
+
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, 284
+
+Straparola, Giovan-Francesco, 281
+
+_Supreme Sin_ (Huneker), 279
+
+Symons, Arthur, 315
+
+
+_Tales from Twelve Tongues_ (Garnett?), 302
+
+Tartini, Giuseppe, 279
+
+Tasso, Torquato, 283
+
+Taylor, H. D., 293
+
+_Temptation of St. Anthony_ (Flaubert), 313
+
+_Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire_ (Baudelaire), 279, 296
+
+_Teufel in Berlin_ (Hoffmann), 286
+
+_Teufel mit der Geige_ (Gengenbach), 279
+
+_Teutonic Mythology_ (Grimm), 296
+
+Thackeray, William Makepeace, 290-94
+
+Thiele, Just Mathias, 313
+
+_Thrawn Janet_ (Stevenson), 284
+
+_Three Low Masses_ (Daudet), 307-08
+
+_Twilight of the Gods_ (Garnett), 315
+
+
+_Undying Fire_ (Wells), 305
+
+
+Vasari, Giorgio, 310
+
+Veber, Pierre, 306
+
+_Vinculum Spirituum_, 301
+
+_Violon du Diable_, 279
+
+_Vision Malefic_ (Huneker), 317
+
+_Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry_ (Mann), 308
+
+_Vite de' pi� eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (Vasari), 319
+
+
+Wagner, Richard, 315
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_ (Scott), 305
+
+Webster, Benjamin, 279
+
+_Well of St. Claire_ (France), 320
+
+Wells, H. G., 305
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 297
+
+_Winterm�rchen_ (Klopstock), 301
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Devil Stories
+       An Anthology
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Maximilian J. Rudwin
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVIL STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tpage">
+<h1>DEVIL STORIES</h1>
+
+<h2>AN ANTHOLOGY</h2>
+
+<p class="center" style="width: 55%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold">SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION
+AND CRITICAL COMMENTS</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: 150%; font-weight: bold"><span class="smcap">By MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="font-size: 130%; padding-top: 4em; margin-left: 32%">
+<span class="i0"><i>“Mortal, mock not at the Devil,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Life is short and soon will fail,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And the ‘fire everlasting’</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i1"><i>Is no idle fairy-tale.”</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i8">—<span class="smcap">Heine</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="publisher">NEW YORK<br />
+
+ALFRED · A · KNOPF<br />
+
+MCMXXI</p>
+
+<p class="publisher">COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY<br />
+ALFRED A. KNOPF, <span class="smcap">Inc.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: 80%">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="list1">
+
+<h2>DEVIL LORE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">ANTHOLOGIES OF DIABOLICAL LITERATURE<br />
+EDITED BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN</p>
+
+<p class="center">I. DEVIL STORIES<br />
+[First Series]</p>
+
+
+<ul>
+<li style="padding-left: 7em"><i>In Preparation:</i></li>
+<li>DEVIL PLAYS</li>
+<li>DEVIL ESSAYS</li>
+<li>DEVIL LEGENDS</li>
+<li>THE BOOK OF LADY LILITH</li>
+<li>ANTHOLOGY OF SATANIC VERSE</li>
+<li>BIBLIOGRAPHIA DIABOLICA</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div class="list2">
+<p class="center"><i>BOOKS BY</i><br />
+<i>MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN</i></p>
+
+<p>The Prophet and Disputation
+Scenes in the Religious Drama
+of the German Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil Scenes in the Religious
+Drama of the German Middle
+Ages.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil in the German Religious
+Plays of the Middle
+Ages and the Reformation.
+[Hesperia: Johns Hopkins
+Studies in Modern Philology,
+No. 6.]</p>
+
+<p>The Origin of the German Carnival
+Comedy.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-top: 0.5em"><i>In Preparation:</i></p>
+
+<p>The Devil in Modern French
+Literature.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="dedication">TO<br />
+ALL STUDENTS OF THE SUPERNATURAL<br />
+IN LITERATURE</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="NOTE" id="NOTE"></a>NOTE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>The preparation of this book would have been out of
+the question without the co-operation of authors and
+publishers. Proper acknowledgment has been given on
+the first page of each selection to the publishers who
+have granted us permission to reprint it. We take this
+opportunity to express once more our deep appreciation
+of the courtesies extended to us by all the parties concerned
+in the material between the covers of this book.
+Special thanks are offered to Mr. John Masefield for
+his permission to republish his story, and to Messrs.
+Arthur Symons and Leo Wiener and to Miss Isabel F.
+Hapgood for their permission to use their translations of
+the foreign stories which we have selected. To Professor
+Henry Alfred Todd and Dr. Dorothy Scarborough,
+of Columbia University, who have kindly read portions
+of the manuscript, the editor is indebted for a number
+of helpful suggestions. He adds his thanks to Professor
+Raymond Weeks, also of Columbia University, who
+called his attention to the Daudet story, and to his former
+colleague, Professor Otto A. Greiner, of Purdue University,
+who was good enough to read part of the proofs.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">The Publisher.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap" style="padding-right: 1.2em">The Editor.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<table summary="table of contents">
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY1"><span class="smcap">The Devil in a Nunnery</span></a><br />
+  <i>A Mediaeval Tale By Francis Oscar Mann</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#BELPHAGOR"><span class="smcap">Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil</span> (1549)</a><br />
+  <i>From the Italian of Niccolò Machiavelli</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER2"><span class="smcap">The Devil and Tom Walker</span> (1824)</a><br />
+  <i>By Washington Irving</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN"><span class="smcap">From the Memoirs of Satan</span> (1828)</a><br />
+  <i>From the German of Wilhelm Hauff</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#ST_JOHNS_EVE3"><span class="smcap">St. John’s Eve</span> (1830)</a><br />
+  <i>From the Russian of Nikolái Vasilévich Gógol</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_WAGER"><span class="smcap">The Devil’s Wager</span> (1833)</a><br />
+  <i>By William Makepeace Thackeray</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN"><span class="smcap">The Painter’s Bargain</span> (1834)</a><br />
+  <i>By William Makepeace Thackeray</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#BON-BON"><span class="smcap">Bon-Bon</span> (1835)</a><br />
+  <i>By Edgar Allan Poe</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL"><span class="smcap">The Printer’s Devil</span> (1836)</a><br />
+  <i>Anonymous</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW16"><span class="smcap">The Devil’s Mother-in-Law</span> (1859)</a><br />
+  <i>From the Spanish by Fernán Caballero</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by J.&nbsp;H. Ingram</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER17"><span class="smcap">The Generous Gambler</span> (1864)</a><br />
+  <i>From the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Arthur Symons</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_162">162</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES18"><span class="smcap">The Three Low Masses</span> (1869)</a><br />
+  <i>A Christmas Story From the French of Alphonse Daudet</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Robert Routeledge</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#DEVIL-PUZZLERS19"><span class="smcap">Devil-Puzzlers</span> (1871)</a><br />
+  <i>By Frederick Beecher Perkins</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_ROUND20"><span class="smcap">The Devil’s Round</span> (1874)</a><br />
+  <i>A Tale of Flemish Golf From the French of Charles Deulin</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Isabel Bruce</i><br />
+  <i>With an introductory note by Andrew Lang</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL"><span class="smcap">The Legend of Mont St.-Michel</span> (1888)</a><br />
+  <i>From the French of Guy de Maupassant</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEMON_POPE26"><span class="smcap">The Demon Pope</span> (1888)</a><br />
+  <i>By Richard Garnett</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#MADAM_LUCIFER27"><span class="smcap">Madam Lucifer</span> (1888)</a><br />
+  <i>By Richard Garnett</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#LUCIFER28"><span class="smcap">Lucifer</span> (1895)</a><br />
+  <i>From the French of Anatole France</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Alfred Allinson</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVIL30"><span class="smcap">The Devil</span> (1899)</a><br />
+  <i>From the Russian of Maxím Gorky</i><br />
+  <i>Translated by Leo Wiener</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN31"><span class="smcap">The Devil and the Old Man</span> (1905)</a><br />
+  <i>By John Masefield</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#NOTES"><span class="smcap">Notes</span></a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#INDEX"><span class="smcap">Index</span></a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>Of all the myths which have come down to us from
+the East, and of all the creations of Western fancy and
+belief, the Personality of Evil has had the strongest
+attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the greatest
+enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence.
+So large a place has Satan taken in our
+imagination, and we might also say in our heart, that
+his expulsion therefrom, no matter what philosophy may
+teach us, must for ever remain an impossibility. As a
+character in imaginative literature Lucifer has not his
+equal in heaven above or on the earth beneath. In contrast
+to the idea of Good, which is the more exalted in
+proportion to its freedom from anthropomorphism, the
+idea of Evil owes to the presence of this element its
+chief value as a poetic theme. The discrowned archangel
+may have been inferior to St. Michael in military
+tactics, but he certainly is his superior in matters
+literary. The fair angels—all frankness and goodness—are
+beyond our comprehension, but the fallen
+angels, with all their faults and sufferings, are kin to us.</p>
+
+<p>There is a legend that the Devil has always had
+literary aspirations. The German theosophist Jacob
+Böhme relates that when Satan was asked to explain the
+cause of God’s enmity to him and his consequent downfall,
+he replied: “I wanted to be an author.”
+Whether or not the Devil has ever written anything
+over his own signature, he has certainly helped others<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span>
+compose their greatest works. It is a significant fact
+that the greatest imaginations have discerned an attraction
+in Diabolus. What would the world’s literature be
+if from it we eliminated Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy</i>, Calderón’s
+<i>Marvellous Magician</i>, Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i>,
+Goethe’s <i>Faust</i>, Byron’s <i>Cain</i>, Vigny’s <i>Eloa</i>, and Lermontov’s
+<i>Demon</i>? Sorry indeed would have been the
+plight of literature without a judicious admixture of the
+Diabolical. Without the Devil there would simply be
+no literature, because without his intervention there
+would be no plot, and without a plot the story of the
+world would lose its interest. Even now, when the belief
+in the Devil has gone out of fashion, and when the
+very mention of his name, far from causing men to cross
+themselves, brings a smile to their faces, Satan has continued
+to be a puissant personage in the realm of letters.
+As a matter of fact, Beelzebub has perhaps received his
+greatest elaboration at the hands of writers who believed
+in him just as little as Shakespeare did in the
+ghost of Hamlet’s father.</p>
+
+<p>Commenting on Anatole France’s <i>The Revolt of the
+Angels</i>, an American critic has recently written: “It
+is difficult to rehabilitate Beelzebub, not because people
+are of one mind concerning Beelzebub, but because
+they are of no mind at all.” How this demon must
+have laughed when he read these lines! Why, he needs
+no rehabilitation. The Devil has never been absent
+from the world of letters, just as he has never been
+missing from the world of men. Since the days of
+Job, Satan has taken a deep interest in the affairs of the
+human race; and while most writers content themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span>
+with recording his activities on this planet, there never
+have been lacking men of sufficient courage to call upon
+the prince of darkness in his proper dominions in order
+to bring back to us, for our instruction and edification,
+a report of his work there. The most distinguished
+poet his infernal Highness has ever entertained at his
+court, it will be recalled, was Dante. The mark which
+the scorching fires of hell left on Dante’s face, was to
+his contemporaries sufficient proof of the truth of his
+story.</p>
+
+<p>The subject-matter of literature may always have
+been in a state of flux, but the Devil has been present
+in all the stages of literary evolution. All schools of
+literature in all ages and in all languages set themselves,
+whether consciously or unconsciously, to represent
+and interpret the Devil, and each school has treated
+him in its own characteristic manner.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil is an old character in literature. Perhaps
+he is as old as literature itself. He is encountered in
+the story of the paradisiacal sojourn of our first ancestors,
+and from that day on, Satan has appeared unfailingly,
+in various forms and with various functions, in
+all the literatures of the world. His person and his
+power continued to develop and to multiply with the
+advance of the centuries, so that in the Middle Ages
+the world fairly pullulated with demons. From his
+minor place in the biblical books, the Devil grew to a
+position of paramount importance in mediaeval literature.
+The Reformation, which was a movement of
+progress in so many respects, left his position intact.
+Indeed, it rather increased his power by withdrawing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span>
+from the saints the right of intercession in behalf of
+the sinners. Neither the Renaissance of ancient learning
+nor the institution of modern science could prevail
+against Satan. As a matter of fact, the growth of the
+interest in the Devil has been on a level with the development
+of the spirit of philosophical inquiry.
+French classicism, to be sure, occasioned a setback for
+our hero. As a member of the Christian hierarchy of
+supernatural personages, the Devil could not help but
+be affected by the ban under which Boileau placed
+Christian supernaturalism. But even the eighteenth
+century, a period so inimical to the Supernatural, produced
+two master-devils in fiction: Le Sage’s Asmodeus
+and Cazotte’s Beelzebub—worthy members of the
+august company of literary Devils.</p>
+
+<p>But as if to make amends for its long lack of appreciation
+of the Devil’s literary possibilities, France,
+in the beginning of the nineteenth century, brought
+about a distinct reaction in his favour. The sympathy
+extended by that country of revolutionary progress to
+all victims and to all rebels, whether individuals or
+classes or nations, could not well be denied to the celestial
+outlaw. The fighters for political, social, intellectual,
+and emotional liberty on earth, could not withhold
+their admiration from the angel who demanded freedom
+of thought and independence of action in heaven.
+The rebel of the Empyrean was hailed as the first martyr
+in the cause of liberty, and his rehabilitation in heaven
+was demanded by the rebels on earth. Satan became
+the symbol of the restless, hapless nineteenth century.
+Through his mouth that age uttered its protest against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span>
+the monarchs of heaven and earth. The Romantic generation
+of 1830 thought the world more than ever out
+of joint, and who was better fitted than the Devil to express
+their dissatisfaction with the celestial government
+of terrestrial affairs? Satan is the eternal Malcontent.
+To Hamlet, Denmark seemed gloomy; to Satan,
+the whole world appears dark. The admiration of the
+Romanticists for Satan was mixed with pity and sympathy—so
+much his melancholy endeared him to their
+sympathies, so kindred it seemed to their human weakness.
+The Romanticists felt a deep admiration for
+solitary grandeur. This “knight of the doleful countenance,”
+laden with a curse and drawing misfortune
+in his train, was the ideal Romantic hero. Was he not
+indeed the original <i>beau ténébreux</i>? Thus Satan became
+the typical figure of that period and its poetry.
+It has been well remarked that if Satan had not existed,
+the Romanticists would have invented him. The Devil’s
+influence on the Romantic School was so strong and so
+sustained that soon it was named after him. The terms
+Romantic and Satanic came to be wellnigh synonymous.
+The interest which the French Romanticists showed in
+the Devil, moreover, passed beyond the boundaries of
+France and the limits of the nineteenth century. The
+Symbolists, for whom the mysteries of Erebus had a
+potent attraction, were simply obsessed by Satan. But
+even the Naturalists, who certainly were not haunted by
+phantoms, often succumbed to his charms. Foreign
+writers turning for inspiration to France, where the literature
+of the last century reached its highest perfection,
+were also caught in the French enthusiasm for the Devil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Needless to say that this Devil is not the evil spirit of
+mediaeval dogma. The Romantic Devil is an altogether
+new species of the <i>genus diaboli</i>. There are fashions
+in Devils as in dresses, and what is a Devil in one
+country or one century may not pass muster in another.
+It is related that after the glory of Greece had departed,
+a mariner, voyaging along her coast by night, heard
+from the woods the cry: “Great Pan is dead!” But
+Pan was not dead; he had fallen asleep to awake again
+as Satan. In like manner, when the eighteenth century
+believed Satan to be dead, he was, as a matter of fact,
+only recuperating his energies for a fresh start in a new
+form. His new avatar was Prometheus. Satan continued
+to be the enemy of God, but he was no longer
+the enemy of man. Instead of a demon of darkness he
+became a god of grace. This champion of celestial
+combat was not actuated by hatred and envy of man,
+as Christianity was thought to teach us, but by love and
+pity for humankind. The strongest expression of this
+idea of the Devil in modern literature has been given
+by August Strindberg, whose Lucifer is a compound of
+Prometheus, Apollo and Christ. However, this interpretation
+of the Devil, whatever value it may have from the
+point of view of originality, is aesthetically as well as
+theologically not acceptable. Such a revaluation of an
+old value offends our intellect while it touches our heart.
+All successful treatment of the Devil in literature and
+art must be made to correspond with the norm of popular
+belief. In art we are all orthodox, whatever our
+views may be in religion. This new conception of Satan
+will be found chiefly in poetry, while the popular concept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>
+has been continued in prose. But even here a
+gradual evolution of the idea of the Devil will be observed.
+The nineteenth century Demon is an improvement
+on his <i>confrère</i> of the thirteenth. He differs from
+his older brother as a cultivated flower from a wild blossom.
+The Devil as a human projection is bound to
+partake in the progress of human thought. Says
+Mephistopheles:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Culture, which the whole world licks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Also unto the Devil sticks.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Devil advances with the progress of civilization,
+because he is what men make him. He has benefited by
+the modern levelling tendency in characterization. Nowadays
+supernatural personages, like their human creators,
+are no longer painted either as wholly white or as
+wholly black, but in various shades of grey. The Devil,
+as Renan has aptly remarked, has chiefly benefited by
+this relativist point of view. The Spirit of Evil is better
+than he was, because evil is no longer so bad as it was.
+Satan, even in the popular mind, is no longer a villain
+of the deepest dye. At his worst he is the general mischief-maker
+of the universe, who loves to stir up the
+earth with his pitch-fork. In modern literature the Devil’s
+chief function is that of a satirist. This fine critic
+directs the shafts of his sarcasm against all the faults
+and foibles of men. He spares no human institution.
+In religion, art, society, marriage—everywhere his
+searching eye can detect the weak spots. The latest demonstration
+of the Devil’s ability as a satirist of men
+and morals is furnished by Mark Twain in his posthumous
+romance <i>The Mysterious Stranger</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Devil Lore Series, which opens with this book
+of Devil Stories, is to serve as documentary evidence of
+man’s abiding interest in the Devil. It will be a sort
+of portrait-gallery of the literary delineations of Satan.
+The Anthologies of Diabolical Literature may be considered,
+I trust, without any risk of offence to any theological
+or philosophical prepossession. To those alike
+who accept and who reject the belief in the Devil’s spiritual
+entity apart from man’s, there must be profit and
+pleasure in the contemplation of his literary incarnations.
+As regards the Devil’s fitness as a literary character,
+all intelligent men and women, believers and unbelievers,
+may be assumed to have but one opinion.</p>
+
+<p>This Series is wholly devoted to the Christian Devil
+with the total disregard of his cousins in the other faiths.
+There will, however, be found a strong Jewish element
+in Christian demonology. It must be borne in mind
+that our literature has become saturated through Christian
+channels with the traditions of the parent creed.</p>
+
+<p>This collection has been limited to twenty tales.
+Within the bounds thus set, an effort has been made to
+have this book as representative of national and individual
+conceptions of the Devil as possible. The tales
+have been taken from many times and tongues. Selection
+has been made not only among writers, but also
+among the stories of each writer. In two instances,
+however, where the choice was not so easy, an author is
+represented by two specimens from his pen.</p>
+
+<p>The stories have been arranged in chronological order
+to show the constant and continuous appeal on the part of
+the Devil to our story-writers. The mediaeval tale, although<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>
+published last, was placed first. For obvious
+reasons, this story has not been given in its original
+form, but in its modernized version. While this is not
+meant to be a nursery-book, it has been made <i>virginibus
+puerisque</i>, and for this reason, selections from Boccaccio,
+Rabelais and Balzac could not find their way into these
+pages. Moreover, as this volume was limited to narratives
+in prose, devil’s tales in verse by Chaucer, Hans
+Sachs and La Fontaine could not be considered, either.
+Nevertheless this collection is sufficiently comprehensive
+to please all tastes in Devils. The reader will find between
+the covers of this book Devils fascinating and fearful,
+Devils powerful and picturesque, Devils serious and
+humorous, Devils pathetic and comic, Devils phantastic
+and satiric, Devils gruesome and grotesque. I have
+tried, though, to keep them all in good humour throughout
+the book, and can accordingly assure the reader that
+he need fear no harm from an intimate acquaintance with
+the diabolical company to which he is herewith introduced.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Maximilian J. Rudwin</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY1" id="THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY1"></a>THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span>
+</h2>
+
+<h3>BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see
+on a seven days’ journey. Neither was it any less pleasant
+in the days of our Lord King Edward, the third of
+that name, he who fought and put the French to shameful
+discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another
+hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he
+now sleeps in the great Church at Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>Buckinghamshire is full of smooth round hills and
+woodlands of hawthorn and beech, and it is a famous
+country for its brooks and shaded waterways running
+through the low hay meadows. Upon its hills feed a
+thousand sheep, scattered like the remnants of the spring
+snow, and it was from these that the merchants made
+themselves fat purses, sending the wool into Flanders in
+exchange for silver crowns. There were many strong
+castles there too, and rich abbeys, and the King’s Highway
+ran through it from North to South, upon which the
+pilgrims went in crowds to worship at the Shrine of the
+Blessed Saint Alban. Thereon also rode noble knights
+and stout men-at-arms, and these you could follow with
+the eye by their glistening armour, as they wound over
+hill and dale, mile after mile, with shining spears and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>shields and fluttering pennons, and anon a trumpet or
+two sounding the same keen note as that which rang out
+dreadfully on those bloody fields of France. The girls
+used to come to the cottage doors or run to hide themselves
+in the wayside woods to see them go trampling by;
+for Buckinghamshire girls love a soldier above all men.
+Nor, I warrant you, were jolly friars lacking in the
+highways and the by-ways and under the hedges, good
+men of religion, comfortable of penance and easy of
+life, who could tip a wink to a housewife, and drink and
+crack a joke with the good man, going on their several
+ways with tight paunches, skins full of ale and a merry
+salutation for every one. A fat pleasant land was
+this Buckinghamshire; always plenty to eat and drink
+therein, and pretty girls and lusty fellows; and God
+knows what more a man can expect in a world where all
+is vanity, as the Preacher truly says.</p>
+
+<p>There was a nunnery at Maids Moreton, two miles out
+from Buckingham Borough, on the road to Stony Stratford,
+and the place was called Maids Moreton because
+of the nunnery. Very devout creatures were the nuns,
+being holy ladies out of families of gentle blood. They
+punctually fulfilled to the letter all the commands of
+the pious founder, just as they were blazoned on the
+great parchment Regula, which the Lady Mother kept
+on her reading-desk in her little cell. If ever any of
+the nuns, by any chance or subtle machination of the
+Evil One, was guilty of the smallest backsliding from
+the conduct that beseemed them, they made full and
+devout confession thereof to the Holy Father who visited
+them for this purpose. This good man loved swan’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+meat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed
+to provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and
+whatsoever penance he laid upon them they performed
+to the utmost, and with due contrition of heart.</p>
+
+<p>From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently
+carried out the services of Holy Mother Church. After
+dinner, one read aloud to them from the Rule, and again
+after supper there was reading from the life of some
+notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample
+for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage.
+For the rest, they tended their herb garden, reared their
+chickens, which were famous for miles around, and kept
+strict watch over their haywards and swineherds. If
+time was when they had nothing more important on
+hand, they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages
+imaginable for the Bishop, the Bishop’s Chaplain, the
+Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot and other godly
+men of religion round about, who were forced often to
+bleed themselves for their health’s sake and their eternal
+salvation, so that these venerable men in process of time
+came to have by them great chests full of these useful
+articles. If little tongues wagged now and then as the
+sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who shall
+blame them, <i>Eva peccatrice</i>? Not I; besides, some of
+them were something stricken in years, and old women
+are garrulous and hard to be constrained from chattering
+and gossiping. But being devout women they could
+have spoken no evil.</p>
+
+<p>One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at
+supper, the Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged
+up and down the hall at the long trestled tables. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+Abbess had just said “<i>Gratias</i>” and the sisters had sung
+“<i>Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula saeculorum,
+Amen</i>,” when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and,
+with many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the
+hands, sidled himself up upon the dais, and, permission
+having been given him, spoke to the Lady Mother
+thus:</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who
+asks refreshment and a night’s lodging.” It is true he
+spoke softly, but little pink ears are sharp of hearing, and
+nuns, from their secluded way of life, love to hear news
+of the great world.</p>
+
+<p>“Send him away,” said the Abbess. “It is not fit
+that a man should lie within this house.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he
+should starve of hunger and exhaustion on his way to
+do penance and worship at the Holy Shrine of the
+Blessed Saint Alban.”</p>
+
+<p>“What kind of pilgrim is he?”</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears
+of a reverend and gracious aspect, a young man well
+spoken and well disposed. Madam knows it waxeth
+late, and the ways are dark and foul.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages
+and good works, to faint and starve by the
+wayside. Let him sleep with the haywards.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance
+and conversation; saving your reverence, I would
+not wish to ask him to eat and sleep with churls.”</p>
+
+<p>“He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter
+and eat of our poor table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command.
+He hath with him, however, an instrument of
+music and would fain cheer you with spiritual songs.”</p>
+
+<p>A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches
+of the great hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.</p>
+
+<p>“Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light
+juggler, a singer of vain songs, a mocker. I would not
+have these quiet halls disturbed by wanton music and
+unholy words. God forbid.” And she crossed herself.</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, I will answer for it.”</p>
+
+<p>The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went
+down the middle of the hall, his keys rattling at his belt.
+A little buzz of conversation rose from the sisters and
+went up to the oak roof-trees, like the singing of bees.
+The Abbess told her beads.</p>
+
+<p>The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God
+knows what manner of man he was; I cannot tell you.
+He certainly was lean and lithe like a cat, his eyes
+danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks
+and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit’s that lives
+on roots and ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went
+like the tune of a May game, and he screwed and twisted
+his scarlet-jerkined body in time with them. In his left
+hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his
+right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones
+of those who heard it, and teased every delicate
+nerve in the body. Such a tune would have tickled the
+ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go pilgrimaging
+certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the
+young nuns tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they
+showed their red gums, it is hard to tell. Even the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though she tried to
+frown a moment later.</p>
+
+<p>The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal
+devil in his legs making the nuns think of the
+games the village folk play all night in the churchyard
+on Saint John’s Eve.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracious Mother,” he cried, bowing deeply and in
+comely wise, “allow a poor pilgrim on his way to confess
+and do penance at the shrine of Saint Alban to take
+food in your hall, and to rest with the haywards this
+night, and let me thereof make some small recompense
+with a few sacred numbers, such as your pious founder
+would not have disdained to hear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Young man,” returned the Abbess, “right glad am
+I to hear that God has moved thy heart to godly works
+and to go on pilgrimages, and verily I wish it may be to
+thy soul’s health and to the respite of thy pains hereafter.
+I am right willing that thou shouldst refresh
+thyself with meat and rest at this holy place.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, I thank thee from my heart, but as some
+slight token of gratitude for so large a favour, let me,
+I pray thee, sing one or two of my divine songs, to the
+uplifting of these holy Sisters’ hearts.”</p>
+
+<p>Another burst of chatter, louder than before, from
+the benches in the hall. One or two of the younger Sisters
+clapped their plump white hands and cried, “Oh!”
+The Lady Abbess held up her hand for silence.</p>
+
+<p>“Verily, I should be glad to hear some sweet songs
+of religion, and I think it would be to the uplifting of
+these Sisters’ hearts. But, young man, take warning
+against singing any wanton lines of vain imagination,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+such as the ribalds use on the highways, and the idlers
+and haunters of taverns. I have heard them in my
+youth, although my ears tingle to think of them now,
+and I should think it shame that any such light words
+should echo among these sacred rafters or disturb the
+slumber of our pious founder, who now sleeps in Christ.
+Let me remind you of what saith Saint Jeremie, <i>Onager
+solitarius, in desiderio animae suae, attraxit ventum
+amoris</i>; the wild ass of the wilderness, in the desire of
+his heart, snuffeth up the wind of love; whereby that
+holy man signifies that vain earthly love, which is but
+wind and air, and shall avail nothing at all, when this
+weak, impure flesh is sloughed away.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madam, such songs as I shall sing, I learnt at the
+mouth of our holy parish priest, Sir Thomas, a man of
+all good learning and purity of heart.”</p>
+
+<p>“In that case,” said the Abbess, “sing in God’s name,
+but stand at the end of the hall, for it suits not the dignity
+of my office a man should stand so near this dais.”</p>
+
+<p>Whereon the pilgrim, making obeisance, went to the
+end of the hall, and the eyes of all the nuns danced after
+his dancing legs, and their ears hung on the clear, sweet
+notes he struck out of his cithern as he walked. He took
+his place with his back against the great hall door, in
+such attitude as men use when they play the cithern. A
+little trembling ran through the nuns, and some rose
+from their seats and knelt on the benches, leaning over
+the table, the better to see and hear him. Their eyes
+sparkled like dew on meadowsweet on a fair morning.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly his fingers were bewitched or else the devil
+was in his cithern, for such sweet sounds had never been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+heard in the hall since the day when it was built and
+consecrated to the service of the servants of God. The
+shrill notes fell like a tinkling rain from the high roof
+in mad, fantastic trills and dying falls that brought all
+one’s soul to one’s lips to suck them in. What he sang
+about, God only knows; not one of the nuns or even the
+holy Abbess herself could have told you, although you
+had offered her a piece of the True Cross or a hair of
+the Blessed Virgin for a single word. But a divine
+yearning filled all their hearts; they seemed to hear ten
+thousand thousand angels singing in choruses, Alleluia,
+Alleluia, Alleluia; they floated up on impalpable clouds
+of azure and silver, up through the blissful paradises
+of the uppermost heaven; their nostrils were filled with
+the odours of exquisite spices and herbs and smoke of
+incense; their eyes dazzled at splendours and lights and
+glories; their ears were full of gorgeous harmonies and
+all created concords of sweet sounds; the very fibres of
+being were loosened within them, as though their souls
+would leap forth from their bodies in exquisite dissolution.
+The eyes of the younger nuns grew round and
+large and tender, and their breath almost died upon
+their velvet lips. As for the old nuns, the great, salt
+tears coursed down their withered cheeks and fell like
+rain on their gnarled hands. The Abbess sat on her
+dais with her lips apart, looking into space, ten thousand
+thousand miles away. But no one saw her and she
+saw no one; every one had forgotten every one else in
+that delicious intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a shrill cry, full of human yearnings and
+desire, the minstrel came to a sudden stop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Western wind, when wilt thou blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the small rain will down rain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ, if my love were in my arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And I in my bed again.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="ni">Silence!—not one of the holy Sisters spoke, but some
+sighed; some put their hands over their hearts, and one
+put her hand in her hood, but when she felt her hair
+shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again sharply, as
+though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, “O
+Jesu.”</p>
+
+<p>Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to
+speak in a cracked, high voice, quickly and monotonously,
+as though she spoke in a dream. Her eyes were
+wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. “God knows,”
+she said, “I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all
+those who be maids here, to be mindful of the woods.
+For they are green, but they are deep and dark, and it is
+merry in the springtime with the thick turf below and
+the good boughs above, all alone with your heart’s darling—all
+alone in the green wood. But God help me,
+he would not stay any more than snow at Easter. I
+thought just now that I was back with him in the woods.
+God keep all those that be maids from the green woods.”</p>
+
+<p>The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished
+her novitiate, was as white as a sheet. Her breath came
+thickly and quick as though she bore a great burden up
+hill. A great sigh made her comely shoulders rise and
+fall. “Blessed Virgin,” she cried. “Ah, ye ask too
+much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know,”
+and her grey eyes filled with sudden tears, and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+dropped her head on her arms on the table, and sobbed
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old
+and dead as a twig dropped from a tree of last autumn,
+and at whom the younger Sisters privily mocked, “It
+is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have held his
+head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into
+mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all
+dropped away into earth. Holy Mother, have pity on
+me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips again or look into
+his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy
+Mother! Holy Mother!”</p>
+
+<p>“He must come oftener,” said a plump Sister of
+thirty, with a little nose turned up at the end, eyes black
+as sloes and lips round as a plum. “I go to the orchard
+day after day, and gather my lap full of apples. He is
+my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him
+every time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to
+come; but that was in the spring, and Our Lady knows
+that is long ago. Will it not be spring again soon? I
+have gathered many ripe apples.”</p>
+
+<p>Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her
+seat and crossed her arms on her breast. She was singing
+quietly to herself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lulla, lullay, lullay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lulla, lullay, lullay.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="ni">She moaned to herself, “I have seen the village women
+go to the well, carrying their babies with them, and they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+laugh as they go by on the way. Their babies hold
+them tight round the neck, and their mothers comfort
+them, saying, ‘Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my
+sweeting.’ Christ and the blessed Saints know that
+I have never felt a baby’s little hand in my bosom—and
+now I shall die without it, for I am old and past the age
+of bearing children.”</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lulla, lullay, lullay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Lulla, lullay, lullay.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“I have heard them on a May morning, with their
+pipes and tabors and jolly, jolly music,” cried Sister
+Helen; “I have seen them too, and my heart has gone
+with them to bring back the white hawthorn from the
+woods. ‘A man and a maid to a hawthorn bough,’ as
+it says in the song. They sing outside my window all
+Saint John’s Eve so that I cannot say my prayers for
+the wild thoughts they put into my brain, as they go
+dancing up and down in the churchyard; I cannot forget
+the pretty words they say to each other, ‘Sweet love,
+a kiss’; ‘kiss me, my love, nor let me go’; ‘As I went
+through the garden gate’; ‘A bonny black knight, a
+bonny black knight, and what will you give to me? A
+kiss, and a kiss, and no more than a kiss, under the wild
+rose tree.’ Oh, Mary Mother, have pity on a poor
+girl’s heart, I shall die, if no one love me, I shall die.”</p>
+
+<p>“In faith, I am truly sorry, William,” said Sister
+Agnes, who was gaunt and hollow-eyed with long vigils
+and overfasting, for which the good father had rebuked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+her time after time, saying that she overtasked the poor
+weak flesh. “I am truly sorry that I could not wait.
+But the neighbours made such a clamour, and my father
+and mother buffeted me too sorely. It is under the oak
+tree, no more than a foot deep, and covered with the
+red and brown leaves. It was a pretty sight to see the
+red blood on its neck, as white as whalebone, and it
+neither cried nor wept, so I put it down among the
+leaves, the pretty poppet; and it was like thee, William,
+it was like thee. I am sorry I did not wait, and now
+I’m worn and wan for thy sake, this many a long year,
+and all in vain, for thou never comst. I am an old
+woman now, and I shall soon be quiet and not complain
+any more.”</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Sisters were sobbing as if their hearts
+would break; some sat quiet and still, and let the tears
+fall from their eyes unchecked; some smiled and cried
+together; some sighed a little and trembled like aspen
+leaves in a southern wind. The great candles in the
+hall were burning down to their sockets. One by one
+they spluttered out. A ghostly, flickering light fell
+upon the legend over the broad dais, “<i>Connubium mundum
+sed virginitas paradisum complet</i>”—“Marriage
+replenisheth the World, but virginity Paradise.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dong, dong, dong.” Suddenly the great bell of the
+Nunnery began to toll. With a cry the Abbess sprang
+to her feet; there were tear stains on her white cheeks,
+and her hand shook as she pointed fiercely to the door.</p>
+
+<p>“Away, false pilgrim,” she cried. “Silence, foul
+blasphemer! <i>Retro me, Satanas.</i>” She crossed herself
+again and again, saying <i>Pater Noster</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The nuns screamed and trembled with terror. A little
+cloud of blue smoke arose from where the minstrel
+had stood. There was a little tongue of flame, and
+he had disappeared. It was almost dark in the hall. A
+few sobs broke the silence. The dying light of a single
+candle fell on the form of the Lady Mother.</p>
+
+<p>“Tomorrow,” she said, “we shall fast and sing
+<i>Placebo</i> and <i>Dirige</i> and the <i>Seven Penitential Psalms</i>.
+May the Holy God have mercy upon us for all we have
+done and said and thought amiss this night. Amen.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Taken by permission from <i>The Devil in a Nunnery and other
+Mediaeval Tales</i>, by Francis Oscar Mann, published by P. Dutton &amp;
+Company, New York, 1914.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BELPHAGOR" id="BELPHAGOR"></a>BELPHAGOR<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI<span class="sidenote"><a href="#BELPHAGOR_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>We read in the ancient archives of Florence the following
+account, as it was received from the lips of a
+very holy man, greatly respected by every one for the
+sanctity of his manners at the period in which he lived.
+Happening once to be deeply absorbed in his prayers,
+such was their efficacy, that he saw an infinite number of
+condemned souls, belonging to those miserable mortals
+who had died in their sins, undergoing the punishment
+due to their offences in the regions below. He remarked
+that the greater part of them lamented nothing
+so bitterly as their folly in having taken wives, attributing
+to them the whole of their misfortunes. Much surprised
+at this, Minos and Rhadamanthus, with the rest of
+the infernal judges, unwilling to credit all the abuse
+heaped upon the female sex, and wearied from day to
+day with its repetition, agreed to bring the matter before
+Pluto. It was then resolved that the conclave of infernal
+princes should form a committee of inquiry, and
+should adopt such measures as might be deemed most
+advisable by the court in order to discover the truth or
+falsehood of the calumnies which they heard. All being
+assembled in council, Pluto addressed them as follows:
+“Dearly beloved demons! though by celestial
+dispensation and the irreversible decree of fate this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+kingdom fell to my share, and I might strictly dispense
+with any kind of celestial or earthly responsibility, yet,
+as it is more prudent and respectful to consult the laws
+and to hear the opinion of others, I have resolved to be
+guided by your advice, particularly in a case that may
+chance to cast some imputation upon our government.
+For the souls of all men daily arriving in our kingdom
+still continue to lay the whole blame upon their wives,
+and as this appears to us impossible, we must be careful
+how we decide in such a business, lest we also should
+come in for a share of their abuse, on account of our
+too great severity; and yet judgment must be pronounced,
+lest we be taxed with negligence and with indifference
+to the interests of justice. Now, as the latter
+is the fault of a careless, and the former of an unjust
+judge, we, wishing to avoid the trouble and the blame
+that might attach to both, yet hardly seeing how to get
+clear of it, naturally enough apply to you for assistance,
+in order that you may look to it, and contrive in some
+way that, as we have hitherto reigned without the slightest
+imputation upon our character, we may continue to
+do so for the future.”</p>
+
+<p>The affair appearing to be of the utmost importance
+to all the princes present, they first resolved that it was
+necessary to ascertain the truth, though they differed as
+to the best means of accomplishing this object. Some
+were of opinion that they ought to choose one or more
+from among themselves, who should be commissioned to
+pay a visit to the world, and in a human shape endeavour
+personally to ascertain how far such reports were
+grounded in truth. To many others it appeared that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+this might be done without so much trouble merely by
+compelling some of the wretched souls to confess the
+truth by the application of a variety of tortures. But
+the majority being in favour of a journey to the world,
+they abided by the former proposal. No one, however,
+being ambitious of undertaking such a task, it was resolved
+to leave the affair to chance. The lot fell upon
+the arch-devil Belphagor, who, previous to the Fall, had
+enjoyed the rank of archangel in a higher world.
+Though he received his commission with a very ill grace,
+he nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto’s imperial
+mandate, and prepared to execute whatever had
+been determined upon in council. At the same time he
+took an oath to observe the tenor of his instructions, as
+they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and
+ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were
+to the following effect:—<i>Imprimis</i>, that the better to promote
+the object in view, he should be furnished with a
+hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly, that he should
+make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the
+world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he
+should enter into the marriage state; and lastly, that he
+should live with his wife for the space of ten years.
+At the expiration of this period, he was to feign death
+and return home, in order to acquaint his employers,
+by the fruits of experience, what really were the respective
+conveniences and inconveniences of matrimony.
+The conditions further ran, that during the said ten
+years he should be subject to all kinds of miseries and
+disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty,
+prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+unless, indeed, he could contrive by his own skill and
+ingenuity to avoid them. Poor Belphagor having
+signed these conditions and received the money, forthwith
+came into the world, and having set up his equipage,
+with a numerous train of servants, he made a very
+splendid entrance into Florence. He selected this city
+in preference to all others, as being most favourable for
+obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and having
+assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he
+took a house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because
+he was unable to explain the instructions under
+which he acted, he gave out that he was a merchant, who
+having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria,
+and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo,
+whence he had lastly set out for Italy, with the intention
+of marrying and settling there, as one of the most polished
+and agreeable countries he knew.</p>
+
+<p>Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently
+about thirty years of age, and he lived in a
+style of life that showed he was in pretty easy circumstances,
+if not possessed of immense wealth. Being,
+moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted
+the notice of many noble citizens blessed with
+large families of daughters and small incomes. The
+former of these were soon offered to him, from among
+whom Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl of the name
+of Onesta, a daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had also
+three sons, all grown up, and three more daughters,
+also nearly marriageable. Though of a noble family
+and enjoying a good reputation in Florence, his father-in-law
+was extremely poor, and maintained as poor an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+establishment. Roderigo, therefore, made very splendid
+nuptials, and omitted nothing that might tend to
+confer honour upon such a festival, being liable, under
+the law which he received on leaving his infernal abode,
+to feel all kinds of vain and earthly passions. He therefore
+soon began to enter into all the pomps and vanities
+of the world, and to aim at reputation and consideration
+among mankind, which put him to no little expense.
+But more than this, he had not long enjoyed the society
+of his beloved Onesta, before he became tenderly attached
+to her, and was unable to behold her suffer the
+slightest inquietude or vexation. Now, along with her
+other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had brought
+into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion
+of pride, that in this respect Lucifer himself could not
+equal her; for her husband, who had experienced the
+effects of both, was at no loss to decide which was the
+most intolerable of the two. Yet it became infinitely
+worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo’s attachment
+to her, of which she availed herself to obtain
+an ascendancy over him and rule him with a rod of iron.
+Not content with this, when she found he would bear it,
+she continued to annoy him with all kinds of insults and
+taunts, in such a way as to give him the most indescribable
+pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence
+of her father, her brothers, her friends, and relatives, the
+duty of the matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her,
+he suffered all for some time with the patience of a
+saint. It would be useless to recount the follies and
+extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her
+taste for dress, and every article of the newest fashion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+in which our city, ever so variable in its nature, according
+to its usual habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live
+upon easy terms with her, he was obliged to do more
+than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in portioning
+off his other daughters; and she next asked him to
+furnish one of her brothers with goods to sail for the
+Levant, another with silks for the West, while a third
+was to be set up in a goldbeater’s establishment at Florence.
+In such objects the greatest part of his fortune
+was soon consumed. At length the Carnival season
+was at hand; the festival of St. John was to be celebrated,
+and the whole city, as usual, was in a ferment.
+Numbers of the noblest families were about to vie with
+each other in the splendour of their parties, and the
+Lady Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her
+acquaintance, insisted that Roderigo should exceed them
+all in the richness of their feasts. For the reasons above
+stated, he submitted to her will; nor, indeed, would he
+have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult it
+might have been, could he have flattered himself with a
+hope of preserving the peace and comfort of his household,
+and of awaiting quietly the consummation of his
+ruin. But this was not the case, inasmuch as the arrogant
+temper of his wife had grown to such a height
+of asperity by long indulgence, that he was at a loss
+in what way to act. His domestics, male and female,
+would no longer remain in the house, being unable to
+support for any length of time the intolerable life they
+led. The inconvenience which he suffered in consequence
+of having no one to whom he could intrust his
+affairs it is impossible to express. Even his own familiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+devils, whom he had brought along with him,
+had already deserted him, choosing to return below
+rather than longer submit to the tyranny of his wife.
+Left, then, to himself, amidst this turbulent and unhappy
+life, and having dissipated all the ready money
+he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes
+of the returns expected from his ventures in the East and
+the West. Being still in good credit, in order to support
+his rank he resorted to bills of exchange; nor was
+it long before, accounts running against him, he found
+himself in the same situation as many other unhappy
+speculators in that market. Just as his case became extremely
+delicate, there arrived sudden tidings both from
+East and West that one of his wife’s brothers had dissipated
+the whole of Roderigo’s profits in play, and
+that while the other was returning with a rich cargo uninsured,
+his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and
+he himself was lost. No sooner did this affair transpire
+than his creditors assembled, and supposing it
+must be all over with him, though their bills had not yet
+become due, they resolved to keep a strict watch over
+him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his
+part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling
+how deeply he was bound by the Stygian law, determined
+at all hazards to make his escape. So taking
+horse one morning early, as he luckily lived near the
+Prato gate, in that direction he went off. His departure
+was soon known; the creditors were all in a bustle; the
+magistrates were applied to, and the officers of justice,
+along with a great part of the populace, were dispatched
+in pursuit. Roderigo had hardly proceeded a mile before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+he heard this hue and cry, and the pursuers were
+soon so close at his heels that the only resource he had
+left was to abandon the highroad and take to the open
+country, with the hope of concealing himself in the
+fields. But finding himself unable to make way over
+the hedges and ditches, he left his horse and took to his
+heels, traversing fields of vines and canes, until he
+reached Peretola, where he entered the house of Matteo
+del Bricca, a labourer of Giovanna del Bene. Finding
+him at home, for he was busily providing fodder for his
+cattle, our hero earnestly entreated him to save him from
+the hands of his adversaries close behind, who would
+infallibly starve him to death in a dungeon, engaging
+that if Matteo would give him refuge, he would make
+him one of the richest men alive, and afford him such
+proofs of it before he took his leave as would convince
+him of the truth of what he said; and if he failed to do
+this, he was quite content that Matteo himself should deliver
+him into the hands of his enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Now Matteo, although a rustic, was a man of courage,
+and concluding that he could not lose anything by the
+speculation, he gave him his hand and agreed to save
+him. He then thrust our hero under a heap of rubbish,
+completely enveloping him in weeds; so that when his
+pursuers arrived they found themselves quite at a loss,
+nor could they extract from Matteo the least information
+as to his appearance. In this dilemma there was
+nothing left for them but to proceed in the pursuit,
+which they continued for two days, and then returned,
+jaded and disappointed, to Florence. In the meanwhile,
+Matteo drew our hero from his hiding-place, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+begged him to fulfil his engagement. To this his friend
+Roderigo replied: “I confess, brother, that I am under
+great obligations to you, and I mean to return them.
+To leave no doubt upon your mind, I will inform you
+who I am;” and he proceeded to acquaint him with all
+the particulars of the affair: how he had come into the
+world, and married, and run away. He next described
+to his preserver the way in which he might become rich,
+which was briefly as follows: As soon as Matteo should
+hear of some lady in the neighbourhood being said to
+be possessed, he was to conclude that it was Roderigo
+himself who had taken possession of her; and he gave
+him his word, at the same time, that he would never
+leave her until Matteo should come and conjure him to
+depart. In this way he might obtain what sum he
+pleased from the lady’s friends for the price of exorcizing
+her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan,
+Roderigo disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Not many days elapsed before it was reported in
+Florence that the daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei,
+a lady married to Buonajuto Tebalducci, was possessed
+by the devil. Her relations did not fail to apply every
+means usual on such occasions to expel him, such as
+making her wear upon her head St. Zanobi’s cap, and
+the cloak of St. John of Gualberto; but these had only the
+effect of making Roderigo laugh. And to convince
+them that it was really a spirit that possessed her, and
+that it was no flight of the imagination, he made the
+young lady talk Latin, hold a philosophical dispute, and
+reveal the frailties of many of her acquaintance. He
+particularly accused a certain friar of having introduced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+a lady into his monastery in male attire, to the
+no small scandal of all who heard it, and the astonishment
+of the brotherhood. Messer Ambrogio found it
+impossible to silence him, and began to despair of his
+daughter’s cure. But the news reaching Matteo, he lost
+no time in waiting upon Ambrogio, assuring him of his
+daughter’s recovery on condition of his paying him five
+hundred florins, with which to purchase a farm at Peretola.
+To this Messer Ambrogio consented; and Matteo
+immediately ordered a number of masses to be said,
+after which he proceeded with some unmeaning ceremonies
+calculated to give solemnity to his task. Then
+approaching the young lady, he whispered in her ear:
+“Roderigo, it is Matteo that is come. So do as we
+agreed upon, and get out.” Roderigo replied: “It
+is all well; but you have not asked enough to make you
+a rich man. So when I depart I will take possession
+of the daughter of Charles, king of Naples, and I will
+not leave her till you come. You may then demand
+whatever you please for your reward; and mind that
+you never trouble me again.” And when he had said
+this, he went out of the lady, to the no small delight and
+amazement of the whole city of Florence.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long again before the accident that had
+happened to the daughter of the king of Naples began
+to be buzzed about the country, and all the monkish
+remedies having been found to fail, the king, hearing of
+Matteo, sent for him from Florence. On arriving at
+Naples, Matteo, after a few ceremonies, performed the
+cure. Before leaving the princess, however, Roderigo
+said: “You see, Matteo, I have kept my promise and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+made a rich man of you, and I owe you nothing now.
+So, henceforward you will take care to keep out of my
+way, lest as I have hitherto done you some good, just
+the contrary should happen to you in future.” Upon
+this Matteo thought it best to return to Florence, after
+receiving fifty thousand ducats from his majesty, in
+order to enjoy his riches in peace, and never once
+imagined that Roderigo would come in his way again.
+But in this he was deceived; for he soon heard that a
+daughter of Louis, king of France, was possessed by an
+evil spirit, which disturbed our friend Matteo not a little,
+thinking of his majesty’s great authority and of
+what Roderigo had said. Hearing of Matteo’s great
+skill, and finding no other remedy, the king dispatched
+a messenger for him, whom Matteo contrived to send
+back with a variety of excuses. But this did not long
+avail him; the king applied to the Florentine council,
+and our hero was compelled to attend. Arriving with
+no very pleasant sensations at Paris, he was introduced
+into the royal presence, when he assured his majesty
+that though it was true he had acquired some fame in the
+course of his demoniac practice, he could by no means
+always boast of success, and that some devils were of
+such a desperate character as not to pay the least attention
+to threats, enchantments, or even the exorcisms of
+religion itself. He would, nevertheless, do his majesty’s
+pleasure, entreating at the same time to be held
+excused if it should happen to prove an obstinate case.
+To this the king made answer, that be the case what it
+might, he would certainly hang him if he did not succeed.
+It is impossible to describe poor Matteo’s terror<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+and perplexity on hearing these words; but at length
+mustering courage, he ordered the possessed princess to
+be brought into his presence. Approaching as usual
+close to her ear, he conjured Roderigo in the most humble
+terms, by all he had ever done for him, not to abandon
+him in such a dilemma, but to show some sense of
+gratitude for past services and to leave the princess.
+“Ah! thou traitorous villain!” cried Roderigo, “hast
+thou, indeed, ventured to meddle in this business?
+Dost thou boast thyself a rich man at my expense? I
+will now convince the world and thee of the extent of
+my power, both to give and to take away. I shall have
+the pleasure of seeing thee hanged before thou leavest
+this place.” Poor Matteo finding there was no remedy,
+said nothing more, but, like a wise man, set his head
+to work in order to discover some other means of expelling
+the spirit; for which purpose he said to the
+king, “Sire, it is as I feared: there are certain spirits of
+so malignant a character that there is no keeping any
+terms with them, and this is one of them. However, I
+will make a last attempt, and I trust that it will succeed
+according to our wishes. If not, I am in your majesty’s
+power, and I hope you will take compassion on my innocence.
+In the first place, I have to entreat that your
+majesty will order a large stage to be erected in the
+centre of the great square, such as will admit the nobility
+and clergy of the whole city. The stage ought to be
+adorned with all kinds of silks and with cloth of gold,
+and with an altar raised in the middle. Tomorrow
+morning I would have your majesty, with your full
+train of lords and ecclesiastics in attendance, seated in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+order and in magnificent array, as spectators of the
+scene at the said place. There, after having celebrated
+solemn mass, the possessed princess must appear; but I
+have in particular to entreat that on one side of the
+square may be stationed a band of men with drums,
+trumpets, horns, tambours, bagpipes, cymbals, and kettle-drums,
+and all other kinds of instruments that make
+the most infernal noise. Now, when I take my hat off,
+let the whole band strike up, and approach with the
+most horrid uproar towards the stage. This, along with
+a few other secret remedies which I shall apply, will
+surely compel the spirit to depart.”</p>
+
+<p>These preparations were accordingly made by the
+royal command; and when the day, being Sunday morning,
+arrived, the stage was seen crowded with people of
+rank and the square with the people. Mass was celebrated,
+and the possessed princess conducted between
+two bishops, with a train of nobles, to the spot. Now,
+when Roderigo beheld so vast a concourse of people,
+together with all this awful preparation, he was almost
+struck dumb with astonishment, and said to himself,
+“I wonder what that cowardly wretch is thinking of
+doing now? Does he imagine I have never seen finer
+things than these in the regions above—ay! and more
+horrid things below? However, I will soon make him
+repent it, at all events.” Matteo then approaching him,
+besought him to come out; but Roderigo replied, “Oh,
+you think you have done a fine thing now! What do
+you mean to do with all this trumpery? Can you escape
+my power, think you, in this way, or elude the vengeance
+of the king? Thou poltroon villain, I will have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+thee hanged for this!” And as Matteo continued the
+more to entreat him, his adversary still vilified him in
+the same strain. So Matteo, believing there was no time
+to be lost, made the sign with his hat, when all the
+musicians who had been stationed there for the purpose
+suddenly struck up a hideous din, and ringing a thousand
+peals, approached the spot. Roderigo pricked up
+his ears at the sound, quite at a loss what to think, and
+rather in a perturbed tone of voice he asked Matteo
+what it meant. To this the latter returned, apparently
+much alarmed: “Alas! dear Roderigo, it is your wife;
+she is coming for you!” It is impossible to give an
+idea of the anguish of Roderigo’s mind and the strange
+alteration which his feelings underwent at that name.
+The moment the name of “wife” was pronounced, he
+had no longer presence of mind to consider whether it
+were probable, or even possible, that it could be her.
+Without replying a single word, he leaped out and fled
+in the utmost terror, leaving the lady to herself, and
+preferring rather to return to his infernal abode and
+render an account of his adventures, than run the risk
+of any further sufferings and vexations under the matrimonial
+yoke. And thus Belphagor again made his appearance
+in the infernal domains, bearing ample testimony
+to the evils introduced into a household by a wife;
+while Matteo, on his part, who knew more of the matter
+than the devil, returned triumphantly home, not a little
+proud of the victory he had achieved.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER2" id="THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER2"></a>THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WASHINGTON IRVING<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is
+a deep inlet, winding several miles into the interior of
+the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a
+thickly-wooded swamp or morass. On one side of this
+inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the
+land rises abruptly from the water’s edge into a high
+ridge, on which grow a few scattered oaks of great
+age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic
+trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount
+of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed
+a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly
+and at night to the very foot of the hill; the elevation of
+the place permitted a good lookout to be kept that no
+one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed
+good landmarks by which the place might easily be
+found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the
+devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it
+under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he
+always does with buried treasure, particularly when it
+has been ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned
+to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized
+at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a
+pirate.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+<p>About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes
+were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall
+sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this
+place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of Tom
+Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself: they
+were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each
+other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on, she
+hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
+alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually
+prying about to detect her secret hoards, and
+many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about
+what ought to have been common property. They lived
+in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone, and had an
+air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems
+of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled
+from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A
+miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the
+bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a thin
+carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
+pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and
+sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look
+piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance
+from this land of famine.</p>
+
+<p>The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name.
+Tom’s wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud
+of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often
+heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face
+sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined
+to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere
+between them. The lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself
+at the horrid clamour and clapper-clawing; eyed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+den of discord askance; and hurried on his way, rejoicing,
+if a bachelor, in his celibacy.</p>
+
+<p>One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part
+of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a
+short cut homeward, through the swamp. Like most
+short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was
+thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks,
+some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at
+noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighbourhood.
+It was full of pits and quagmires, partly
+covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface
+often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering
+mud: there were also dark and stagnant pools, the
+abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake;
+where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay
+half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping
+in the mire.</p>
+
+<p>Tom had long been picking his way cautiously
+through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to
+tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds
+among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a
+cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and
+then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the
+quacking of a wild duck rising on the wing from some
+solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm piece of
+ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep
+bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds
+of the Indians during their wars with the first
+colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort,
+which they had looked upon as almost impregnable,
+and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+children. Nothing remained of the old Indian fort but
+a few embankments, gradually sinking to the level of
+the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part
+by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which
+formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of
+the swamp.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker
+reached the old fort, and he paused there awhile to rest
+himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to
+linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common
+people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
+down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted
+that the savages held incantations here, and made
+sacrifices to the evil spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled
+with any fears of the kind. He reposed himself for
+some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to
+the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his
+walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet.
+As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck
+against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable
+mould, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian
+tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust
+on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since
+this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento
+of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this
+last foothold of the Indian warriors.</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to
+shake the dirt from it.</p>
+
+<p>“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice. Tom
+lifted up his eyes, and beheld a great black man seated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+directly opposite him, on the stump of a tree. He was
+exceedingly surprised, having neither heard nor seen
+any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on
+observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit,
+that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It
+is true he was dressed in a rude half Indian garb, and
+had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his
+face was neither black nor copper-colour, but swarthy
+and dingy, and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed
+to toil among fires and forges. He had a
+shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head
+in all directions, and bore an ax on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great
+red eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you doing on my grounds?” said the black
+man, with a hoarse growling voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Your grounds!” said Tom, with a sneer, “no more
+your grounds than mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody.”</p>
+
+<p>“Deacon Peabody be d—d,” said the stranger, “as
+I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to
+his own sins and less to those of his neighbours. Look
+yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.”</p>
+
+<p>Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed,
+and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing
+without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been
+nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was
+likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
+scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man,
+who had waxed wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+the Indians. He now looked around, and found most
+of the tall trees marked with the name of some great
+man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the
+ax. The one on which he had been seated, and which
+had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of
+Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man
+of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth,
+which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s just ready for burning!” said the black man,
+with a growl of triumph. “You see I am likely to have
+a good stock of firewood for winter.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what right have you,” said Tom, “to cut down
+Deacon Peabody’s timber?”</p>
+
+<p>“The right of a prior claim,” said the other. “This
+woodland belonged to me long before one of your
+whitefaced race put foot upon the soil.”</p>
+
+<p>“And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?” said
+Tom.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman
+in some countries; the black miner in others. In
+this neighbourhood I am known by the name of the
+black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated
+this spot, and in honour of whom they now and
+then roasted a white man, by way of sweet-smelling
+sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated
+by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at
+the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the
+great patron and prompter of slave-dealers, and the
+grand-master of the Salem witches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not,”
+said Tom, sturdily, “you are he commonly called Old
+Scratch.”</p>
+
+<p>“The same, at your service!” replied the black man,
+with a half civil nod.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the opening of this interview, according to
+the old story; though it has almost too familiar an air
+to be credited. One would think that to meet with
+such a singular personage, in this wild, lonely place,
+would have shaken any man’s nerves; but Tom was a
+hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had
+lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did not even
+fear the devil.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that after this commencement they had a
+long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned
+homeward. The black man told him of great sums of
+money buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak-trees on
+the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
+under his command, and protected by his power, so that
+none could find them but such as propitiated his favour.
+These he offered to place within Tom Walker’s reach,
+having conceived an especial kindness for him; but they
+were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
+conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom
+never disclosed them publicly. They must have been
+very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he
+was not a man to stick at trifles when money was in
+view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp,
+the stranger paused. “What proof have I that all you
+have been telling me is true?” said Tom. “There’s my
+signature,” said the black man, pressing his finger on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+Tom’s forehead. So saying, he turned off among the
+thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go
+down, down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his
+head and shoulders could be seen, and so on, until he
+totally disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>When Tom reached home, he found the black print
+of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which
+nothing could obliterate.</p>
+
+<p>The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden
+death of Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer.
+It was announced in the papers with the usual
+flourish, that “A great man had fallen in Israel.”</p>
+
+<p>Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had
+just hewn down, and which was ready for burning.
+“Let the freebooter roast,” said Tom, “who cares!” He
+now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
+no illusion.</p>
+
+<p>He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence;
+but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it
+with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention
+of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply
+with the black man’s terms, and secure what would make
+them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt
+disposed to sell himself to the Devil, he was determined
+not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused, out
+of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter
+were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more
+she talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned
+to please her.</p>
+
+<p>At length she determined to drive the bargain on her
+own account, and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+to herself. Being of the same fearless temper as her
+husband, she set off for the old Indian fort towards the
+close of a summer’s day. She was many hours absent.
+When she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her
+replies. She spoke something of a black man, whom
+she had met about twilight hewing at the root of a tall
+tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
+terms: she was to go again with a propitiatory offering,
+but what it was she forbore to say.</p>
+
+<p>The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with
+her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for
+her, but in vain; midnight came, but she did not make
+her appearance: morning, noon, night returned, but still
+she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety,
+especially as he found she had carried off in her apron
+the silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article
+of value. Another night elapsed, another morning
+came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of
+more.</p>
+
+<p>What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence
+of so many pretending to know. It is one of those
+facts which have become confounded by a variety of
+historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among
+the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some
+pit or slough; others, more charitable, hinted that she
+had eloped with the household booty, and made off to
+some other province; while others surmised that the
+tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on the
+top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation
+of this, it was said a great black man, with an ax on his
+shoulder, was seen late that very evening coming out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron,
+with an air of surly triumph.</p>
+
+<p>The most current and probable story, however, observes,
+that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate
+of his wife and his property, that he set out at length to
+seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer’s
+afternoon he searched about the gloomy place,
+but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly,
+but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern
+alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by;
+or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring
+pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
+twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to
+flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamour
+of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. He
+looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron,
+and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great
+vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it.
+He leaped with joy; for he recognized his wife’s apron,
+and supposed it to contain the household valuables.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us get hold of the property,” said he, consolingly
+to himself, “and we will endeavour to do without
+the woman.”</p>
+
+<p>As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its
+wide wings, and sailed off, screaming, into the deep
+shadows of the forest. Tom seized the checked apron,
+but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver
+tied up in it!</p>
+
+<p>Such, according to this most authentic old story, was
+all that was to be found of Tom’s wife. She had probably
+attempted to deal with the black man as she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though
+a female scold is generally considered a match for the
+devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the
+worst of it. She must have died game, however; for
+it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply
+stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair, that
+looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse
+black shock of the woodman. Tom knew his wife’s
+prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders, as
+he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
+“Egad,” said he to himself, “Old Scratch must have
+had a tough time of it!”</p>
+
+<p>Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property,
+with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude.
+He even felt something like gratitude towards the black
+woodman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness.
+He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance
+with him, but for some time without success; the old
+black-legs played shy, for whatever people may think,
+he is not always to be had for calling for: he knows how
+to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.</p>
+
+<p>At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom’s
+eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to
+anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he
+met the black man one evening in his usual woodman’s
+dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the
+swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive
+Tom’s advances with great indifference, made brief replies,
+and went on humming his tune.</p>
+
+<p>By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business,
+and they began to haggle about the terms on which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+former was to have the pirate’s treasure. There was
+one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally
+understood in all cases where the devil grants
+favours; but there were others about which, though of
+less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted
+that the money found through his means should be
+employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
+Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say,
+that he should fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom
+resolutely refused: he was bad enough in all conscience;
+but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-trader.</p>
+
+<p>Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not
+insist upon it, but proposed, instead, that he should
+turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the
+increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar
+people.</p>
+
+<p>To this no objections were made, for it was just to
+Tom’s taste.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall open a broker’s shop in Boston next
+month,” said the black man.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll do it tomorrow, if you wish,” said Tom Walker.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall lend money at two per cent. a month.”</p>
+
+<p>“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive
+the merchants to bankruptcy”—</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll drive them to the d—l,” cried Tom Walker.</p>
+
+<p>“You are the usurer for my money!” said black-legs
+with delight. “When will you want the rhino?”</p>
+
+<p>“This very night.”</p>
+
+<p>“Done!” said the devil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Done!” said Tom Walker.—So they shook hands
+and struck a bargain.</p>
+
+<p>A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind his
+desk in a counting-house in Boston.</p>
+
+<p>His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would
+lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread
+abroad. Everybody remembers the time of Governor
+Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was
+a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged
+with government bills, the famous Land Bank had been
+established; there had been a rage for speculating; the
+people had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
+for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went
+about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados,
+lying nobody knew where, but which everybody
+was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating
+fever which breaks out every now and then in the
+country, had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody
+was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from
+nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the dream
+had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the
+patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country
+resounded with the consequent cry of “hard times.”</p>
+
+<p>At this propitious time of public distress did Tom
+Walker set up as usurer in Boston. His door was soon
+thronged by customers. The needy and adventurous;
+the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber; the
+thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit;
+in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate
+means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+acted like a “friend in need”; that is to say, he always
+exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to
+the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his
+terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
+squeezed his customers closer and closer: and sent
+them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door.</p>
+
+<p>In this way he made money hand over hand; became
+a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon
+’Change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out
+of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished
+and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a
+carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly
+starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased
+wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, you
+would have thought you heard the souls of the poor
+debtors he was squeezing.</p>
+
+<p>As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful.
+Having secured the good things of this world, he began
+to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought
+with regret on the bargain he had made with his black
+friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the
+conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a
+violent church-goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously,
+as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs.
+Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most
+during the week, by the clamour of his Sunday devotion.
+The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly
+travelling Zionward, were struck with self-reproach
+at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in
+their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as
+rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a stern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+supervisor and censurer of his neighbours, and seemed to
+think every sin entered up to their account became a
+credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of
+the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers
+and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom’s zeal became as notorious
+as his riches.</p>
+
+<p>Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms,
+Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would
+have his due. That he might not be taken unawares,
+therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in
+his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
+counting-house desk, and would frequently be found
+reading it when people called on business; on such occasions
+he would lay his green spectacles in the book, to
+mark the place, while he turned round to drive some
+usurious bargain.</p>
+
+<p>Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his
+old days, and that, fancying his end approaching, he
+had his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried
+with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at
+the last day the world would be turned upside down; in
+which case he should find his horse standing ready for
+mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give
+his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably
+a mere old wives’ fable. If he really did take such a
+precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says
+the authentic old legend; which closes his story in the
+following manner.</p>
+
+<p>One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as
+a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat
+in his counting-house, in his white linen cap and India<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing
+a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of
+an unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed
+the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged
+him to grant a few months’ indulgence. Tom had
+grown testy and irritated, and refused another day.</p>
+
+<p>“My family will be ruined, and brought upon the
+parish,” said the land-jobber. “Charity begins at
+home,” replied Tom; “I must take care of myself in
+these hard times.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have made so much money out of me,” said the
+speculator.</p>
+
+<p>Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take
+me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”</p>
+
+<p>Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door.
+He stepped out to see who was there. A black
+man was holding a black horse, which neighed and
+stamped with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>“Tom, you’re come for,” said the black fellow,
+gruffly. Tom shrank back, but too late. He had left
+his little Bible at the bottom of his coat-pocket, and his
+big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was
+about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares.
+The black man whisked him like a child into
+the saddle, gave the horse the lash, and away he galloped,
+with Tom on his back, in the midst of the thunder-storm.
+The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears,
+and stared after him from the windows. Away went
+Tom Walker, dashing down the street; his white cap
+bobbing up and down; his morning-gown fluttering in
+the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for
+the black man, he had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage.
+A countryman, who lived on the border of the
+swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder-gust
+he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
+along the road, and running to the window caught sight
+of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that
+galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills, and
+down into the black hemlock swamp towards the old
+Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling
+in that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.</p>
+
+<p>The good people of Boston shook their heads and
+shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed
+to witches and goblins, and tricks of the devil, in
+all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement of the colony,
+that they were not so much horror-struck as might
+have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take
+charge of Tom’s effects. There was nothing, however,
+to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his
+bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders.
+In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with
+chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead
+of his half-starved horses, and the very next day
+his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten
+wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this story
+to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The
+very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd’s
+money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring
+swamp and old Indian fort are often haunted in stormy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+nights by a figure on horseback, in morning-gown and
+white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the
+usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a
+proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so
+prevalent throughout New England, of “The Devil and
+Tom Walker.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Courtesy of G.&nbsp;P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers, New York &amp; London.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN" id="FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN"></a>FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILHELM HAUFF<span class="sidenote"><a href="#FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and
+twelve or fifteen other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow
+guests), in a perpetual whirl of delight. Scarcely any
+had any special business to detain them at the hotel,
+and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of departure,
+even at a distant day. On the other hand, after
+we had slept for some time late on mornings, sat long
+at dinner, sung and played long of evenings, and drank,
+chatted, and laughed long of nights, the magic tie which
+bound us to this hotel seemed to have woven new chains
+around us.</p>
+
+<p>This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end
+to, perhaps for our good. On the seventh day of our
+rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend Von Natas was not to
+be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his apology
+a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but
+would certainly be in time for tea and supper.</p>
+
+<p>The enjoyment of his society had already become such
+a necessity, that this piece of information made us helpless
+and ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation turned naturally on our absent
+friend and his striking, brilliant apparition among us.
+It was strange, but I could not get it out of my head that
+I had already met with him in my walk through life, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was, it still
+forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I
+called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection
+of a man who in his whole demeanour, but more especially
+in his glance, had the greatest resemblance to him.
+The one of whom I now speak was a foreign physician,
+who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived
+at first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd
+of worshippers collected around him. The thought of
+this man was always a melancholy one, for it was asserted
+that some serious misfortune always followed his
+visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled
+him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the
+same person.</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea
+that incessantly haunted me, and how unpleasant it was
+to identify so horrible a being as the stranger who had
+so afflicted my native city, with our mutual friend who
+had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will
+seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that
+all my neighbours were full of precisely the same idea,
+and that all fancied they had seen our agreeable companion
+in some entirely different shape.</p>
+
+<p>“You are enough to make one downright melancholy,”
+said Baroness von Thingen, who sat near me; “you
+make our friend Natas out to be the Wandering Jew, or
+God knows what more!”</p>
+
+<p>A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had
+joined our circle some days before, and passed his time
+in quiet, silent enjoyment, enlivened by an occasional
+deep conference with the Rhine wine, had kept smiling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+to himself during what he called our “comparative
+anatomy,” and twirling his huge snuff-box between his
+fingers with such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like
+a coach-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to
+make,” exclaimed he at last. “Under your favour,
+gracious lady, I do not look upon him as being precisely
+the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very
+strange mortal. As long as he was present, the thought
+would, it is true, now and then flash up in my mind,
+‘You have seen this man before, but pray where was
+it?’ but these recollections were driven away as if by
+magic whenever he fastened upon me those dark wandering
+eyes of his.”</p>
+
+<p>“So was it with me—and with me—and with me,” exclaimed
+we all in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>“Hem! hem!” smiled the Professor. “Even now the
+scales seem to fall from my eyes, and I see that he is
+the very same person I saw in Stuttgart twelve years
+ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“What, you have seen him then, and in what circumstances?”
+asked Lady von Thingen eagerly, and almost
+blushed at the eagerness she displayed.</p>
+
+<p>The Professor took a pinch of snuff, shook the superfluous
+grains off his waistcoat, and answered—“It may
+be now about twelve years since I was forced by a law-suit
+to spend some months in Stuttgart. I lived at one
+of the best hotels, and generally dined with a large
+company at the table d’hôte. Once upon a time I made
+my first appearance at table after a lapse of several
+days, during which I had been forced to keep my room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+The company were talking very eagerly about a certain
+Signor Barighi, who for some time past had been delighting
+the other visitors with his lively wit, and his
+fluency in all languages. All were unanimous in his
+praise, but they could not exactly agree as to his occupation;
+some making him out a diplomatist, others a
+teacher of languages, a third party a distinguished political
+exile, and a fourth a spy of the police. The
+door opened, all seemed silent, even confused, at having
+carried on the dispute in so loud a tone; I judged
+that the person spoken of must be among us, and saw—”</p>
+
+<p>“Who, pray?”</p>
+
+<p>“Under favour, the same person who has amused us
+so agreeably for some days past. There was nothing
+supernatural in this, to be sure, but listen a moment;
+for two days Signor Barighi, as the stranger was called,
+had given a new relish to our meals by his brilliant conversation,
+when mine host interrupted us suddenly—‘Gentlemen,’
+said he, ‘prepare yourself for an unique
+entertainment which will be provided for you tomorrow.’</p>
+
+<p>“We asked what this meant, and a grey headed captain,
+who had presided at the hotel table many years, informed
+us of the joke as follows—Exactly opposite
+this dining room, an old bachelor lives, solitary and
+alone, in a large deserted house; he is a retired Counsellor
+of State—lives on a handsome premium, and
+has an enormous fortune besides. He is, however, a
+downright fool, and has some of the strangest peculiarities;
+thus, for instance, he often gives himself entertainments
+on a scale of extravagant luxury. He orders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+covers for twelve, from the hotel, he has excellent wines
+in his cellar, and one or the other of our waiters has
+the honour to attend table. You think, perhaps, that at
+these feasts he feeds the hungry, and gives drink to the
+thirsty—no such thing; on the chairs lie old yellow
+leaves of parchment, from the family record, and the
+old hunks is as jovial as if he had the merriest set of
+fellows around him; he talks and laughs with them,
+and the whole thing is said to be so fearful to look
+upon, that the youngest waiters are always sent over,
+for whoever has been to one such supper will enter
+the deserted house no more.</p>
+
+<p>“The day before yesterday he had a supper, and our
+new waiter, Frank, there, calls heaven and earth to
+witness that nobody shall ever induce him to go there a
+second time. The next day after the entertainment
+comes the Counsellor’s second freak. Early in the
+morning he leaves the city, and comes back the morning
+after; not, however, to his own house, which during
+this time is fast locked and bolted, but into this hotel.
+Here he treats people he has been in the habit of seeing
+for a whole year, as strangers; dines, and afterwards
+places himself at one of the windows, and examines his
+own house across the way from top to bottom.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Who does that house opposite belong to?’ he then
+asks the host.</p>
+
+<p>“The other regularly bows and answers, ‘It belongs to
+the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency’s
+service.’”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Professor,” here observed I, “what has this silly
+Hasentreffer of yours to do with our Natas?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“A moment’s patience, Doctor,” answered the Professor,
+“the light will soon break in upon you. Hasentreffer
+then examines the house, and learns that it belongs
+to Hasentreffer. ‘Oh, what!’ he asks, ‘the same
+that was a student with me at Tibsingen’—then throws
+open the window, stretches his powdered head out, and
+calls out—‘Ha-asentreffer—Ha-asentreffer!’</p>
+
+<p>“Of course no one answers, but he remarks: ‘The old
+fellow would never forgive me if I was not to look in
+on him for a moment,’ then takes up his hat and cane,
+unlocks his own house, goes in, and all goes on after as
+before.</p>
+
+<p>“All of us,” the Professor proceeded in his story,
+“were greatly astonished at this singular story, and
+highly delighted at the idea of the next day’s merriment.
+Signor Barighi, however, obliged us to promise that we
+would not betray him, as he said he was preparing a
+capital joke to play off on the Counsellor.</p>
+
+<p>“We all met at the table d’hôte earlier than usual,
+and besieged the windows. An old tumble down carriage,
+drawn by two blind steeds, came crawling down
+the street; it stopped before the hotel. There’s Hasentreffer,
+there’s Hasentreffer, was echoed by every
+mouth; and we were filled with extravagant merriment
+when we saw the little man get out, neatly powdered,
+dressed in an iron grey surtout with a huge meerschaum
+in hand. An escort of at least ten servants followed him
+in, and in this guise he entered the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>“We sat down at once. I have seldom laughed as
+much as I did then; for the old chap insisted, with the
+greatest coolness, that he came direct from Carrel, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+that he had six days before been extremely well entertained
+at the Swan Inn at Frankfort. Barighi must
+have disappeared before the dessert, for when the Counsellor
+left the table, and the other guests, full of curiosity,
+imitated his example, Barighi was nowhere to be
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>“The Counsellor took his seat at the window; we all
+followed his example and watched his movements.
+The house opposite seemed desolate and uninhabited.
+Grass grew on the threshold, the shutters were closed,
+and on some of them birds seemed to have built their
+nests.</p>
+
+<p>“‘A fine house that, opposite,’ said the old man to
+our host, who kept standing behind him in the third
+position. ‘Who does it belong to?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your
+Excellency’s service.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a
+fellow-student with me,’ exclaimed he; ‘he would never
+forgive me if I was not to inform him that I was here.’
+He opened the window,—‘Ha-asentreffer—Hasentreffer!’
+cried he, in a hoarse voice. But who can paint
+our terror, when opposite, in the empty house, which
+we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a window-shutter
+was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it
+peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his
+chintz morning-gown and white nightcap, under which
+a few thin grey locks were visible; this, this exactly, was
+his usual morning costume. Down to the minutest
+wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the street
+was precisely the same as the one that stood by our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+side. But a panic seized us, when the figure in the
+morning-gown called out across the street, in just the
+same hoarse voice, ‘What do you want? who are you
+calling to, hey?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?’
+said the one on our side of the way, pale as death, in a
+trembling voice, and quaking as he leaned against the
+window for support.</p>
+
+<p>“‘I’m the man,’ squeaked the other, and nodded his
+head in a friendly way; ‘have you any commands for
+me?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘But I’m the man too,’ said our friend mournfully,
+‘how can it be possible?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘You are mistaken, my dear friend,’ answered he
+across the way, ‘you are the thirteenth, be good enough
+just to step across the street to my house, and let me
+twist your neck for you! it is by no means painful.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Waiter! my hat and stick,’ said the Counsellor,
+pale as death, and his voice escaped in mournful tones
+from his hollow chest. ‘The devil is in my house and
+seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you, gentlemen,’
+added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon
+left the room.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What does this mean?’ we asked each other; ‘are
+we all beside ourselves?’</p>
+
+<p>“The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking
+quietly out of the window, while our good silly old
+friend crossed the street at his usual formal pace. At
+the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys out of
+his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door—he of the
+morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“The latter now withdrew from the window, and we
+saw him go forward to meet our acquaintance at the
+room-door.</p>
+
+<p>“Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear,
+and trembled. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the former, ‘God
+pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of those two must be
+the devil in human shape.’ We laughed at our host,
+and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of
+Barighi’s; but our host assured us that no one could
+have obtained access to the house except he was in possession
+of the Counsellor’s very artificially contrived
+keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table not ten
+minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could
+he have disguised himself so completely in so short a
+time, even supposing him to have known how to unlock
+a strange house? He added, that the two were so fearfully
+like one another, that he who had lived in the
+neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish
+the true one from the counterfeit. ‘But, for God’s
+sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the horrid shrieks
+opposite?’</p>
+
+<p>“We rushed to the window—terrible and fearful
+voices rang across from the empty house; we fancied we
+saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his image in the
+morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On
+a sudden all was quiet.</p>
+
+<p>“We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed
+to cross over to the house—we all agreed to it.
+We crossed the street—the huge bell at the old man’s
+door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard in
+answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith’s—the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+door was broken open, the whole tide of anxious
+visitors poured up the wide silent staircase—all the
+doors were fastened; at length one was opened. In a
+splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey frock-coat
+torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible
+disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>“Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found,
+neither in Stuttgart nor elsewhere.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ST_JOHNS_EVE3" id="ST_JOHNS_EVE3"></a>ST. JOHN’S EVE<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY NIKOLÁI VASILÉVICH GÓGOL<span class="sidenote"><a href="#ST_JOHNS_EVE_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity:
+to the day of his death, he never liked to tell
+the same thing twice. There were times, when, if you
+asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he would interpolate
+new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible
+to recognize it. Once on a time, one of those
+gentlemen (it is hard for us simple people to put a
+name to them, to say whether they are scribblers, or not
+scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the usurers at
+our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every
+sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no
+thicker than an A&nbsp;B&nbsp;C book, every month, or even every
+week),—one of these gentlemen wormed this same story
+out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot
+about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green
+caftan, whom I have mentioned, and one of
+whose tales you have already read, I think, came from
+Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening
+it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich
+was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his
+nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>about them, and stick them together with wax, so he
+passed it over to me. As I understand something about
+reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook
+to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when
+all at once he caught me by the hand, and stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>“Stop! tell me first what you are reading.”</p>
+
+<p>I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.</p>
+
+<p>“What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich?
+These were your very words.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who told you that they were my words?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, what more would you have? Here it is
+printed: <i>Related by such and such a sacristan</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies,
+the dog of a Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? <i>’Twas
+just the same as though one hadn’t his wits about him!</i>
+Listen, I’ll tell it to you on the spot.”</p>
+
+<p>We moved up to the table, and he began.</p>
+
+
+<p style="padding-top: 1.5em">My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may
+he eat only wheaten rolls and makovniki<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> with honey in
+the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well.
+When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn’t stir from
+the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no
+match for the story-teller of the present day, when he
+begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing
+to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap,
+and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old
+mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when
+the frost was crackling out of doors, and had so sealed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she
+used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long
+thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot,
+and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.</p>
+
+<p>The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in
+fear of something, lighted us within our cottage; the
+spindle hummed; and all of us children, collected in a
+cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not crawled
+off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great
+age. But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the
+Zaporozhian Cossacks, the Poles, the bold deeds of
+Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and Sagaidatchnii, did not
+interest us so much as the stories about some deed of
+old which always sent a shiver through our frames, and
+made our hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes
+such terror took possession of us in consequence of them,
+that, from that evening on, Heaven knows what a marvel
+everything seemed to us. If you chanced to go out of
+the cottage after nightfall for anything, you imagine
+that a visitor from the other world has lain down to
+sleep in your bed; and I should not be able to tell this
+a second time were it not that I had often taken my own
+smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the bed,
+for the Evil One rolled up in a ball! But the chief
+thing about grandfather’s stories was, that he never had
+lied in his life; and whatever he said was so, was so.</p>
+
+<p>I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales.
+I know that there are a great many wise people who
+copy in the courts, and can even read civil documents,
+who, if you were to put into their hand a simple prayer-book,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+could not make out the first letter in it, and would
+show all their teeth in derision—which is wisdom.
+These people laugh at everything you tell them. Such
+incredulity has spread abroad in the world! What
+then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to
+love me if it is not possible that even you will not believe
+me!) Once he said something about witches;
+... What then? Along comes one of these head-breakers,—and
+doesn’t believe in witches! Yes, glory
+to God that I have lived so long in the world! I have
+seen heretics, to whom it would be easier to lie in confession
+than it would for our brothers and equals to take
+snuff, and those people would deny the existence of
+witches! But let them just dream about something,
+and they won’t even tell what it was! There’s no use in
+talking about them!</p>
+
+
+<p style="padding-top: 1.5em">No one could have recognized this village of ours a
+little over a hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the
+poorest kind of a hamlet. Half a score of miserable
+izbás, unplastered, badly thatched, were scattered here
+and there about the fields. There was not an enclosure
+or a decent shed to shelter animals or wagons. That
+was the way the wealthy lived: and if you had looked
+for our brothers, the poor,—why, a hole in the ground,—that
+was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke could
+you tell that a God-created man lived there. You ask,
+why they lived so? It was not entirely through poverty:
+almost every one led a wandering, Cossack life,
+and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+was rather because there was no reason for setting up a
+well-ordered khata<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>. How many people were wandering
+all over the country,—Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians!
+It was quite possible that their own countrymen might
+make a descent, and plunder everything. Anything
+was possible.</p>
+
+<p>In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human
+form, often made his appearance. Why he came, and
+whence, no one knew. He prowled about, got drunk,
+and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there
+was not a hint of his existence. Then, again, behold,
+and he seemed to have dropped from the sky, and went
+flying about the street of the village, of which no trace
+now remains, and which was not more than a hundred
+paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all
+the Cossacks he met; then there were songs, laughter,
+money in abundance, and vodka flowed like water....
+He would address the pretty girls, and give them ribbons,
+earrings, strings of beads,—more than they knew
+what to do with. It is true that the pretty girls rather
+hesitated about accepting his presents: God knows,
+perhaps they had passed through unclean hands. My
+grandfather’s aunt, who kept a tavern at the time, in
+which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often
+had his carouses, said that no consideration on the face
+of the earth would have induced her to accept a gift
+from him. And then, again, how avoid accepting?
+Fear seized on every one when he knit his bristly brows,
+and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet,
+God knows whither: but if you accept, then the next
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>night some fiend from the swamp, with horns on his
+head, comes to call, and begins to squeeze your neck,
+when there is a string of beads upon it; or bite your
+finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag you by the
+hair, if ribbons are braided in it. God have mercy,
+then, on those who owned such gifts! But here was the
+difficulty: it was impossible to get rid of them; if you
+threw them into the water, the diabolical ring or necklace
+would skim along the surface, and into your hand.</p>
+
+<p>There was a church in the village,—St. Pantelei, if I
+remember rightly. There lived there a priest, Father
+Athanasii of blessed memory. Observing that Basavriuk
+did not come to Church, even on Easter, he determined
+to reprove him, and impose penance upon
+him. Well, he hardly escaped with his life. “Hark
+ye, pannotche!”<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> he thundered in reply, “learn to mind
+your own business instead of meddling in other
+people’s, if you don’t want that goat’s throat of yours
+stuck together with boiling kutya.”<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> What was to be
+done with this unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented
+himself with announcing that any one who should
+make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted
+a Catholic, an enemy of Christ’s church, not a member
+of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh,
+who had a labourer whom people called Peter the Orphan—perhaps
+because no one remembered either his
+father or mother. The church starost,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> it is true, said
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>that they had died of the pest in his second year; but
+my grandfather’s aunt would not hear to that, and tried
+with all her might to furnish him with parents, although
+poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last
+year’s snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe,
+taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only
+knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised
+himself as a eunuch, had made his escape. Little
+cared the black-browed youths and maidens about
+his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only
+had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with
+dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging
+by his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome
+mountings in the other, he would surpass all the
+young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor
+Peter had was a grey svitka with more holes in it than
+there are gold pieces in a Jew’s pocket. And that was
+not the worst of it, but this: that Korzh had a daughter,
+such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced
+to see. My deceased grandfather’s aunt used to say—and
+you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the
+Evil One than to call anybody a beauty, without malice
+be it said—that this Cossack maiden’s cheeks were as
+plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just bathed
+in God’s dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and
+coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were like
+black cords, such as our maidens buy nowadays, for
+their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow pedlars who
+visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched
+as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little
+mouth, at sight of which the youth smacked their lips,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+seemed made to emit the songs of nightingales; that her
+hair, black as the raven’s wing, and soft as young flax
+(our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs interwoven
+with pretty, bright-hued ribbons), fell in curls
+over her kuntush.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Eh! may I never intone another
+alleluia in the choir, if I would not have kissed her, in
+spite of the grey which is making its way all through
+the old wool which covers my pate, and my old woman
+beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know
+what happens when young men and maids live side by
+side. In the twilight the heels of red boots were always
+visible in the place where Pidórka chatted with her
+Petrus. But Korzh would never have suspected anything
+out of the way, only one day—it is evident that
+none but the Evil One could have inspired him—Petrus
+took it into his head to kiss the Cossack maiden’s rosy lips
+with all his heart in the passage, without first looking
+well about him; and that same Evil One—may the son
+of a dog dream of the holy cross!—caused the old greybeard,
+like a fool, to open the cottage-door at that same
+moment. Korzh was petrified, dropped his jaw, and
+clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky kisses
+had completely stunned him. It surprised him more
+than the blow of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our
+days, the muzhik generally drives out his intoxication
+for lack of fusees and powder.</p>
+
+<p>Recovering himself, he took his grandfather’s hunting-whip
+from the wall, and was about to belabour
+Peter’s back with it, when Pidórka’s little six-year-old
+brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other, and,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>grasping his father’s legs with his little hands, screamed
+out, “Daddy, daddy! don’t beat Petrus!” What was to
+be done? A father’s heart is not made of stone. Hanging
+the whip again upon the wall, he led him quietly
+from the house. “If you ever show yourself in my
+cottage again, or even under the windows, look out,
+Petró! by Heaven, your black moustache will disappear;
+and your black locks, though wound twice about your
+ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name is not
+Terentii Korzh.” So saying, he gave him a little taste
+of his fist in the nape of his neck, so that all grew dark
+before Petrus, and he flew headlong. So there was an
+end of their kissing. Sorrow seized upon our doves;
+and a rumour was rife in the village, that a certain
+Pole, all embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre,
+spurs, and pockets jingling like the bells of the bag
+with which our sacristan Taras goes through the church
+every day, had begun to frequent Korzh’s house.
+Now, it is well known why the father is visited when
+there is a black-browed daughter about. So, one day,
+Pidórka burst into tears, and clutched the hand of her
+Ivas. “Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly to Petrus,
+my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him
+all: I would have loved his brown eyes, I would have
+kissed his white face, but my fate decrees not so. More
+than one towel have I wet with burning tears. I am sad,
+I am heavy at heart. And my own father is my enemy.
+I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not love. Tell
+him they are preparing a wedding, but there will be no
+music at our wedding: ecclesiastics will sing instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+pipes and kobzas.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> I shall not dance with my bridegroom:
+they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be my
+dwelling,—of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a
+cross will stand upon the roof.”</p>
+
+<p>Petró stood petrified, without moving from the spot,
+when the innocent child lisped out Pidórka’s words to
+him. “And I, unhappy man, thought to go to the
+Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my
+beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us.
+I will have a wedding, too, dear little fish, I, too; but no
+ecclesiastics will be at that wedding. The black crow
+will caw, instead of the pope, over me; the smooth field
+will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my roof-tree.
+The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will
+wash the Cossack’s bones, and the whirlwinds will dry
+them. But what am I? Of whom, to whom, am I
+complaining? ’Tis plain, God willed it so. If I am to
+be lost, then so be it!” and he went straight to the tavern.</p>
+
+<p>My late grandfather’s aunt was somewhat surprised
+on seeing Petrus in the tavern, and at an hour when good
+men go to morning mass; and she stared at him as though
+in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy, about
+half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to
+drown his woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles,
+and tasted more bitter than wormwood. He flung the
+jug from him upon the ground. “You have sorrowed
+enough, Cossack,” growled a bass voice behind him.
+He looked round—Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His
+hair was like a brush, his eyes like those of a bull. “I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>know what you lack: here it is.” Then he jingled a
+leather purse which hung from his girdle, and smiled
+diabolically. Petró shuddered. “He, he, he! yes, how
+it shines!” he roared, shaking out ducats into his hand:
+“he, he, he! and how it jingles! And I only ask one
+thing for a whole pile of such shiners.”—“It is the Evil
+One!” exclaimed Petró:—“Give them here! I am
+ready for anything!” They struck hands upon it.
+“See here, Petró, you are ripe just in time: tomorrow is
+St. John the Baptist’s day. Only on this one night in
+the year does the fern blossom. Delay not. I will
+await thee at midnight in the Bear’s ravine.”</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the
+woman brings their corn, with as much anxiety as Petrus
+awaited the evening. And, in fact, he looked to see
+whether the shadows of the trees were not lengthening, if
+the sun were not turning red towards setting; and, the
+longer he watched, the more impatient he grew. How
+long it was! Evidently, God’s day had lost its end
+somewhere. And now the sun is gone. The sky is red
+only on one side, and it is already growing dark. It
+grows colder in the fields. It gets dusky, and more
+dusky, and at last quite dark. At last! With heart almost
+bursting from his bosom, he set out on his way, and
+cautiously descended through the dense woods into the
+deep hollow called the Bear’s ravine. Basavriuk was
+already waiting there. It was so dark, that you could
+not see a yard before you. Hand in hand they penetrated
+the thin marsh, clinging to the luxuriant thorn-bushes,
+and stumbling at almost every step. At last
+they reached an open spot. Petró looked about him:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+he had never chanced to come there before. Here Basavriuk
+halted.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you see, before you stand three hillocks? There
+are a great many sorts of flowers upon them. But may
+some power keep you from plucking even one of them.
+But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look not
+round, no matter what may seem to be going on behind
+thee.”</p>
+
+<p>Petró wanted to ask—and behold, he was no longer
+there. He approached the three hillocks—where were
+the flowers? He saw nothing. The wild steppe-grass
+darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance.
+But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole
+bed of flowers, all wonderful, all strange: and there were
+also the simple fronds of fern. Petró doubted his
+senses, and stood thoughtfully before them, with both
+hands upon his sides.</p>
+
+<p>“What prodigy is this? one can see these weeds ten
+times in a day: what marvel is there about them? was
+not devil’s-face laughing at me?”</p>
+
+<p>Behold! the tiny flower-bud crimsons, and moves as
+though alive. It is a marvel, in truth. It moves, and
+grows larger and larger, and flashes like a burning coal.
+The tiny star flashes up, something bursts softly, and the
+flower opens before his eyes like a flame, lighting the
+others about it. “Now is the time,” thought Petró, and
+extended his hand. He sees hundreds of shaggy hands
+reach from behind him, also for the flower; and there is
+a running about from place to place, in the rear. He
+half shut his eyes, plucked sharply at the stalk, and the
+flower remained in his hand. All became still. Upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+a stump sat Basavriuk, all blue like a corpse. He
+moved not so much as a finger. His eyes were immovably
+fixed on something visible to him alone: his mouth
+was half open and speechless. All about, nothing
+stirred. Ugh! it was horrible!—But then a whistle was
+heard, which made Petró’s heart grow cold within him;
+and it seemed to him that the grass whispered, and the
+flowers began to talk among themselves in delicate
+voices, like little silver bells; the trees rustled in waving
+contention;—Basavriuk’s face suddenly became full of
+life and his eyes sparkled. “The witch has just returned,”
+he muttered between his teeth. “See here,
+Petró: a beauty will stand before you in a moment; do
+whatever she commands; if not—you are lost for ever.”
+Then he parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick, and
+before him stood a tiny izbá, on chicken’s legs, as they
+say. Basavriuk smote it with his fist, and the wall
+trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them, and
+with a whine, transforming itself into a cat, flew straight
+at his eyes. “Don’t be angry, don’t be angry, you old
+Satan!” said Basavriuk, employing such words as would
+have made a good man stop his ears. Behold, instead
+of a cat, an old woman with a face wrinkled like a
+baked apple, and all bent into a bow: her nose and chin
+were like a pair of nut-crackers. “A stunning beauty!”
+thought Petró; and cold chills ran down his back. The
+witch tore the flower from his hand, bent over, and muttered
+over it for a long time, sprinkling it with some
+kind of water. Sparks flew from her mouth, froth appeared
+on her lips.</p>
+
+<p>“Throw it away,” she said, giving it back to Petró.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Petró threw it, and what wonder was this? the flower
+did not fall straight to the earth, but for a long while
+twinkled like a fiery ball through the darkness, and
+swam through the air like a boat: at last it began to
+sink lower, and fell so far away, that the little star,
+hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible.
+“Here!” croaked the old woman, in a dull voice: and
+Basavriuk, giving him a spade, said, “Dig here, Petró:
+here you will find more gold than you or Korzh ever
+dreamed of.”</p>
+
+<p>Petró spat on his hands, seized the spade, applied his
+foot, and turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth
+time.... There was something hard: the spade
+clinked, and would go no farther. Then his eyes began
+to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried
+to seize it; but the chest began to sink into the earth,
+deeper, farther, and deeper still: and behind him he
+heard a laugh, more like a serpent’s hiss. “No, you shall
+not see the gold until you procure human blood,” said
+the witch, and led up to him a child of six, covered with
+a white sheet, indicating by a sign that he was to cut
+off his head. Petró was stunned. A trifle, indeed, to
+cut off a man’s or even an innocent child’s head for no
+reason whatever! In wrath he tore off the sheet enveloping
+his head, and behold! before him stood Ivas.
+And the poor child crossed his little hands, and hung his
+head.... Petró flew upon the witch with the knife
+like a madman, and was on the point of laying hands
+on her....</p>
+
+<p>“What did you promise for the girl?” ... thundered
+Basavriuk; and like a shot he was on his back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame flashed from
+the earth; it illumined it all inside, and it was as if
+moulded of crystal; and all that was within the earth
+became visible, as if in the palm of the hand. Ducats,
+precious stones in chests and kettles, were piled in heaps
+beneath the very spot they stood on. His eyes burned,
+... his mind grew troubled.... He grasped the
+knife like a madman, and the innocent blood spurted
+into his eyes. Diabolical laughter resounded on all
+sides. Misshaped monsters flew past him in herds.
+The witch, fastening her hands in the headless trunk,
+like a wolf, drank its blood.... All went round in his
+head. Collecting all his strength, he set out to run.
+Everything turned red before him. The trees seemed
+steeped in blood, and burned and groaned. The sky
+glowed and glowered.... Burning point, like lightning,
+flickered before his eyes. Utterly exhausted, he
+rushed into his miserable hovel, and fell to the ground
+like a log. A death-like sleep overpowered him.</p>
+
+<p>Two days and two nights did Petró sleep, without once
+awakening. When he came to himself, on the third
+day, he looked long at all the corners of his hut; but in
+vain did he endeavour to recollect; his memory was like
+a miser’s pocket, from which you cannot entice a
+quarter of a kopek. Stretching himself, he heard
+something clash at his feet. He looked—two bags of
+gold. Then only, as if in a dream, he recollected that
+he had been seeking some treasure, that something had
+frightened him in the woods.... But at what price he
+had obtained it, and how, he could by no means understand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Korzh saw the sacks,—and was mollified. “Such a
+Petrus, quite unheard of! yes, and did I not love him?
+Was he not to me as my own son?” And the old fellow
+carried on his fiction until it reduced him to tears.
+Pidórka began to tell him some passing gipsies had
+stolen Ivas; but Petró could not even recall him—to such
+a degree had the Devil’s influence darkened his mind!
+There was no reason for delay. The Pole was dismissed,
+and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls were
+baked, towels and handkerchiefs embroidered; the
+young people were seated at table; the wedding-loaf was
+cut; banduras, cymbals, pipes, kobzi, sounded, and
+pleasure was rife....</p>
+
+<p>A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the
+present day. My grandfather’s aunt used to tell—what
+doings!—how the maidens—in festive head-dresses of
+yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which they bound
+gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the
+seams with red silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers;
+in morocco shoes, with high iron heels—danced the gorlitza
+as swimmingly as peacocks, and as wildly as the
+whirlwind; how the youths—with their ship-shaped caps
+upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, with a
+little slit at the nape where the hair-net peeped through,
+and two horns projecting, one in front and another behind,
+of the very finest black lambskin; in kuntushas of
+the finest blue silk with red borders—stepped forward
+one by one, their arms akimbo in stately form, and
+executed the gopak; how the lads—in tall Cossack caps,
+and light cloth svitkas, girt with silver embroidered belts,
+their short pipes in their teeth—skipped before them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+and talked nonsense. Even Korzh could not contain
+himself, as he gazed at the young people, from getting
+gay in his old age. Bandura in hand, alternately puffing
+at his pipe and singing, a brandy-glass upon his
+head, the greybeard began the national dance amid loud
+shouts from the merry-makers. What will not people
+devise in merry mood! They even began to disguise
+their faces. They did not look like human beings.
+They are not to be compared with the disguises which
+we have at our weddings nowadays. What do they do
+now? Why, imitate gipsies and Moscow pedlars.
+No! then one used to dress himself as a Jew, another as
+the Devil: they would begin by kissing each other, and
+end by seizing each other by the hair.... God be with
+them! you laughed till you held your sides. They
+dressed themselves in Turkish and Tartar garments. All
+upon them glowed like a conflagration ... and then
+they began to joke and play pranks.... Well, then
+away with the saints!</p>
+
+<p>An amusing thing happened to my grandfather’s aunt,
+who was at this wedding. She was dressed in a voluminous
+Tartar robe, and, wineglass in hand, was entertaining
+the company. The Evil One instigated one man to
+pour vodka over her from behind. Another, at the
+same moment, evidently not by accident, struck a light,
+and touched it to her; ... the flame flashed up; poor
+aunt, in terror, flung her robe from her, before them
+all.... Screams, laughter, jests, arose, as if at a fair.
+In a word, the old folks could not recall so merry a
+wedding.</p>
+
+<p>Pidórka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+and lady. There was plenty of everything, and everything
+was handsome.... But honest people shook
+their heads when they looked at their way of living.
+“From the Devil no good can come,” they unanimously
+agreed. “Whence, except from the tempter of orthodox
+people, came this wealth? Where else could he get
+such a lot of gold? Why, on the very day that he got
+rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?” Say,
+if you can, that people imagine things! In fact, a
+month had not passed, and no one would have recognized
+Petrus. Why, what had happened to him? God knows.
+He sits in one spot, and says no word to any one: he
+thinks continually, and seems to be trying to recall something.
+When Pidórka succeeds in getting him to speak,
+he seems to forget himself, carries on a conversation,
+and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently glances
+at the sacks, “Stop, stop! I have forgotten,” he cries,
+and again plunges into revery, and again strives to recall
+something. Sometimes when he has sat long in a
+place, it seems to him as though it were coming, just
+coming back to mind, ... and again all fades away.
+It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern: they bring
+him vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to him.
+Some one comes along, and strikes him on the shoulder; ... but
+beyond that everything is veiled in darkness
+before him. The perspiration streams down his face,
+and he sits exhausted in the same place.</p>
+
+<p>What did not Pidórka do? She consulted the sorceress;
+and they poured out fear, and brewed stomach-ache,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>—but
+all to no avail. And so the summer passed.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>Many a Cossack had mowed and reaped: many a Cossack,
+more enterprising than the rest, had set off upon
+an expedition. Flocks of ducks were already crowding
+our marshes, but there was not even a hint of improvement.</p>
+
+<p>It was red upon the steppes. Ricks of grain, like
+Cossacks’ caps, dotted the fields here and there. On the
+highway were to be encountered wagons loaded with
+brushwood and logs. The ground had become more
+solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already
+had the snow begun to besprinkle the sky, and the
+branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin.
+Already on frosty days the red-breasted finch
+hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish
+nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children,
+with huge sticks, chased wooden tops upon the ice; while
+their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at
+intervals with lighted pipes in their lips, to growl, in
+regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to take the air,
+and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the
+snow began to melt, and the ice rind slipped away: but
+Petró remained the same; and, the longer it went on,
+the more morose he grew. He sat in the middle of the
+cottage as though nailed to the spot, with the sacks of
+gold at his feet. He grew shy, his hair grew long, he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>became terrible; and still he thought of but one thing,
+still he tried to recall something, and got angry and ill-tempered
+because he could not recall it. Often, rising
+wildly from his seat, he gesticulates violently, fixes his
+eyes on something as though desirous of catching it: his
+lips move as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten
+word—and remain speechless. Fury takes
+possession of him: he gnaws and bites his hands like a
+man half crazy, and in his vexation tears out his hair
+by the handful, until, calming down, he falls into forgetfulness,
+as it were, and again begins to recall, and is
+again seized with fury and fresh tortures.... What
+visitation of God is this?</p>
+
+<p>Pidórka was neither dead nor alive. At first it was
+horrible to her to remain alone in the cottage; but, in
+course of time, the poor woman grew accustomed to her
+sorrow. But it was impossible to recognize the Pidórka
+of former days. No blush, no smile: she was thin and
+worn with grief, and had wept her bright eyes away.
+Once, some one who evidently took pity on her, advised
+her to go to the witch who dwelt in the Bear’s ravine,
+and enjoyed the reputation of being able to cure every
+disease in the world. She determined to try this last
+remedy: word by word she persuaded the old woman to
+come to her. This was St. John’s Eve, as it chanced.
+Petró lay insensible on the bench, and did not observe
+the new-comer. Little by little he rose, and looked
+about him. Suddenly he trembled in every limb, as
+though he were on the scaffold: his hair rose upon his
+head, ... and he laughed such a laugh as pierced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+Pidórka’s heart with fear. “I have remembered, remembered!”
+he cried in terrible joy; and, swinging a
+hatchet round his head, he flung it at the old woman
+with all his might. The hatchet penetrated the oaken
+door two vershok.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The old woman disappeared; and
+a child of seven in a white blouse, with covered head,
+stood in the middle of the cottage.... The sheet flew
+off. “Ivas!” cried Pidórka, and ran to him; but the apparition
+became covered from head to foot with blood,
+and illumined the whole room with red light.... She
+ran into the passage in her terror, but, on recovering herself
+a little, wished to help him; in vain! the door had
+slammed to behind her so securely that she could not
+open it. People ran up, and began to knock: they broke
+in the door, as though there were but one mind among
+them. The whole cottage was full of smoke; and just
+in the middle, where Petrus had stood, was a heap of
+ashes, from which smoke was still rising. They flung
+themselves upon the sacks: only broken potsherds lay
+there instead of ducats. The Cossacks stood with staring
+eyes and open mouths, not daring to move a hair,
+as if rooted to the earth, such terror did this wonder
+inspire in them.</p>
+
+<p>I do not remember what happened next. Pidórka
+took a vow to go upon a pilgrimage, collected the property
+left her by her father, and in a few days it was as
+if she had never been in the village. Whither she had
+gone, no one could tell. Officious old women would have
+dispatched her to the same place whither Petró had gone;
+but a Cossack from Kiev reported that he had seen, in a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>cloister, a nun withered to a mere skeleton, who prayed
+unceasingly; and her fellow-villagers recognized her as
+Pidórka, by all the signs,—that no one had ever heard
+her utter a word; that she had come on foot, and had
+brought a frame for the ikon of God’s mother, set with
+such brilliant stones that all were dazzled at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not the end, if you please. On the same
+day that the Evil One made way with Petrus, Basavriuk
+appeared again; but all fled from him. They knew
+what sort of a bird he was,—none else than Satan, who
+had assumed human form in order to unearth treasures;
+and, since treasures do not yield to unclean hands, he seduced
+the young. That same year, all deserted their
+earth huts, and collected in a village; but, even there,
+there was no peace, on account of that accursed Basavriuk.
+My late grandfather’s aunt said that he was
+particularly angry with her, because she had abandoned
+her former tavern, and tried with all his might to revenge
+himself upon her. Once the village elders were
+assembled in the tavern, and, as the saying goes, were
+arranging the precedence at the table, in the middle of
+which was placed a small roasted lamb, shame to say.
+They chattered about this, that, and the other,—among
+the rest about various marvels and strange things. Well,
+they saw something; it would have been nothing if only
+one had seen it, but all saw it; and it was this: the
+sheep raised his head; his goggling eyes became alive
+and sparkled; and the black, bristling moustache, which
+appeared for one instant, made a significant gesture at
+those present. All, at once, recognized Basavriuk’s
+countenance in the sheep’s head: my grandfather’s aunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+thought it was on the point of asking for vodka....
+The worthy elders seized their hats, and hastened home.</p>
+
+<p>Another time, the church starost himself, who was
+fond of an occasional private interview with my grandfather’s
+brandy-glass, had not succeeded in getting to
+the bottom twice, when he beheld the glass bowing very
+low to him. “Satan take you, let us make the sign of
+the cross over you!” ... And the same marvel happened
+to his better half. She had just begun to mix
+the dough in a huge kneading-trough, when suddenly
+the trough sprang up. “Stop, stop! where are you going?”
+Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went
+skipping all about the cottage.... You may laugh, but
+it was no laughing-matter to your grandfathers. And
+in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the village
+with holy water, and chase the Devil through the streets
+with his brush; and my late grandfather’s aunt long complained,
+that, as soon as it was dark, some one came
+knocking at her door, and scratching at the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Well! All appears to be quiet now, in the place
+where our village stands; but it was not so very long
+ago—my father was still alive—that I remember how a
+good man could not pass the ruined tavern, which a dishonest
+race had long managed for their own interest.
+From the smoke-blackened chimneys, smoke poured out
+in a pillar, and rising high in the air, as if to take an
+observation, rolled off like a cap, scattering burning
+coals over the steppe; and Satan (the son of a dog should
+not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully in his lair, that
+the startled ravens rose in flocks from the neighbouring
+oak-wood, and flew through the air with wild cries.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> From <i>St. John’s Eve and Other Stories</i>, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
+from the Russian of N.&nbsp;V. Gógol. (Copyright, 1886, by Thomas
+Y. Crowell &amp; Co. By permission of the Publishers.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Wooden house.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Sir.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins, which is
+brought to the church on the celebration of memorial masses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Elder.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Upper garment in Little Russia.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Eight-stringed musical instrument.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> “To pour out fear,” is done with us in case of fear; when it is desired
+to know what caused it, melted lead or wax is poured into water
+and the object whose form it assumes is the one which frightened the
+sick person; after this, the fear departs. <i>Sónvashnitza</i> is brewed for
+giddiness, and pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is
+burned, thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled
+with water, which is placed on the patient’s stomach: after an incantation,
+he is given a spoonful of this water to drink.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Three inches and a half.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_WAGER" id="THE_DEVILS_WAGER"></a>THE DEVIL’S WAGER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_WAGER_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring
+save church-yard ghosts—when all doors are
+closed except the gates of graves, and all eyes shut but
+the eyes of wicked men.</p>
+
+<p>When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking
+of the grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs
+in the pool.</p>
+
+<p>And no light except that of the blinking stars, and
+the wicked and devilish wills-o’-the-wisp, as they gambol
+among the marshes, and lead good men astray.</p>
+
+<p>When there is nothing moving in heaven except the
+owl, as he flappeth along lazily; or the magician, as he
+rideth on his infernal broomstick, whistling through the
+air like the arrows of a Yorkshire archer.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o’clock of the
+night,) that two beings went winging through the black
+clouds, and holding converse with each other.</p>
+
+<p>Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of
+gods (as the heathens feigned), but of demons; and the
+second, with whom he held company, was the soul of
+Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was
+Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre,
+Villacerf and autre lieux. But the great die as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+well as the humble; and nothing remained of brave
+Roger now, but his coffin and his deathless soul.</p>
+
+<p>And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his
+companion, had bound him round the neck with his tail;
+which, when the soul was stubborn, he would draw so
+tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking into him the
+barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo,
+would groan and roar lustily.</p>
+
+<p>Now they two had come together from the gates of
+purgatory, being bound to those regions of fire and
+flame where poor sinners fry and roast in saecula saeculorum.</p>
+
+<p>“It is hard,” said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went
+gliding through the clouds, “that I should thus be condemned
+for ever, and all for want of a single ave.”</p>
+
+<p>“How, Sir Soul?” said the demon. “You were on
+earth so wicked, that not one, or a million of aves, could
+suffice to keep from hell-flame a creature like thee; but
+cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a subject of
+our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honour, as am I also:” and to show
+his authority, he lashed with his tail the ribs of the
+wretched Rollo.</p>
+
+<p>“Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would
+have saved me; for my sister, who was Abbess of St.
+Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail, by her prayer and
+good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that every
+day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks
+which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex
+and torment my poor carcass, were now not applied
+above once a week; the roasting had ceased, the boiling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept up,
+to remind me of my situation.”</p>
+
+<p>“A gentle stew,” said the demon.</p>
+
+<p>“Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the
+effects of the prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday,
+he who watched me in purgatory told me, that yet
+another prayer from my sister, and my bonds should be
+unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been
+a blessed angel.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the other ave?” said the demon.</p>
+
+<p>“She died, sir—my sister died—death choked her in
+the middle of the prayer.” And hereat the wretched
+spirit began to weep and whine piteously; his salt tears
+falling over his beard, and scalding the tail of Mercurius
+the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“It is, in truth, a hard case,” said the demon; “but I
+know of no remedy save patience, and for that you will
+have an excellent opportunity in your lodgings below.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I have relations,” said the Earl; “my kinsman
+Randal, who has inherited my lands, will he not say a
+prayer for his uncle?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thou didst hate and oppress him when living.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my
+niece, Matilda—”</p>
+
+<p>“You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover.”</p>
+
+<p>“Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?”</p>
+
+<p>“A dozen, without a doubt.”</p>
+
+<p>“And my brother, the prior?”</p>
+
+<p>“A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens
+his mouth, except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup
+of wine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave
+for me, I should be saved.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aves with them are <i>rarae</i> aves,” replied Mercurius,
+wagging his tail right waggishly; “and, what is more,
+I will lay thee any wager that no one of these will say a
+prayer to save thee.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would wager willingly,” responded he of Chauchigny;
+“but what has a poor soul like me to stake?”</p>
+
+<p>“Every evening, after the day’s roasting, my lord
+Satan giveth a cup of cold water to his servants; I will
+bet thee thy water for a year, that none of the three will
+pray for thee.”</p>
+
+<p>“Done!” said Rollo.</p>
+
+<p>“Done!” said the demon; “and here, if I mistake not,
+is thy castle of Chauchigny.”</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived
+the tall towers, the courts, the stables, and the
+fair gardens of the castle. Although it was past midnight,
+there was a blaze of light in the banqueting-hall,
+and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.</p>
+
+<p>“With whom shall we begin?” said the demon: “with
+the baron or the lady?”</p>
+
+<p>“With the lady, if you will.”</p>
+
+<p>“Be it so; her window is open, let us enter.”</p>
+
+<p>So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda’s
+chamber.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The young lady’s eyes were fixed so intently on a
+little clock, that it was no wonder that she did not perceive
+the entrance of her two visitors. Her fair cheek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+rested in her white arm, and her white arm on the cushion
+of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported
+by sweet thoughts and swan’s down; a lute was at
+her side, and a book of prayers lay under the table (for
+piety is always modest). Like the amorous Alexander,
+she sighed and looked (at the clock)—and sighed for
+ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word
+“Edward!”</p>
+
+<p>At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. “The jade is
+at her old pranks,” said he to the devil; and then addressing
+Matilda: “I pray thee, sweet niece, turn thy
+thoughts for a moment from that villainous page, Edward,
+and give them to thine affectionate uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition
+of her uncle (for a year’s sojourn in purgatory
+had not increased the comeliness of his appearance),
+she started, screamed, and of course fainted.</p>
+
+<p>But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself.
+“What’s o’clock?” said she, as soon as she had recovered
+from her fit: “is he come?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle—that is, his
+soul. For the love of heaven, listen to me: I have been
+frying in purgatory for a year past, and should
+have been in heaven but for the want of a single
+ave.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will say it for thee tomorrow, uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tonight, or never.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, tonight be it:” and she requested the devil
+Mercurius to give her the prayer-book, from under the
+table; but he had no sooner touched the holy book than
+he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. “It was hotter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>”
+he said, “than his master Sir Lucifer’s own particular
+pitchfork.” And the lady was forced to begin her ave
+without the aid of her missal.</p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of her devotions the demon
+retired, and carried with him the anxious soul of poor
+Sir Roger de Rollo.</p>
+
+<p>The lady knelt down—she sighed deeply; she looked
+again at the clock, and began—</p>
+
+<p>“Ave Maria.”</p>
+
+<p>When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet
+voice singing—</p>
+
+<p>“Hark!” said Matilda.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Now the toils of day are over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the sun hath sunk to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeking, like a fiery lover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bosom of the blushing west—<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The faithful night keeps watch and ward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Raising the moon, her silver shield,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And summoning the stars to guard<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“For mercy’s sake!” said Sir Rollo, “the ave first, and
+next the song.”</p>
+
+<p>So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions,
+and began—</p>
+
+<p>“Ave Maria gratia plena!” but the music began again,
+and the prayer ceased of course.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The faithful night! Now all things lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Hid by her mantle dark and dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In pious hope I hither hie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And humbly chant mine ev’ning hymn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">(For never holy pilgrim kneel’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or wept at feet more pure than thine),<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“Virgin love!” said the Baron. “Upon my soul, this
+is too bad!” and he thought of the lady’s lover whom he
+had caused to be hanged.</p>
+
+<p>But <i>she</i> only thought of him who stood singing at her
+window.</p>
+
+<p>“Niece Matilda!” cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, “wilt
+thou listen to the lies of an impudent page, whilst thine
+uncle is waiting but a dozen words to make him happy?”</p>
+
+<p>At this Matilda grew angry: “Edward is neither impudent
+nor a liar, Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end
+of the song.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come away,” said Mercurius; “he hath yet got
+wield, field, sealed, congealed, and a dozen other rhymes
+beside; and after the song will come the supper.”</p>
+
+<p>So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady
+listened, and the page sung away till morning.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>“My virtues have been my ruin,” said poor Sir Rollo,
+as he and Mercurius slunk silently out of the window.
+“Had I hanged that knave Edward, as I did the page his
+predecessor, my niece would have sung mine ave, and I
+should have been by this time an angel in heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is reserved for wiser purposes,” responded the
+devil: “he will assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde’s
+brother; and, in consequence, will be hanged.
+In the love of the lady he will be succeeded by a gardener,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+who will be replaced by a monk, who will give
+way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedlar,
+who shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband
+of the fair Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of
+having one poor soul a-frying, we may now look forward
+to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil.”</p>
+
+<p>The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion
+knew too much for one who would make fair
+bets; but there was no help for it; he would not, and he
+could not cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the
+brother might be found more pious than the sister.</p>
+
+<p>But there seemed little chance of this. As they
+crossed the court, lackeys, with smoking dishes and full
+jugs, passed and repassed continually, although it was
+long past midnight. On entering the hall, they found
+Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than
+had congregated there even in the time of Sir Rollo.
+The lord of the castle had signified that “it was his royal
+pleasure to be drunk,” and the gentlemen of his train
+had obsequiously followed their master. Mercurius
+was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually
+rigid countenance into a bland and benevolent smile,
+which became him wonderfully.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about
+a year, and a person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather
+disturbed the hilarity of the company. Sir Randal
+dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the confessor,
+incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song,
+with which he was amusing the society.</p>
+
+<p>“Holy Mother!” cried he, “it is Sir Roger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Alive!” screamed Sir Randal.</p>
+
+<p>“No, my lord,” Mercurius said; “Sir Roger is dead,
+but cometh on a matter of business; and I have the
+honour to act as his counsellor and attendant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nephew,” said Sir Roger, “the demon saith justly;
+I am come on a trifling affair, in which thy service is
+essential.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will do anything, uncle, in my power.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?” But Sir
+Randal looked very blank at this proposition. “I mean
+life spiritual, Randal,” said Sir Roger; and thereupon he
+explained to him the nature of the wager.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius
+was playing all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by
+his wit and fun, became so popular with this godless
+crew, that they lost all the fear which his first appearance
+had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken
+with him, and used his utmost eloquence and endeavours
+to convert the devil; the knights stopped drinking to
+listen to the argument; the men-at-arms forbore brawling;
+and the wicked little pages crowded round the two
+strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse.
+The ghostly man, however, had little chance in the
+controversy, and certainly little learning to carry it on.
+Sir Randal interrupted him. “Father Peter,” said he,
+“our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a
+single ave: wilt thou say it for him?” “Willingly, my
+lord,” said the monk, “with my book;” and accordingly
+he produced his missal to read, without which aid it appeared
+that the holy father could not manage the desired
+prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father
+Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following
+irreverent ditty:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Some love the matin-chimes, which tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hour of prayer to sinner:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But better far’s the mid-day bell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which speaks the hour of dinner;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For when I see a smoking fish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or capon drowned in gravy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or noble haunch on silver dish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Full glad I sing mine ave.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My pulpit is an ale-house bench,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereon I sit so jolly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A smiling rosy country wench<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My saint and patron holy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I press her ringlets wavy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in her willing ear I speak<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A most religious ave.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And if I’m blind, yet heaven is kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And holy saints forgiving;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For sure he leads a right good life<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who thus admires good living.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above, they say, our flesh is air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our blood celestial ichor:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They may not change our liquor!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled
+under the table in an agony of devout drunkenness;
+whilst the knights, the men-at-arms, and the wicked little
+pages, rang out the last verse with a most melodious and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+emphatic glee. “I am sorry, fair uncle,” hiccupped Sir
+Randal, “that, in the matter of the ave, we could not
+oblige thee in a more orthodox manner; but the holy
+father has failed, and there is not another man in the
+hall who hath an idea of a prayer.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is my own fault,” said Sir Rollo; “for I hanged
+the last confessor.” And he wished his nephew a surly
+goodnight, as he prepared to quit the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Au revoir, gentlemen,” said the devil Mercurius;
+and once more fixed his tail round the neck of his disappointed
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the
+devil, on the contrary, was in high good humour. He
+wagged his tail with the most satisfied air in the world,
+and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of his poor associate.
+On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in
+the woods, and the owls that were watching in the towers.</p>
+
+<p>In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can
+fly hundreds of miles: so that almost the same beat of
+the clock which left these two in Champagne found them
+hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court of
+the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through
+passage and cloister, until they reached the door of the
+prior’s cell.</p>
+
+<p>Now the prior, Rollo’s brother, was a wicked and
+malignant sorcerer; his time was spent in conjuring devils
+and doing wicked deeds, instead of fasting, scourging,
+and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and
+he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of
+his wager with poor Sir Roger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“You seem to be well acquainted with the road,” said
+the knight.</p>
+
+<p>“I have reason,” answered Mercurius, “having, for a
+long period, had the acquaintance of his reverence, your
+brother; but you have little chance with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“And why?” said Sir Rollo.</p>
+
+<p>“He is under a bond to my master, never to say a
+prayer, or else his soul and his body are forfeited at
+once.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, thou false and traitorous devil!” said the enraged
+knight; “and thou knewest this when we made our
+wager?”</p>
+
+<p>“Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so
+had there been any chance of losing?”</p>
+
+<p>And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius’s door.</p>
+
+<p>“Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and
+stopped the tongue of my nephew’s chaplain; I do believe
+that had I seen either of them alone, my wager had
+been won.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with
+thee; however, thou mayest see the prior alone, if thou
+wilt; and lo! his door is open. I will stand without for
+five minutes when it will be time to commence our
+journey.”</p>
+
+<p>It was the poor Baron’s last chance: and he entered
+his brother’s room more for the five minutes’ respite
+than from any hope of success.</p>
+
+<p>Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations:
+he stood in the middle of a circle of skulls,
+with no garment except his long white beard, which
+reached to his knees; he was waving a silver rod,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation.
+“I am,” said he, “the shade of thy brother
+Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure brotherly
+love, to warn thee of thy fate.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whence camest thou?”</p>
+
+<p>“From the abode of the blessed in Paradise,” replied
+Sir Roger, who was inspired with a sudden thought;
+“it was but five minutes ago that the Patron Saint of thy
+church told me of thy danger, and of thy wicked compact
+with the fiend. ‘Go,’ said he, ‘to thy miserable
+brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he
+may escape from paying the awful forfeit of his bond.’”</p>
+
+<p>“And how may that be?” said the prior; “the false
+fiend hath deceived me; I have given him my soul, but
+have received no worldly benefit in return. Brother!
+dear brother! how may I escape?”</p>
+
+<p>“I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of
+blessed St. Mary Lazarus” (the worthy Earl had, at a
+pinch, coined the name of a saint), “I left the clouds,
+where, with other angels, I was seated, and sped hither
+to save thee. ‘Thy brother,’ said the Saint, ‘hath but
+one day more to live, when he will become for all
+eternity the subject of Satan; if he would escape, he
+must boldly break his bond, by saying an ave.’”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the express condition of the agreement,” said
+the unhappy monk, “I must say no prayer, or that instant
+I become Satan’s, body and soul.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the express condition of the Saint,” answered
+Roger, fiercely; “pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for
+ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung
+out an ave. “Amen!” said Sir Roger, devoutly.</p>
+
+<p>“Amen!” said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind,
+he seized Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up
+with him to the top of the church-steeple.</p>
+
+<p>The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against
+his brother; but it was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled
+kindly on him, and said, “Do not fret, brother; it must
+have come to this in a year or two.”</p>
+
+<p>And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top:
+<i>but this time the devil had not his tail round his
+neck</i>. “I will let thee off thy bet,” said he to the demon;
+for he could afford, now, to be generous.</p>
+
+<p>“I believe, my lord,” said the demon, politely, “that
+our ways separate here.” Sir Roger sailed gaily upwards:
+while Mercurius having bound the miserable
+monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth, and
+perhaps lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming
+as the devil dashed him against the iron spikes and
+buttresses of the church.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN" id="THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN"></a>THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge;
+and as all the world knows, both father and son were
+astonishingly clever fellows at their profession. Solomon
+painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and
+Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration,
+only nobody came to sit to him.</p>
+
+<p>As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession,
+and had arrived at the age of twenty, at least,
+Simon determined to better himself by taking a wife,—a
+plan which a number of other wise men adopt, in
+similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed
+upon a butcher’s daughter (to whom he owed considerable
+for cutlets) to quit the meat-shop and follow him.
+Griskinissa—such was the fair creature’s name—“was
+as lovely a bit of mutton,” her father said, “as ever a
+man would wish to stick a knife into.” She had sat to
+the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious
+who possess any of Gambouge’s pictures will see her as
+Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other
+characters: Portrait of a lady—Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph—Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in
+a forest; Maternal Solicitude—Griskinissa again, with
+young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring
+of their affections.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune
+of a couple of hundred pounds; and as long as this
+sum lasted no woman could be more lovely or loving.
+But want began speedily to attack their little household;
+baker’s bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole,
+her father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies
+of mutton-chops; and swore that his daughter, and
+the dauber, her husband, should have no more of his
+wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing
+and crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven that
+they would do without: but in the course of the evening
+Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his
+best coat.</p>
+
+<p>When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears
+to the poor a kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife
+were so delighted, that they, in course of a month, made
+away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan, his
+best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand
+basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery,
+and arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had
+found a second father in <i>her uncle</i>,—a base pun, which
+showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
+longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she
+swallowed the warming-pan in the course of three days,
+and fuddled herself one whole evening with the crimson
+plush breeches.</p>
+
+<p>Drinking is the devil—the father, that is to say, of all
+vices. Griskinissa’s face and her mind grew ugly together;
+her good humour changed to bilious, bitter discontent;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse and
+swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear,
+and the peach-colour on her cheeks fled from its old
+habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with
+a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty,
+draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into
+her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once
+so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness and
+Mrs. Simon Gambouge.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough
+in the days of his better fortune, was completely cast
+down by his present ill luck, and cowed by the ferocity
+of his wife. From morning till night the neighbours
+could hear this woman’s tongue, and understand her doings;
+bellows went skimming across the room, chairs
+were flumped down on the floor, and poor Gambouge’s oil
+and varnish pots went clattering through the windows, or
+down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon
+sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the
+brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing
+up a picture of his wife, in the character of Peace,
+which he had commenced a year before, he was more
+than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in the
+most pathetic manner. “O miserable fate of genius!”
+cried he, “was I, a man of such commanding talents,
+born for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have
+my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold only for
+a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled
+me; cursed be the art which is unworthy of me! Let
+me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a soldier, or sell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched than
+I am now!”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite the contrary,” cried a small, cheery voice.</p>
+
+<p>“What!” exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised.
+“Who’s there?—where are you?—who are
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>“You were just speaking of me,” said the voice.</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his
+right, a bladder of crimson lake, which he was about to
+squeeze out upon the mahogany. “Where are you?”
+cried he again.</p>
+
+<p>“S-q-u-e-e-z-e!” exclaimed the little voice.</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and
+gave a squeeze; when, as sure as I’m living, a little imp
+spurted out from the hole upon the palette, and began
+laughing in the most singular and oily manner.</p>
+
+<p>When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole;
+then he grew to be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at
+the size of a cat; and then he jumped off the palette, and,
+turning head over heels, asked the poor painter what
+he wanted with him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and
+fixed himself at last upon the top of Gambouge’s easel,—smearing
+out, with his heels, all the white and vermilion
+which had just been laid on the allegoric portrait of
+Mrs. Gambouge.</p>
+
+<p>“What!” exclaimed Simon, “is it the—”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always
+at hand: besides, I am not half so black as I am painted,
+as you will see when you know me a little better.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Upon my word,” said the painter, “it is a very singular
+surprise which you have given me. To tell truth, I
+did not even believe in your existence.”</p>
+
+<p>The little imp put on a theatrical air, and with one of
+Mr. Macready’s best looks, said,—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand
+the quotation, but felt somehow strangely and singularly
+interested in the conversation of his new friend.</p>
+
+<p>Diabolus continued: “You are a man of merit, and
+want money; you will starve on your merit; you can only
+get money from me. Come, my friend, how much is it?
+I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai, the
+usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now:
+nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere
+ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself,
+is a supposition—a valueless, windy, uncertain property
+of yours, called by some poet of your own, I think, an
+<i>animula</i>, <i>vagula</i>, <i>blandula</i>—bah! there is no use beating
+about the bush—I mean <i>a soul</i>. Come, let me have it;
+you know you will sell it some other way, and not get
+such good pay for your bargain!”—and, having made
+this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as
+big as a double <i>Times</i>, only there was a different <i>stamp</i>
+in the corner.</p>
+
+<p>It is useless and tedious to describe law documents:
+lawyers only love to read them; and they have as good
+in Chitty as any that are to be found in the Devil’s own;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+so nobly have the apprentices emulated the skill of the
+master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over
+the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished
+for seven years, and at the end of that time was to become
+the property of the—; <b>provided</b> that during the
+course of the seven years, every single wish which he
+might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting
+parties; otherwise the deed became null and
+nonavenue, and Gambouge should be left “to go to the—his
+own way.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will never see me again,” said Diabolus, in
+shaking hands with poor Simon, on whose fingers he left
+such a mark as is to be seen at this day—“never, at least,
+unless you want me; for everything you ask will be performed
+in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe
+me, it is the best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids
+anything like scandal. But if you set me about anything
+which is extraordinary, and out of the course of
+nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this
+you are the best judge.” So saying, Diabolus disappeared;
+but whether up the chimney, through the keyhole,
+or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody
+knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight,
+as, heaven forgive me! I believe many a worthy man
+would be, if he were allowed an opportunity to make a
+similar bargain.</p>
+
+<p>“Heigho!” said Simon. “I wonder whether this be
+a reality or a dream.—I am sober, I know; for who will
+give me credit for the means to be drunk? and as for
+sleeping, I’m too hungry for that. I wish I could see a
+capon and a bottle of white wine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Monsieur Simon</span>!” cried a voice on the landing-place.</p>
+
+<p>“C’est ici,” quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the
+door. He did so; and lo! there was a <i>restaurateur’s</i> boy
+at the door, supporting a tray, a tin-covered dish, and
+plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall amber-coloured
+flask of Sauterne.</p>
+
+<p>“I am the new boy, sir,” exclaimed this youth, on
+entering; “but I believe this is the right door, and you
+asked for these things.”</p>
+
+<p>Simon grinned, and said, “Certainly, I did <i>ask for</i>
+these things.” But such was the effect which his interview
+with the demon had had on his innocent mind, that
+he took them, although he knew they were for old Simon,
+the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and
+lived on the floor beneath.</p>
+
+<p>“Go, my boy,” he said; “it is good: call in a couple of
+hours, and remove the plates and glasses.”</p>
+
+<p>The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat
+greedily down to discuss the capon and the white wine.
+He bolted the legs, he devoured the wings, he cut every
+morsel of flesh from the breast;—seasoning his repast
+with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for
+the inevitable bill which was to follow all.</p>
+
+<p>“Ye gods!” said he, as he scraped away at the back-bone,
+“what a dinner! what wine!—and how gaily
+served up too!” There were silver forks and spoons,
+and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish.
+“Why the money for this dish and these spoons,” cried
+Simon, “would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! <span class="smcap">I
+wish</span>”—and here Simon whistled, and turned round to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+see that no one was peeping—“I wish the plate were
+mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! “Here they
+are,” thought Simon to himself; “why should not I
+<i>take them</i>?” and take them he did. “Detection,” said
+he, “is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon
+live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge.”</p>
+
+<p>So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap
+of his surtout, and ran down stairs as if the Devil were
+behind him—as, indeed, he was.</p>
+
+<p>He immediately made for the house of his old friend
+the pawnbroker—that establishment which is called in
+France the Mont de Piété. “I am obliged to come to
+you again, my old friend,” said Simon, “with some family
+plate, of which I beseech you to take care.”</p>
+
+<p>The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods.
+“I can give you nothing upon them,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“What!” cried Simon; “not even the worth of the
+silver?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; I could buy them at that price at the ‘Café
+Morisot,’ Rue de la Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got
+them a little cheaper.” And, so saying, he showed to
+the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles
+which he wished to pawn.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh!
+how fearful is retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter
+is remorse for crime—<i>when crime is found out!</i>—otherwise,
+conscience takes matters much more easily.
+Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
+virtuous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“But, hark ye, my friend,” continued the honest
+broker, “there is no reason why, because I cannot lend
+upon these things, I should not buy them: they will do
+to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
+the money?—speak, or I peach.”</p>
+
+<p>Simon’s resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously.
+“Give me half,” he said, “and let me go.—What
+scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!” ejaculated he,
+as he passed out of the accursed shop, “seeking every
+wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
+gain.”</p>
+
+<p>When he had marched forwards for a street or two,
+Gambouge counted the money which he had received,
+and found that he was in possession of no less than a
+hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a
+lamp. He looked up at the lamp, in doubt as to the
+course he should next pursue: upon it was inscribed the
+simple number, 152. “A gambling-house,” thought
+Gambouge. “<span class="smcap">I wish</span> I had half the money that is now
+on the table, up stairs.”</p>
+
+<p>He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him,
+and found half a hundred persons busy at a table of
+<i>rouge et noir</i>. Gambouge’s five napoleons looked insignificant
+by the side of the heaps which were around him;
+but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection
+by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw
+down his capital stoutly upon the 0 0.</p>
+
+<p>It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to
+Simon it was more lucky than to the rest of the world.
+The ball went spinning round—in “its predestined circle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+rolled,” as Shelley has it, after Goethe—and plumped
+down at last in the double zero. One hundred and thirty-five
+gold napoleons (louis they were then) were
+counted out to the delighted painter. “Oh, Diabolus!”
+cried he, “now it is that I begin to believe in thee!
+Don’t talk about merit,” he cried; “talk about fortune.
+Tell me not about heroes for the future—tell me of
+<i>zeroes</i>.” And down went twenty napoleons more upon
+the 0.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled,
+and dropped into zero as naturally as a duck pops its
+head into a pond. Our friend received five hundred
+pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and lookers-on
+began to stare at him.</p>
+
+<p>There were twelve thousand pounds upon the table.
+Suffice it to say, that Simon won half, and retired from
+the Palais Royal with a thick bundle of bank-notes
+crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had
+been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the
+revenues of a prince for half a year!</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist,
+and that he had a stake in the country, discovered that
+he was an altered man. He repented of his foul deed,
+and his base purloining of the <i>restaurateur’s</i> plate. “O
+honesty!” he cried, “how unworthy is an action like this
+of a man who has a property like mine!” So he went
+back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable.
+“My friend,” said he, “I have sinned against all
+that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and
+my religion. Here is thy money. In the name of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully
+sold thee!”</p>
+
+<p>But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, “Nay, Mr.
+Gambouge, I will sell that plate for a thousand francs to
+you, or I will never sell it at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” cried Gambouge, “thou art an inexorable
+ruffian, Troisboules; but I will give thee all I am worth.”
+And here he produced a billet of five hundred francs.
+“Look,” said he, “this money is all I own; it is the payment
+of two years’ lodging. To raise it, I have toiled
+for many months; and, failing, I have been a criminal.
+O heaven! I <i>stole</i> that plate that I might pay my debt,
+and keep my dear wife from wandering houseless. But
+I cannot bear this load of ignominy—I cannot suffer the
+thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom
+I did wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I
+<i>will</i> do right!”</p>
+
+<p>The broker was alarmed. “Give me thy note,” he
+cried; “here is the plate.”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me an acquittal first,” cried Simon, almost
+broken-hearted; “sign me a paper, and the money is
+yours.” So Troisboules wrote according to Gambouge’s
+dictation: “Received, for thirteen ounces of plate,
+twenty pounds.”</p>
+
+<p>“Monster of iniquity!” cried the painter, “fiend of
+wickedness! thou art caught in thine own snares. Hast
+thou not sold me five pounds’ worth of plate for twenty?
+Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
+dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy
+money, or I will bring thee to justice!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a
+while; but he gave up his money at last, and the dispute
+ended. Thus it will be seen that Diabolus had rather
+a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar.
+Simon now returned home, and, to do him justice, paid
+the bill for his dinner, and restored the plate.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>And now I may add (and the reader should ponder
+upon this, as a profound picture of human life), that
+Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew likewise abundantly
+moral. He was a most exemplary father. He
+fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a
+base action. And I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or
+the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar circumstances,
+would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one blot upon his character—he hated
+Mrs. Gam. worse than ever. As he grew more benevolent,
+she grew more virulent: when he went to plays,
+she went to Bible societies, and <i>vice versâ</i>: in fact, she
+led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog
+leads a cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune—for,
+as may be supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly
+things—he was the most miserable dog in the whole city
+of Paris. Only in the point of drinking did he and
+Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and during a
+considerable number of hours in each day, he thus dissipated,
+partially, his domestic chagrin. O philosophy!
+we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+wine-cup, where thou liest like truth in a well, where
+shall we find thee?</p>
+
+<p>He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered
+so much, there was so little sign of devilment in
+the accomplishment of his wishes, and the increase of
+his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years, began
+to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all,
+as that which we have described at the commencement of
+this history. He had grown, as we said, very pious and
+moral. He went regularly to mass, and had a confessor
+into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult
+that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the
+whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>“I am inclined to think, holy sir,” said Gambouge,
+after he had concluded his history, and shown how, in
+some miraculous way, all his desires were accomplished,
+“that, after all, this demon was no other than the creation
+of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle
+of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity.”</p>
+
+<p>The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out
+of church comfortably together, and entered afterwards
+a <i>café</i>, where they sat down to refresh themselves after
+the fatigues of their devotion.</p>
+
+<p>A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders
+at his button-hole, presently entered the room, and sauntered
+up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon
+and his clerical friend. “Excuse me, gentlemen,”
+he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began
+reading the papers of the day.</p>
+
+<p>“Bah!” said he, at last,—“sont-ils grands ces journaux<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+anglais? Look, sir,” he said, handing over an
+immense sheet of <i>The Times</i> to Mr. Gambouge, “was
+ever anything so monstrous?”</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge smiled, politely, and examined the proffered
+page. “It is enormous,” he said; “but I do not
+read English.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay,” said the man with the orders, “look closer at
+it, Signor Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the
+language is.”</p>
+
+<p>Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He
+turned pale as he looked at it, and began to curse the
+ices and the waiter. “Come, M. l’Abbé,” he said; “the
+heat and glare of this place are intolerable.”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The stranger rose with them. “Au plaisir de vous
+revoir, mon cher monsieur,” said he; “I do not mind
+speaking before the Abbé here, who will be my very
+good friend one of these days; but I thought it necessary
+to refresh your memory, concerning our little
+business transaction six years since; and could not exactly
+talk of it <i>at church</i>, as you may fancy.”</p>
+
+<p>Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted
+<i>Times</i>, the paper signed by himself, which the little
+Devil had pulled out of his fob.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who
+had but a year to live, grew more pious, and more careful
+than ever. He had consultations with all the doctors
+of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais. But
+his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty
+had been before; and not one of the doctors whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+he consulted could give him a pennyworth of consolation.</p>
+
+<p>Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the
+Devil, and put him to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous
+tasks; but they were all punctually performed, until
+Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.</p>
+
+<p>One day, Simon’s confessor came bounding into the
+room, with the greatest glee. “My friend,” said he, “I
+have it! Eureka!—I have found it. Send the Pope
+a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit college
+at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter’s;
+and tell his Holiness you will double all if he will give
+you absolution!”</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a
+courier to Rome <i>ventre à terre</i>. His Holiness agreed to
+the request of the petition, and sent him an absolution,
+written out with his own fist, and all in due form.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” said he, “foul fiend, I defy you! arise. Diabolus!
+your contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has
+absolved me, and I am safe on the road to salvation.”
+In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the hand of his
+confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down
+the cheeks of these good men.</p>
+
+<p>They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there
+was Diabolus sitting opposite to them holding his sides,
+and lashing his tail about, as if he would have gone
+mad with glee.</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” said he, “what nonsense is this! do you suppose
+I care about <i>that</i>?” and he tossed the Pope’s missive
+into a corner. “M. l’Abbé knows,” he said, bowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+and grinning, “that though the Pope’s paper may pass
+current <i>here</i>, it is not worth twopence in our country.
+What do I care about the Pope’s absolution? You
+might just as well be absolved by your under butler.”</p>
+
+<p>“Egad,” said the Abbé, “the rogue is right—I quite
+forgot the fact, which he points out clearly enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, Gambouge,” continued Diabolus, with horrid
+familiarity, “go thy ways, old fellow, that <i>cock won’t
+fight</i>.” And he retired up the chimney, chuckling at
+his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
+scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper
+by profession.</p>
+
+<p>Simon was left in that condition of grief in which,
+according to the newspapers, cities and nations are
+found when a murder is committed, or a lord ill of the
+gout—a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than to
+describe.</p>
+
+<p>To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now
+first made acquainted with his compact, and its probable
+consequences, raised such a storm about his ears, as
+made him wish almost that his seven years were expired.
+She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept,
+she went into such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge,
+who had completely knocked under to her, was worn out
+of his life. He was allowed no rest, night or day: he
+moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and
+cursed his stars that he ever had married the butcher’s
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>It wanted six months of the time.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once
+to have taken possession of Simon Gambouge. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+called his family and his friends together—he gave one
+of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the city of
+Paris—he gaily presided at one end of his table, while
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the
+other extremity.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, using the customary formula, he called
+upon Diabolus to appear. The old ladies screamed and
+hoped he would not appear naked; the young ones tittered,
+and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.</p>
+
+<p>A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in
+black, made his appearance, to the surprise of all present,
+and bowed all round to the company. “I will not
+show my <i>credentials</i>,” he said, blushing, and pointing to
+his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, “unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but
+I am the person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me
+what is your will.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know,” said that gentleman, in a stately and determined
+voice, “that you are bound to me, according to
+our agreement, for six months to come.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am,” replied the new comer.</p>
+
+<p>“You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or
+you forfeit the bond which I gave you?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true.”</p>
+
+<p>“You declare this before the present company?”</p>
+
+<p>“Upon my honour, as a gentleman,” said Diabolus,
+bowing, and laying his hand upon his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were
+charmed with the bland manners of the fascinating
+stranger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“My love,” continued Gambouge, mildly addressing
+his lady, “will you be so polite as to step this way?
+You know I must go soon, and I am anxious, before this
+noble company, to make a provision for one who, in
+sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been
+my truest and fondest companion.”</p>
+
+<p>Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief—all
+the company did likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly,
+and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her husband’s
+side, and took him tenderly by the hand. “Simon!”
+said she, “is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?”</p>
+
+<p>Simon continued solemnly: “Come hither, Diabolus;
+you are bound to obey me in all things for the
+six months during which our contract has to run; take,
+then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half
+a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey
+all her caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all
+the abuse which falls from her infernal tongue. Do
+this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver myself up
+at the appointed time.”</p>
+
+<p>Not Lord G——, when flogged by Lord B——, in the
+House,—not Mr. Cartlitch, of Astley’s Amphitheatre,
+in his most pathetic passages, could look more crestfallen,
+and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did now.
+“Take another year, Gambouge,” screamed he; “two
+more—ten more—a century; roast me on Lawrence’s
+gridiron, boil me in holy water, but don’t ask that: don’t,
+don’t bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!”</p>
+
+<p>Simon smiled sternly. “I have said it,” he cried;
+“do this, or our contract is at an end.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop
+of beer in the house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth
+so frightfully that every person in the company wellnigh
+fainted with the cholic. He slapped down the great
+parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and
+lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading
+out a mighty pair of wings as wide as from here to
+Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over
+one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. “You
+drunken, lazy scoundrel!” cried a shrill and well-known
+voice, “you have been asleep these two hours:” and here
+he received another terrific box on the ear.</p>
+
+<p>It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and
+the beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps
+of the tipsy Griskinissa. Nothing remained to corroborate
+his story, except the bladder of lake, and this was
+spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish,” said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling
+cheeks, “that dreams were true;” and he went to work
+again at his portrait.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the
+arts, and is footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam.
+takes in washing; and it is said that her continual dealings
+with soap-suds and hot water have been the only
+things in life which have kept her from spontaneous
+combustion.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BON-BON" id="BON-BON"></a>BON-BON<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY EDGAR ALLAN POE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#BON-BON_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Je suis plus savant que Balzac—<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plus sage que Pibrac;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">De la nation cossaque,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">La mettroit au sac;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">De Charon je passerois le lac<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">En dormant dans son bac;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">J’irois au fier Eac,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sans que mon cœur fit tic ni tac,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Presenter du tabac.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">—<i>French Vaudeville.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That Pierre Bon-Bon was a <i>restaurateur</i> of uncommon
+qualifications, no man who, during the reign of ——,
+frequented the little <i>café</i> in the <i>cul-de-sac</i> Le Febvre at
+Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at liberty to dispute.
+That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree,
+skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume,
+still more especially undeniable. His <i>pâtés à la fois</i>
+were beyond doubt immaculate; but what pen can do
+justice to his essays <i>sur la Nature</i>—his thoughts <i>sur
+l’Ame</i>—his observations <i>sur l’Esprit</i>? If his <i>omelettes</i>—if
+his <i>fricandeaux</i> were inestimable, what <i>littérateur</i>
+of that day would not have given twice as much for an
+“<i>Idée de Bon-Bon</i>” as for all the trash of all the “<i>Idées</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>”
+of all the rest of the <i>savants</i>? Bon-Bon had ransacked
+libraries which no other man had ransacked—had read
+more than any other would have entertained a notion
+of reading—had understood more than any other would
+have conceived the possibility of understanding; and
+although, while he flourished, there were not wanting
+some authors at Rouen to assert “that his <i>dicta</i> evinced
+neither the purity of the Academy, nor the depth of the
+Lyceum”—although, mark me, his doctrines were by
+no means very generally comprehended, still it did not
+follow that they were difficult of comprehension. It
+was, I think, on account of their self-evidency that many
+persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is to
+Bon-Bon—but let this go no further—it is to Bon-Bon
+that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics.
+The former was indeed not a Platonist, nor
+strictly speaking an Aristotelian—nor did he, like the
+modern Leibnitz, waste those precious hours which
+might be employed in the invention of a <i>fricassée</i> or,
+<i>facili gradu</i>, the analysis of a sensation, in frivolous
+attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of
+ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was Ionic—Bon-Bon
+was equally Italic. He reasoned <i>a priori</i>—He
+reasoned <i>a posteriori</i>. His ideas were innate—or otherwise.
+He believed in George of Trebizond—he believed
+in Bossarion. Bon-Bon was emphatically a—Bon-Bonist.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of
+<i>restaurateur</i>. I would not, however, have any friend of
+mine imagine that, in fulfilling his hereditary duties in
+that line, our hero wanted a proper estimation of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+dignity and importance. Far from it. It was impossible
+to say in which branch of his profession he took the
+greater pride. In his opinion the powers of the intellect
+held intimate connection with the capabilities of the
+stomach. I am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed
+with the Chinese, who hold that the soul lies in
+the abdomen. The Greeks at all events were right, he
+thought, who employed the same word for the mind and
+the diaphragm.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> By this I do not mean to insinuate a
+charge of gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to
+the prejudice of the metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon
+had his failings—and what great man has not a
+thousand?—if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings,
+they were failings of very little importance—faults indeed
+which, in other tempers, have often been looked
+upon rather in the light of virtues. As regards one of
+these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it in
+this history but for the remarkable prominency—the
+extreme <i>alto relievo</i>—in which it jutted out from the
+plane of his general disposition. He could never let
+slip an opportunity of making a bargain.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he was avaricious—no. It was by no means
+necessary to the satisfaction of the philosopher, that the
+bargain should be to his own proper advantage. Provided
+a trade could be effected—a trade of any kind,
+upon any terms, or under any circumstances—a triumphant
+smile was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten
+his countenance, and a knowing wink of the eye
+to give evidence of his sagacity.</p>
+
+<p>At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>humour so peculiar as the one I have just mentioned,
+should elicit attention and remark. At the epoch of our
+narrative, had this peculiarity <i>not</i> attracted observation,
+there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was
+soon reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the
+smile of Bon-Bon was found to differ widely from the
+downright grin with which he would laugh at his own
+jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown
+out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous
+bargains made in a hurry and repented of at leisure;
+and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities,
+vague longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted
+by the author of all evil for wise purposes of his own.</p>
+
+<p>The philosopher had other weaknesses—but they are
+scarcely worthy our serious examination. For example,
+there are few men of extraordinary profundity who are
+found wanting in an inclination for the bottle.
+Whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather
+a valid proof, of such profundity, it is a nice thing to
+say. Bon-Bon, as far as I can learn, did not think the
+subject adapted to minute investigation;—nor do I.
+Yet in the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical,
+it is not to be supposed that the <i>restaurateur</i> would
+lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont
+to characterize, at one and the same time, his <i>essais</i> and
+his <i>omelettes</i>. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne
+had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments
+for the Côtes du Rhône. With him Sauternes was
+to Médoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport
+with a syllogism in sipping St. Péray, but unravel an
+argument over Clos-Vougeot, and upset a theory in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same
+quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling
+propensity to which I have formerly alluded—but
+this was by no means the case. Indeed to say the truth,
+<i>that</i> trait of mind in the philosophic Bon-Bon <i>did</i> begin
+at length to assume a character of strange intensity and
+mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with the
+<i>diablerie</i> of his favourite German studies.</p>
+
+<p>To enter the little <i>café</i> in the <i>cul-de-sac</i> Le Febvre was,
+at the period of our tale, to enter the <i>sanctum</i> of a man
+of genius. Bon-Bon was a man of genius. There was
+not a <i>sous-cuisinier</i> in Rouen who could not have told
+you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat
+knew it, and forbore to whisk her tail in the presence
+of the man of genius. His large water-dog was acquainted
+with the fact, and upon the approach of his
+master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity
+of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping
+of the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog.
+It is, however, true that much of this habitual respect
+might have been attributed to the personal appearance
+of the metaphysician. A distinguished exterior will,
+I am constrained to say, have its way even with a beast;
+and I am willing to allow much in the outward man of
+the <i>restaurateur</i> calculated to impress the imagination of
+the quadruped. There is a peculiar majesty about the
+atmosphere of the little great—if I may be permitted so
+equivocal an expression—which mere physical bulk
+alone will be found at all times inefficient in creating.
+If, however, Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height,
+and if his head was diminutively small, still it was impossible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+to behold the rotundity of his stomach without
+a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon the sublime.
+In its size both dogs and men must have seen a
+type of his acquirements—in its immensity a fitting habitation
+for his immortal soul.</p>
+
+<p>I might here—if it so pleased me—dilate upon the
+matter of habiliment, and other mere circumstances of
+the external metaphysician. I might hint that the hair
+of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over his
+forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white
+flannel cap and tassels—that his pea-green jerkin was
+not after the fashion of those worn by the common class
+of <i>restaurateurs</i> at that day—that the sleeves were something
+fuller than the reigning costume permitted—that
+the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous
+period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the
+garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the
+particoloured velvet of Genoa—that his slippers were
+of bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have
+been manufactured in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing
+of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding and
+embroidery—that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
+material called <i>aimable</i>—that his sky-blue cloak,
+resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded
+all over with crimson devices, floated cavaliery
+upon his shoulders like a mist of the morning—and
+that his <i>tout ensemble</i> gave rise to the remarkable
+words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence,
+“that it was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was
+indeed a bird of Paradise, or the rather a very Paradise
+of perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon all these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+points if I pleased,—but I forbear; merely personal details
+may be left to historical novelists,—they are beneath
+the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that “to enter the <i>café</i> in the <i>cul-de-sac</i> Le
+Febvre was to enter the <i>sanctum</i> of a man of genius”—but
+then it was only the man of genius who could duly
+estimate the merits of the <i>sanctum</i>. A sign, consisting
+of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one side
+of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a
+<i>pâté</i>. On the back were visible in large letters <i>Oeuvres
+de Bon-Bon</i>. Thus was delicately shadowed forth the
+twofold occupation of the proprietor.</p>
+
+<p>Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior
+of the building presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched
+room, of antique construction, was indeed all
+the accommodation afforded by the <i>café</i>. In a corner
+of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician.
+An array of curtains, together with a canopy <i>à la
+grecque</i>, gave it an air at once classic and comfortable.
+In the corner diagonally opposite, appeared, in direct
+family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the
+<i>bibliothèque</i>. A dish of polemics stood peacefully
+upon the dresser. Here lay an ovenful of the latest
+ethics—there a kettle of duodecimo <i>mélanges</i>. Volumes
+of German morality were hand and glove with
+the gridiron—a toasting-fork might be discovered by the
+side of Eusebius—Plato reclined at his ease in the frying-pan—and
+contemporary manuscripts were filed
+away upon the spit.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects the <i>Café de Bon-Bon</i> might be said
+to differ little from the usual <i>restaurants</i> of the period.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+A large fireplace yawned opposite the door. On the
+right of the fireplace an open cupboard displayed a
+formidable array of labelled bottles.</p>
+
+<p>It was here, about twelve o’clock one night, during
+the severe winter of ——, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having
+listened for some time to the comments of his neighbours
+upon his singular propensity—that Pierre Bon-Bon,
+I say, having turned them all out of his house,
+locked the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself
+in no very pacific mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed
+arm-chair, and a fire of blazing fagots.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those terrific nights which are only met
+with once or twice during a century. It snowed fiercely,
+and the house tottered to its centre with the floods of
+wind that, rushing through the crannies of the wall, and
+pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully
+the curtains of the philosopher’s bed, and disorganized
+the economy of his <i>pâté</i>-pans and papers. The huge
+folio sign that swung without, exposed to the fury of
+the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a moaning
+sound from its stanchions of solid oak.</p>
+
+<p>It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician
+drew up his chair to its customary station by the
+hearth. Many circumstances of a perplexing nature
+had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity of
+his meditations. In attempting <i>des œufs à la Princesse</i>,
+he had unfortunately perpetrated an <i>omelette à la Reine</i>;
+the discovery of a principle in ethics had been frustrated
+by the overturning of a stew; and last, not least, he had
+been thwarted in one of those admirable bargains which
+he at all times took such especial delight in bringing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+a successful termination. But in the chafing of his
+mind at these unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not
+fail to be mingled some degree of that nervous anxiety
+which the fury of a boisterous night is so well calculated
+to produce. Whistling to his more immediate vicinity
+the large black water-dog we have spoken of before, and
+settling himself uneasily in his chair, he could not help
+casting a wary and unquiet eye toward those distant recesses
+of the apartment whose inexorable shadows not
+even the red fire-light itself could more than partially
+succeed in overcoming. Having completed a scrutiny
+whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible to himself,
+he drew close to his seat a small table covered with
+books and papers, and soon became absorbed in the task
+of retouching a voluminous manuscript, intended for
+publication on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>He had been thus occupied for some minutes, when
+“I am in no hurry, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” suddenly whispered
+a whining voice in the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet,
+overturning the table at his side, and staring around
+him in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>“Very true,” calmly replied the voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Very true!—what is very true?—how came you
+here?” vociferated the metaphysician, as his eye fell
+upon something which lay stretched at full length upon
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>“I was saying,” said the intruder, without attending to
+the interrogatories,—“I was saying that I am not at all
+pushed for time—that the business, upon which I took
+the liberty of calling, is of no pressing importance—in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+short, that I can very well wait until you have finished
+your Exposition.”</p>
+
+<p>“My Exposition!—there now!—how do <i>you</i> know?—how
+came <i>you</i> to understand that I was writing an Exposition—good
+God!”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush!” replied the figure, in a shrill undertone;
+and, arising quickly from the bed, he made a single step
+toward our hero, while an iron lamp that depended overhead
+swung convulsively back from his approach.</p>
+
+<p>The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow
+scrutiny of the stranger’s dress and appearance.
+The outlines of his figure, exceedingly lean, but much
+above the common height, were rendered minutely distinct
+by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted
+tight to the skin, but was otherwise cut very much in the
+style of a century ago. These garments had evidently
+been intended for a much shorter person than their present
+owner. His ankles and wrists were left naked for
+several inches. In his shoes, however, a pair of very
+brilliant buckles gave the lie to the extreme poverty implied
+by the other portions of his dress. His head was
+bare, and entirely bald, with the exception of the hinder-part,
+from which depended a <i>queue</i> of considerable
+length. A pair of green spectacles, with side glasses,
+protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and at
+the same time prevented our hero from ascertaining
+either their colour or their conformation. About the
+entire person there was no evidence of a shirt; but a
+white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
+precision around the throat, and the ends, hanging
+down formally side by side gave (although I dare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+say unintentionally) the idea of an ecclesiastic. Indeed,
+many other points both in his appearance and demeanour
+might have very well sustained a conception of
+that nature. Over his left ear, he carried, after the
+fashion of a modern clerk, an instrument resembling the
+<i>stylus</i> of the ancients. In a breast-pocket of his coat
+appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened
+with clasps of steel. This book, whether accidentally
+or not, was so turned outwardly from the person as to
+discover the words “<i>Rituel Catholique</i>” in white letters
+upon the back. His entire physiognomy was interestingly
+saturnine—even cadaverously pale. The forehead
+was lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of
+contemplation. The corners of the mouth were drawn
+down into an expression of the most submissive humility.
+There was also a clasping of the hands, as he stepped
+towards our hero—a deep sigh—and altogether a look
+of such utter sanctity as could not have failed to be
+unequivocally prepossessing. Every shadow of anger
+faded from the countenance of the metaphysician, as,
+having completed a satisfactory survey of his visitor’s
+person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted
+him to a seat.</p>
+
+<p>There would however be a radical error in attributing
+this instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher
+to any one of those causes which might naturally
+be supposed to have had an influence. Indeed,
+Pierre Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to understand
+of his disposition, was of all men the least likely
+to be imposed upon by any speciousness of exterior deportment.
+It was impossible that so accurate an observer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+of men and things should have failed to discover,
+upon the moment, the real character of the personage
+who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To say no
+more, the conformation of his visitor’s feet was sufficiently
+remarkable—he maintained lightly upon his
+head an inordinately tall hat—there was a tremulous
+swelling about the hinder-part of his breeches—and the
+vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. Judge,
+then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found
+himself thrown thus at once into the society of a person
+for whom he had at all times entertained the most unqualified
+respect. He was, however, too much of the
+diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions
+in regard to the true state of affairs. It was not
+his cue to appear at all conscious of the high honour he
+thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by leading his guest
+into conversation, to elicit some important ethical ideas,
+which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated
+publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same
+time immortalize himself—ideas which, I should have
+added, his visitor’s great age, and well-known proficiency
+in the science of morals, might very well have
+enabled him to afford.</p>
+
+<p>Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade
+the gentleman sit down, while he himself took occasion
+to throw some fagots upon the fire, and place upon the
+now re-established table some bottles of Mousseaux.
+Having quickly completed these operations, he drew his
+chair <i>vis-à-vis</i> to his companion’s, and waited until the
+latter should open the conversation. But plans even
+the most skilfully matured are often thwarted in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+outset of their application—and the <i>restaurateur</i> found
+himself <i>nonplussed</i> by the very first words of his visitor’s
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>“I see you know me, Bon-Bon,” said he; “ha! ha!
+ha!—he! he! he!—hi! hi! hi—ho! ho! ho!—hu!
+hu! hu!”—and the Devil, dropping at once the sanctity
+of his demeanour, opened to its fullest extent a mouth
+from ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and
+fang-like teeth, and, throwing back his head, laughed
+long, loudly, wickedly, and uproariously, while the
+black dog, crouching down upon his haunches, joined
+lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off a tangent,
+stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner
+of the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the philosopher: he was too much a man of
+the world either to laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to
+betray the indecorous trepidation of the cat. It must
+be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see the
+white letters which formed the words “<i>Rituel Catholique</i>”
+on the book in his guest’s pocket, momently changing
+both their colour and their import, and in a few seconds,
+in place of the original title, the words “<i>Registre
+des Condamnés</i>” blaze forth in characters of red. This
+startling circumstance, when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor’s
+remark, imparted to his manner an air of embarrassment
+which probably might not otherwise have
+been observed.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, sir,” said the philosopher, “why, sir, to speak
+sincerely—I believe you are—upon my word—the d—dest—that
+is to say, I think—I imagine—I <i>have</i> some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+faint—some <i>very</i> faint idea—of the remarkable honour—”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!—ah!—yes!—very well!” interrupted his Majesty;
+“say no more—I see how it is.” And hereupon,
+taking off his green spectacles, he wiped the glasses carefully
+with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited them in
+his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of
+the book, his amazement was now much increased by
+the spectacle which here presented itself to view. In
+raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to
+ascertain the colour of his guest’s, he found them by no
+means black, as he had anticipated—nor grey, as might
+have been imagined—nor yet hazel nor blue—nor indeed
+yellow nor red—nor purple—nor white—nor
+green—nor any other colour in the heavens above, or in
+the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In
+short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his
+Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but could discover no
+indications of their having existed at any previous
+period—for the space where eyes should naturally have
+been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level
+of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear
+making some inquiry into the sources of so strange
+a phenomenon; and the reply of his Majesty was at
+once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon—eyes! did you say?—oh!—ah!—I
+perceive! The ridiculous prints, eh, which
+are in circulation, have given you a false idea of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+personal appearance. Eyes!—true. Eyes, Pierre
+Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place—<i>that</i>, you
+would say, is the head?—right—the head of a worm.
+To <i>you</i>, likewise, these optics are indispensable—yet I
+will convince you that my vision is more penetrating
+than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner—a
+pretty cat—look at her—observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon,
+do you behold the thoughts—the thoughts, I say—the
+ideas—the reflections—which are being engendered
+in her pericranium? There it is now—you do not!
+She is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the
+profundity of her mind. She has just concluded that I
+am the most distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you
+are the most superficial of metaphysicians. Thus you
+see I am not altogether blind; but to one of my profession,
+the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance,
+liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron
+or a pitchfork. To you, I allow, these optical affairs
+are indispensable. Endeavour, Bon-Bon, to use
+them well; <i>my</i> vision is the soul.”</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon
+the table, and pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested
+him to drink it without scruple, and make himself
+perfectly at home.</p>
+
+<p>“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his
+Majesty, tapping our friend knowingly upon the shoulder,
+as the latter put down his glass after a thorough
+compliance with his visitor’s injunction. “A clever
+book that of yours, upon my honour. It’s a work after
+my own heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I
+think, however, might be improved, and many of your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was
+one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as
+much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack
+at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth in
+all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint
+out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose,
+Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine
+moral truth I am alluding?”</p>
+
+<p>“Cannot say that I—”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed!—why it was I who told Aristotle that, by
+sneezing, men expelled superfluous ideas through the
+proboscis.”</p>
+
+<p>“Which is—hiccup!—undoubtedly the case,” said
+the metaphysician, while he poured out for himself another
+bumper of Mousseaux, and offering his snuff-box to
+the fingers of his visitor.</p>
+
+<p>“There was Plato, too,” continued his Majesty, modestly
+declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied—“there
+was Plato, too, for whom I, at one time,
+felt all the affection of a friend. You knew Plato, Bon-Bon?—ah,
+no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me
+at Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was
+distressed for an idea. I bade him write down that
+‘ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν αὐλός.’ He said that he would do so, and went
+home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my
+conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even to
+aid a friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind
+the philosopher’s chair as he was inditing the
+‘αυλός.’</p>
+
+<p>“Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it
+upside down. So the sentence now reads ‘<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>ὁ νοῦς ἐστιν
+αύγος,’ and is, you perceive, the fundamental doctrine in
+his metaphysics.”</p>
+
+<p>“Were you ever at Rome?” asked the <i>restaurateur</i>, as
+he finished his second bottle of Mousseaux, and drew
+from the closet a larger supply of Chambertin.</p>
+
+<p>“But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was
+a time,” said the Devil, as if reciting some passage from
+a book—“there was a time when occurred an anarchy of
+five years, during which the republic, bereft of all its
+officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the
+people, and these were not legally vested with any degree
+of executive power—at that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon—at
+that time <i>only</i> I was in Rome, and I have no
+earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.”<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>“What do you think of—what do you think of—hiccup!—Epicurus?”</p>
+
+<p>“What do I think of <i>whom</i>?” said the Devil, in astonishment;
+“you surely do not mean to find any fault with
+Epicurus! What do I think of Epicurus! Do you
+mean me, sir?—I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher
+who wrote each of the three hundred treatises
+commemorated by Diogenes Laertes.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s a lie!” said the metaphysician, for the wine
+had gotten a little into his head.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well!—very well, sir!—very well, indeed,
+sir!” said his Majesty, apparently much flattered.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s a lie!” repeated the <i>restaurateur</i>, dogmatically;
+“that’s a—hiccup!—a lie!”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+<p>“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the Devil,
+pacifically, and Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at
+an argument, thought it his duty to conclude a second
+bottle of Chambertin.</p>
+
+<p>“As I was saying,” resumed the visitor—“as I was
+observing a little while ago, there are some very <i>outré</i>
+notions in that book of yours, Monsieur Bon-Bon.
+What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug
+about the soul? Pray, sir, what <i>is</i> the soul?”</p>
+
+<p>“The—hiccup!—soul,” replied the metaphysician,
+referring to his MS., “is undoubtedly—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“Indubitably—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“Indisputably—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“Incontrovertibly—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“Hiccup!—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“And beyond all question, a—”</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here the philosopher,
+looking daggers, took occasion to make an end,
+upon the spot, of his third bottle of Chambertin.)</p>
+
+<p>“Then—hiccup!—pray, sir—what—what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,”
+replied his Majesty, musingly. “I have tasted—that is
+to say, I have known some very bad souls, and some too—pretty
+good ones.” Here he smacked his lips, and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume
+in his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.</p>
+
+<p>He continued:</p>
+
+<p>“There was the soul of Cratinus—passable: Aristophanes—racy:
+Plato—exquisite—not <i>your</i> Plato,
+but Plato the comic poet; your Plato would have turned
+the stomach of Cerberus—faugh! Then let me see!
+there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and
+Terentius. Then there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and
+Naso, and Quintus Flaccus,—dear Quinty! as I called
+him when he sang a <i>saeculare</i> for my amusement, while
+I toasted him, in pure good humour, on a fork. But
+they want <i>flavour</i>, these Romans. One fat Greek is
+worth a dozen of them, and besides will <i>keep</i>, which
+cannot be said of a Quirite. Let us taste your Sauterne.”</p>
+
+<p>Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the
+<i>nil admirari</i>, and endeavoured to hand down the bottles
+in question. He was, however, conscious of a strange
+sound in the room like the wagging of a tail. Of this,
+although extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher
+took no notice:—simply kicking the dog, and requesting
+him to be quiet. The visitor continued:</p>
+
+<p>“I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;—you
+know I am fond of variety. Terentius I could
+not have told from Menander. Naso, to my astonishment,
+was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong
+twang of Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of
+Archilochus—and Titus Livius was positively Polybius
+and none other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Hiccup!” here replied Bon-Bon, and his Majesty
+proceeded:</p>
+
+<p>“But if I <i>have</i> a <i>penchant</i>, Monsieur Bon-Bon—if I
+<i>have</i> a <i>penchant</i>, it is for a philosopher. Yet, let me
+tell you, sir, it is not every dev—I mean it is not every
+gentleman who knows how to <i>choose</i> a philosopher.
+Long ones are <i>not</i> good; and the best, if not carefully
+shelled, are apt to be a little rancid on account of the
+gall.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shelled!!”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean taken out of the carcass.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think of a—hiccup!—physician?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Don’t</i> mention them!—ugh! ugh!” (Here his Majesty
+retched violently.) “I never tasted but one—that
+rascal Hippocrates!—smelt of asafoetida—ugh! ugh!
+ugh!—caught a wretched cold washing him in the Styx—and
+after all he gave me the cholera-morbus.”</p>
+
+<p>“The—hiccup!—wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the—hiccup!—abortion
+of a pill-box!”—and the philosopher
+dropped a tear.</p>
+
+<p>“After all,” continued the visitor, “after all, if a dev—if
+a gentleman wishes to <i>live</i>, he must have more talents
+than one or two; and with us a fat face is an evidence
+of diplomacy.”</p>
+
+<p>“How so?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions.
+You must know that, in a climate so sultry as
+mine, it is frequently impossible to keep a spirit alive
+for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless
+pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is <i>not</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+good), they will—smell—you understand, eh? Putrefaction
+is always to be apprehended when the souls are
+consigned to us in the usual way.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hiccup!—hiccup!—good God! how <i>do</i> you manage?”</p>
+
+<p>Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled
+violence, and the Devil half started from his
+seat;—however, with a slight sigh, he recovered his composure,
+merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I
+tell you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we <i>must</i> have no more
+swearing.”</p>
+
+<p>The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting
+thorough comprehension and acquiescence, and the
+visitor continued:</p>
+
+<p>“Why, there are <i>several</i> ways of managing. The
+most of us starve: some put up with the pickle: for my
+part I purchase my spirits <i>vivente corpore</i>, in which case
+I find they keep very well.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the body!—hiccup!—the body!!”</p>
+
+<p>“The body, the body—well, what of the body?—oh!
+ah! I perceive. Why, sir, the body is not <i>at all</i> affected
+by the transaction. I have made innumerable
+purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never
+experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and
+Nimrod, and Nero, and Caligula, and Dionysius, and
+Pisistratus, and—and a thousand others, who never
+knew what it was to have a soul during the latter part
+of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why
+isn’t there A—, now, whom you know as well as I?
+Is <i>he</i> not in possession of all his faculties, mental and
+corporeal? Who writes a keener epigram? Who reasons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+more wittily? Who—but, stay! I have his agreement
+in my pocket-book.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and
+took from it a number of papers. Upon some of these
+Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the letters <i>Machi</i>—<i>Maza</i>—<i>Robesp</i>—with
+the words <i>Caligula</i>, <i>George</i>, <i>Elizabeth</i>.
+His Majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and
+from it read aloud the following words:</p>
+
+<p>“In consideration of certain mental endowments
+which it is unnecessary to specify, and in further consideration
+of one thousand louis d’or, I, being aged one
+year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer
+of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance
+in the shadow called my soul. (Signed) A....”<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+(Here His Majesty repeated a name which I do not feel
+myself justified in indicating more unequivocally.)</p>
+
+<p>“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but, like you,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon, he was mistaken about the soul.
+The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a shadow! Ha!
+ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hu! hu! hu! Only think of a
+<i>fricasséed</i> shadow!”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Only</i> think—hiccup!—of a <i>fricasséed</i> shadow!” exclaimed
+our hero, whose faculties were becoming much
+illuminated by the profundity of His Majesty’s discourse.
+“Only think of a—hiccup!—<i>fricasséed</i> shadow!!
+Now, damme!—hiccup!—humph! If <i>I</i> would have
+been such a—hiccup!—nincompoop! <i>My</i> soul, Mr.—humph!”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Your</i> soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir—hiccup!—<i>my</i> soul is—”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+<p>“What, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>No</i> shadow, damme!”</p>
+
+<p>“Did you mean to say—”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir, <i>my</i> soul is—hiccup!—humph!—yes, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did you not intend to assert—”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>My</i> soul is—hiccup!—peculiarly qualified for—hiccup!—a—”</p>
+
+<p>“What, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Stew.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha!”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Soufflée.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Eh!”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Fricassée.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ragoût</i> and <i>fricandeau</i>—and see here, my good
+fellow! I’ll let you have it—hiccup!—a bargain.”
+Here the philosopher slapped His Majesty upon the
+back.</p>
+
+<p>“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter
+calmly, at the same time rising from his seat. The
+metaphysician stared.</p>
+
+<p>“Am supplied at present,” said His Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>“Hic-cup!—e-h?” said the philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>“Have no funds on hand.”</p>
+
+<p>“What?”</p>
+
+<p>“Besides, very unhandsome in me—”</p>
+
+<p>“Sir!”</p>
+
+<p>“To take advantage of—”</p>
+
+<p>“Hic-cup!”</p>
+
+<p>“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>Here the visitor bowed and withdrew—in what manner
+could not precisely be ascertained—but in a well-concerted
+effort to discharge a bottle at “the villain,”
+the slender chain was severed that depended from the
+ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall
+of the lamp.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Φρένες.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Ils écrivaient sur la philosophie (<i>Cicero</i>, <i>Lucretius</i>, <i>Seneca</i>), mais
+c’était la philosophie grecque.—<i>Condorcet.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Query.—<i>Arouet?</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL" id="THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL"></a>THE PRINTER’S DEVIL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span><span class="sidenote" style="font-size: 60%"><a href="#THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL_N">Notes</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>As I was sitting in my armchair and preparing an
+essay on the Devil in literature, sleep overpowered me;
+the pen fell from my hands, and my head reclined upon
+the desk. I had been thinking so much about the Devil
+in my waking hours, that the same idea pursued me
+after I had fallen asleep. I heard a gentle rap at the
+door, and having bawled out as usual, “Come in,” a little
+gentleman entered, wrapped in a large blue cloth
+cloak, with a slouched hat, and goggles over his eyes.
+After bowing and scraping with considerable ceremony,
+he took off his hat, and threw his cloak over the back
+of a chair, when I immediately perceived that my visitor
+was no mortal. His face was hideously ugly; the skin
+appearing very much like wet paper, and the forehead
+covered with those cabalistic signs whose wondrous significance
+is best known to those who correct the press.
+On the end of his long hooked nose there seemed to me
+to be growing, like a carbuncle, the first letter of the alphabet,
+glittering with ink and ready to print. I observed,
+also, that each of his fingers and toes, or rather
+claws, was in the same manner terminated by one of the
+letters of the alphabet; and as he slashed round his tail
+to brush a fly off his nose, I noticed that the letter Z
+formed the extremity of that useful member. While I
+was looking with no small astonishment and some trepidation
+at my extraordinary visitor, he took occasion to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+inform me that he had taken liberty to call, as he was
+afraid I might forget him in the treatise which I was
+writing—an omission which he assured me would cause
+him no little mortification. “In me,” says he, “you behold
+the prince and patron of printers’ devils. My
+province is to preside over the hell of books; and if you
+will only take the trouble to accompany me a little way,
+I will show you some of the wonders of that world.”
+As my imagination had lately been much excited by
+perusing Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>, I was delighted with an adventure
+which promised to turn out something like his
+wonderful journey, and I readily consented to visit my
+new friend’s dominions, and we sallied forth together.
+As we pursued our way, my conductor endeavoured to
+give me some information respecting the world I was
+about to enter, in order to prepare me for the wonders
+I should encounter there. “You must know,” remarked
+he, “that books have souls as well as men; and the moment
+any work is published, whether successful or not,
+its soul appears in precisely the same form in another
+world; either in this domain, which is subject to me, or
+in a better region, over which I have no control. I have
+power only to exhibit the place of punishment for bad
+books, periodicals, pamphlets, and, in short, publications
+of every kind.”</p>
+
+<p>We now arrived at the mouth of a cavern, which I did
+not remember to have ever noticed before, though I had
+repeatedly passed the spot in my walks. It looked to
+me more like the entrance to a coalmine than anything
+else, as the sides were entirely black. Upon examining
+them more closely, I found that they were covered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+with a black fluid which greatly resembled printer’s ink,
+and which seemed to corrode and wear away the rocks
+of the cavern wherever it touched them. “We have
+lately received a large supply of political publications,”
+said my companion; “and hell is perfectly saturated with
+their maliciousness. We carry on a profitable trade
+upon the earth, by retailing this ink to the principal political
+editors. Unfortunately, it is not found to answer
+very well for literary publications, though they have
+tried it with considerable success in printing the London
+<i>Quarterly</i> and several of the other important reviews.”</p>
+
+<p>The cavern widened as we advanced, and we came
+presently into a vast open plain, which was bounded on
+one side by a wall so high that it seemed to reach the
+very heavens. As we approached the wall I observed
+a vast gateway before us, closed up by folding doors.
+The gates opened at our approach, and we entered. I
+found myself in a warm sandy valley, bounded on one
+side by a steep range of mountains. A feeble light
+shone upon it, much like that of a sick chamber, and the
+air seemed confined and stifling like that of the abode
+of illness. My ears were assailed by a confused whining
+noise, as if all the litters of new-born puppies, kittens
+with their eyes unopened, and babes just come to
+light, in the whole world, were brought into one spot,
+and were whelping, mewing, and squalling at once. I
+turned in mute wonder to my guide for explanation;
+and he informed me that I now beheld the destined abode
+of all still-born and abortive publications; and the infantine
+noises which I heard were only their feeble wailing
+for the miseries they had endured in being brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+into the world. I now saw what the feebleness of the
+light had prevented my observing before, that the soil
+was absolutely covered with books of every size and
+shape, from the little diamond almanac up to the respectable
+quarto. I saw folios there. These books
+were crawling about and tumbling over each other like
+blind whelps, uttering, at the same time, the most
+mournful cries. I observed one, however, which remained
+quite still, occasionally groaning a little, and appeared
+like an overgrown toad oppressed with its own
+heaviness. I drew near, and read upon the back,
+“<i>Resignation</i>, a Novel.” The cover flew open, and the
+title-page immediately began to address me. I walked
+off, however, as fast as possible, only distinguishing a
+few words about “the injustice and severity of critics;”
+“bad taste of the public;” “very well considering;”
+“first effort;” “feminine mind,” &amp;c. &amp;c. I presently
+discovered a very important-looking little book, stalking
+about among the rest in a great passion, kicking the
+others out of the way, and swearing like a trooper; till
+at length, apparently exhausted with its efforts, it sunk
+down to rise no more. “Ah ha!” exclaimed my little
+diabolical friend, “here is a new comer; let’s see who he
+is;” and coming up, he turned it over with his foot so
+that we could see the back of it, upon which was printed
+“<i>The Monikins</i>, by the Author of, &amp;c. &amp;c.” I noticed
+that the book had several marks across it, as if some one
+had been flogging the unfortunate work. “It is only
+the marks of the scourge,” said my companion, “which
+the critics have used rather more severely, I think, than
+was necessary.” I expected, after all the passion I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+had seen, and the great importance of feeling, arrogance,
+and vanity the little work had manifested, that
+it would have some pert remarks to make to us; but
+it was so much exhausted that it could not say a word.
+At the bottom of the valley was a small pond of a milky
+hue, from which there issued a perfume very much like
+the smell of bread and butter. An immense number of
+thin, prettily bound manuscript books were soaking in
+this pond of milk, all of which, I was informed, were
+<i>Young Ladies’ Albums</i>, which it was necessary to
+souse in the slough, to prevent them from stealing passages
+from the various works about them. As soon as
+I heard what they were, I ran away with all my speed,
+having a mortal dread of these books.</p>
+
+<p>We had now traversed the valley, and, approaching
+the barrier of mountains, we found a passage cut
+through, which greatly resembled the Pausilipo, near
+Naples; it was closed on the side towards the valley,
+only with a curtain of white paper, upon which were
+printed the names of the principal reviews, which my
+conductor assured me were enough to prevent any of
+the unhappy works we had seen from coming near the
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>As we advanced through the mountains, occasional
+gleams of light appeared before us, and immediately
+vanished, leaving us in darkness. My guide, however,
+seemed to be well acquainted with the way, and we went
+on fearlessly till we emerged into an open field, lighted
+up by constant flashes of lightning, which glared from
+every side; the air was hot, and strongly impregnated
+with sulphur. “Each department of my dominions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>”
+said the Devil, “receives its light from the works which
+are sent there. You are now surrounded by the glittering
+but evanescent coruscations of the more recent
+novels. This department of hell was never very well
+supplied till quite lately, though Fielding, Smollett,
+Maturin, and Godwin, did what they could for us. Our
+greatest benefactors have been Disraeli, Bulwer, and
+Victor Hugo; and this glare of light, so painful to our
+eyes, proceeds chiefly from their books.” There was a
+tremendous noise like the rioting of an army of drunken
+men, with horrible cries and imprecations, and fiend-like
+laughing, which made my blood curdle; and such
+a scrambling and fighting among the books, as I never
+saw before. I could not imagine at first what could be
+the cause of this, till I discovered at last a golden hill
+rising up like a cone in the midst of the plane, with
+just room enough for one book on the summit; and I
+found that the novels were fighting like so many devils
+for the occupation of this place. One work, however,
+had gained possession of it, and seemed to maintain its
+hold with a strength and resolution which bade defiance
+to the rest. I could not at first make out the name of
+this book, which seemed to stand upon its golden throne
+like the Prince of Hell; but presently the whole arch of
+the heavens glared with new brilliancy, and the magic
+name of <i>Vivian Grey</i> flashed from the book in letters
+of scorching light. I was much afraid, however, that
+<i>Vivian</i> would not long retain his post; for I saw <i>Pelham</i>
+and <i>Peregrine Pickle</i>, and the terrible <i>Melmoth</i> with
+his glaring eyes, coming together to the assault, when
+a whirlwind seized them all four and carried them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+away to a vast distance, leaving the elevation vacant for
+some other competitor. “There is no peace to the
+wicked, you see,” said my Asmodeus. “These books
+are longing for repose, and they can get none on account
+of the insatiable vanity of their authors, whose
+desire for distinction made them careless of the sentiments
+they expressed and the principles they advocated.
+The great characteristic of works of this stamp is action,
+intense, painful action. They have none of that beautiful
+serenity which shines in Scott and Edgeworth; and
+they are condemned to illustrate, by an eternity of contest
+here, the restless spirit with which they are inspired.”</p>
+
+<p>While I was looking on with fearful interest in the
+mad combat before me, the horizon seemed to be darkened,
+and a vast cloud rose up in the image of a gigantic
+eagle, whose wings stretched from the east to
+the west till he covered the firmament. In his talons
+he carried an open book, at the sight of which the battle
+around me was calmed; the lightnings ceased to flash,
+and there was an awful stillness. Then suddenly there
+glared from the book a sheet of fire, which rose in
+columns a thousand feet high, and filled the empyrean
+with intense light; the pillars of flame curling and
+wreathing themselves into monstrous letters, till they
+were fixed in one terrific glare, and I read—“BYRON.”
+Even my companion quailed before the awful light, and
+I covered my face with my hands. When I withdrew
+them, the cloud and the book had vanished, and the
+contest was begun again—“You have seen the Prince of
+this division of hell,” said my guide.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We now began rapidly to descend into the bowels of
+the earth; and, after sinking some thousand feet, I
+found myself on terra firma again, and walking a little
+way, we came to a gate of massive ice, over which was
+written in vast letters—“My heritage is despair.” We
+passed through, and immediately found ourselves in a
+vast basin of lead, which seemed to meet the horizon on
+every side. A bright light shone over the whole region;
+but it was not like the genial light of the sun. It
+chilled me through; and every ray that fell upon me
+seemed like the touch of ice. The deepest silence prevailed;
+and though the valley was covered with books,
+not one moved or uttered a sound. I drew near to one,
+and I shivered with intense cold as I read upon it—“Voltaire.”
+“Behold,” said the demon, “the hell of infidel
+books; the light which emanates from them is the light
+of reason, and they are doomed to everlasting torpor.”
+I found it too cold to pursue my investigations any farther
+in this region, and I gladly passed on from the
+leaden gulf of Infidelity.</p>
+
+<p>I had no sooner passed the barrier which separated
+this department from the next, than I heard a confused
+sound like the quacking of myriads of ducks and geese,
+and a great flapping of wings; of which I soon saw the
+cause. “You are in the hell of newspapers,” said my
+guide. And sure enough, when I looked up I saw
+thousands of newspapers flying about with their great
+wooden back-bones, and the padlock dangling like a
+bobtail at the end, flapping their wings and hawking at
+each other like mad. After circling about in the air
+for a little while, and biting and tearing each other as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+much as they could, they plumped down, head first, into
+a deep black-looking pool, and were seen no more.
+“We place these newspapers deeper in hell than the
+Infidel publications,” said the Devil; “because they are
+so much more extensively read, and thereby do much
+greater mischief. It is a kind of pest of which there
+is no end; and we are obliged to allot the largest portion
+of our dominions to containing them.”</p>
+
+<p>We now came to an immense pile of a leaden hue,
+which I found at last to consist of old worn-out type,
+which was heaped up to form the wall of the next division.
+A monstrous u, turned bottom upwards (in this
+way ⋂) formed the arch of a gateway through which
+we passed; and then traversed a draw-bridge, which was
+thrown across a river of ink, upon whose banks millions
+of horrible little demons were sporting. I presently
+saw that they were employed in throwing into the black
+stream a quantity of books which were heaped up on
+the shore. As I looked down into the stream, I saw
+that they were immediately devoured by the most hideous
+and disgusting monsters which were floundering about
+there. I looked at one book, which had crawled out
+after being thrown into the river; it was dripping with
+filth, but I distinguished on the back the words—<i>Don
+Juan</i>. It had hardly climbed up the bank, however,
+when one of the demons gave it a kick, and sent it back
+into the stream, where it was immediately swallowed.
+On the back of some of the books which the little imps
+were tossing in, I saw the name of—<i>Rochester</i>, which
+showed me the character of those which were sent into
+this division of the infernal regions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beyond this region rose up a vast chain of mountains,
+which we were obliged to clamber over. After toiling
+for a long time, we reached the summit, and I looked
+down upon an immense labyrinth built upon the plain
+below, in which I saw a great number of large folios,
+stalking about in solemn pomp, each followed by a
+number of small volumes and pamphlets, like so many
+pages or footmen watching the beck of their master.
+“You behold here,” said the demon, “all the false works
+upon theology which have been written since the beginning
+of the Christian era. They are condemned to wander
+about to all eternity in the hopeless maze of this
+labyrinth, each folio drawing after it all the minor
+works to which it gave origin.” A faint light shone
+from these ponderous tomes; but it was like the shining
+of a lamp in a thick mist, shorn of its rays, and
+illuminating nothing around it. And if my companion
+had not held a torch before me, I should not have discerned
+the outlines of this department of the Infernal
+world. As my eye became somewhat accustomed to the
+feeble light, I discovered beyond the labyrinth a thick
+mist, which appeared to rise from some river or lake.
+“That,” said my companion, “is the distinct abode of
+German Metaphysical works, and other treatises of a
+similar unintelligible character. They are all obliged
+to pass through a press; and if there is any sense in them,
+it is thus separated from the mass of nonsense in which
+it is imbedded, and is allowed to escape to a better
+world. Very few of the works, however, are found to
+be materially diminished by passing through the
+press.” We had now crossed the plain, and stood near<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+the impenetrable fog, which rose up like a wall before
+us. In front of it was the press managed by several
+ugly little demons, and surrounded by an immense number
+of volumes of every size and shape, waiting for the
+process which all were obliged to undergo. As I was
+watching their operations, I saw two very respectable
+German folios, with enormous clasps, extended like
+arms, carrying between them a little volume, which they
+were fondling like a pet child with marks of doting
+affection. These folios proved to be two of the most
+abstruse, learned, and incomprehensible of the metaphysical
+productions of Germany; and the bantling
+which they seemed to embrace with so much affection,
+was registered on the back—“<i>Records of a School</i>.” I
+did not find that a single ray of intelligence had been extracted
+from either of the two after being subjected to
+the press. As soon as the volumes had passed through
+the operation of yielding up all the little sense they contained,
+they plunged into the intense fog, and disappeared
+for ever.</p>
+
+<p>We next approached the verge of a gulf, which appeared
+to be bottomless; and there was dreadful noise,
+like the war of the elements, and forked flames shooting
+up from the abyss, which reminded me of the crater
+of Vesuvius. “You have now reached the ancient limits
+of hell,” said the demon, “and you behold beneath
+your feet the original chaos on which my domains are
+founded. But within a few years we have been obliged
+to build a yet deeper division beyond the gulf, to contain
+a class of books that were unknown in former times.”
+“Pray, what class can be found,” I asked, “worse than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+those which I have already seen, and for which it appears
+hell was not bad enough?” “They are American
+re-prints of English publications,” replied he, “and
+they are generally works of such a despicable character,
+that they would have found their way here without being
+republished; but even where the original work was
+good, it is so degenerated by the form under which it
+re-appears in America, that its merit is entirely lost, and
+it is only fit for the seventh and lowest division of hell.”</p>
+
+<p>I now perceived a bridge spanning over the gulf,
+with an arch that seemed as lofty as the firmament. We
+hastily passed over, and found that the farthest extremity
+of the bridge was closed by a gate, over which was
+written three words. “They are the names of the three
+furies who reign over this division,” said my guide. I
+of course did not contradict him; but the words looked
+very much like some I had seen before; and the more
+I examined them, the more difficult was it to convince
+myself that the inscription was not the same thing as
+the sign over a certain publishing house in Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>“These,” said the Devil, “are called the three furies
+of the hell of books; not from the mischief they do there
+to the works about them, but for the unspeakable wrong
+they did to the same works upon the earth, by re-printing
+them in their hideous brown paper editions.” As
+soon as they beheld me, they rushed towards me with
+such piteous accents and heart-moving entreaties, that I
+would intercede to save them from their torment, that I
+was moved with the deepest compassion, and began to
+ask my conductor if there were no relief for them. But
+he hurried me away, assuring me that they only wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+to sell me some of their infernal editions, and the idea
+of owning any such property was so dreadful that it
+woke me up directly.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW16" id="THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW16"></a>THE DEVIL’S MOTHER-IN-LAW<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY FERNÁN CABALLERO<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>In a town, named Villagañanes, there was once an old
+widow uglier than the sergeant of Utrera, who was considered
+as ugly as ugly could be; drier than hay; older
+than foot-walking, and more yellow than the jaundice.
+Moreover, she had so crossgrained a disposition that Job
+himself could not have tolerated her. She had been
+nicknamed “Mother Holofernes,” and she had only to
+put her head out of doors to put all the lads to flight.
+Mother Holofernes was as clean as a new pin, and as industrious
+as an ant, and in these respects suffered no little
+vexation on account of her daughter Panfila, who was, on
+the contrary, so lazy, and such an admirer of the Quietists,
+that an earthquake would not move her. So it
+came to pass that Mother Holofernes began quarrelling
+with her daughter almost from the day that the girl was
+born.</p>
+
+<p>“You are,” she said, “as flaccid as Dutch tobacco, and
+it would take a couple of oxen to draw you out of your
+room. You fly work as you would the pest, and nothing
+pleases you but the window, you shameless girl. You
+are more amorous than Cupid himself, but, if I have any
+power, you shall live as close as a nun.”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+<p>On hearing all this, Panfila got up, yawned, stretched
+herself, and turning her back on her mother, went to the
+street door. Mother Holofernes, without paying attention
+to this, began to sweep with most tremendous energy,
+accompanying the noise of the broom with a monologue
+of this tenor:—</p>
+
+<p>“In my time girls had to work like men.”</p>
+
+<p>The broom gave the accompaniment of <i>shis</i>, <i>shis</i>, <i>shis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“And lived as secluded as nuns.”</p>
+
+<p>And the broom went <i>shis</i>, <i>shis</i>, <i>shis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Now they are a pack of fools.”—<i>Shis</i>, <i>shis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Of idlers.”—<i>Shis</i>, <i>shis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“And think of nothing but husbands.—<i>Shis</i>, <i>shis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“And are a lot of good-for-nothings.”</p>
+
+<p>The broom following with its chorus.</p>
+
+<p>By this time she had nearly reached the street door,
+when she saw her daughter making signs to a youth;
+and the handle of the broom, as the handiest implement,
+descended upon the shoulders of Panfila, and effected
+the miracle of making her run. Next, Mother Holofernes,
+grasping the broom, made for the door; but scarcely
+had the shadow of her head appeared, than it produced
+the customary effect, and the aspirant disappeared so
+swiftly that it seemed as if he must have had wings on
+his feet.</p>
+
+<p>“Drat that fellow!” shouted the mother; “I should
+like to break all the bones in his body.”</p>
+
+<p>“What for? Why should I not think of getting married?”</p>
+
+<p>“What are you saying? You get married, you fool!
+not while I live!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Why were you married, madam? and my grandmother?
+and my great grandmother?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nicely I have been repaid for it, by you, you sauce-box!
+And understand me, that if I chose to get married,
+and your grandmother also, and your great grandmother
+also, I do not intend that you shall marry; nor
+my granddaughter, nor my great granddaughter! Do
+you hear me?”</p>
+
+<p>In these gentle disputes the mother and daughter
+passed their lives, without any other result than that the
+mother grumbled more and more every day, and the
+daughter became daily more and more desirous of getting
+a husband.</p>
+
+<p>Upon one occasion, when Mother Holofernes was
+doing the washing, and as the lye was on the point of
+boiling, she had to call her daughter to help her lift the
+caldron, in order to pour its contents on to the tub of
+clothes. The girl heard her with one ear, but with the
+other was listening to a well-known voice which sang
+in the street:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I would like to love thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Did thy mother let me woo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May the demon meddle<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">In all she tries to do!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sound outside being more attractive for Panfila
+than the caldron within, she did not hasten to her
+mother, but went to the window. Mother Holofernes,
+meanwhile, seeing that her daughter did not come, and
+that time was passing, attempted to lift the caldron by
+herself, in order to pour the water upon the linen; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+as the good woman was small, and not very strong, it
+turned over, and burnt her foot. On hearing the horrible
+groans Mother Holofernes made, her daughter
+went to her.</p>
+
+<p>“Wretch, wretch!” cried the enraged Mother Holofernes
+to her daughter, “may you love Barabbas! And
+as for marrying—may Heaven grant you may marry the
+Evil One himself!”</p>
+
+<p>Sometime after this accident an aspirant presented
+himself: he was a little man, young, fair, red-haired,
+well-mannered, and had well-furnished pockets. He
+had not a single fault, and Mother Holofernes was not
+able to find any in all her arsenal of negatives. As for
+Panfila, it wanted little to send her out of her senses with
+delight. So the preparations for the wedding were
+made, with the usual grumbling accompaniment on the
+part of the bridegroom’s future mother-in-law. Everything
+went on smoothly straightforward, and without a
+break—like a railroad—when, without knowing why,
+the popular voice—a voice which is as the personification
+of conscience,—began to rise in a murmur against
+the stranger, despite the fact that he was affable, humane,
+and liberal; that he spoke well and sang better;
+and freely took the black and horny hands of the labourers
+between his own white and beringed fingers.
+They began to feel neither honoured nor overpowered by
+so much courtesy; his reasoning was always so coarse,
+although forcible and logical.</p>
+
+<p>“By my faith!” said Uncle Blas; “why does this ill-faced
+gentleman call me Mr. Blas, as if that would
+make me any better? What does it look like to you?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as for me,” said Uncle Gil, “did he not come
+to shake hands with me as if we had some plot between
+us? Did he not call me citizen? I, who have never
+been out of the village, and never want to go.”</p>
+
+<p>As for Mother Holofernes, the more she saw of her
+future son-in-law, the less regard she had for him. It
+seemed to her that between that innocent red hair and
+the cranium were located certain protuberances of a
+very curious kind; and she remembered with emotion
+that malediction she had uttered against her daughter
+on that ever memorable day on which her foot was injured
+and her washing spoilt.</p>
+
+<p>At last, the wedding day arrived. Mother Holofernes
+had made pastry and reflections—the former sweet,
+the latter bitter; a great <i>olla podrida</i> for the food, and a
+dangerous project for supper; she had prepared a barrel
+of wine that was generous, and a line of conduct that
+was not. When the bridal pair were about to retire to
+the nuptial chamber, Mother Holofernes called her
+daughter aside, and said: “When you are in your
+room, be careful to close the door and windows; shut all
+the shutters, and do not leave a single crevice open but
+the keyhole of the door. Take with you this branch
+of consecrated olive, and beat your husband with it as I
+advise you; this ceremony is customary at all marriages,
+and signifies that the woman is going to be master, and
+is followed in order to sanction and establish the rule.”</p>
+
+<p>Panfila, for the first time obedient to her mother, did
+everything that she had prescribed.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner did the bridegroom espy the branch of
+consecrated olive in the hands of his wife, than he attempted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+to make a precipitous retreat. But when he
+found the doors and windows closed, and every crevice
+stopped up, seeing no other means of escape than by
+passing through the keyhole, he crept into that; this
+spruce, red-and-white, and well-spoken bachelor being,
+as Mother Holofernes had suspected, neither more nor
+less than the Evil One himself, who, availing himself of
+the right given him by the anathema launched against
+Panfila by her mother, thought to amuse himself with
+the pleasures of a marriage, and encumber himself with
+a wife of his own, whilst so many husbands were supplicating
+him to take theirs off their hands.</p>
+
+<p>But this gentleman, despite his reputation for wisdom,
+had met with a mother-in-law who knew more than he
+did; and Mother Holofernes was not the only specimen
+of that genus. Therefore, scarcely had his lordship entered
+into the keyhole, congratulating himself upon having,
+as usual, discovered a method of escape, than he
+found himself in a phial, which his foreseeing mother-in-law
+had ready on the other side of the door; and no
+sooner had he got into it than the provident old dame
+sealed the vessel hermetically. In a most tender voice,
+and with most humble supplications, and most pathetic
+gestures, her son-in-law addressed her, and desired that
+she would grant him his liberty. But Mother Holofernes
+was not to be deceived by the demon, nor disconcerted
+by orations, nor imposed upon by honeyed words;
+she took charge of the bottle and its contents, and went
+off to a mountain. The old lady vigorously climbed to
+the summit of this mountain, and there, on its most
+elevated crest, in a rocky and secluded spot, deposited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+the phial, taking leave of her son-in-law with a shake of
+her closed fist as a farewell greeting.</p>
+
+<p>And there his lordship remained for ten years. What
+years those ten were! The world was as quiet as a pool
+of oil. Everybody attended to his own affairs, without
+meddling in those of other people. Nobody coveted the
+position, nor the wife, nor the property of other persons;
+theft became a word without signification; arms rusted;
+powder was only consumed in fireworks; prisons stood
+empty; finally, in this decade of the golden age, only
+one single deplorable event occurred ... the lawyers
+died from hunger and quietude.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! that so happy a time should have an end! But
+everything has an end in this world, even the discourses
+of the most eloquent fathers of the country. At last
+the much-to-be-envied decade came to a termination in
+the following way.</p>
+
+<p>A soldier named Briónes had obtained permission
+for a few days’ leave to enable him to visit his native
+place, which was Villagañanes. He took the road which
+led to the lofty mountain upon whose summit the son-in-law
+of Mother Holofernes was cursing all mothers-in-law,
+past, present, and future, promising as soon as ever
+he regained his power to put an end to that class of
+vipers, and by a very simple method—the abolition of
+matrimony. Much of his time was spent in composing
+and reciting satires against the invention of washing
+linen, the primal cause of his present trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the foot of the mountain, Briónes did not
+care to go round the mountain like the road, but wished
+to go straight ahead, assuring the carriers who were with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+him, that if the mountain would not go to the right-about
+for him he would pass over its summit, although it
+were so high that he should knock his head against the
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the summit, Briónes was struck
+with amazement on seeing the phial borne like a pimple
+on the nose of the mountain. He took it up, looked
+through it, and on perceiving the demon, who with years
+of confinement and fasting, the sun’s rays, and sadness,
+had dwindled and become as dried as a prune, exclaimed
+in surprise:—</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever vermin is this? What a phenomenon!”</p>
+
+<p>“I am an honourable and meritorious demon,” said
+the captive, humbly and courteously. “The perversity
+of a treacherous mother-in-law, into whose clutches I
+fell, has held me confined here during the last ten years;
+liberate me, valiant warrior, and I will grant any favour
+you choose to solicit.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should like my demission from the army,” said
+Briónes.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall have it; but uncork, uncork quickly, for it
+is a most monstrous anomaly to have thrust into a corner,
+in these revolutionary times, the first revolutionist
+in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Briónes drew the cork out slightly, and a noxious
+vapour issued from the bottle and ascended to his brain.
+He sneezed, and immediately replaced the stopper with
+such a violent blow from his hand that the cork was
+suddenly depressed, and the prisoner, squeezed down,
+gave a shout of rage and pain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“What are you doing, vile earthworm, more malicious
+and perfidious than my mother-in-law?” he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>“There is another condition,” responded Briónes,
+“that I must add to our treaty; it appears to me that the
+service I am going to do you is worth it.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what is this condition, tardy liberator?” inquired
+the demon.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like for thy ransom four dollars daily during
+the rest of my life. Think of it, for upon that depends
+whether you stay in or come out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miserable avaricious one!” exclaimed the demon,
+“I have no money.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” replied Briónes, “what an answer from a great
+lord like you! Why, friend, that is the Minister of
+War’s answer! If you can’t pay me I cannot help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you do not believe me,” said the demon, “only
+let me out, and I will aid you to obtain what you want
+as I have done for many others. Let me out, I say,
+let me out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gently,” responded the soldier, “there is nothing to
+hurry about. Understand me that I shall have to hold
+you by the tail until you have performed your promise
+to me; and if not, I have nothing more to say to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Insolent, do you not trust me then!” shouted the
+demon.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” responded Briónes.</p>
+
+<p>“What you desire is contrary to my dignity,” said the
+captive, with all the arrogance that a being of his size
+could express.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Now I must go,” said Briónes.</p>
+
+<p>“Good-bye,” said the demon, in order not to say
+<i>adieu</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But seeing that Briónes went off, the captive made
+desperate jumps in the phial, shouting loudly to the
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p>“Return, return, dear friend,” he said; and muttered
+to himself, “I should like a four-year-old bull to overtake
+you, you soulless fool!” and then he shouted,
+“Come, come, beneficent fellow, liberate me, and hold
+me by the tail, or by the nose, valiant warrior;” and
+then muttered to himself, “Some one will avenge me,
+obstinate soldier; and if the son-in-law of Mother Holofernes
+is not able to do it, there are those who will burn
+you both, face to face, in the same bonfire, or I have
+little influence.”</p>
+
+<p>On hearing the demon’s supplications Briónes returned
+and uncorked the bottle. Mother Holofernes’s
+son-in-law came forth like a chick from its shell, drawing
+out his head first and then his body, and lastly his
+tail, which Briónes seized; and the more the demon
+tried to contract it the firmer he held it.</p>
+
+<p>After the ex-captive, who was somewhat cramped, had
+occasionally stopped to stretch his arms and legs, they
+took the road to court, the demon grumbling and following
+the soldier, who carried the tail well secured in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>On their arrival they went to court, and the demon
+said to his liberator:—</p>
+
+<p>“I am going to put myself into the body of the princess,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+who is extremely beloved by her father, and I shall
+give her pains that no doctor will be able to cure; then
+you present yourself and offer to cure her, demanding
+for your recompense four dollars daily, and your discharge.
+I will then leave her to you, and our accounts
+will be settled.”</p>
+
+<p>Everything happened as arranged and foreseen by the
+demon, but Briónes did not wish to let go his hold of the
+tail, and he said:—</p>
+
+<p>“Well devised, sir, but four dollars are a ransom unworthy
+of you, of me, and of the service that we have
+undertaken. Find some method of showing yourself
+more generous. To do this will give you honour in the
+world, where, pardon my frankness, you do not enjoy
+the best of characters.”</p>
+
+<p>“Would that I could get rid of you!” said the demon
+to himself, “but I am so weak and so numbed that I am
+not able to go alone. I must have patience! that which
+men call a virtue. Oh, now I understand why so many
+fall into my power for not having practised it. Forward
+then for Naples, for it is necessary to submit in
+order to liberate my tail. I must go and submit to the
+arbitration of fate for the satisfaction of this new demand.”</p>
+
+<p>Everything succeeded according to his wish. The
+princess of Naples fell a victim to convulsive pains and
+took to her bed. The king was greatly afflicted.
+Briónes presented himself with all the arrogance his
+knowledge that he would receive the demon’s aid could
+give him. The king was willing to make use of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+services, but stipulated that if within three days he had
+not cured the princess, as he confidently promised to, he
+should be hanged. Briónes, certain of a favourable result,
+did not raise the slightest objection.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, the demon heard this arrangement
+made, and gave a leap of delight at seeing within his
+hands the means of avenging himself.</p>
+
+<p>The demon’s leap caused the princess such pain that
+she begged them to take the doctor away.</p>
+
+<p>The following day this scene was repeated. Briónes
+then knew that the demon was at the bottom of it, and
+intended to let him be hanged. But Briónes was not a
+man to lose his head.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day, when the pretended doctor arrived,
+they were erecting the gallows in front of the very palace
+door. As he entered the princess’s apartment, the
+invalid’s pains were redoubled and she began to cry out
+that they should put an end to that impostor.</p>
+
+<p>“I have not exhausted all my resources yet,” said
+Briónes gravely, “deign, your Royal Highness, to wait
+a little while.” He then went out of the room and gave
+orders in the princess’s name that all the bells of the
+city should be rung.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to the royal apartment, the demon,
+who has a mortal hatred of the sound of bells, and
+is, moreover, inquisitive, asked Briónes what the bells
+were ringing for.</p>
+
+<p>“They are ringing,” responded the soldier, “because
+of the arrival of your mother-in-law, whom I have ordered
+to be summoned.”</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the demon heard that his mother-in-law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+had arrived, than he flew away with such rapidity that
+not even a sun’s ray could have caught him. Proud as
+a peacock, Briónes was left in victorious possession of
+the field.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> From <i>Spanish Fairy Tales</i>. By Fernán Caballero. Translated by
+J.&nbsp;H. Ingram. (Philadelphia, J.&nbsp;B. Lippincott Co., 1881. By permission
+of the Publishers.)</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER17" id="THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER17"></a>THE GENEROUS GAMBLER<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Yesterday, across the crowd of the boulevard, I found
+myself touched by a mysterious Being I had always desired
+to know, and who I recognized immediately, in
+spite of the fact that I had never seen him. He had, I
+imagined, in himself, relatively as to me, a similar desire,
+for he gave me, in passing, so significant a sign in
+his eyes that I hastened to obey him. I followed him
+attentively, and soon I descended behind him into a
+subterranean dwelling, astonishing to me as a vision,
+where shone a luxury of which none of the actual houses
+in Paris could give me an approximate example. It
+seemed to me singular that I had passed so often that
+prodigious retreat without having discovered the entrance.
+There reigned an exquisite, an almost stifling
+atmosphere, which made one forget almost instantaneously
+all the fastidious horrors of life; there I breathed
+a sombre sensuality, like that of opium-smokers when,
+set on the shore of an enchanted island, over which shone
+an eternal afternoon, they felt born in them, to the soothing
+sounds of melodious cascades, the desire of never
+again seeing their households, their women, their children,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>and of never again being tossed on the decks of
+ships by storms.</p>
+
+<p>There were there strange faces of men and women,
+gifted with so fatal a beauty that I seemed to have seen
+them years ago and in countries which I failed to remember,
+and which inspired in me that curious sympathy
+and that equally curious sense of fear that I usually
+discover in unknown aspects. If I wanted to define in
+some fashion or other the singular expression of their
+eyes, I would say that never had I seen such magic radiance
+more energetically expressing the horror of
+<i>ennui</i> and of desire—of the immortal desire of feeling
+themselves alive.</p>
+
+<p>As for mine host and myself, we were already, as we
+sat down, as perfect friends as if we had always known
+each other. We drank immeasurably of all sorts of
+extraordinary wines, and—a thing not less bizarre—it
+seemed to me, after several hours, that I was no more
+intoxicated than he was.</p>
+
+<p>However, gambling, this superhuman pleasure, had
+cut, at various intervals, our copious libations, and I
+ought to say that I had gained and lost my soul, as we
+were playing, with an heroical carelessness and light-heartedness.
+The soul is so invisible a thing, often useless
+and sometimes so troublesome, that I did not experience,
+as to this loss, more than that kind of emotion I
+might have, had I lost my visiting card in the street.</p>
+
+<p>We spent hours in smoking cigars, whose incomparable
+savour and perfume give to the soul the nostalgia
+of unknown delights and sights, and, intoxicated by all
+these spiced sauces, I dared, in an access of familiarity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+which did not seem to displease him, to cry, as I lifted a
+glass filled to the brim with wine: “To your immortal
+health, Old He-Goat!”</p>
+
+<p>We talked of the universe, of its creation and of its
+future destruction; of the leading ideas of the century—that
+is to say, of Progress and Perfectibility—and, in
+general, of all kinds of human infatuations. On this
+subject his Highness was inexhaustible in his irrefutable
+jests, and he expressed himself with a splendour of diction
+and with a magnificence in drollery such as I have
+never found in any of the most famous conversationalists
+of our age. He explained to me the absurdity of different
+philosophies that had so far taken possession of
+men’s brains, and deigned even to take me in confidence
+in regard to certain fundamental principles, which I am
+not inclined to share with any one.</p>
+
+<p>He complained in no way of the evil reputation under
+which he lived, indeed, all over the world, and he assured
+me that he himself was of all living beings the
+most interested in the destruction of <i>Superstition</i>, and he
+avowed to me that he had been afraid, relatively as to
+his proper power, once only, and that was on the day
+when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the
+rest of the human herd, cry in his pulpit: “My dear
+brethren, do not ever forget, when you hear the progress
+of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of the
+Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!”</p>
+
+<p>The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally
+on the subject of Academies, and my strange host
+declared to me that he didn’t disdain, in many cases, to
+inspire the pens, the words, and the consciences of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in person,
+in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he
+had any news of God—who has not his hours of impiety?—especially
+as the old friend of the Devil. He
+said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a
+deeper shade of sadness: “We salute each other when
+we meet.” But, for the rest, he spoke in Hebrew.</p>
+
+<p>It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long
+an audience to a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous
+personage, sung by so many poets, and served by
+so many philosophers who work for his glory’s sake
+without being aware of it, said to me: “I want you to
+remember me always, and to prove to you that I—of
+whom one says so much evil—am often enough <i>bon
+diable</i>, to make use of one of your vulgar locutions.
+So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you have
+made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you
+ought to have gained, if your fate had been fortunate—that
+is to say, the possibility of solacing and of conquering,
+during your whole life, this bizarre affection of
+<i>ennui</i>, which is the source of all your maladies and of
+all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by
+you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign
+over your vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds,
+fairy palaces, shall come to seek you and shall ask you
+to accept them without your having made the least effort
+to obtain them; you can change your abode as often
+as you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+without lassitude, in lands where the climate is always
+hot, and where the women are as scented as the flowers.”
+With this he rose up and said good-bye to me
+with a charming smile.</p>
+
+<p>If it had not been for the shame of humiliating myself
+before so immense an assembly, I might have voluntarily
+fallen at the feet of this generous Gambler, to
+thank him for his unheard-of munificence. But, little
+by little, after I had left him, an incurable defiance entered
+into me; I dared no longer believe in so prodigious
+a happiness; and as I went to bed, making over again
+my nightly prayer by means of all that remained in me
+in the matter of faith, I repeated in my slumber: “My
+God, my Lord, my God! Do let the Devil keep his
+word with me!”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> From <i>The English Review</i>, November 1918. By permission of the
+Editor and Mr. Arthur Symons.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES18" id="THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES18"></a>THE THREE LOW MASSES<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span><br />
+
+<span style="font-size: 70%">A CHRISTMAS STORY</span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY ALPHONSE DAUDET<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>“Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, your reverence, two magnificent turkeys,
+stuffed with truffles. I should know something about it,
+for I myself helped to fill them. One would have said
+their skin would crack as they were roasting, it is that
+stretched....”</p>
+
+<p>“Jesu-Maria! I who like truffles so much!...
+Quick, give me my surplice, Garrigou.... And have
+you seen anything else in the kitchen besides the turkeys?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, all kinds of good things.... Since noon, we
+have done nothing but pluck pheasants, hoopoes, barn-fowls,
+and woodcocks. Feathers were flying about all
+over.... Then they have brought eels, gold carp, and
+trout out of the pond, besides....”</p>
+
+<p>“What size were the trout, Garrigou?”</p>
+
+<p>“As big as that, your reverence.... Enormous!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh heavens! I think I see them.... Have you
+put the wine in the vessels?”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+<p>“Yes, your reverence, I have put the wine in the vessels....
+But la! it is not to be compared to what you
+will drink presently, when the midnight mass is over.
+If you only saw that in the dining hall of the château!
+The decanters are all full of wines glowing with every
+colour!... And the silver plate, the chased <i>epergnes</i>,
+the flowers, the lustres!... Never will such another
+midnight repast be seen. The noble marquis has invited
+all the lords of the neighbourhood. At least forty
+of you will sit down to table, without reckoning the farm
+bailiff and the notary.... Oh, how lucky is your
+reverence to be one of them!... After a mere sniff
+of those fine turkeys, the scent of truffles follows me
+everywhere.... Yum!”</p>
+
+<p>“Come now, come now, my child. Let us keep from
+the sin of gluttony, on the night of the Nativity especially....
+Be quick and light the wax-tapers and ring
+the first bell for the mass; for it’s nearly midnight and we
+must not be behind time.”</p>
+
+<p>This conversation took place on a Christmas night in
+the year of grace one thousand six hundred and something,
+between the Reverend Dom Balaguère (formerly
+Prior of the Barnabites, now paid chaplain of the Lords
+of Trinquelague), and his little clerk Garrigou, or at
+least him whom he took for his little clerk Garrigou,
+for you must know that the devil had on that night assumed
+the round face and soft features of the young
+sacristan, in order the more effectually to lead the reverend
+father into temptation, and make him commit the
+dreadful sin of gluttony. Well then, while the supposed
+Garrigou (hum!) was with all his might making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+the bells of the baronial chapel chime out, his reverence
+was putting on his chasuble in the little sacristy of
+the château; and with his mind already agitated by all
+these gastronomic descriptions, he kept saying to himself
+as he was robing:</p>
+
+<p>“Roasted turkeys, ... golden carp, ... trout as
+big as that!...”</p>
+
+<p>Out of doors, the soughing night wind was carrying
+abroad the music of the bells, and with this, lights began
+to make their appearance on the dark sides of Mount
+Ventoux, on the summit of which rose the ancient towers
+of Trinquelague. The lights were borne by the families
+of the tenant farmers, who were coming to hear the midnight
+mass at the château. They were scaling the hill
+in groups of five or six together, and singing; the father
+in front carrying a lantern, and the women wrapped up
+in large brown cloaks, beneath which their little children
+snuggled and sheltered. In spite of the cold and the
+lateness of the hour these good folks were marching
+blithely along, cheered by the thought that after the
+mass was over there would be, as always in former
+years, tables set for them down in the kitchens. Occasionally
+the glass windows in some lord’s carriage,
+preceded by torch-bearers, would glisten in the moon-light
+on the rough ascent; or perhaps a mule would jog
+by with tinkling bells, and by the light of the misty lanterns
+the tenants would recognize their bailiff and would
+salute him as he passed with:</p>
+
+<p>“Good evening, Master Arnoton.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good evening. Good evening, my friend.”</p>
+
+<p>The night was clear, and the stars were twinkling with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+frost; the north wind was nipping, and at times a fine
+small hail, that slipped off one’s garments without wetting
+them, faithfully maintained the tradition of Christmas
+being white with snow. On the summit of the hill,
+as the goal towards which all were wending, gleamed
+the château, with its enormous mass of towers and
+gables, and its chapel steeple rising into the blue-black
+sky. A multitude of little lights were twinkling, coming,
+going, and moving about at all the windows; they
+looked like the sparks one sees running about in the
+ashes of burnt paper.</p>
+
+<p>After you had passed the drawbridge and the postern
+gate, it was necessary, in order to reach the chapel, to
+cross the first court, which was full of carriages, footmen
+and sedan chairs, and was quite illuminated by the
+blaze of torches and the glare of the kitchen fires. Here
+were heard the click of turnspits, the rattle of sauce-pans,
+the clash of glasses and silver plate in the commotion
+attending the preparation of the feast; while
+over all rose a warm vapour smelling pleasantly of
+roast meat, piquant herbs, and complex sauces, and
+which seemed to say to the farmers, as well as to the
+chaplain and to the bailiff, and to everybody:</p>
+
+<p>“What a good midnight repast we are going to have
+after the mass!”</p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Ting-a-ring!—a—ring!</p>
+
+<p>The midnight mass is beginning in the chapel of the
+château, which is a cathedral in miniature, with groined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+and vaulted roofs, oak wood-work as high as the walls,
+expanded draperies, and tapers all aglow. And what
+a lot of people! What grand dresses! First of all,
+seated in the carved stalls that line the choir, is the
+Lord of Trinquelague in a coat of salmon-coloured silk,
+and about him are ranged all the noble lords who have
+been invited.</p>
+
+<p>On the opposite side, on velvet-covered praying-stools,
+the old dowager marchioness in flame-coloured brocade,
+and the youthful Lady of Trinquelague wearing a lofty
+head-dress of plaited lace in the newest fashion of the
+French court, have taken their places. Lower down,
+dressed in black, with punctilious wigs, and shaven
+faces, like two grave notes among the gay silks and the
+figured damasks, are seen the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton,
+and the notary Master Ambroy. Then come the stout
+major-domos, the pages, the horsemen, the stewards,
+Dame Barbara, with all her keys hanging at her side on
+a real silver ring. At the end, on the forms, are the
+lower class, the female servants, the cotter farmers and
+their families; and lastly, down there, near the door,
+which they open and shut very carefully, are messieurs
+the scullions, who enter in the interval between two
+sauces, to take a little whiff of mass; and these bring
+the smell of the repast with them into the church, which
+now is in high festival and warm from the number of
+lighted tapers.</p>
+
+<p>Is it the sight of their little white caps that so distracts
+the celebrant? Is it not rather Garrigou’s bell?
+that mad little bell which is shaken at the altar foot with
+an infernal impetuosity that seems all the time to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+saying: “Come, let us make haste, make haste....
+The sooner we shall have finished, the sooner shall we
+be at table.” The fact is that every time this devil’s
+bell tinkles the chaplain forgets his mass, and thinks
+of nothing but the midnight repast. He fancies he sees
+the cooks bustling about, the stoves glowing with forge-like
+fires, the two magnificent turkeys, filled, crammed,
+marbled with truffles....</p>
+
+<p>Then again he sees, passing along, files of little pages
+carrying dishes enveloped in tempting vapours, and with
+them he enters the great hall now prepared for the feast.
+Oh delight! there is the immense table all laden and
+luminous, peacocks adorned with their feathers, pheasants
+spreading out their reddish-brown wings, ruby-coloured
+decanters, pyramids of fruit glowing amid green
+boughs, and those wonderful fish Garrigou (ah well,
+yes, Garrigou!) had mentioned, laid on a couch of fennel,
+with their pearly scales gleaming as if they had just
+come out of the water, and bunches of sweet-smelling
+herbs in their monstrous snouts. So clear is the vision
+of these marvels that it seems to Dom Balaguère that all
+these wondrous dishes are served before him on the
+embroidered altar-cloth, and two or three times instead
+of the <i>Dominus vobiscum</i>, he finds himself saying the
+<i>Benedicite</i>. Except these slight mistakes, the worthy
+man pronounces the service very conscientiously, without
+skipping a line, without omitting a genuflexion; and
+all goes tolerably well until the end of the first mass;
+for you know that on Christmas Day the same officiating
+priest must celebrate three consecutive masses.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s one done!” says the chaplain to himself with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+a sigh of relief; then, without losing a moment, he motioned
+to his clerk, or to him whom he supposed to be
+his clerk, and...</p>
+
+<p>“Ting-a-ring ... Ting-a-ring, a-ring!”</p>
+
+<p>Now the second mass is beginning, and with it begins
+also Dom Balaguère’s sin. “Quick, quick, let us make
+haste,” Garrigou’s bell cries out to him in its shrill little
+voice, and this time the unhappy celebrant, completely
+given over to the demon of gluttony, fastens upon the
+missal and devours its pages with the eagerness of his
+over-excited appetite. Frantically he bows down, rises
+up, merely indicates the sign of the cross and the genuflexions,
+and curtails all his gestures in order to get
+sooner finished. Scarcely has he stretched out his arms
+at the gospel, before he is striking his breast at the
+<i>Confiteor</i>. It is a contest between himself and the clerk
+as to who shall mumble the faster. Versicles and responses
+are hurried over and run one into another.
+The words, half pronounced, without opening the mouth,
+which would take up too much time, terminate in unmeaning
+murmurs.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Oremus ps ... ps ... ps....</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Mea culpa ... pa ... pa....</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Like vintagers in a hurry pressing grapes in the vat,
+these two paddle in the mass Latin, sending splashes in
+every direction.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Dom ... scum!...</i>” says Balaguère.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>... Stutuo!...</i>” replies Garrigou; and all the
+time the cursed little bell is tinkling there in their ears,
+like the jingles they put on post-horses to make them gallop
+fast. You may imagine at that speed a low mass is
+quickly disposed of.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“That makes two,” says the chaplain quite panting;
+then without taking time to breathe, red and perspiring,
+he descends the altar steps and...</p>
+
+<p>“Ting-a-ring!... Ting-a-ring!...”</p>
+
+<p>Now the third mass is beginning. There are but a
+few more steps to be taken to reach the dining-hall; but,
+alas! the nearer the midnight repast approaches the more
+does the unfortunate Balaguère feel himself possessed
+by mad impatience and gluttony. The vision becomes
+more distinct; the golden carps, the roasted turkeys are
+there, there!... He touches them, ... he ... oh
+heavens! The dishes are smoking, the wines perfume
+the air; and with furiously agitated clapper, the little
+bell is crying out to him:</p>
+
+<p>“Quick, quick, quicker yet!”</p>
+
+<p>But how could he go quicker? His lips scarcely
+move. He no longer pronounces the words; ... unless
+he were to impose upon Heaven outright and trick it
+out of its mass.... And that is precisely what he does,
+the unfortunate man!... From temptation to temptation;
+he begins by skipping a verse, then two. Then
+the epistle is too long—he does not finish it, skims over
+the gospel, passes before the <i>Credo</i> without going into it,
+skips the <i>Pater</i>, salutes the <i>Preface</i> from a distance, and
+by leaps and bounds thus hurls himself into eternal
+damnation, constantly followed by the vile Garrigou
+(<i>vade retro, Satanas!</i>), who seconds him with wonderful
+skill, sustains his chasuble, turns over the leaves two at
+a time, elbows the reading-desks, upsets the vessels, and
+is continually sounding the little bell louder and louder,
+quicker and quicker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>You should have seen the scared faces of all who
+were present, as they were obliged to follow this mass
+by mere mimicry of the priest, without hearing a word;
+some rise when others kneel, and sit down when the others
+are standing up, and all the phases of this singular
+service are mixed up together in the multitude of different
+attitudes presented by the worshippers on the
+benches....</p>
+
+<p>“The <i>abbé</i> goes too fast.... One can’t follow him,”
+murmured the old dowager, shaking her head-dress in
+confusion. Master Arnoton with great steel spectacles
+on his nose is searching in his prayer-book to find where
+the dickens they are. But at heart all these good
+folks, who themselves are thinking about feasting, are
+not sorry that the mass is going on at this post haste;
+and when Dom Balaguère with radiant face turns towards
+those present and cries with all his might: “<i>Ite,
+missa est</i>,” they all respond to him a “<i>Deo gratias</i>” in
+but one voice, and that as joyous and enthusiastic, as
+if they thought themselves already seated at the midnight
+repast and drinking the first toast.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Five minutes afterwards the crowd of nobles were sitting
+down in the great hall, with the chaplain in the
+midst of them. The château, illuminated from top to
+bottom, was resounding with songs, with shouts, with
+laughter, with uproar; and the venerable Dom Balaguère
+was thrusting his fork into the wing of a fowl, and
+drowning all remorse for his sin in streams of regal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+wine and the luscious juices of the viands. He ate and
+drank so much, the dear, holy man, that he died during
+the night of a terrible attack, without even having had
+time to repent; and then in the morning when he got
+to heaven, I leave you to imagine how he was received.</p>
+
+<p>He was told to withdraw on account of his wickedness.
+His fault was so grievous that it effaced a whole
+lifetime of virtue.... He had robbed them of a midnight
+mass.... He should have to pay for it with
+three hundred, and he should not enter into Paradise
+until he had celebrated in his own chapel these three
+hundred Christmas masses in the presence of all those
+who had sinned with him and by his fault....</p>
+
+<p>... And now this is the true legend of Dom Balaguère
+as it is related in the olive country. At the present
+time the château of Trinquelague no longer exists,
+but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount Ventoux,
+amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles
+in the wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation;
+there are birds’ nests at the corners of the altar,
+and in the recesses of the lofty windows, from which the
+stained glass has long ago disappeared. It seems, however,
+that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
+wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to
+the masses and to the midnight repasts, see this phantom
+of a chapel illuminated by invisible tapers that burn in
+the open air, even in snow and wind. You may laugh
+at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
+Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared
+to me that one Christmas night, when he was a little
+tipsy, he lost his way on the hill of Trinquelague; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+this is what he saw.... Till eleven o’clock, nothing.
+All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly, about
+midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple,
+an old, old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues
+off. Very soon Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and
+uncertain shadows moving in the road that climbs the
+hill. They passed on beneath the chapel porch, and
+murmured:</p>
+
+<p>“Good evening, Master Arnoton!”</p>
+
+<p>“Good evening, good evening, my friends!” ...</p>
+
+<p>When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very
+courageous, silently approached, and when he looked
+through the broken door, a singular spectacle met his
+gaze. All those he had seen pass were seated round the
+choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old seats
+still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
+lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in
+flowered jackets such as our grandfathers had; all with
+an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From time to time
+the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
+were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit
+round the tapers, the flames of which rose straight and
+ill-defined, as if they were burning behind a veil; and
+what amused Garrigue very much was a certain personage
+with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
+his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was
+quite entangled, and kept itself upright by noiselessly
+flapping its wings....</p>
+
+<p>At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure
+was on his knees in the middle of the choir, desperately
+shaking a clapperless and soundless bell, whilst a priest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+clad in ancient gold, was coming and going before the
+altar, reciting prayers of which not a word was heard....
+Most certainly this was Dom Balaguère in the act
+of saying his third low mass.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> From <i>The Fig and the Idler, an Algerian Legend, and Other
+Stories</i>, by Alphonse Daudet. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. (By
+permission of the Publisher.)</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="DEVIL-PUZZLERS19" id="DEVIL-PUZZLERS19"></a>DEVIL-PUZZLERS<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS<span class="sidenote"><a href="#DEVIL-PUZZLERS_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It will not do at all to disbelieve in the existence of a
+personal devil. It is not so many years ago that one
+of our profoundest divines remarked with indignation
+upon such disbelief. “No such person?” cried the doctor
+with energy. “Don’t tell me! I can hear his tail
+snap and crack about amongst the churches any day!”</p>
+
+<p>And if the enemy is, in truth, still as vigorously active
+among the sons of God as he was in the days of Job
+(that is to say, in the time of Solomon, when, as the critics
+have found out, the Book of Job was written), then
+surely still more is he vigilant and sly in his tricks for
+foreclosing his mortgages upon the souls of the wicked.</p>
+
+<p>And once more: still more than ever is his personal
+appearance probable in these latter days. The everlasting
+tooting of the wordy Cumming has proclaimed
+the end of all things for a quarter of a century; and he
+will surely see his prophecy fulfilled if he can only keep
+it up long enough. But, though we discredit the sapient
+Second-Adventist as to the precise occasion of the diabolic
+avatar, has there not been a strange coincidence
+between his noisy declarations, and other evidences of
+an approximation of the spiritual to the bodily sphere
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>of life? Is not this same quarter of a century that of
+the Spiritists? Has it not witnessed the development
+of Od? And of clairvoyance? And have not the doctrines
+of ghosts, and re-appearances of the dead, and of
+messages from them, risen into a prominence entirely
+new, and into a coherence and semblance at least of
+fact and fixed law such as was never known before?
+Yea, verily. Of all times in the world’s history, to reject
+out of one’s beliefs either good spirits or bad, angelology
+or diabology, chief good being, or chief bad
+being, this is the most improper.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hicok was trebly liable to the awful temptation,
+under which he had assuredly fallen, over and above
+the fact that he was a prig, which makes one feel the
+more glad that he was so handsomely come up with in
+the end; such a prig that everybody who knew him,
+invariably called him (when he wasn’t by) Hicok-alorum.
+This charming surname had been conferred
+on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got
+into a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky
+ways of dodging out of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok
+knew too much to know <i>that</i>; and so he acquired his fine
+title to teach him one thing more.</p>
+
+<p>Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,—</p>
+
+<ul><li>1. He was foreign-born.</li>
+
+<li>2. He was a Scotchman.</li>
+
+<li>3. He was a physician and surgeon.</li></ul>
+
+
+<p>The way in which these causes operated was as follows
+(I wish it were allowable to use Artemas Ward’s
+curiously satisfactory vocable “thusly:” like Mrs. Wiggle’s
+soothing syrup, it “supplies a real want”):<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>—</p>
+
+<p>Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing
+moral stamina of a native American, and therefore was
+comparatively easily beset by sin. Being, secondly, a
+Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited, with a
+conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other
+folks sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly
+sure of his utter mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics,
+or, as he used to call it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization,
+<i>dialektik</i>. Now, in the latter two, the
+Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are
+simply imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence
+of God, has been joined with an equally complete
+conviction of the exact opposite. Let not man, therefore,
+put those traits asunder—not so much by reason
+of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses
+would try to convince a Scotchman—or anybody else,
+for that matter.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen
+of this profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing
+materialists, or else implicit and extreme Calvinistic
+Presbyterians, “of the large blue kind.” And
+they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
+self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not
+Majendie say to his students, “Gentlemen, disease is a
+subject which physicians know nothing about”?</p>
+
+<p>So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal
+devil, and believed in his own ability to get the
+upper hand of that individual in a tournament of the wits.
+Ah, he learned better by terrible experience! The doctor
+was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair, a
+freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+and eyelashes, which made him look as if he had
+finished off his toilet with just a light flourish from the
+dredging-box. He was erect of carriage, and of a
+prompt, ridiculous alertness of step and motion, very
+much like that of Major Wellington De Boots. And his
+face commonly wore a kind of complacent serenity such
+as the Hindoos ascribe to Buddha. I know a little snappish
+dentist’s-goods dealer up town, who might be mistaken
+for Hicok-alorum any day.</p>
+
+<p>Well, well—what had the doctor done? Why—it will
+sound absurd, probably, to some unbelieving people—but
+really Dr. Hicok confessed the whole story to me himself:
+he had made a bargain with the Evil One! And
+indeed he was such an uncommonly disagreeable-looking
+fellow, that, unless on some such hypothesis, it is impossible
+to imagine how he could have prospered as he
+did. He gained patients, and cured them too; made
+money; invested successfully; bought a brown-stone
+front—a house, not a wiglet—then bought other real estate;
+began to put his name on charity subscription lists,
+and to be made vice-president of various things.</p>
+
+<p>Chiefest of all,—it must have been by some superhuman
+aid that Dr. Hicok married his wife, the then and
+present Mrs. Hicok. Dear me! I have described the
+doctor easily enough. But how infinitely more difficult
+it is to delineate Beauty than the Beast: did you ever
+think of it? All I can say is, that she is a very lovely
+woman now; and she must have been, when the doctor
+married her, one of the loveliest creatures that ever lived—a
+lively, graceful, bright-eyed brunette, with thick fine
+long black hair, pencilled delicate eyebrows, little pink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+ears, thin high nose, great astonished brown eyes, perfect
+teeth, a little rosebud of a mouth, and a figure so
+extremely beautiful that nobody believed she did not
+pad—hardly even the artists who—those of them at
+least who work faithfully in the life-school—are the
+very best judges extant of truth in costume and personal
+beauty. But, furthermore, she was good, with the innocent
+unconscious goodness of a sweet little child; and
+of all feminine charms—even beyond her supreme grace
+of motion—she possessed the sweetest, the most resistless—a
+lovely voice; whose tones, whether in speech or
+song, were perfect in sweetness, and with a strange penetrating
+sympathetic quality and at the same time with
+the most wonderful half-delaying completeness of articulation
+and modulation, as if she enjoyed the sound
+of her own music. No doubt she did; but it was unconsciously,
+like a bird. The voice was so sweet, the
+great loveliness and kindness of soul it expressed were
+so deep, that, like every exquisite beauty, it rayed forth
+a certain sadness within the pleasure it gave. It awakened
+infinite, indistinct emotions of beauty and perfection—infinite
+longings.</p>
+
+<p>It’s of no use to tell me that such a spirit—she really
+ought not to be noted so low down as amongst human
+beings—that such a spirit could have been made glad
+by becoming the yoke-fellow of Hicok-alorum, by influences
+exclusively human. No!—I don’t believe it—I
+won’t believe it—it can’t be believed. I can’t convince
+you, of course, for you don’t know her; but if you did,
+along with the rest of the evidence, and if your knowledge
+was like mine, that from the testimony of my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+eyes and ears and judgment—you would know, just as I
+do, that the doctor’s possession of his wife was the key-stone
+of the arch of completed proof on which I found
+my absolute assertion that he had made that bargain.</p>
+
+<p>He certainly had! A most characteristic transaction
+too; for while, after the usual fashion, it was agreed
+by the “party of the first part,”—viz., Old Scratch—that
+Dr. Hicok should succeed in whatever he undertook
+during twenty years, and by the party of the second
+part, that at the end of that time the D—— should fetch
+him in manner and form as is ordinarily provided, yet
+there was added a peculiar clause. This was, that,
+when the time came for the doctor to depart, he should
+be left entirely whole and unharmed, in mind, body, and
+estate, provided he could put to the Devil three consecutive
+questions, of which either one should be such that
+that cunning spirit could not solve it on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>So for twenty years Dr. Hicok lived and prospered,
+and waxed very great. He did not gain one single
+pound avoirdupois however, which may perchance seem
+strange, but is the most natural thing in the world. Who
+ever saw a little, dry, wiry, sandy, freckled man, with
+white eyebrows, that did grow fat? And besides, the
+doctor spent all his leisure time in hunting up his saving
+trinity of questions; and hard study, above all for such
+a purpose, is as sure an anti-fattener as Banting.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the Scotch metaphysicians by heart already,
+<i>ex-officio</i> as it were; but he very early gave up the idea
+of trying to fool the Devil with such mud-pie as that.
+Yet be it understood, that he found cause to except Sir
+William Hamilton from the muddle-headed crew. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+chewed a good while, and pretty hopefully, upon the
+Quantification of the Predicate; but he had to give that
+up too, when he found out how small and how dry a
+meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
+Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload
+more of old casuists, Romanist and Protestant.</p>
+
+<p>He exhausted the learning of the Development
+Theory. He studied and experimented up to the existing
+limits of knowledge on the question of the Origin of
+Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
+could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at
+the end of our noses on that, as well as most other questions.
+He hammered his way through the whole controversy
+on the Freedom of the Will. He mastered the
+whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and
+of two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American
+college professors on the other, on the question of
+Protection or Free Trade. He made, with vast pains,
+an extensive collection of the questions proposed at debating
+societies and college-students’ societies with long
+Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr.
+Hicok had got the idea, that, from the spontaneous activity
+of so many free young geniuses, many wondrous
+and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having, however,
+tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all
+these innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were
+only seventeen questions debated! The doctor read me
+a curious little memorandum of his conclusions on this
+unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed some
+day.</p>
+
+<p>He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+little Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat
+the Devil out of his soul, can accomplish an amazing
+deal in twenty years. He even went so far as to take
+into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
+the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in
+that case, would be the mortification of having stooped
+to an inadequate adversary—a foeman unworthy of his
+steel. So he weighed such queries as the old scholastic
+<i>brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
+intentiones?</i> and that beautiful moot point wherewith
+Sir Thomas More silenced the challenging schoolmen
+of Bruges, <i>An averia carrucae capta in vetito nomio
+sint irreplegibilia?</i></p>
+
+<p>He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and
+among the chips from his workshop is a really clever
+theory of conundrums. He has a classification and
+discussion of them, all his own, and quite ingenious
+and satisfactory, which divides them into answerable
+and unanswerable, and, under each of these, into resemblant
+and differential.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: let the four classes be distinguished
+with the initials of those four terms, A.&nbsp;R., A.&nbsp;D., U.&nbsp;R.,
+and U.&nbsp;D.; you will find that the Infinite Possible Conundrum
+(so to speak) can always be reduced under one of
+those four heads. Using symbols, as they do in discussing
+syllogism—indeed, by the way, a conundrum
+is only a jocular variation in the syllogism, an intentional
+fallacy for fun (read Whately’s <i>Logic</i>, Book III.,
+and see if it isn’t so)—using symbols, I say, you have
+these four “figures:”—</p>
+
+<p>I. (A.&nbsp;R.) Why is A like B? (answerable): as, Why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+is a gentleman who gives a young lady a young dog, like
+a person who rides rapidly up hill? A. Because he
+gives a gallop up (gal-a-pup).</p>
+
+<p><i>Sub-variety</i>; depending upon a violation of something
+like the “principle of excluded middle,” a very
+fallacy of a fallacy; such as the ancient “nigger-minstrel!”
+case, Why is an elephant like a brick? A. Because
+neither of them can climb a tree.</p>
+
+<p>II. (A.&nbsp;D.) Why is A <i>unlike</i> B? (answerable) usually
+put thus: What is the difference between A and
+B? (Figure I., if worded in the same style, would become:
+What is the similarity between A and B?): as,
+What is the difference between the old United-States
+Bank and the Fulton Ferry-boat signals in thick weather?
+A. One is a fog whistle, and the other is a Whig fossil.</p>
+
+<p>III. (U.&nbsp;R.) Why is A like B? (unanswerable): as
+Charles Lamb’s well-known question, Is that your own
+hare, or a wig?</p>
+
+<p>IV. (U.&nbsp;D.) Why is A <i>unlike</i> B? (unanswerable): i.&nbsp;e.,
+What is the difference, &amp;c., as, What is the difference
+between a fac simile and a sick family; or between hydraulics
+and raw-hide licks?</p>
+
+<p>But let me not diverge too far into frivolity. All the
+hopefully difficult questions Dr. Hicok set down and
+classified. He compiled a set of rules on the subject,
+and indeed developed a whole philosophy of it, by which
+he struck off, as soluble, questions or classes of them.
+Some he thought out himself; others were now and then
+answered in some learned book, that led the way
+through the very heart of one or another of his biggest
+mill-stones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So it was really none too much time that he had; and,
+in truth, he did not actually decide upon his three questions,
+until just a week before the fearful day when he
+was to put them.</p>
+
+<p>It came at last, as every day of reckoning surely
+comes; and Dr. Hicok, memorandum in hand, sat in
+his comfortable library about three o’clock on one beautiful
+warm summer afternoon, as pale as a sheet, his
+heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp’s biggest steam-hammer
+at Essen, his mouth and tongue parched and
+feverish, a pitcher of cold water at hand from which
+he sipped and sipped, though it seemed as if his throat
+repelled it into “the globular state,” or dispersed it into
+steam, as red-hot iron does. Around him were the records
+of the vast army of doubters and quibblers in whose
+works he had been hunting, as a traveller labours
+through a jungle, for the deepest doubts, the most remote
+inquiries.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than
+reason, which makes a desperate man try to believe by
+his will what he longs to know to be true, Dr. Hicok
+would say to himself, “I know I’ve got him!” And then
+his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly,
+and with so deadly a faintness, as the other side
+of his awful case loomed before him, and he thought,
+“But if—?” He would not finish <i>that</i> question; he
+could not. The furthest point to which he could bring
+himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence
+in the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>There was a ring at the street-door. The servant
+brought in a card, on a silver salver.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p>MR. APOLLO LYON</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Show the gentleman in,” said the doctor. He spoke
+with difficulty; for the effort to control his own nervous
+excitement was so immense an exertion, that he hardly
+had the self-command and muscular energy even to articulate.</p>
+
+<p>The servant returned, and ushered into the library a
+handsome, youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman,
+pale, with large melancholy black eyes, and
+dressed in the most perfect and quiet style.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree
+of steadiness and politeness that did him the greatest
+credit.</p>
+
+<p>“How do you do, sir?” he said: “I am happy”—but
+it struck him that he wasn’t, and he stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>“Very right, my dear sir,” replied the guest, in a voice
+that was musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient
+in tone. “Very right; how hollow those formulas are!
+I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I am glad to see
+<i>you</i>, doctor. Now, that is really the fact.”</p>
+
+<p>No doubt! “Divil doubt him!” as an Irishman would
+say. So is a cat glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something
+like these thoughts arose in the doctor’s mind; he
+smiled as affably as he could, and requested the visitor
+to be seated.</p>
+
+<p>“Thanks!” replied he, and took the chair which the
+doctor moved up to the table for him. He placed his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+hat and gloves on the table. There was a brief pause,
+as might happen if any two friends sat down at their
+ease for a chat on matters and things in general. The
+visitor turned over a volume or two that lay on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>“The Devil,” he read from one of them; “His Origin,
+Greatness, and Decadence. By the Rev. A. Réville,
+D.D.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” he commented quietly. “A Frenchman, I observe.
+If it had been an Englishman, I should fancy
+he wrote the book for the sake of the rhyme in the title.
+Do you know, doctor, I fancy that incredulity of his will
+substitute one dash for the two periods in the reverend
+gentleman’s degree! I know no one greater condition of
+success in some lines of operation, than to have one’s existence
+thoroughly disbelieved in.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor forced himself to reply: “I hardly know
+how I came to have the book here. Yet he does make
+out a pretty strong case. I confess I would like to be
+certified that he is right. Suppose you allow yourself
+to be convinced?” And the poor fellow grinned: it
+couldn’t be called a smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, really, I’ll look into it. I’ve considered the
+point though, not that I’m sure I could choose. And
+you know, as the late J. Milton very neatly observed, one
+would hardly like to lose one’s intellectual being,
+‘though full of pain;’” and he smiled, not unkindly but
+sadly, and then resumed: “A Bible too. Very good
+edition. I remember seeing it stated that a professional
+person made it his business to find errors of the press
+in one of the Bible Society’s editions—this very one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+I think; and the only one he could discover was a single
+‘wrong font.’ Very accurate work—very!”</p>
+
+<p>He had been turning over the leaves indifferently as
+he spoke, and laid the volume easily back. “Curious
+old superstition that,” he remarked, “that certain personages
+were made uncomfortable by this work!” And
+he gave the doctor a glance, as much as to ask, in the
+most delicate manner in the world, “Did you put that
+there to scare me with?”</p>
+
+<p>I think the doctor blushed a little. He had not really
+expected, you know,—still, in case there should be any
+prophylactic influence—? No harm done, in any
+event; and that was precisely the observation made by
+the guest.</p>
+
+<p>“No harm done, my dear fellow!” he said, in his
+calm, quiet, musical voice. No good, either, I imagine
+they both of them added to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>There is an often repeated observation, that people
+under the pressure of an immeasurable misery or agony
+seem to take on a preternaturally sharp vision for
+minute details, such as spots in the carpet, and sprigs in
+the wall-paper, threads on a sleeve, and the like. Probably
+the doctor felt this influence. He had dallied a
+little, too, with the crisis; and so did his visitor—from
+different motives, no doubt; and, as he sat there, his eye
+fell on the card that had just been brought to him.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon,” he said; “but might I ask a
+question about your card?”</p>
+
+<p>“Most certainly, doctor: what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why—it’s always a liberty to ask questions about a
+gentleman’s name, and we Scotchmen are particularly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+sensitive on the point; but I have always been interested
+in the general subject of patronomatology.”</p>
+
+<p>The other, by a friendly smile and a deprecating wave
+of the hand, renewed his welcome to the doctor’s question.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s this: How did you come to decide upon
+that form of name—Mr. Apollo Lyon?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! just a little fancy of mine. It’s a newly-invented
+variable card, I believe they call it. There’s a
+temporary ink arrangement. It struck me it was liable
+to abuse in case of an assumption of <i>aliases</i>; but perhaps
+that’s none of my business. You can easily take
+off the upper name, and another one comes out underneath.
+I’m always interested in inventions. See.”</p>
+
+<p>And as the text, “But they have sought out many inventions,”
+passed through Dr. Hicok’s mind, the other
+drew forth a white handkerchief, and, rubbing the card
+in a careless sort of way, laid it down before the doctor.
+Perhaps the strain on the poor doctor’s nerves was unsteadying
+him by this time: he may not have seen right;
+but he seemed to see only one name, as if compounded
+from the former two.</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p>APOLLYON</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And it seemed to be in red ink instead of black; and
+the lines seemed to creep and throb and glow, as if the
+red were the red of fire, instead of vermilion. But red
+is an extremely trying colour to the eyes. However, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+doctor, startled as he was, thought best not to raise any
+further queries, and only said, perhaps with some difficulty,
+“Very curious, I’m sure!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, doctor,” said Mr. Lyon, or whatever his name
+was, “I don’t want to hurry you, but I suppose we might
+as well have our little business over?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, yes. I suppose you wouldn’t care to consider
+any question of compromises or substitutes?”</p>
+
+<p>“I fear it’s out of the question, really,” was the reply,
+most kindly in tone, but with perfect distinctness.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment’s silence. It seemed to Dr.
+Hicok as if the beating of his heart must fill the room,
+it struck so heavily, and the blood seemed to surge with
+so loud a rush through the carotids up past his ears.
+“Shall I be found to have gone off with a rush of blood
+to the head?” he thought to himself. But—it can very
+often be done by a resolute effort—he gathered himself
+together as it were, and with one powerful exertion mastered
+his disordered nerves. Then he lifted his memorandum,
+gave one glance at the sad, calm face opposite
+him, and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“You know they’re every once in a while explaining a
+vote, as they call it, in Congress. It don’t make any
+difference, I know; but it seems to me as if I should put
+you more fully in possession of my meaning, if I should
+just say a word or two, about the reasons for my selection.”</p>
+
+<p>The visitor bowed with his usual air of pleasant acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>“I am aware,” said Dr. Hicok, “that my selection
+would seem thoroughly commonplace to most people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+Yet nobody knows better than you do, my dear sir, that
+the oldest questions are the newest. The same vitality
+which is so strong in them, as to raise them as soon as
+thought begins, is infinite, and maintains them as long
+as thought endures. Indeed, I may say to you frankly,
+that it is by no means on novelty, but rather on antiquity,
+that I rely.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor’s hearer bowed with an air of approving
+interest. “Very justly reasoned,” he observed. The
+doctor went on—</p>
+
+<p>“I have, I may say—and under the circumstances I
+shall not be suspected of conceit—made pretty much the
+complete circuit of unsolved problems. They class exactly
+as those questions do which we habitually reckon
+as solved: under the three subjects to which they relate—God,
+the intelligent creation, the unintelligent creation.
+Now, I have selected my questions accordingly—one for
+each of those divisions. Whether I have succeeded in
+satisfying the conditions necessary will appear quickly.
+But you see that I have not stooped to any quibbling, or
+begging either. I have sought to protect myself by the
+honourable use of a masculine reason.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your observations interest me greatly,” remarked
+the audience. “Not the less so, that they are so accurately
+coincident with my own habitual lines of
+thought—at least, so far as I can judge from what you
+have said. Indeed, suppose you had called upon me to
+help you prepare insoluble problems. I was bound, I
+suppose, to comply to the best of my ability; and, if I
+had done so, those statements of yours are thus far the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+very preface I supplied—I beg your pardon—should
+have supplied—you with. I fancy I could almost state
+the questions. Well?”—</p>
+
+<p>All this was most kind and complimentary; but somehow
+it did not encourage the doctor in the least. He
+even fancied that he detected a sneer, as if his interlocutor
+had been saying, “Flutter away, old bird! That
+was <i>my bait</i> that you have been feeding on: you’re safe
+enough; it is my net that holds you.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>First Question</i>,” said Dr. Hicok, with steadiness:
+“Reconcile the foreknowledge and the fore-ordination
+of God with the free will of man?”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought so, of course,” remarked the other. Then
+he looked straight into the doctor’s keen little grey eyes
+with his deep melancholy black ones, and raised his
+slender fore-finger. “Most readily. The reconciliation
+is <i>your own conscience</i>, doctor! Do what you know to
+be right, and you will find that there is nothing to reconcile—that
+you and your Maker have no debates to
+settle!”</p>
+
+<p>The words were spoken with a weighty solemnity and
+conviction that were even awful. The doctor had a
+conscience, though he had found himself practically
+forced, for the sake of success, to use a good deal of
+constraint with it—in fact, to lock it up, as it were, in a
+private mad-house, on an unfounded charge of lunacy.
+But the obstinate thing would not die, and would not
+lose its wits; and now all of a sudden, and from the
+very last quarter where it was to be expected, came a
+summons before whose intensity of just requirement no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+bolts could stand. The doctor’s conscience walked out
+of her prison, and came straight up to the field of battle,
+and said—</p>
+
+<p>“Give up the first question.”</p>
+
+<p>And he obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>“I confess it,” he said. “But how could I have expected
+a great basic truth both religiously and psychologically
+so, from—from <i>you</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah! my dear sir,” was the reply, “you have erred in
+<i>that</i> line of thought, exactly as many others have. The
+truth is one and the same, to God, man, and devil.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Second Question</i>,” said Dr. Hicok. “Reconcile the
+development theory, connection of natural selection and
+sexual relation, with the responsible immortality of the
+soul.”</p>
+
+<p>“Unquestionably,” assented the other, as if to say,
+“Just as I expected.”</p>
+
+<p>“No theory of creation has any logical connection
+with any doctrine of immortality. What was the motive
+of creation?—<i>that</i> would be a question! If you
+had asked me <i>that</i>! But the question, ‘Where did men
+come from?’ has no bearing on the question, ‘Have they
+any duties now that they are here?’ The two are reconciled,
+because they do not differ. You can’t state any
+inconsistency between a yard measure and a fifty-six
+pound weight.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor nodded; he sat down; he took a glass of
+water, and pressed his hand to his heart. “Now, then,”
+he said to himself, “once more! If I have to stand this
+fifteen minutes I shall be in <i>some</i> other world!”</p>
+
+<p>The door from the inner room opened; and Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+Hicok came singing in, carrying balanced upon her
+pretty pink fore-finger something or other of an airy
+bouquet-like fabric. Upon this she was looking with
+much delight.</p>
+
+<p>“See, dear!” she said: “how perfectly lovely!”</p>
+
+<p>Both gentlemen started, and the lady started too.
+She had not known of the visit; and she had not, until
+this instant, seen that her husband was not alone.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Hicok, of course, had never given her the key to
+his skeleton-closet; for he was a shrewd man. He loved
+her too; and he thought he had provided for her absence
+during the ordeal. She had executed her shopping with
+unprecedented speed.</p>
+
+<p>Why the visitor started, would be difficult to say.
+Perhaps her voice startled him. The happy music in it
+was enough like a beautified duplicate of his own thrilling
+sweet tones, to have made him acknowledge her for
+a sister—from heaven. He started, at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Lyon, my wife,” said the doctor, somewhat at a
+loss. Mr. Lyon bowed, and so did the lady.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure,” she said.
+“I did not know you were busy, dear. There is a
+thunder-shower coming up. I drove home just in
+season.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!—only a little wager, about some conundrums,”
+said the doctor. Perhaps he may be excused for his
+fib. He did not want to annoy her unnecessarily.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, do let me know!” she said, with much eagerness.
+“You know how I enjoy them!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said the doctor, “not exactly the ordinary
+kind. I was to puzzle my friend here with one out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+three questions; and he has beaten me in two of them already.
+I’ve but one more chance.”</p>
+
+<p>“Only one?” she asked, with a smile. “What a
+bright man your friend must be! I thought nobody
+could puzzle you, dear. Stay; let <i>me</i> ask the other
+question.”</p>
+
+<p>Both the gentlemen started again: it was quite a surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“But are you a married man, Mr. Lyon?” she asked,
+with a blush.</p>
+
+<p>“No, madam,” was the reply, with a very graceful
+bow—“I have a mother, but no wife. Permit me to
+say, that, if I could believe there was a duplicate of
+yourself in existence, I would be as soon as possible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, what a gallant speech!” said the lady. “Thank
+you, sir, very much;” and she made him a pretty little
+curtsy. “Then I am quite sure of my question, sir.
+Shall I, dear?”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor quickly decided. “I am done for, anyhow,”
+he reflected. “I begin to see that the old villain
+put those questions into my head himself. He hinted
+as much. I don’t know but I’d rather she would ask
+it. It’s better to have her kill me, I guess, than to
+hold out the carving-knife to him myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“With all my heart, my dear,” said the doctor, “if
+Mr. Lyon consents.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lyon looked a little disturbed; but his manner
+was perfect, as he replied that he regretted to seem to
+disoblige, but that he feared the conditions of their little
+bet would not allow it.</p>
+
+<p>“Beg your pardon, I’m sure, for being so uncivil,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>”
+said the lively little beauty, as she whispered a few
+words in her husband’s ear.</p>
+
+<p>This is what she said—</p>
+
+<p>“What’s mine’s yours, dear. Take it. Ask him—buz,
+buzz, buzz.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor nodded. Mrs. Hicok stood by him and
+smiled, still holding in her pretty pink fore-finger the
+frail shimmering thing just mentioned; and she gave it
+a twirl, so that it swung quite round. “Isn’t it a love of
+a bonnet?” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” the doctor said aloud. “I adopt the question.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Third Question. Which is the front side of this?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>And he pointed to the bonnet. It must have been a
+bonnet, because Mrs. Hicok called it so. I shouldn’t
+have known it from the collection of things in a kaleidoscope,
+bunched up together.</p>
+
+<p>The lady stood before him, and twirled the wondrous
+fabric round and round, with the prettiest possible unconscious
+roguish look of defiance. The doctor’s very
+heart stood still.</p>
+
+<p>“Put it on, please,” said Mr. Lyon, in the most innocent
+way in the world.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no!” laughed she. “I know I’m only a woman,
+but I’m not <i>quite</i> so silly! But I’ll tell you what: you
+men put it on, if you think that will help you!” And
+she held out the mystery to him.</p>
+
+<p>Confident in his powers of discrimination, Mr. Lyon
+took hold of the fairy-like combination of sparkles and
+threads and feathers and flowers, touching it with that
+sort of timid apprehension that bachelors use with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+baby. He stood before the glass over the mantelpiece.
+First he put it across his head with one side in front,
+and then with the other. Then he put it lengthways of
+his head, and tried the effect of tying one of the two
+couples of strings under each of his ears. Then he put
+it on, the other side up; so that it swam on his head like
+a boat, with a high mounted bow and stern. More than
+once he did all this, with obvious care and thoughtfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Then he came slowly back, and resumed his seat. It
+was growing very dark, though they had not noticed it;
+for the thunder-shower had been hurrying on, and already
+its advanced guard of wind, heavy laden with the
+smell of the rain, could be heard, and a few large drops
+splashed on the window.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful wife of the doctor laughed merrily to
+watch the growing discomposure of the visitor, who returned
+the bonnet, with undiminished courtesy, but with
+obvious constraint of manner.</p>
+
+<p>He looked down; he drummed on the table; he looked
+up; and both the doctor and the doctor’s wife were
+startled at the intense sudden anger in the dark, handsome
+face. Then he sprang up, and went to the window.
+He looked out a moment, and then said—</p>
+
+<p>“Upon my word, that is going to be a very sharp
+squall! The clouds are <i>very</i> heavy. If I’m any judge,
+something will be struck. I can feel the electricity in
+the air.”</p>
+
+<p>While he still spoke, the first thunder-bolt crashed
+overhead. It was one of those close, sudden, overpoweringly
+awful explosions from clouds very heavy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+very near, where the lightning and the thunder leap together
+out of the very air close about you, even as if you
+were in them. It was an unendurable burst of sound,
+and of the intense white sheety light of very near lightning.
+Dreadfully frightened, the poor little lady clung
+close to her husband. He, poor man, if possible yet
+more frightened, exhausted as he was by what he had
+been enduring, fainted dead away. Don’t blame him: a
+cast-iron bull-dog might have fainted.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hicok, thinking that her husband was struck
+dead by the lightning, screamed terribly. Then she
+touched him; and, seeing what was really the matter,
+administered cold water from the pitcher on the table.
+Shortly he revived.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is he?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know, love. I thought you were dead. He
+must have gone away. Did it strike the house?”</p>
+
+<p>“Gone away? Thank God! Thank <i>you</i>, dear!”
+cried out the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Not knowing any adequate cause for so much emotion,
+she answered him—</p>
+
+<p>“Now, love, don’t you ever say women are not practical
+again. That was a practical question, you see.
+But didn’t it strike the house? What a queer smell.
+Ozone: isn’t that what you were telling me about? How
+funny, that lightning should have a smell!”</p>
+
+<p>“I believe there’s no doubt of it,” observed Dr. Hicok.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Apollo Lyon had really gone, though just how or
+when, nobody could say.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear,” said Dr. Hicok, “I do so like that bonnet
+of yours! I don’t wonder it puzzled him. It would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+puzzle the Devil himself. I firmly believe I shall call
+it your Devil-puzzler.”</p>
+
+<p>But he never told her what the puzzle had been.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> By permission of G.&nbsp;P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers. New York and
+London.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_ROUND20" id="THE_DEVILS_ROUND20"></a>THE DEVIL’S ROUND<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span><br />
+
+<span style="font-size: 70%">A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF</span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY CHARLES DEULIN<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_ROUND_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>[The following story, translated by Miss Isabel Bruce from
+<i>Le Grand Choleur</i> of M. Charles Deulin (<i>Contes du Roi Gambrinus</i>),
+gives a great deal of information about French and
+Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game represents
+a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The object
+is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible, to a given point;
+but, after every three strokes, the opponent is allowed to <i>décholer</i>,
+or make one stroke back, or into a hazard. Here the element
+of hockey comes in. Get rid of this element, let each
+man hit his own ball, and, in place of striking to a point—say,
+the cemetery gate—let men “putt” into holes, and the
+Flemish game becomes golf. It is of great antiquity. Ducange,
+in his Lexicon of Low Latin, gives <i>Choulla</i>, French
+<i>choule</i>&nbsp;=&nbsp;“Globulus ligneus qui clava propellitur”—a wooden
+ball struck with a club. The head of the club was of iron (cf.
+<i>crossare</i>). This is borne out by a miniature in a missal of
+1504, which represents peasants playing <i>choule</i> with clubs very
+like niblicks. Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353,
+1357, and other dates older by a century than our earliest
+Scotch references to golf. At present the game is played in
+Belgium with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
+beechwood. M. Zola (<i>Germinal</i>, p. 310) represents his miners
+playing <i>chole</i>, or <i>choulle</i>, and says that they hit drives of more
+than 500 yards. Experiments made at Wimbledon with a Belgian
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>club sent over by M. Charles Michel suggest that M. Zola
+has over-estimated the distance. But M. Zola and M. Deulin
+agree in making the players <i>run</i> after the ball. M. Henri
+Gaidoz adds that a similar game, called <i>soule</i>, is played in various
+departments of France. He refers to Laisnel de la Salle.
+The name <i>chole</i> may be connected with German <i>Kolbe</i>, and
+<i>golf</i> may be the form which this word would assume in a
+Celtic language. All this makes golf very old; but the question
+arises, Are the “holes” to which golfers play of Scotch or
+of Dutch origin? There are several old Flemish pictures of
+golf; do any of them show players in the act of “holing out”?
+There is said to be such a picture at Neuchâtel.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">A. Lang.</span>]</p></div>
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Once upon a time there lived at the hamlet of Coq,
+near Condé-sur-l’Escaut, a wheelwright called Roger.
+He was a good fellow, untiring both at his sport and at
+his toil, and as skilful in lofting a ball with a stroke of
+his club as in putting together a cartwheel. Every one
+knows that the game of golf consists in driving towards
+a given point a ball of cherrywood with a club which
+has for head a sort of little iron shoe without a heel.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I do not know a more amusing game;
+and when the country is almost cleared of the harvest,
+men, women, children, everybody, drives his ball as
+you please, and there is nothing cheerier than to see
+them filing on a Sunday like a flight of starlings across
+potato fields and ploughed lands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Well, one Tuesday, it was a Shrove Tuesday, the
+wheelwright of Coq laid aside his plane, and was slipping
+on his blouse to go and drink his can of beer at
+Condé, when two strangers came in, club in hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Would you put a new shaft to my club, master?”
+said one of them.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you asking me, friends? A day like
+this! I wouldn’t give the smallest stroke of the chisel
+for a brick of gold. Besides, does any one play golf
+on Shrove Tuesday? You had much better go and see
+the mummers tumbling in the high street of Condé.”</p>
+
+<p>“We take no interest in the tumbling of mummers,”
+replied the stranger. “We have challenged each other
+at golf and we want to play it out. Come, you won’t refuse
+to help us, you who are said to be one of the finest
+players of the country?”</p>
+
+<p>“If it is a match, that is different,” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>He turned up his sleeves, hooked on his apron, and
+in the twinkling of an eye had adjusted the shaft.</p>
+
+<p>“How much do I owe you?” asked the unknown, drawing
+out his purse.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing at all, faith; it is not worth while.”</p>
+
+<p>The stranger insisted, but in vain.</p>
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>“You are too honest, i’faith,” said he to the wheelwright,
+“for me to be in your debt. I will grant you
+the fulfilment of three wishes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t forget to wish what is <i>best</i>,” added his companion.</p>
+
+<p>At these words the wheelwright smiled incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you not a couple of the loafers of Capelette?”
+he asked, with a wink.</p>
+
+<p>The idlers of the crossways of Capelette were considered
+the wildest wags in Condé.</p>
+
+<p>“Whom do you take us for?” replied the unknown
+in a tone of severity, and with his club he touched an
+axle, made of iron, which instantly changed into one of
+pure silver.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you, then,” cried Roger, “that your word
+is as good as ready money?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am St. Peter, and my companion is St. Antony, the
+patron of golfers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Take the trouble to walk in, gentlemen,” said the
+wheelwright of Coq; and he ushered the two saints into
+the back parlour. He offered them chairs, and went to
+draw a jug of beer in the cellar. They clinked their
+glasses together, and after each had lit his pipe:</p>
+
+<p>“Since you are so good, sir saints,” said Roger, “as to
+grant me the accomplishment of three wishes, know
+that for a long while I have desired three things. I
+wish, first of all, that whoever seats himself upon the
+elm-trunk at my door may not be able to rise without
+my permission. I like company and it bores me to be
+always alone.”</p>
+
+<p>St. Peter shook his head and St. Antony nudged his
+client.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>“When I play a game of cards, on Sunday evening, at
+the ‘Fighting Cock,’” continued the wheelwright, “it is
+no sooner nine o’clock than the garde-champêtre comes
+to chuck us out. I desire that whoever shall have his
+feet on my leathern apron cannot be driven from the
+place where I shall have spread it.”</p>
+
+<p>St. Peter shook his head, and St. Antony, with a solemn
+air, repeated:</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t forget what is <i>best</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is best,” replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly,
+“is to be the first golfer in the world. Every time I
+find my master at golf it turns my blood as black as the
+inside of the chimney. So I want a club that will carry
+the ball as high as the belfry of Condé, and will infallibly
+win me my match.”</p>
+
+<p>“So be it,” said St. Peter.</p>
+
+<p>“You would have done better,” said St. Antony, “to
+have asked for your eternal salvation.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bah!” replied the other. “I have plenty of time to
+think of that; I am not yet greasing my boots for the
+long journey.”</p>
+
+<p>The two saints went out and Roger followed them,
+curious to be present at such a rare game; but suddenly,
+near the Chapel of St. Antony, they disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The wheelwright then went to see the mummers tumbling
+in the high street of Condé.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned, towards midnight, he found at the
+corner of his door the desired club. To his great surprise
+it was only a bad little iron head attached to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+wretched worn-out shaft. Nevertheless he took the gift
+of St. Peter and put it carefully away.</p>
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Next morning the Condéens scattered in crowds over
+the country, to play golf, eat red herrings, and drink
+beer, so as to scatter the fumes of wine from their heads
+and to revive after the fatigues of the Carnival. The
+wheelwright of Coq came too, with his miserable club,
+and made such fine strokes that all the players left their
+games to see him play. The following Sunday he
+proved still more expert; little by little his fame spread
+through the land. From ten leagues round the most
+skilful players hastened to come and be beaten, and it
+was then that he was named the Great Golfer.</p>
+
+<p>He passed the whole Sunday in golfing, and in the
+evening he rested himself by playing a game of matrimony
+at the “Fighting Cock.” He spread his apron
+under the feet of the players, and the devil himself
+could not have put them out of the tavern, much less the
+rural policeman. On Monday morning he stopped the
+pilgrims who were going to worship at Notre Dame de
+Bon Secours; he induced them to rest themselves upon
+his <i>causeuse</i>, and did not let them go before he had confessed
+them well.</p>
+
+<p>In short, he led the most agreeable life that a good
+Fleming can imagine, and only regretted one thing—namely,
+that he had not wished it might last for ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Well, it happened one day that the strongest player
+of Mons, who was called Paternostre, was found dead on
+the edge of a bunker. His head was broken, and near
+him was his niblick, red with blood.</p>
+
+<p>They could not tell who had done this business, and as
+Paternostre often said that at golf he feared neither man
+nor devil, it occurred to them that he had challenged
+Mynheer van Belzébuth, and that as a punishment for
+this he had knocked him on the head. Mynheer van
+Belzébuth is, as every one knows, the greatest gamester
+that there is upon or under the earth, but the game he
+particularly affects is golf. When he goes his round in
+Flanders one always meets him, club in hand, like a
+true Fleming.</p>
+
+<p>The wheelwright of Coq was very fond of Paternostre,
+who, next to himself, was the best golfer in the country.
+He went to his funeral with some golfers from the hamlets
+of Coq, La Cigogne, and La Queue de l’Ayache.</p>
+
+<p>On returning from the cemetery they went to the
+tavern to drink, as they say, to the memory of the dead,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+and there they lost themselves in talk about the noble
+game of golf. When they separated, in the dusk of
+evening:</p>
+
+<p>“A good journey to you,” said the Belgian players,
+“and may St. Antony, the patron of golfers, preserve
+you from meeting the devil on the way!”</p>
+
+<p>“What do I care for the devil?” replied Roger. “If
+he challenged me I should soon beat him!”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p>
+<p>The companions trotted from tavern to tavern without
+misadventure; but the wolf-bell had long tolled for retiring
+in the belfry of Condé when they returned each
+one to his own den.</p>
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+<p>As he was putting the key into the lock the wheelwright
+thought he heard a shout of mocking laughter.
+He turned, and saw in the darkness a man six feet high,
+who again burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you laughing at?” said he, crossly.</p>
+
+<p>“At what? Why, at the <i>aplomb</i> with which you
+boasted a little while ago that you would dare measure
+yourself against the devil.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not, if he challenged me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, my master, bring your clubs. I challenge
+you!” said Mynheer van Belzébuth, for it was
+himself. Roger recognized him by a certain odour of
+sulphur that always hangs about his majesty.</p>
+
+<p>“What shall the stake be?” he asked resolutely.</p>
+
+<p>“Your soul?”</p>
+
+<p>“Against what?”</p>
+
+<p>“Whatever you please.”</p>
+
+<p>The wheelwright reflected.</p>
+
+<p>“What have you there in your sack?”</p>
+
+<p>“My spoils of the week.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is the soul of Paternostre among them?”</p>
+
+<p>“To be sure! and those of five other golfers; dead,
+like him, without confession.”</p>
+
+<p>“I play you my soul against that of Paternostre.”</p>
+
+<p>“Done!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>”</p>
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+<p>The two adversaries repaired to the adjoining field
+and chose for their goal the door of the cemetery of
+Condé.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Belzébuth teed a ball on a frozen heap, after
+which he said, according to custom:</p>
+
+<p>“From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three
+strokes will you run in?”</p>
+
+<p>“In two,” replied the great golfer.</p>
+
+<p>And his adversary was not a little surprised, for
+from there to the cemetery was nearly a quarter of a
+league.</p>
+
+<p>“But how shall we see the ball?” continued the wheelwright.</p>
+
+<p>“True!” said Belzébuth.</p>
+
+<p>He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly
+in the dark like an immense glowworm.</p>
+
+<p>“Fore!” cried Roger.</p>
+
+<p>He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose
+to the sky like a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three
+strokes it crossed three-quarters of the distance.</p>
+
+<p>“That is good!” said Belzébuth, whose astonishment
+redoubled. “My turn to play now!”<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the
+roofs of Coq nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league
+away. The blow was so violent that the iron struck
+fire against a pebble.</p>
+
+<p>“Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my
+aid,” murmured the wheelwright of Coq.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p><p>He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain,
+the club seemed to have acquired a new vigour.
+At the second stroke the ball went as if of itself and hit
+the door of the cemetery.</p>
+
+<p>“By the horns of my grandfather!” cried Belzébuth,
+“it shall not be said that I have been beaten by a son of
+that fool Adam. Give me my revenge.”</p>
+
+<p>“What shall we play for?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls
+of two golfers.”</p>
+
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>The devil played up, “pressing” furiously; his club
+blazed at each stroke with showers of sparks. The ball
+flew from Condé to Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze.
+Once it spun away to Tournai, six leagues from there.</p>
+
+<p>It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the
+two golfers followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger
+was never able to understand how he ran, or rather flew
+so fast, and without fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the
+souls of the six defunct golfers. Belzébuth rolled his
+eyes like an angry tom-cat.</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we go on?” said the wheelwright of Coq.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” replied the other; “they expect me at the
+Witches’ Sabbath on the hill of Copiémont.</p>
+
+<p>“That brigand,” said he aside, “is capable of filching
+all my game.”</p>
+
+<p>And he vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+in a sack and went to bed, enchanted to have beaten
+Mynheer van Belzébuth.</p>
+
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a
+visit which he little expected. An old man, tall, thin
+and yellow, came into the workshop carrying a scythe
+on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, faith, <i>my</i> scythe is never unhafted.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then how can I serve you?”</p>
+
+<p>“By following me: your hour is come.”</p>
+
+<p>“The devil,” said the great golfer, “could you not
+wait a little till I have finished this wheel?”</p>
+
+<p>“Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have
+well earned a smoke.”</p>
+
+<p>“In that case, master, sit down there on the <i>causeuse</i>.
+I have at your service some famous tobacco at seven
+petards the pound.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s good, faith; make haste.”</p>
+
+<p>And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door
+on the elm trunk.</p>
+
+<p>Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned
+to his work. At the end of a quarter of an hour
+Death called to him:</p>
+
+<p>“Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?”</p>
+
+<p>The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing,
+singing:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Attendez-moi sur l’orme;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vous m’attendrez longtemps.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“I don’t think he hears me,” said Death. “Ho!
+friend, are you ready?”</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent, Jean,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Va-t-en voir s’ils viennent,”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="ni">replied the singer.</p>
+
+<p>“Would the brute laugh at me?” said Death to himself.</p>
+
+<p>And he tried to rise.</p>
+
+<p>To his great surprise he could not detach himself
+from the <i>causeuse</i>. He then understood that he was the
+sport of a superior power.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us see,” he said to Roger. “What will you take
+to let me go? Do you wish me to prolong your life
+ten years?”</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“J’ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatière,”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="ni">sang the great golfer.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you take twenty years?”</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Il pleut, il pleut, bergère;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rentre tes blancs moutons.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?—may the devil
+admire you!”</p>
+
+<p>The wheelwright of Coq intoned:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the clock of Condé had just struck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+four, and the boys were coming out of school. The
+sight of this great dry heron of a creature who struggled
+on the <i>causeuse</i>, like a devil in a holy-water pot,
+surprised and soon delighted them.</p>
+
+<p>Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the
+old, Death watches the young, they thought it funny to
+put out their tongues at him, singing in chorus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“Will you take a hundred years?” yelled Death.</p>
+
+<p>“Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of
+an extension of a hundred years? I accept with all my
+heart, master; but let us understand: I am not such a
+fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then what do you want?”</p>
+
+<p>“From old age I only ask the experience which it
+gives by degrees. ‘Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!’
+says the proverb. I wish to preserve for a hundred
+years the strength of a young man, and to acquire
+the knowledge of an old one.”</p>
+
+<p>“So be it,” said Death; “I shall return this day a
+hundred years.”</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Saint-Malo débarquez sans naufrage.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+<p>The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed
+perfect happiness, which was increased by the certainty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+of its not ending for a hundred years. Thanks to
+his experience, he so well understood the management
+of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
+shop.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had
+not foreseen. His wonderful skill at golf ended by
+frightening the players whom he had at first delighted,
+and was the cause of his never finding any one who
+would play against him.</p>
+
+<p>He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his
+travels over French Flanders, Belgium, and all the
+greens where the noble game of golf is held in honour.
+At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be admired
+by a new generation of golfers, after which he
+departed to return twenty years later.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before
+long became a burden to him. Besides that, it
+bored him to win on every occasion; he was tired of passing
+like the Wandering Jew through generations, and of
+seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of his
+friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced
+to making new friendships which were undone
+by the age or death of his fellows; all changed around
+him, he only did not change.</p>
+
+<p>He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which
+condemned him to taste the same pleasures for ever,
+and he sometimes longed to know the calmer joys of old
+age. One day he caught himself at his looking-glass,
+examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the
+snow on the forehead of the old.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+<p>In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise
+that he was no longer amused at anything. If sometimes
+in the tavern he had a fancy for making use of his
+apron to pass the night at cards: “What is the good of
+this excess?” whispered experience; “it is not sufficient
+to be unable to shorten one’s days, one must also avoid
+making oneself ill.”</p>
+
+<p>He reached the point of refusing himself the pleasure
+of drinking his pint and smoking his pipe. Why, indeed,
+plunge into dissipations which enervate the body
+and dull the brain?</p>
+
+<p><i>The wretch went further and gave up golf!</i> Experience
+convinced him that the game is a dangerous one,
+which overheats one, and is eminently adapted to produce
+colds, catarrhs, rheumatism, and inflammation of
+the lungs.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, what is the use, and what great glory is it to
+be reputed the first golfer in the world?</p>
+
+<p>Of what use is glory itself? A vain hope, vain as the
+smoke of a pipe.</p>
+
+<p>When experience had thus bereft him one by one of
+his delusions, the unhappy golfer became mortally
+weary. He saw that he had deceived himself, that delusion
+has its price, and that the greatest charm of
+youth is perhaps its inexperience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He thus arrived at the term agreed on in the contract,
+and as he had not had a paradise here below, he sought
+through his hardly-acquired wisdom a clever way of
+conquering one above.</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+<p>Death found him at Coq at work in his shop. Experience
+had at least taught him that work is the most
+lasting of pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you ready?” said Death.</p>
+
+<p>“I am.”</p>
+
+<p>He took his club, put a score of balls in his pocket,
+threw his sack over his shoulder, and buckled his gaiters
+without taking off his apron.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you want your club for?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, to golf in paradise with my patron St. Antony.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you fancy, then, that I am going to conduct you
+to paradise?”</p>
+
+<p>“You must, as I have half-a-dozen souls to carry
+there, that I once saved from the clutches of Belzébuth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Better have saved your own. <i>En route, cher Dumollet!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The great golfer saw that the old reaper bore him a
+grudge, and that he was going to conduct him to the
+paradise of the lost.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>Indeed a quarter of an hour later the two travellers
+knocked at the gate of hell.</p>
+
+<p>“Toc, toc!”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+<p>“Who is there?”</p>
+
+<p>“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t open the door,” cried Belzébuth; “that rascal
+wins at every turn; he is capable of depopulating my
+empire.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed in his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! you are not saved,” said Death. “I am going
+to take you where you won’t be cold either.”</p>
+
+<p>Quicker than a beggar would have emptied a poor’s
+box they were in purgatory.</p>
+
+<p>“Toc—toc!”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is there?”</p>
+
+<p>“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.</p>
+
+<p>“But he is in a state of mortal sin,” cried the angel
+on duty. “Take him away from here—he can’t come
+in.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot, all the same, let him linger between heaven
+and earth,” said Death; “I shall shunt him back to Coq.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where they will take me for a ghost. Thank you!
+is there not still paradise?”</p>
+
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>They were there at the end of a short hour.</p>
+
+<p>“Toc, toc!”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is there?”</p>
+
+<p>“The wheelwright of Coq,” said the great golfer.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah! my lad,” said St. Peter, half opening the door,
+“I am really grieved. St. Antony told you long ago
+you had better ask for the salvation of your soul.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true, St. Peter,” replied Roger with a sheepish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+air. “And how is he, that blessed St. Antony?
+Could I not come in for one moment to return the visit
+he once paid me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, here he comes,” said St. Peter, throwing the
+door wide open.</p>
+
+<p>In the twinkling of an eye the sly golfer had flung
+himself into paradise, unhooked his apron, let it fall to
+the ground, and seated himself down on it.</p>
+
+<p>“Good morning, St. Antony,” said he with a fine salute.
+“You see I had plenty of time to think of paradise,
+for here we are!”</p>
+
+<p>“What! <i>You</i> here!” cried St. Antony.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I and my company,” replied Roger, opening
+his sack and scattering on the carpet the souls of the six
+golfers.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you have the goodness to pack right off, all of
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Impossible,” said the great golfer, showing his
+apron.</p>
+
+<p>“The rogue has made game of us,” said St. Antony.
+“Come, St. Peter, in memory of our game of golf, let
+him in with his souls. Besides, he has had his purgatory
+on earth.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not a very good precedent,” murmured St.
+Peter.</p>
+
+<p>“Bah!” replied Roger, “if we have a few good golfers
+in paradise, where is the harm?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>”</p>
+
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>Thus, after having lived long, golfed much and drunk
+many cans of beer, the wheelwright of Coq called the
+Great Golfer was admitted to paradise; but I advise no
+one to copy him, for it is not quite the right way to go,
+and St. Peter might not always be so compliant, though
+great allowances must be made for golfers.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> From <i>Longman’s Magazine</i>, vol. xiv. [Copyright 1889 by Longmans,
+Green &amp; Co., London &amp; New York. By permission of the Publishers.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Boire la cervelle du mort.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> They play to points, not holes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back, or into a
+hazard.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Vivre à porte close.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Noires glaives.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL" id="THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL"></a>THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the
+sea. I got an indistinct impression of it as of a grey
+shadow outlined against the misty sky. I saw it again
+from Avranches at sunset. The immense stretch of sand
+was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay
+was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance
+like a weird, seignorial residence, like a dream
+palace, strange and beautiful—this alone remained
+black in the crimson light of the dying day.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning at dawn I went toward it
+across the sands, my eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel,
+as big as a mountain, cut like a cameo, and as dainty as
+lace. The nearer I approached the greater my admiration
+grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful
+or more perfect.</p>
+
+<p>As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of
+a god, I wandered through those halls supported by frail
+or massive columns, raising my eyes in wonder to those
+spires which looked like rockets starting for the sky,
+and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of gargoyles,
+of slender and charming ornaments, a regular
+fireworks of stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal
+and delicate architecture.</p>
+
+<p>As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+peasant came up to me and told me the story of the
+great quarrel between Saint Michael and the devil.</p>
+
+<p>A sceptical genius has said: “God made man in his
+image and man has returned the compliment.”</p>
+
+<p>This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very
+curious to write the history of the local divinity of every
+continent, as well as the history of the patron saints in
+each one of our provinces. The negro has his ferocious
+man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan
+fills his paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical
+people, deified all the passions.</p>
+
+<p>Every village in France is under the influence of some
+protecting saint, modelled according to the characteristics
+of the inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint
+Michael, the radiant and victorious angel, the sword-carrier,
+the hero of Heaven, the victorious, the conqueror
+of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning,
+deceitful and tricky, understands and tells of the
+struggle between the great saint and the devil.</p>
+
+<p>To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil,
+Saint Michael built himself, in the open ocean, this
+habitation worthy of an archangel; and only such a
+saint could build a residence of such magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked
+one, he surrounded his domains by quicksands, more
+treacherous even than the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he
+owned all the salt marshes, the rich lands where grow
+the finest crops, the wooded valleys and all the fertile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+hills of the country, while the saint ruled only over the
+sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint
+Michael was as poor as a church mouse.</p>
+
+<p>After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of
+this state of affairs and began to think of some compromise
+with the devil, but the matter was by no means
+easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.</p>
+
+<p>He thought the thing over for about six months; then
+one morning he walked across to the shore. The demon
+was eating his soup in front of his door when he saw the
+saint. He immediately rushed toward him, kissed the
+hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him refreshments.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began:
+“I have come here to propose to you a good bargain.”</p>
+
+<p>The devil, candid and trustful, answered: “That
+will suit me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Here it is. Give me all your lands.”</p>
+
+<p>Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak: “But—”</p>
+
+<p>The saint continued: “Listen first. Give me all
+your lands. I will take care of all the work, the ploughing,
+the sowing, the fertilizing, everything, and we will
+share the crops equally. How does that suit you?”</p>
+
+<p>The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He
+only demanded in addition a few of those delicious grey
+mullet which are caught around the solitary mount.
+Saint Michael promised the fish.</p>
+
+<p>They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show
+that it was a bargain, and the saint continued: “See
+here, so that you will have nothing to complain of,
+choose that part of the crops which you prefer: the part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+that grows above ground or the part that stays in the
+ground.” Satan cried out: “I will take all that will
+be above ground.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a bargain!” said the saint. And he went away.</p>
+
+<p>Six months later, all over the immense domain of
+the devil, one could see nothing but carrots, turnips,
+onions, salsify, all the plants whose juicy roots are good
+and savoury and whose useless leaves are good for nothing
+but for feeding animals.</p>
+
+<p>Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint
+Michael a swindler.</p>
+
+<p>But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for
+agriculture, went back to see the devil and said:
+“Really, I hadn’t thought of that at all; it was just an
+accident, no fault of mine. And to make things fair
+with you, this year I’ll let you take everything that is
+under the ground.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” answered Satan.</p>
+
+<p>The following spring all the evil spirit’s lands were
+covered with golden wheat, oats as big as beans, flax,
+magnificent colza, red clover, peas, cabbage, artichokes,
+everything that develops into grains or fruit in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he
+completely lost his temper. He took back his fields and
+remained deaf to all the fresh propositions of his
+neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely
+manor Saint Michael looked at the distant and fertile
+lands and watched the devil direct the work, take in his
+crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry, exasperated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+at his powerlessness. As he was no longer
+able to deceive Satan, he decided to wreak vengeance on
+him, and he went out to invite him to dinner for the following
+Monday.</p>
+
+<p>“You have been very unfortunate in your dealings
+with me,” he said; “I know it, but I don’t want any ill
+feeling between us, and I expect you to dine with me.
+I’ll give you some good things to eat.”</p>
+
+<p>Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted
+eagerly. On the day appointed he donned his finest
+clothes and set out for the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal.
+First there was a <i>vol-au-vent</i>, full of cocks’ crests and
+kidneys, with meat-balls, then two big grey mullet with
+cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with chestnuts soaked
+in wine, some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake, vegetables
+which melted in the mouth and nice hot pancake
+which was brought on smoking and spreading a delicious
+odour of butter.</p>
+
+<p>They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady
+red wine, and after each course they whetted their appetites
+with some old apple brandy.</p>
+
+<p>The devil drank and ate to his heart’s content; in
+fact he took so much that he was very uncomfortable,
+and began to retch.</p>
+
+<p>Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a
+voice like thunder: “What! before me, rascal! You
+dare—before me—”</p>
+
+<p>Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a
+stick, pursued him. They ran through the halls, turning
+round the pillars, running up the staircases, galloping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle to
+gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was
+running about madly and trying hard to escape. At
+last he found himself at the top of the last terrace, right
+at the top, from which could be seen the immense bay,
+with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no
+longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and
+gave him a furious kick, which shot him through space
+like a cannon-ball.</p>
+
+<p>He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily
+before the town of Mortain. His horns and claws stuck
+deep into the rock, which keeps through eternity the
+traces of this fall of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end
+of time, and as he looked at this fatal castle in the distance,
+standing out against the setting sun, he understood
+well that he would always be vanquished in this
+unequal struggle, and he went away limping, heading
+for distant countries, leaving to his enemy his fields, his
+hills, his valleys and his marshes.</p>
+
+<p>And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of
+Normandy, vanquished the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Another people would have dreamed of this battle in
+an entirely different manner.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEMON_POPE26" id="THE_DEMON_POPE26"></a>THE DEMON POPE<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY RICHARD GARNETT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEMON_POPE_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>“So you won’t sell me your soul?” said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” replied the student, “I had rather keep
+it myself, if it’s all the same to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s not all the same to me. I want it very particularly.
+Come, I’ll be liberal. I said twenty years.
+You can have thirty.”</p>
+
+<p>The student shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>“Forty!”</p>
+
+<p>Another shake.</p>
+
+<p>“Fifty!”</p>
+
+<p>As before.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” said the devil. “I know I’m going to do a
+foolish thing, but I cannot bear to see a clever, spirited
+young man throw himself away. I’ll make you another
+kind of offer. We don’t have any bargain at present,
+but I will push you on in the world for the next forty
+years. This day forty years I come back and ask you
+for a boon; not your soul, mind, or anything not perfectly
+in your power to grant. If you give it, we are
+quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to
+this?”</p>
+
+<p>The student reflected for some minutes. “Agreed,”
+he said at last.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+<p>Scarcely had the devil disappeared, which he did instantaneously,
+ere a messenger reined in his smoking
+steed at the gate of the University of Cordova (the judicious
+reader will already have remarked that Lucifer
+could never have been allowed inside a Christian seat of
+learning), and, inquiring for the student Gerbert, presented
+him with the Emperor Otho’s nomination to the
+Abbacy of Bobbio, in consideration, said the document,
+of his virtue and learning, wellnigh miraculous in one so
+young. Such messengers were frequent visitors during
+Gerbert’s prosperous career. Abbot, bishop, archbishop,
+cardinal, he was ultimately enthroned Pope on
+April 2, 999, and assumed the appellation of Silvester
+the Second. It was then a general belief that the world
+would come to an end in the following year, a catastrophe
+which to many seemed the more imminent from
+the election of a chief pastor whose celebrity as a theologian,
+though not inconsiderable, by no means equalled
+his reputation as a necromancer.</p>
+
+<p>The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless
+through the dreaded twelvemonth, and early in the first
+year of the eleventh century Gerbert was sitting peacefully
+in his study, perusing a book of magic. Volumes
+of algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy,
+and other such light reading filled his bookcase; and on
+a table stood an improved clock of his invention, next to
+his introduction of the Arabic numerals his chief legacy
+to posterity. Suddenly a sound of wings was heard,
+and Lucifer stood by his side.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a long time,” said the fiend, “since I have had
+the pleasure of seeing you. I have now called to remind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+you of our little contract, concluded this day forty
+years.”</p>
+
+<p>“You remember,” said Silvester, “that you are not to
+ask anything exceeding my power to perform.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no such intention,” said Lucifer. “On the
+contrary, I am about to solicit a favour which can be
+bestowed by you alone. You are Pope, I desire that
+you would make me a Cardinal.”</p>
+
+<p>“In the expectation, I presume,” returned Gerbert,
+“of becoming Pope on the next vacancy.”</p>
+
+<p>“An expectation,” replied Lucifer, “which I may
+most reasonably entertain, considering my enormous
+wealth, my proficiency in intrigue, and the present condition
+of the Sacred College.”</p>
+
+<p>“You would doubtless,” said Gerbert, “endeavour to
+subvert the foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of
+profligacy and licentiousness, render the Holy See odious
+and contemptible.”</p>
+
+<p>“On the contrary,” said the fiend, “I would extirpate
+heresy, and all learning and knowledge as inevitably
+tending thereunto. I would suffer no man to read but
+the priest, and confine his reading to his breviary. I
+would burn your books together with your bones on the
+first convenient opportunity. I would observe an austere
+propriety of conduct, and be especially careful not
+to loosen one rivet in the tremendous yoke I was forging
+for the minds and consciences of mankind.”</p>
+
+<p>“If it be so,” said Gerbert, “let’s be off!”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” exclaimed Lucifer, “you are willing to accompany
+me to the infernal regions!”</p>
+
+<p>“Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+of Plato and Aristotle, and give place to the darkness
+against which I have been contending all my
+life.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gerbert,” replied the demon, “this is arrant trifling.
+Know you not that no good man can enter my dominions?
+that, were such a thing possible, my empire would
+become intolerable to me, and I should be compelled to
+abdicate?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do know it,” said Gerbert, “and hence I have been
+able to receive your visit with composure.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gerbert,” said the devil, with tears in his eyes, “I
+put it to you—is this fair, is this honest? I undertake
+to promote your interests in the world; I fulfil my promise
+abundantly. You obtain through my instrumentality
+a position to which you could never otherwise have
+aspired. Often have I had a hand in the election of a
+Pope, but never before have I contributed to confer the
+tiara on one eminent for virtue and learning. You
+profit by my assistance to the full, and now take advantage
+of an adventitious circumstance to deprive me of
+my reasonable guerdon. It is my constant experience
+that the good people are much more slippery than the
+sinners, and drive much harder bargains.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lucifer,” answered Gerbert, “I have always sought
+to treat you as a gentleman, hoping that you would approve
+yourself such in return. I will not inquire
+whether it was entirely in harmony with this character
+to seek to intimidate me into compliance with your demand
+by threatening me with a penalty which you well
+knew could not be enforced. I will overlook this little
+irregularity, and concede even more than you have requested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+You have asked to be a Cardinal. I will
+make you Pope—”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha!” exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused
+his sooty hide, as the light of a fading ember is
+revived by breathing upon it.</p>
+
+<p>“For twelve hours,” continued Gerbert. “At the expiration
+of that time we will consider the matter further;
+and if, as I anticipate, you are more anxious to
+divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to
+assume it, I promise to bestow upon you any boon you
+may ask within my power to grant, and not plainly inconsistent
+with religion or morals.”</p>
+
+<p>“Done!” cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic
+words, and in a moment the apartment held two
+Pope Silvesters, entirely indistinguishable save by their
+attire, and the fact that one limped slightly with the left
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>“You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard,”
+said Gerbert, and, taking his book of magic
+with him, he retreated through a masked door to a secret
+chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled,
+and muttered to himself, “Poor old Lucifer! Sold
+again!”</p>
+
+<p>If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He
+approached a large slab of silver which did duty as a
+mirror, and contemplated his personal appearance with
+some dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly don’t look half so well without my
+horns,” he soliloquized, “and I am sure I shall miss my
+tail most grievously.”</p>
+
+<p>A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+the deficient appendages, and Lucifer now looked every
+inch a Pope. He was about to call the master of the
+ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the door
+was burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards,
+rushed into the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Down with the sorcerer!” they cried, as they seized
+and gagged him.</p>
+
+<p>“Death to the Saracen!”</p>
+
+<p>“Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!”</p>
+
+<p>“Knows Greek!”</p>
+
+<p>“Talks Arabic!”</p>
+
+<p>“Reads Hebrew!”</p>
+
+<p>“Burn him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Smother him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Let him be deposed by a general council,” said a
+young and inexperienced Cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>“Heaven forbid!” said an old and wary one, <i>sotto
+voce</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame
+he was doomed to inhabit for the next eleven hours was
+speedily exhausted. Bound and helpless, he swooned
+away.</p>
+
+<p>“Brethren,” said one of the senior cardinals, “it hath
+been delivered by the exorcists that a sorcerer or other
+individual in league with the demon doth usually bear
+upon his person some visible token of his infernal compact.
+I propose that we forthwith institute a search
+for this stigma, the discovery of which may contribute
+to justify our proceedings in the eyes of the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“I heartily approve of our brother Anno’s proposition,”
+said another, “the rather as we cannot possibly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+fail to discover such a mark, if, indeed, we desire to
+find it.”</p>
+
+<p>The search was accordingly instituted, and had not
+proceeded far ere a simultaneous yell from all the seven
+cardinals indicated that their investigation had brought
+more light than they had ventured to expect.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Father had a cloven foot!</p>
+
+<p>For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly
+stunned, silent, and stupefied with amazement. As
+they gradually recovered their faculties it would have
+become manifest to a nice observer that the Pope had
+risen very considerably in their good opinion.</p>
+
+<p>“This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation,”
+said one.</p>
+
+<p>“I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately,”
+said another.</p>
+
+<p>“It is written, ‘the devils believe,’” said a third:
+“the Holy Father, therefore, is not a heretic at any
+rate.”</p>
+
+<p>“Brethren,” said Anno, “this affair, as our brother
+Benno well remarks, doth indeed call for mature deliberation.
+I therefore propose that, instead of smothering
+his Holiness with cushions, as originally contemplated,
+we immure him for the present in the dungeon
+adjoining hereunto, and, after spending the night
+in meditation and prayer, resume the consideration of
+the business tomorrow morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Informing the officials of the palace,” said Benno,
+“that his Holiness has retired for his devotions, and desires
+on no account to be disturbed.”</p>
+
+<p>“A pious fraud,” said Anno, “which not one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+Fathers would for a moment have scrupled to commit.”</p>
+
+<p>The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible
+Lucifer, and bore him carefully, almost tenderly, to the
+apartment appointed for his detention. Each would
+fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery, but each
+felt that the eyes of his six brethren were upon him:
+and all, therefore, retired simultaneously, each taking a
+key of the cell.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately
+afterwards. He had the most confused idea of the circumstances
+which had involved him in his present
+scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were
+the usual concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were
+by no means to his taste, and he wished he had been
+made acquainted with them sooner. The dungeon was
+not only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the poor
+devil in his present form had no latent store of infernal
+heat to draw upon. His teeth chattered, he shivered in
+every limb, and felt devoured with hunger and thirst.
+There is much probability in the assertion of some of
+his biographers that it was on this occasion that he
+invented ardent spirits; but, even if he did, the mere
+conception of a glass of brandy could only increase his
+sufferings. So the long January night wore wearily
+on, and Lucifer seemed likely to expire from inanition,
+when a key turned in the lock, and Cardinal Anno cautiously
+glided in, bearing a lamp, a loaf, half a cold
+roast kid, and a bottle of wine.</p>
+
+<p>“I trust,” he said, bowing courteously, “that I may
+be excused any slight breach of etiquette of which I may
+render myself culpable from the difficulty under which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+I labour of determining whether, under present circumstances,
+‘Your Holiness,’ or ‘Your infernal Majesty’ be
+the form of address most befitting me to employ.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bub-ub-bub-boo,” went Lucifer, who still had the
+gag in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>“Heavens!” exclaimed the Cardinal, “I crave your
+Infernal Holiness’s forgiveness. What a lamentable
+oversight!”</p>
+
+<p>And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he
+set out the refection, upon which the demon fell voraciously.</p>
+
+<p>“Why the devil, if I may so express myself,” pursued
+Anno, “did not your Holiness inform us that you
+<i>were</i> the devil? Not a hand would then have been
+raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my
+life for the audience now happily vouchsafed me.
+Whence this mistrust of your faithful Anno, who has
+served you so loyally and zealously these many years?”</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall never forgive myself,” protested the Cardinal,
+“for the part I have borne in this unfortunate
+transaction. Next to ministering to your Majesty’s bodily
+necessities, there is nothing I have so much at heart
+as to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty
+to remember that I believed myself to be acting in your
+Majesty’s interest by overthrowing a magician who was
+accustomed to send your Majesty upon errands, and who
+might at any time enclose you in a box, and cast you
+into the sea. It is deplorable that your Majesty’s most
+devoted servants should have been thus misled.”</p>
+
+<p>“Reasons of State,” suggested Lucifer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“I trust that they no longer operate,” said the Cardinal.
+“However, the Sacred College is now fully possessed
+of the whole matter: it is therefore unnecessary
+to pursue this department of the subject further. I
+would now humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty,
+or rather, perhaps, your Holiness, since I am about
+to speak of spiritual things, on the important and delicate
+point of your Holiness’s successor. I am ignorant
+how long your Holiness proposes to occupy the Apostolic
+chair; but of course you are aware that public opinion
+will not suffer you to hold it for a term exceeding that
+of the pontificate of Peter. A vacancy, therefore, must
+one day occur; and I am humbly to represent that the
+office could not be filled by one more congenial than
+myself to the present incumbent, or on whom he could
+more fully rely to carry out in every respect his views
+and intentions.”</p>
+
+<p>And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances
+of his past life, which certainly seemed to corroborate
+his assertion. He had not, however, proceeded
+far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another key in
+the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively,
+“Beware of Benno,” ere he dived under a table.</p>
+
+<p>Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold
+viands. Warned by the other lamp and the remains of
+Lucifer’s repast that some colleague had been beforehand
+with him, and not knowing how many more might
+be in the field, he came briefly to the point as regarded
+the Papacy, and preferred his claim in much the same
+manner as Anno. While he was earnestly cautioning
+Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+would cheat the very Devil himself, another key turned
+in the lock, and Benno escaped under the table, where
+Anno immediately inserted his fingers into his right eye.
+The little squeal consequent upon this occurrence Lucifer
+successfully smothered by a fit of coughing.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham,
+and exhibited the same disgust as Benno on seeing himself
+forestalled. So far as his requests transpired they
+were moderate, but no one knows where he would have
+stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal
+No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an
+inexhaustible purse, power to call up the Devil <i>ad
+libitum</i>, and a ring of invisibility to allow him free access
+to his mistress, who was unfortunately a married
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way
+of poisoning Cardinal No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred
+the same petition as respected Cardinal No. 4.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion
+of the Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York,
+with the faculty of holding them together, and of unlimited
+non-residence. In the course of his harangue
+he made use of the phrase <i>non obstantibus</i>, of which
+Lucifer immediately took a note.</p>
+
+<p>What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is
+not known, for he had hardly opened his mouth when
+the twelfth hour expired, and Lucifer, regaining his
+vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the Church
+spinning to the other end of the room, and split the
+marble table with a single stroke of his tail. The six<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+crouched and huddling Cardinals cowered revealed to
+one another, and at the same time enjoyed the spectacle
+of his Holiness darting through the stone ceiling, which
+yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up afterwards
+as if nothing had happened. After the first shock
+of dismay they unanimously rushed to the door, but
+found it bolted on the outside. There was no other
+exit, and no means of giving an alarm. In this emergency
+the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a
+bright example to their ultramontane colleagues.
+“<i>Bisogna pazienzia</i>,” they said, as they shrugged their
+shoulders. Nothing could exceed the mutual politeness
+of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the
+two who had sought to poison each other. The Frenchman
+was held to have gravely derogated from good manners
+by alluding to this circumstance, which had reached
+his ears while he was under the table: and the Englishman
+swore so outrageously at the plight in which he
+found himself that the Italians then and there silently
+registered a vow that none of his nation should ever be
+Pope, a maxim which, with one exception, has been observed
+to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom
+he found arrayed in all the insignia of his dignity; of
+which, as he remarked, he thought his visitor had probably
+had enough.</p>
+
+<p>“I should think so indeed,” replied Lucifer. “But
+at the same time I feel myself fully repaid for all I
+have undergone by the assurance of the loyalty of my
+friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is needless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+for me to devote any considerable amount of personal
+attention to ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the
+promised boon, which it will be in no way inconsistent
+with thy functions to grant, seeing that it is a work of
+mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be released, and
+that their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone suffered,
+be buried in oblivion.”</p>
+
+<p>“I hoped you would carry them all off,” said Gerbert,
+with an expression of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said the Devil. “It is more to my interest
+to leave them where they are.”</p>
+
+<p>So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals
+came forth, sheepish and crestfallen. If, after all,
+they did less mischief than Lucifer had expected from
+them, the cause was their entire bewilderment by what
+had passed, and their utter inability to penetrate the policy
+of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even with
+ostentation to good works. They could never quite satisfy
+themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope
+or to the Devil, and when under the latter impression
+habitually emitted propositions which Gerbert justly
+stigmatized as rash, temerarious, and scandalous.
+They plagued him with allusions to certain matters mentioned
+in their interviews with Lucifer, with which they
+naturally but erroneously supposed him to be conversant,
+and worried him by continual nods and titterings
+as they glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish
+this nuisance, and at the same time silence sundry unpleasant
+rumours which had somehow got abroad, Gerbert
+devised the ceremony of kissing the Pope’s feet,
+which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+day. The stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering
+that the Holy Father had lost his hoof surpasses all description,
+and they went to their graves without having
+obtained the least insight into the mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Taken by permission from <i>The Twilight of the Gods</i>, by Richard
+Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="MADAM_LUCIFER27" id="MADAM_LUCIFER27"></a>MADAM LUCIFER<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY RICHARD GARNETT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#MADAM_LUCIFER_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Lucifer sat playing chess with Man for his soul.</p>
+
+<p>The game was evidently going ill for Man. He had
+but pawns left, few and struggling. Lucifer had rooks,
+knights, and, of course, bishops.</p>
+
+<p>It was but natural under such circumstances that Man
+should be in no great hurry to move. Lucifer grew impatient.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pity,” said he at last, “that we did not fix
+some period within which the player must move, or resign.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Lucifer,” returned the young man, in heart-rending
+accents, “it is not the impending loss of my
+soul that thus unmans me, but the loss of my betrothed.
+When I think of the grief of the Lady Adeliza, the paragon
+of terrestrial loveliness!” Tears choked his utterance;
+Lucifer was touched.</p>
+
+<p>“Is the Lady Adeliza’s loveliness in sooth so transcendent?”
+he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“She is a rose, a lily, a diamond, a morning star!”</p>
+
+<p>“If that is the case,” rejoined Lucifer, “thou mayest
+reassure thyself. The Lady Adeliza shall not want for
+consolation. I will assume thy shape and woo her in
+thy stead.”</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+<p>The young man hardly seemed to receive all the comfort
+from this promise which Lucifer no doubt designed.
+He made a desperate move. In an instant the Devil
+checkmated him, and he disappeared.</p>
+
+
+<p style="padding-top: 1.5em">“Upon my word, if I had known what a business this
+was going to be, I don’t think I should have gone in for
+it,” soliloquized the Devil as, wearing his captive’s semblance
+and installed in his apartments, he surveyed the
+effects to which he now had to administer. They included
+coats, shirts, collars, neckties, foils, cigars, and
+the like <i>ad libitum</i>; and very little else except three
+challenges, ten writs, and seventy-four unpaid bills, elegantly
+disposed around the looking-glass. To the poor
+youth’s praise be it said, there were no <i>billets-doux</i>, except
+from the Lady Adeliza herself.</p>
+
+<p>Noting the address of these carefully, the Devil sallied
+forth, and nothing but his ignorance of the topography
+of the hotel, which made him take the back
+stairs, saved him from the clutches of two bailiffs lurking
+on the principal staircase. Leaping into a cab, he
+thus escaped a perfumer and a bootmaker, and shortly
+found himself at the Lady Adeliza’s feet.</p>
+
+<p>The truth had not been half told him. Such beauty,
+such wit, such correctness of principle! Lucifer went
+forth from her presence a love-sick fiend. Not Merlin’s
+mother had produced half the impression upon him;
+and Adeliza on her part had never found her lover one-hundredth
+part so interesting as he seemed that morning.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer proceeded at once to the City, where, assuming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+his proper shape for the occasion, he negotiated a
+loan without the smallest difficulty. All debts were
+promptly discharged, and Adeliza was astonished at the
+splendour and variety of the presents she was constantly
+receiving.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer had all but brought her to name the day,
+when he was informed that a gentleman of clerical appearance
+desired to wait upon him.</p>
+
+<p>“Wants money for a new church or mission, I suppose,”
+said he. “Show him up.”</p>
+
+<p>But when the visitor was ushered in, Lucifer found
+with discomposure that he was no earthly clergyman,
+but a celestial saint; a saint, too, with whom Lucifer had
+never been able to get on. He had served in the army
+while on earth, and his address was curt, precise, and
+peremptory.</p>
+
+<p>“I have called,” he said, “to notify to you my appointment
+as Inspector of Devils.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” exclaimed Lucifer, in consternation. “To
+the post of my old friend Michael!”</p>
+
+<p>“Too old,” said the Saint laconically. “Millions of
+years older than the world. About your age, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer winced, remembering the particular business
+he was then about. The Saint continued:</p>
+
+<p>“I am a new broom, and am expected to sweep clean.
+I warn you that I mean to be strict, and there is one
+little matter which I must set right immediately. You
+are going to marry that poor young fellow’s betrothed,
+are you? Now you know you can not take his wife,
+unless you give him yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my dear friend,” exclaimed Lucifer, “what an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+inexpressibly blissful prospect you do open unto me!”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know that,” said the Saint. “I must remind
+you that the dominion of the infernal regions is
+unalterably attached to the person of the present Queen
+thereof. If you part with her you immediately lose
+all your authority and possessions. I don’t care a brass
+button which you do, but you must understand that you
+cannot eat your cake and have it too. Good morning!”</p>
+
+<p>Who shall describe the conflict in Lucifer’s bosom?
+If any stronger passion existed therein at that moment
+than attachment to Adeliza, it was aversion to his consort,
+and the two combined were wellnigh irresistible.
+But to disenthrone himself, to descend to the condition
+of a poor devil!</p>
+
+<p>Feeling himself incapable of coming to a decision, he
+sent for Belial, unfolded the matter, and requested his
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>“What a shame that our new inspector will not let
+you marry Adeliza!” lamented his counsellor. “If you
+did, my private opinion is that forty-eight hours afterwards
+you would care just as much for her as you do
+now for Madam Lucifer, neither more nor less. Are
+your intentions really honourable?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” replied Lucifer, “it is to be a Lucifer match.”</p>
+
+<p>“The more fool you,” rejoined Belial. “If you
+tempted her to commit a sin, she would be yours without
+any conditions at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Belial,” said Lucifer, “I cannot bring myself to
+be a tempter of so much innocence and loveliness.”</p>
+
+<p>And he meant what he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Well then, let me try,” proposed Belial.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“You?” replied Lucifer contemptuously; “do you
+imagine that Adeliza would look at you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?” asked Belial, surveying himself complacently
+in the glass.</p>
+
+<p>He was humpbacked, squinting, and lame, and his
+horns stood up under his wig.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion ended in a wager: after which there
+was no retreat for Lucifer.</p>
+
+<p>The infernal Iachimo was introduced to Adeliza as a
+distinguished foreigner, and was soon prosecuting his
+suit with all the success which Lucifer had predicted.
+One thing protected while it baffled him—the entire inability
+of Adeliza to understand what he meant. At
+length he was constrained to make the matter clear by
+producing an enormous treasure, which he offered
+Adeliza in exchange for the abandonment of her lover.</p>
+
+<p>The tempest of indignation which ensued would have
+swept away any ordinary demon, but Belial listened unmoved.
+When Adeliza had exhausted herself he smilingly
+rallied her upon her affection for an unworthy
+lover, of whose infidelity he undertook to give her proof.
+Frantic with jealousy, Adeliza consented, and in a trice
+found herself in the infernal regions.</p>
+
+
+<p style="padding-top: 1.5em">Adeliza’s arrival in Pandemonium, as Belial had
+planned, occurred immediately after the receipt of a
+message from Lucifer, in whose bosom love had finally
+gained the victory, and who had telegraphed his abdication
+and resignation of Madam Lucifer to Adeliza’s
+betrothed. The poor young man had just been hauled
+up from the lower depths, and was beset by legions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+demons obsequiously pressing all manner of treasures
+upon his acceptance. He stared, helpless and bewildered,
+unable to realize his position in the smallest
+degree. In the background grave and serious demons,
+the princes of the infernal realm, discussed the new departure,
+and consulted especially how to break it to
+Madam Lucifer—a commission of which no one
+seemed ambitious.</p>
+
+<p>“Stay where you are,” whispered Belial to Adeliza;
+“stir not: you shall put his constancy to the proof within
+five minutes.”</p>
+
+<p>Not all the hustling, mowing, and gibbering of the
+fiends would under ordinary circumstances have kept
+Adeliza from her lover’s side: but what is all hell to
+jealousy?</p>
+
+<p>In even less time than he had promised, Belial returned,
+accompanied by Madam Lucifer. This lady’s
+black robe, dripping with blood, contrasted agreeably
+with her complexion of sulphurous yellow; the absence
+of hair was compensated by the exceptional length of
+her nails; she was a thousand million years old, and,
+but for her remarkable muscular vigour, looked every
+one of them. The rage into which Belial’s communication
+had thrown her was something indescribable;
+but, as her eye fell on the handsome youth, a different
+order of thoughts seemed to take possession of her
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Let the monster go!” she exclaimed; “who cares?
+Come, my love, ascend the throne with me, and share
+the empire and the treasures of thy fond Luciferetta.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you don’t, back you go,” interjected Belial.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What might have been the young man’s decision if
+Madam Lucifer had borne more resemblance to Madam
+Vulcan, it would be wholly impertinent to inquire, for
+the question never arose.</p>
+
+<p>“Take me away!” he screamed, “take me away, anywhere!
+anywhere out of her reach! Oh, Adeliza!”</p>
+
+<p>With a bound Adeliza stood by his side. She was
+darting a triumphant glance at the discomfited Queen of
+Hell, when suddenly her expression changed, and she
+screamed loudly. Two adorers stood before her, alike
+in every lineament and every detail of costume, utterly
+indistinguishable, even by the eye of Love.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer, in fact, hastening to throw himself at Adeliza’s
+feet and pray her to defer his bliss no longer, had
+been thunderstruck by the tidings of her elopement with
+Belial. Fearing to lose his wife and his dominions
+along with his sweetheart, he had sped to the nether
+regions with such expedition that he had had no time
+to change his costume. Hence the equivocation which
+confounded Adeliza, but at the same time preserved
+her from being torn to pieces by the no less mystified
+Madam Lucifer.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving the state of the case, Lucifer with true
+gentlemanly feeling resumed his proper semblance, and
+Madam Lucifer’s talons were immediately inserted into
+his whiskers.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear! my love!” he gasped, as audibly as she
+would let him, “is this the way it welcomes its own
+Lucy-pucy?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is that person?” demanded Madam Lucifer.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know her,” screamed the wretched Lucifer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+“I never saw her before. Take her away; shut her up
+in the deepest dungeon!”</p>
+
+<p>“Not if I know it,” sharply replied Madam Lucifer.
+“You can’t bear to part with her, can’t you? You
+would intrigue with her under my nose, would you?
+Take that! and that! Turn them both out, I say! turn
+them both out!”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, my dearest love, most certainly,” responded
+Lucifer.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Sire,” cried Moloch and Beelzebub together,
+“for Heaven’s sake let your Majesty consider what he
+is doing. The Inspector—”</p>
+
+<p>“Bother the Inspector!” screeched Lucifer. “D’ye
+think I’m not a thousand times more afraid of your
+mistress than of all the saints in the calendar? There,”
+addressing Adeliza and her betrothed, “be off! You’ll
+find all debts paid, and a nice balance at the bank.
+Out! Run!”</p>
+
+<p>They did not wait to be told twice. Earth yawned.
+The gates of Tartarus stood wide. They found themselves
+on the side of a steep mountain, down which they
+scoured madly, hand linked in hand. But fast as they
+ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of
+Madam Lucifer.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Taken by permission from <i>The Twilight of the Gods</i>, by Richard
+Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LUCIFER28" id="LUCIFER28"></a>LUCIFER<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY ANATOLE FRANCE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#LUCIFER_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p style="padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em"><i>E si compiacque tanto Spinello di farlo orribile e contrafatto,
+che si dice (tanto può alcuna fiata l’immaginazione) che
+la detta figura da lui dipinta gli apparve in sogno, domandandolo
+dove egli l’ avesse veduta si brutta.</i><a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(<i>Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, da Messer<br />
+Giorgio Vasari.—“Vita di Spinello.”</i>)<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence,
+had a wholesome terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly
+in the watches of the night, when it is given
+to the powers of Darkness to prevail. And the worthy
+man’s fears were not unreasonable, for in those days the
+Demons had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed
+them of more souls with a single picture than a good
+little Preaching Friar could do in thirty sermons. No
+doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in the
+hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>his powers “that day of wrath, that day of mourning,”
+which is to reduce the universe to ashes, <i>teste David et
+Sibylla</i>, borrowing his deepest voice and bellowing
+through his hands to imitate the Archangel’s last trump.
+But there! it was “all sound and fury, signifying nothing,”
+whereas a painting displayed on a Chapel wall or
+in the Cloister, showing Jesus Christ sitting on the Great
+White Throne to judge the living and the dead, spoke
+unceasingly to the eyes of sinners, and through the eyes
+chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting
+at Santa-Croce in Florence and the Campo Santo of
+Pisa the mysteries of Divine Justice. These works were
+drawn according to the account in verse which Dante
+Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon
+Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell, and
+Purgatory and Paradise, whither by the singular great
+merits of his lady, he was able to make his way alive.
+So everything in these paintings was instructive and true,
+and we may say surely less profit is to be had of reading
+the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating
+such representative works of art. Moreover, the
+Florentine masters took heed to paint, under the shade
+of orange groves, on the flower-starred turf, fair ladies
+and gallant knights, with Death lying in wait for them
+with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love to
+the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted
+to convert carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness
+of God on the lips of women. To rebuke the covetous,
+the painter would show to the life the Devils pouring
+molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbess,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+who had commissioned some work from him and then
+scamped his pay.</p>
+
+<p>This is why the Demons in those days were bitter
+enemies of the painters, and above all of the Florentine
+painters, who surpassed all the rest in subtlety of wit.
+Chiefly they reproached them with representing them
+under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and fish,
+serpents’ bodies and bats’ wings. This sore resentment
+which they felt will come out plainly in the history of
+Spinello of Arezzo.</p>
+
+<p>Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of
+Florentine exiles, and his graciousness of mind matched
+his gentle birth; for he was the most skilful painter of
+his time. He wrought many and great works at Florence;
+and the Pisans begged him to complete Giotto’s
+wall-paintings in their Campo Santo, where the dead
+rest beneath roses in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem.
+At last, after working long years in divers cities and
+getting much gold, he longed to see once more the good
+city of Arezzo, his mother. The men of Arezzo had
+not forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being
+enrolled in the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia,
+had visited the sick and buried the dead in the
+plague of 1383. They were grateful to him besides for
+having by his works spread the fame of their city over
+all Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him
+with high honours on his return.</p>
+
+<p>Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important
+tasks in his native town. His wife would tell
+him:</p>
+
+<p>“You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+younger men to paint instead of you. It is meet a man
+should end his days in a gentle, religious quiet. It is
+tempting God to be for ever raising new and worldly
+monuments, mere heathen towers of Babel. Quit your
+colours and your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy
+your peace of mind.”</p>
+
+<p>So the good dame would preach, but he refused to
+listen, for his one thought was to increase his fortune and
+renown. Far from resting on his laurels, he arranged
+a price with the Wardens of Sant’ Agnolo for a history
+of St. Michael, that was to cover all the Choir of the
+Church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise
+he threw himself with extraordinary ardour.
+Re-reading the parts of Scripture that were to be his
+inspiration, he set himself to study deeply every line
+and every word of these passages. Not content with
+drawing all day long in his workshop, he persisted in
+working both at bed and board; while at dusk, walking
+below the hill on whose brow Arezzo proudly lifts her
+walls and towers, he was still lost in thought. And we
+may say the story of the Archangel was already limned
+in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents
+in red chalk on the plaster of the wall. He was soon
+done tracing these outlines; then he fell to painting above
+the high altar the scene that was to outshine all the others
+in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein to glorify
+the leader of the hosts of Heaven for the victory he won
+before the beginning of time. Accordingly Spinello
+represented St. Michael fighting in the air against the
+serpent with seven heads and ten horns, and he figured
+with delight, in the bottom part of the picture, the Prince<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+of the Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an appalling
+monster. The figures seemed to grow to life
+of themselves under his hand. His success was beyond
+his fondest hopes; so hideous was the countenance
+of Lucifer, none could escape the nightmare of its foulness.
+The face haunted the painter in the streets and
+even went home with him to his lodging.</p>
+
+<p>Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in
+his bed beside his wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers
+he saw an Angel as comely as St. Michael, but black;
+and the Angel said to him:</p>
+
+<p>“Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you
+seen me, that you should paint me as you have, under
+so ignominious a likeness?”</p>
+
+<p>The old painter answered, trembling, that he had never
+seen him with his eyes, never having gone down alive
+into Hell, like Messer Dante Alighieri; but that, in depicting
+him as he had done, he was for expressing in
+visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin.</p>
+
+<p>Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of
+San Gemignano seemed of a sudden to heave and
+stagger.</p>
+
+<p>“Spinello,” he went on, “will you do me the pleasure
+to reason awhile with me? I am no mean Logician; He
+you pray to knows that.”</p>
+
+<p>Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms:</p>
+
+<p>“Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me.
+You know of my enterprise, and how I forsook Heaven
+to become the Prince of this World. A tremendous adventure,—and
+a unique one, had not the Giants in like
+fashion assailed the god Jupiter, as yourself have seen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this Titanic
+war is carved in marble.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true,” said Spinello, “I have seen the tomb,
+shaped like a great tun, in the Church of Santa Reparata
+at Florence. ’Tis a fine work of the Romans.”</p>
+
+<p>“Still,” returned Lucifer, smiling, “the Giants are not
+pictured on it in the shape of frogs or chameleons or
+the like hideous and horrid creatures.”</p>
+
+<p>“True,” replied the painter, “but then they had not
+attacked the true God, but only a false idol of the Pagans.
+’Tis a mighty difference. The fact is clear, Lucifer,
+you raised the standard of revolt against the true
+and veritable King of Earth and Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will not deny it,” said Lucifer. “And how many
+sorts of sins do you charge me with for that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Seven, it is like enough,” the painter answered,
+“and deadly sins one and all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Seven!” exclaimed the Angel of Darkness; “well!
+the number is canonical. Everything goes by sevens in
+my history, which is close bound up with God’s.
+Spinello, you deem me proud, angry and envious. I
+enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my
+only aim. Do you deem me covetous? Granted again;
+Covetousness is a virtue for Princes. For Gluttony and
+Lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not complain. Remains
+<i>Indolence</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms
+across his breast, and shaking his gloomy head, tossed
+his flaming locks:</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me, Spinello, do you really think I am indolent?
+Do you take me for a coward? Do you hold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+that in my revolt I showed a lack of courage? Nay!
+you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the
+guise of a hero, with a proud countenance. You should
+wrong no one, not even the Devil. Cannot you see that
+you insult Him you make prayer to, when you give Him
+for adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinello, you
+are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great
+mind to pull your ears, as they do to an ill-conditioned
+schoolboy.”</p>
+
+<p>At this threat, and seeing the arm of Lucifer already
+stretched out towards him, Spinello clapped his hand to
+his head and began to howl with terror.</p>
+
+<p>His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him
+what ailed him. He told her with chattering teeth, how
+he had just seen Lucifer and had been in terror for his
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>“I told you so,” retorted the worthy dame; “I knew
+all those figures you will go on painting on the walls
+would end by driving you mad.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am not mad,” protested the painter. “I saw him
+with my own eyes; and he is beautiful to look on, albeit
+proud and sad. First thing tomorrow I will blot out
+the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its place the
+shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong
+even the Devil himself.”</p>
+
+<p>“You had best go to sleep again,” scolded his wife.
+“You are talking stark nonsense, and unchristian to
+boot.”</p>
+
+<p>Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and
+he fell back unconscious on his pillow. He lingered
+on a few days in a high fever, and then died.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Taken by permission from <i>The Well of St. Claire</i>, by Anatole
+France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published, 1909, by John Lane
+Co., New York.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> “And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and portentous
+Production that it was commonly reported—so great is always the
+force of fancy—that the said figure (of Lucifer trodden underfoot by
+St. Michael in the Altar-Piece of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo)
+painted by him had appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him
+in what place he had beheld him under so brutish a form.”
+</p><p>
+<i>Lives of the most Excellent Painters</i>, by Giorgio Vasari.—“Life of
+Spinello.”</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL30" id="THE_DEVIL30"></a>THE DEVIL<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY MAXIM GORKY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Life is a burden in the Fall,—the sad season of decay
+and death!</p>
+
+<p>The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark
+nights, the growling, whining wind, the heavy, black
+autumn shadows—all that drives clouds of gloomy
+thoughts over the human soul, and fills it with a mysterious
+fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in an
+eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why?
+... for what purpose?...</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the
+tenebrous thoughts that enfold the soul late in the
+autumn, therefore those who want to assuage their bitterness
+ought to meet them half way. This is the only
+way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair
+and doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.</p>
+
+<p>But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny
+brambles that lacerate the living heart, and on that path
+the devil always lies in ambush. It is that best of all
+the devils, with whom the great Goethe has made us acquainted....</p>
+
+<p>My story is about that devil.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The devil suffered from ennui.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He is too wise to ridicule everything.</p>
+
+<p>He knows that there are phenomena of life which the
+devil himself is not able to rail at; for example, he has
+never applied the sharp scalpel of his irony to the
+majestic fact of his existence. To tell the truth, our
+favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we were
+to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like
+ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But
+we had better leave that alone; we are not children that
+break their best toys in order to discover what is in them.</p>
+
+<p>The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the
+darkness of an autumn night: he felt lonely and whistled
+softly as he looked around himself in search of a distraction.
+He whistled an old song—my father’s favourite
+song,—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“When, in autumnal days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A leaf from its branch is torn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on high by the wind is borne.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves
+and among the black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds
+slowly crawled over the heaven and with their cold tears
+watered the narrow dwellings of the dead. The mournful
+trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the
+strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to
+the speechless clouds. The branches were now and then
+caught by the crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful
+sound passed over the churchyard....</p>
+
+<p>The devil was whistling, and he thought:</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+doubt, the dampness goes down to them, and although
+they are secure against rheumatism ever since the day
+of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel comfortable.
+How, if I called one of them up and had a talk
+with him? It would be a little distraction for me, and,
+very likely, for him also. I will call him! Somewhere
+around here they have buried an old friend of
+mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was
+alive ... why not renew our acquaintance? People
+of his kind are dreadfully exacting. I shall find out
+whether the grave satisfies him completely. But where
+is his grave?”</p>
+
+<p>And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything,
+wandered for a long time about the cemetery, before
+he found the author’s grave....</p>
+
+<p>“Oh there!” he called out as he knocked with his
+claws at the heavy stone under which his acquaintance
+was put away.</p>
+
+<p>“Get up!”</p>
+
+<p>“What for?” came the dull answer from below.</p>
+
+<p>“I need you.”</p>
+
+<p>“I won’t get up.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you, anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>“You know me.”</p>
+
+<p>“The censor?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha, ha, ha! No!”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe a secret policeman?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no!”</p>
+
+<p>“Not a critic, either?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am the devil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll be out in a minute.”</p>
+
+<p>The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst
+open, and a skeleton came out of it. It was a very common
+skeleton, just the kind that students study anatomy
+by: only it was dirty, had no wire connections, and in
+the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric light
+instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its
+bones in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them,
+making a dry, rattling noise with them, and raising up
+its skull, looked with its cold, blue eyes at the murky,
+cloud-covered sky. “I hope you are well!” said the
+devil.</p>
+
+<p>“How can I be?” curtly answered the author. He
+spoke in a strange, low voice, as if two bones were grating
+against each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, excuse my greeting!” the devil said pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind!... But why have you raised me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the
+weather is very bad.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?”
+asked the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my
+lifetime.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say I did! They had poured enough cold
+water over me all my life.”</p>
+
+<p>They walked beside each other over the narrow path,
+between graves and crosses. Two blue beams fell from
+the author’s eyes upon the ground and lit the way for
+the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them, and
+the wind freely passed between the author’s bare ribs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+and through his breast where there was no longer a
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>“We are going to town?” he asked the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“What interests you there?”</p>
+
+<p>“Life, my dear sir,” the author said impassionately.</p>
+
+<p>“What! It still has a meaning for you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed it has!”</p>
+
+<p>“But why?”</p>
+
+<p>“How am I to say it? A man measures all by the
+quantity of his effort, and if he carries a common stone
+down from the summit of Ararat, that stone becomes
+a gem to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor fellow!” smiled the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“But also happy man!” the author retorted coldly.</p>
+
+<p>The devil shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>They left the churchyard, and before them lay a
+street,—two rows of houses, and between them was darkness
+in which the miserable lamps clearly proved the
+want of light upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me,” the devil spoke after a pause, “how do you
+like your grave?”</p>
+
+<p>“Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very
+quiet there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it not damp down there in the Fall?” asked the
+devil.</p>
+
+<p>“A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance
+comes from those various idiots who ramble
+over the cemetery and accidentally stumble on my grave.
+I don’t know how long I have been lying in my grave,
+for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the
+concept of time does not exist for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“You have been in the ground four years,—it will
+soon be five,” said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at
+my grave during that time. Those accursed people
+make me nervous. One, you see, straight away denied
+the fact of my existence: he read my name on the tombstone
+and said confidently: ‘There never was such a
+man! I have never read him, though I remember such
+a name: when I was a boy, there lived a man of that
+name who had a broker’s shop in our street.’ How do
+you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen
+years in the most popular periodicals, and three times
+during my lifetime my books came out in separate editions.”</p>
+
+<p>“There were two more editions since your death,” the
+devil informed him.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them
+said: ‘Oh, that’s that fellow!’ ‘Yes, that is he!’ answered
+the other. ‘Yes, they used to read him in the
+auld lang syne.’ ‘They read a lot of them.’ ‘What was
+it he preached?’ ‘Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness,
+and so forth.’ ‘Oh, yes, I remember.’ ‘He had
+a heavy tongue.’ ‘There is a lot of them in the ground:—yes,
+Russia is rich in talents’ ... And those asses
+went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the
+temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that,
+yet it hurts me. And oh, how I wanted to give them a
+piece of my mind!”</p>
+
+<p>“You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!”
+smiled the devil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“No, that would not have done. On the verge of the
+twentieth century it would be absurd for dead people to
+scold, and, besides, it would be hard on the materialists.”</p>
+
+<p>The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.</p>
+
+<p>This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a
+bridegroom at all weddings and a corpse at all burials,
+and now that all is dead in him, his egotism is still
+alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of importance
+is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves
+applause and recognition.... How annoying
+people are! The devil was on the point of proposing
+to the author to return to his grave, when an idea flashed
+through his evil head. They had just reached a square,
+and heavy masses of buildings surrounded them on all
+sides. The dark, wet sky hung low over the square; it
+seemed as though it rested on the roofs and murkily
+looked at the dirty earth.</p>
+
+<p>“Say,” said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards
+the author, “don’t you want to know how your
+wife is getting on?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know whether I want to,” the author spoke
+slowly.</p>
+
+<p>“I see, you are a thorough corpse!” called out the
+devil to annoy him.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t know?” said the author and jauntily
+shook his bones. “I don’t mind seeing her; besides,
+she will not see me, or if she will, she cannot recognize
+me!”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course!” the devil assured him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“You know, I only said so because she did not like
+for me to go away long from home,” explained the author.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became
+as transparent as glass. The author saw the inside
+of large apartments, and it was so light and cosy
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>“Elegant appointments!” he grated his bones approvingly:
+“Very fine appointments! If I had lived in
+such rooms, I would be alive now.”</p>
+
+<p>“I like it, too,” said the devil and smiled. “And it is
+not expensive—it only costs some three thousands.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest
+work brought me 815 roubles, and I worked over it a
+whole year. But who lives here?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your wife,” said the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“I declare! That is good ... for her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and here comes her husband.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed!
+Her husband, you say? What a fine looking fellow!
+Rather a bourgeois phiz,—kind, but somewhat stupid!
+He looks as if he might be cunning,—well, just the face
+to please a woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?” the devil
+proposed and looked maliciously at the author. But he
+was taken up with the scene before him.</p>
+
+<p>“What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently
+satisfied with life. Tell me, does she love him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes, very much!”</p>
+
+<p>“And who is he?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“A clerk in a millinery shop.”</p>
+
+<p>“A clerk in a millinery shop,” the author repeated
+slowly and did not utter a word for some time. The
+devil looked at him and smiled a merry smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you like that?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The author spoke with an effort:</p>
+
+<p>“I had some children.... I know they are alive....
+I had some children ... a son and a daughter....
+I used to think then that my son would turn out
+in time a good man....”</p>
+
+<p>“There are plenty of good men, but what the world
+needs is perfect men,” said the devil coolly and whistled
+a jolly march.</p>
+
+<p>“I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ...
+and my son....”</p>
+
+<p>The author’s empty skull shook sadly.</p>
+
+<p>“Just look how he is embracing her! They are living
+an easy life!” exclaimed the devil.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich.”</p>
+
+<p>“My wife? Where did she get the money from?”</p>
+
+<p>“From the sale of your books!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” said the author and shook his bare and empty
+skull. “Oh! Then it simply means that I have worked
+for a certain clerk?”</p>
+
+<p>“I confess it looks that way,” the devil chimed in
+merrily.</p>
+
+<p>The author looked at the ground and said to the devil:
+“Take me back to my grave!”</p>
+
+<p>... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+the sky, and the author rattled his bones as he marched
+rapidly to his grave.... The devil walked behind him
+and whistled merrily.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is
+surfeited with literature, and even the people that write
+only to please him, are rarely to his taste. In the present
+case my reader is also dissatisfied because I have
+said nothing about hell. As my reader is justly convinced
+that after death he will find his way there, he
+would like to know something about hell during his lifetime.
+Really, I can’t tell anything pleasant to my
+reader on that score, because there is no hell, no fiery
+hell which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is something
+else and infinitely more terrible.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the doctor will have said about you to
+your friends: “He is dead!” you will enter an immeasurable,
+illuminated space, and that is the space of
+the consciousness of your mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable
+life rotates about you like a wheel.</p>
+
+<p>It moves painfully slow, and passes before you from
+your first conscious step to the last moment of your life.</p>
+
+<p>You will see all that you have hidden from yourself
+during your lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your
+existence: you will think over anew all your past
+thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of yours,—all
+your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!</p>
+
+<p>And to increase your torments, you will know that on
+that narrow and stupid road which you have traversed,
+others are marching, and pushing each other, and hurrying,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+and lying.... And you understand that they are
+doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is
+to live such a wretched, soulless life.</p>
+
+<p>And though you see them hastening on towards their
+destruction, you are in no way able to warn them: you
+will not move nor cry, and your helpless desire to aid
+them will tear your soul to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Your life passes before you, and you see it from the
+start, and there is no end to the work of your conscience,
+and there will be no end ... and to the horror of your
+torments there will never be an end ... never!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> From the <i>National Magazine</i>, vol. XV. By permission of the Editor
+and Translator.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN31" id="THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN31"></a>THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY JOHN MASEFIELD<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN_N">Notes</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was
+a man who never throve. Nothing he put his hand to
+ever prospered, and as his state worsened, his friends
+fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night when
+he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in
+two or three days and the money he couldn’t scrape together,
+he cried out, “I wish I could sell my soul to the
+devil like that man the old books tell about.”</p>
+
+<p>Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and,
+while it chimed, a sparkle began to burn about the room,
+and the air, all at once, began to smell of brimstone, and
+a voice said:</p>
+
+<p>“Will these terms suit you?”</p>
+
+<p>He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment
+there. He picked it up and read it through; and
+being in despair, and not knowing what he was doing,
+he answered, “Yes,” and looked round for a pen.</p>
+
+<p>“Take and sign,” said the voice again, “but first consider
+what it is you do; do nothing rashly. Consider.”</p>
+
+<p>So he thought awhile; then “Yes,” he said, “I’ll sign,”
+and with that he groped for the pen.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+<p>“Blood from your left thumb and sign,” said the
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>So he pricked his left thumb and signed.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is your earnest money,” said the voice, “nine
+and twenty silver pennies. This day twenty years hence
+I shall see you again.”</p>
+
+<p>Now early next morning our friend came to himself
+and felt like one of the drowned. “What a dream I’ve
+had,” he said. Then he woke up and saw the nine and
+twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of brimstone.</p>
+
+<p>So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he
+had sold his soul to the devil for twenty years of heart’s-desire;
+and whatever fears he may have had as to what
+might come at the end of those twenty years, he found
+comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a
+good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could
+eat, drink, merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be
+care-free, heart at ease and jib-sheet to windward.</p>
+
+<p>So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in
+great state, having his heart’s desire in all things; but,
+when his twenty years were nearly run through, there
+was no wretcheder man in all the world than that poor
+fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches,
+everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool,
+where he signed on as A.&nbsp;B., aboard a Black Ball packet,
+a tea clipper, bound to the China seas.</p>
+
+<p>They made a fine passage out, and when our friend
+had only three days more, they were in the Indian Ocean
+lying lazy, becalmed.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+calm, all he had to do was just to think of things; the
+ship of course having no way on her.</p>
+
+<p>So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning
+and weeping till, just twenty minutes or so before eight
+bells were made, up came the Captain for a turn on
+deck.</p>
+
+<p>He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our
+friend crying at the wheel. “Hello, my man,” he says,
+“why, what’s all this? Ain’t you well? You’d best lay
+aft for a dose o’salts at four bells tonight.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Cap’n,” said the man, “there’s no salts’ll ever
+cure my sickness.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, what’s all this?” says the old man. “You
+must be sick if it’s as bad as all that. But come now;
+your cheek is all sunk, and you look as if you ain’t slept
+well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you anything
+on your mind?”</p>
+
+<p>“Captain,” he answers very solemn, “I have sold my
+soul to the devil.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” said the old man, “why, that’s bad. That’s
+powerful bad. I never thought them sort of things ever
+happened outside a book.”</p>
+
+<p>“But,” said our friend, “that’s not the worst of it,
+Captain. At this time three days hence the devil will
+fetch me home.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good Lord!” groaned the old man. “Here’s a nice
+hurrah’s nest to happen aboard my ship. But come
+now,” he went on, “did the devil give you no chance—no
+saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a moment.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Captain,” said our friend, “just when I made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+the deal, there came a whisper in my ear. And,” he
+said, speaking very quietly, so as not to let the mate
+hear, “if I can give the devil three jobs to do which he
+cannot do, why, then, Captain,” he says, “I’m saved, and
+that deed of mine is cancelled.”</p>
+
+<p>Well, at this the old man grinned and said, “You
+just leave things to me, my son. <i>I’ll</i> fix the devil for
+you. Aft there, one o’ you, and relieve the wheel.
+Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below, and
+be quite easy in your mind, for I’ll deal with the devil
+for you. You rest and be easy.”</p>
+
+<p>And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one
+after that, and the one after that was the day the Devil
+was due.</p>
+
+<p>Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch,
+the old man called all hands aft.</p>
+
+<p>“Men,” he said, “I’ve got an all-hands job for you this
+forenoon.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Mate,” he cried, “get all hands on to the main-tops’l
+halliards and bowse the sail stiff up and down.”</p>
+
+<p>So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns
+off, and old John Chantyman piped up—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There’s a Black Ball clipper<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comin’ down the river.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands
+jammed in the sheave.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now get my
+dinghy off o’ the half-deck and let her drag alongside.”</p>
+
+<p>So they did that, too.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now forrard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+with you, to the chain-locker, and rouse out every inch
+of chain you find there.”</p>
+
+<p>So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up
+and flaked along the deck all clear for running.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Chips,” says the old man to the carpenter, “just
+bend the spare anchor to the end of that chain, and clear
+away the fo’c’s’le rails ready for when we let go.”</p>
+
+<p>So they did this, too.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” said the old man, “get them tubs of slush
+from the galley. Pass that slush along there, doctor.
+Very well that. Now turn to, all hands, and slush away
+every link in that chain a good inch thick in grease.”</p>
+
+<p>So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man
+meant.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well that,” cries the old man. “Now get below
+all hands! Chips, on to the fo’c’s’le head with you and
+stand by! I’ll keep the deck, Mr. Mate! Very well
+that.”</p>
+
+<p>So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill
+o’ baccy to leeward of the capstan, and the old man
+walked the weather-poop looking for a sign of hell-fire.</p>
+
+<p>It was still dead calm—but presently, towards six
+bells, he raised a black cloud away to leeward, and saw
+the glimmer of the lightning in it; only the flashes were
+too red, and came too quick.</p>
+
+<p>“Now,” says he to himself, “stand by.”</p>
+
+<p>Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward,
+right alongside, and there came a red flash, and a strong
+sulphurous smell, and then a loud peal of thunder as
+the devil steps aboard.</p>
+
+<p>“Mornin’, Cap’n,” says he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Mornin’, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “and what
+in blazes do you want aboard <i>my</i> ship?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Captain,” said the devil, “I’ve come for the
+soul of one of your hands as per signed agreement: and,
+as my time’s pretty full up in these wicked days, I hope
+you won’t keep me waiting for him longer than need
+be.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “the man you
+come for is down below, sleeping, just at this moment.
+It’s a fair pity to call him up till it’s right time. So
+supposin’ I set you them three tasks. How would that
+be? Have you any objections?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, no,” said the devil, “fire away as soon as you
+like.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, “you see that main-tops’l
+yard? Suppose you lay out on that main-tops’l
+yard and take in three reefs singlehanded.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, ay, sir,” the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines,
+into the top, up the topmast rigging and along the
+yard.</p>
+
+<p>Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he
+hailed the deck:</p>
+
+<p>“Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!”</p>
+
+<p>“I will not,” said the old man, “nary a lower.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come up your sheets, then,” cries the devil. “This
+main-topsail’s stiff up-and-down. How’m I to take in
+three reefs when the sail’s stiff up-and-down?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” said the old man, “<i>you can’t do it</i>. Come
+out o’ that! Down from aloft, you hoof-footed son.
+That’s one to me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” says the devil, when he got on deck again,
+“I don’t deny it, Cap’n. That’s one to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the old man, going towards
+the rail, “suppose you was to step into that little boat
+alongside there. Will you please?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, ay, sir,” he said, and he slid down the forrard
+fall, got into the stern sheets, and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the skipper, taking a little
+salt spoon from his vest pocket, “supposin’ you bail all
+the water on that side the boat on to this side the boat,
+using this spoon as your dipper.”</p>
+
+<p>Well!—the devil just looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>“Say!” he said at length, “which of the New England
+States d’ye hail from anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not Jersey, anyway,” said the old man. “That’s
+two up, alright; ain’t it, sonny?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” growls the devil, as he climbs aboard.
+“That’s two up. Two to you and one to play. Now,
+what’s your next contraption?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, looking very innocent,
+“you see, I’ve ranged my chain ready for letting go
+anchor. Now Chips is forrard there, and when I sing
+out, he’ll let the anchor go. Supposin’ you stopper the
+chain with them big hands o’ yourn and keep it from
+running out clear. Will you, please?”</p>
+
+<p>So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together,
+and gets away forrard by the bitts, and stands
+by.</p>
+
+<p>“All ready, Cap’n,” he says.</p>
+
+<p>“All ready, Chips?” asked the old man.</p>
+
+<p>“All ready, sir,” replies Chips.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Then, stand by—Let <i>go</i> the anchor,” and clink,
+clink, old Chips knocks out the pin, and away goes the
+spare anchor and greased chain into a five mile deep of
+God’s sea. As I said, they were in the Indian Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Well—there was the devil, making a grab here and
+a grab there, and the slushy chain just slipping through
+his claws, and at whiles a bight of chain would spring
+clear and rap him in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the
+devil ran to the last big link (which was seized to the
+heel of the foremast), and he put both his arms through
+it, and hung on to it like grim death.</p>
+
+<p>But the chain gave such a <i>Yank</i> when it came-to, that
+the big link carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it
+went through the hawsehole, in a shower of bright
+sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no devil
+now. The devil’s dead.</p>
+
+<p>As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching
+the bubbles burst, but the devil never rose. Then he
+went to the fo’c’s’le scuttle and banged thereon with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+hand-spike.</p>
+
+<p>“Rouse out, there, the port watch!” he called, “an’
+get my dinghy inboard.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> From <i>A Mainsail Haul</i>, by John Masefield [Copyright 1913 by The
+Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the Author and the
+Publishers.]</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY_N" id="THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY_N"></a>THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY</h2>
+
+<h3>BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_IN_A_NUNNERY1">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>According to a German legend, the devil is master of all
+arts, and certainly he has given sufficient proof of his musical
+talent. Certain Church Fathers ascribed, not without good reason,
+the origin of music to Satan. “The Devil,” says Mr.
+Huneker in his diabolical story “The Supreme Sin” (1920), “is
+the greatest of all musicians,” and Rowland Hill long ago
+admitted the fact that the devil has all the good tunes. Perhaps
+his greatest composition is the <i>Sonata del Diavolo</i>, which Tartini
+wrote down in 1713. This diabolical master-piece is the
+subject of Gérard de Nerval’s story <i>La Sonate du Diable</i>
+(1830). While the devil plays all instruments equally well,
+he seems to prefer the violin. Satan appears as fiddler in the
+poem “Der Teufel mit der Geige,” which has been ascribed to
+the Swiss anti-Papist Pamphilus Gengenbach of the sixteenth
+century. In Leanu’s <i>Faust</i> (1836) Mephistopheles takes the
+violin out of the hands of one of the musicians at a peasant-wedding
+and plays a diabolical <i>czardas</i>, which fills the hearts
+of all who hear it with voluptuousness. An opera <i>Un Violon
+du Diable</i> was played in Paris in 1849. <i>The Devil’s Violin</i>,
+an extravaganza in verse by Benjamin Webster, was performed
+the same year in London. In his story “Les Tentations ou
+Eros, Plutus et la Gloire” Baudelaire presents the Demon
+of Love as holding in his left hand a violin “which without
+doubt served to sing his pleasures and pains.” The devil
+also appears as limping fiddler in a California legend, which
+appeared under the title “The Devil’s Fiddle” in a Californian
+magazine in 1855. Death, the devil’s first cousin, if not his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+<i>alter ego</i>, has the souls, in the Dance of Death, march off to
+hell to a merry tune on his violin. Death appears as a musician
+also in the Piper of Hamlin. In this legend, well known
+to the English world through Browning’s poem “Pied Piper of
+Hamelin” (1843) and Miss Peabody’s play <i>The Piper</i> (1909),
+the rats are the human souls, which Death charms with his
+music into following him. In the Middle Ages the soul was
+often represented as leaving the body in the form of a mouse.
+The soul of a good man comes out of his mouth as a white
+mouse, while at the death of a sinner the soul escapes as a
+black mouse, which the devil catches and brings to hell. Mephistopheles,
+it will be recalled, calls himself “the lord of rats
+and mice” (<i>Faust</i>, 1, 1516). Devil-Death has inherited this
+wind instrument from the goat-footed Pan.</p>
+
+<p>“The Devil is more busy in the convents,” we are told by
+J.&nbsp;K. Huysmans in his novel <i>En route</i> (1895), “than in the
+cities, as he has a harder job on hand.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BELPHAGOR_N" id="BELPHAGOR_N"></a>BELPHAGOR<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI<span class="sidenote"><a href="#BELPHAGOR">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This story of the devil Belphagor, who was sent by his infernal
+chief Pluto up to earth, where he married an earthly
+wife, but finally left her in disgust to go back to hell, is also
+of mediaeval origin. It was first printed by Giovanni Brevio
+in 1545, and appeared for the second time with the name of
+Machiavelli in 1549, twenty-two years after the death of the
+diabolical statesman. The two authors did not borrow from
+each other, but had a common source in a mediaeval Latin
+manuscript, which seems to have first fallen into the hands of
+Italians, but was later brought to France where it has been lost.
+The tale of the marriage of the devil appeared in several other
+Italian versions during the sixteenth century. Among the Italian
+novelists, who retold it for the benefit of their married
+friends, may be mentioned Giovan-Francesco Straparola, Francesco
+Sansovino, and Gabriel Chappuys. In England this story
+was no less popular. Barnabe Riche inserted it in his collection
+of narratives in 1581, and we meet it again later in the
+following plays: <i>Grim, the Collier of Croydon</i>, ascribed to Ulpian
+Fulwell (1599); <i>The Devil and his Dame</i> by P.&nbsp;M. Houghton
+(1600); <i>Machiavel and the Devil</i> by Daborne and Henslowe
+(1613); <i>The Devil is an Ass</i> by Ben Jonson (1616); and
+<i>Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil</i> (1690). In France
+the story was treated in verse by La Fontaine (1694), and in
+Germany it served the Nuremberg poet Hans Sachs as the subject
+for a farce (1557).</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Encyclopaedia Britannica</i> is authority for the statement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+that Machiavelli’s own married life had nothing to do with the
+plot of his story.</p>
+
+<p>“The notion of this story is ingenious, and might have been
+made productive of entertaining incident, had Belphagor been
+led by his connubial connections from one crime to another.
+But Belphagor is only unfortunate, and in no respect guilty;
+nor did anything occur during his abode on earth that testified
+to the power of woman in leading us to final condemnation.
+The story of the peasant and the possession of the princesses
+bears no reference to the original idea with which the tale commences,
+and has no connection with the object of the infernal
+deputy’s terrestrial sojourn” (J.&nbsp;C. Dunlop, <i>History of Fiction</i>).
+To this criticism Mr. Thomas Roscoe replies that “part of the
+humour of the story seems to consist in Belphagor’s earthly career
+being cut short before he had served the full term of his
+apprenticeship. But from the follies and extravagances into
+which he had already plunged, we are now authorized to believe
+that, even if he had been able longer to support the asperities
+of the lady’s temper, he must, from the course he was pursuing,
+have been led from crime to crime, or at least from folly to
+folly, to such a degree that he would infallibly have been condemned”
+(T. Roscoe, <i>Italian Novelists</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The demon of Machiavelli offers no features of a deep psychology,
+but he distinguishes himself from the other demons
+of his period by his elegant manners. Like creator, like creature.</p>
+
+<p>Belphagor, the god of the Moabites, like all other pagan
+gods, joined the infernal forces of Satan when driven off the
+earth by the Church Triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>The parliament of devils, which we find in this story, was
+taken from the mystery-plays where the ruler of hell is represented
+as holding occasional receptions when he listens to
+the reports of their recent achievements on his behalf, and consults
+their opinion on matters of state. Satan, who has always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+wished to rival God, has instituted the infernal council in imitation
+of the celestial council described in the Book of Job.
+The source for the parliament of devils is the apocryphal book
+<i>Evangelium Nicodemi</i>. An early metrical tract under the title
+of the <i>Parlement of Devils</i> was printed two or three times in
+London about 1520. A “Pandemonium” is also found in
+Tasso, Milton, and Chateaubriand. The <i>Parlement of Foules</i>
+(14th century) is but a modification of the <i>Parlement of Devils</i>,
+for the devil and the fool were originally identical in person
+and may be traced back to the demonic clown of the ancient
+heathen cult (cf. the present writer’s book, <i>The Origin of the
+German Carnival Comedy</i>, p. 37). A far echo is Thomas Chatterton’s
+poem <i>The Parliament of Sprites</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This story recalls to us the saying that the heart of a beautiful
+woman is the most beloved hiding-place of at least seven
+devils.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER_N" id="THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER_N"></a>THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WASHINGTON IRVING<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_TOM_WALKER2">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>By his interest in popular legends the first of the great American
+writers shows his sympathy with the Romantic movement,
+which prevailed in his time in all the countries of Europe.
+His devil, however, has not been imported from the lands
+across the Atlantic, but is a part of the superstitions of the
+New World. The author himself did not believe in “Old
+Scratch.” The real devils for him were the slave-traders and
+the witch-hunters of Salem fame. It is interesting now to read
+a contemporary critic of Washington Irving’s devil-story: “If
+Mr. Irving believes in the existence of Tom Walker’s master,
+we can scarcely conceive how he can so earnestly jest about
+him; at all events, we would counsel him to beware lest his own
+spells should prove fatal to him” (<i>Eclectic Review</i>, 1825).
+Few people in those days had the courage to take Old Nick
+good-naturedly. “Even the clever Madame de Staël,” said
+Goethe, “was greatly scandalized that I kept the devil in such
+good-humour.”</p>
+
+<p>The devil appears in many colours, principally, however, in
+black and red. It is a common belief in Scotland that the
+devil is a black man, as may also be seen in Robert Louis
+Stevenson’s story “Thrawn Janet.” There is no warrant in the
+biblical tradition for a black devil. Satan, however, appeared
+as an Ethiopian as far back as the days of the Church Fathers.
+The black colour presumably is intended to suggest his place
+of abode, whereas red denotes the scorching fires of hell. The
+devil was considered as a sort of eternal Salamander. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+New Testament he is described as a fiery fiend. Red was considered
+by Oriental nations as a diabolical colour. In Egypt
+red hair and red animals of all kinds were considered infernal.
+The Apis was also red-coloured. Satan’s red beard recalls
+the Scandinavian god Donar or Thor, who is of Phoenician origin.
+Judas was always represented in mediaeval mystery-plays
+with a red beard; and down to the present day red hair
+is the mark of a suspicious character. The devil also appears
+as yellow, and even blue, but never as white or green. The
+yellow devil is but a shade less bright than his fiery brother.
+The blue devil is a sulphur-constitutioned individual. He is
+the demon of melancholy, and fills us with “the blues.” As the
+spirit of darkness and death, the devil cannot assume the colours
+of white or green, which are the symbols of light and
+life. The devil’s dragon-tail is, according to Sir Walter Scott,
+of biblical tradition, coming from a literal interpretation of a
+figurative expression.</p>
+
+<p>A few interesting remarks on the expression “The Devil
+and Tom Walker” current in certain parts of this country as a
+caution to usurers will be found in Dr. Blondheim’s article
+“The Devil and Doctor Foster” in <i>Modern Language Notes</i> for
+1918.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN_N" id="FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN_N"></a>FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILHELM HAUFF<span class="sidenote"><a href="#FROM_THE_MEMOIRS_OF_SATAN">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Wilhelm Hauff, the author of this book, ranks honourably
+among the members of the Romantic School in Germany. As
+the work of a man of only twenty-two years, just out of the
+university, the book is a credit to its author. It must be
+admitted, however, that it was not altogether original with
+him. The idea was taken from E. Th. A. Hoffmann,—Devil-Hoffmann,
+as he was called by his contemporaries,—who in his
+short-story “Der Teufel in Berlin” also has the devil travel incognito
+in Germany; and the title was borrowed from Jean
+Paul Richter, who also claimed to edit <i>Selections from the
+Devil’s Papers</i> (<i>Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, 1789</i>).
+There were others, too, who claimed to have been honoured
+by his Satanic Majesty to edit his “journal.” J.&nbsp;R. Beard, a
+Unitarian minister, published in 1872 an <i>Autobiography of
+Satan</i>. Another autobiography of Satan is said to have been
+found among the posthumous works of Leonid Andréev,
+author of that original diabolical work <i>Anathema, a tragedy</i>
+(Engl. tr. 1910). This book has just appeared in English
+under the title <i>Satan’s Diary</i>. Frédéric Soulié’s <i>Les Mémoires
+du Diable</i> (1837/8) consist of memoirs not of the devil himself,
+but of other people, which the Count de Luizzi, the human
+partner to the diabolical pact, is very anxious to know. Hauff’s
+book consists of a series of papers, which are but loosely connected.
+In certain passages we hear nothing of the autobiographer.
+The Suavian writer apparently could digest the Diabolical
+only in homeopathic doses. His Satan, moreover, is a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+very youthful and quite harmless devil. He is nothing but a
+personified echo of the author’s student-days. The book by
+Hauff is perhaps the most popular personification of the devil
+in German literature.</p>
+
+<p>The passage presented here shows the phantastic element
+of the book at its best. The short introductory synopsis will
+give an idea of its satirical aspect. The humorous aspect
+has pretty nearly been lost in translation. Professor Brander
+Matthews has aptly said: “The German humour is like the
+simple Italian wines—it will not stand export.”</p>
+
+<p>Of all the peoples, the Germans seem to have had the most
+kindly feelings towards the devil. This is because they knew
+him better. To judge from the many bridges and cathedrals,
+which the demon, according to legends, has built in Germany,
+he must have been a frequent visitor to that country. In
+Frankfort, where with his own hands our author received the
+memoirs from the autobiographer, there is a gilded cock above
+the bridge in memory of the bargain the bridge-builder once
+made with Satan to give him the first living thing that should
+cross the river. The day the bridge was finished, a cock fluttered
+from a woman’s market-basket and ran over the bridge.
+A claw-like hand reached down and claimed the prize.</p>
+
+<p>The distinguished personage, whose adventures form the subject
+of this book, does not figure in it under his own name, nor
+does he appear here in the gala attire of tail, horns and cloven
+foot with which he graces the revels on the Blocksberg. He
+borrows for the nonce a tall, gentlemanly figure, surmounted
+by delicate features, dresses well, is fastidious about his ring
+and linen, travels post and stops at the best hotels. He begins
+his earthly career by studying at the renowned university
+of ——. As he can boast of abundant means, a handsome
+wardrobe and the name of Herr von Barbe, it is no wonder
+that on the first evening he should be politely received, the
+next morning have a confidential friend, and the second evening
+embrace “brothers till death.” He becomes much puzzled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+at the extraordinary manners of the students, and at their
+language, so different from that of every rational German.
+He remarks: “Over a glass of beer they often fell into singularly
+transcendental investigations, of which I understood little
+or nothing. However, I observed the principal words, and
+when drawn into a conversation, replied with a grave air—‘Freedom,
+Fatherland, Nationality.’” He attends the lectures
+of a celebrated professor, whose profundity of thought and
+terseness of style are so astounding, that the German world
+set him down as possessed; the critical student, however, differs
+somewhat from that conclusion, observing—</p>
+
+<p>“I have borne a great deal in the world. I have even entered
+into swine,” (“The devil,” said Luther, “knows Scripture
+well and he uses it in argument”) “but into such a philosopher?
+No, indeed! I had rather be excused.”</p>
+
+<p>The episode here reprinted occurred in a hotel in Frankfort,
+where our incognito is known as Herr von Natas (which, it will
+be noticed, is his more familiar name read backwards). His
+brilliant powers of conversation, his adroit flattery, courteous
+gallantry, and elegant, though wayward flights of imagination,
+soon rendered him the delight of the whole <i>table d’hôte</i>.
+All guests, including our author, were fascinated by the
+mysterious stranger. But we will let the author himself tell his
+story.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="ST_JOHNS_EVE_N" id="ST_JOHNS_EVE_N"></a>ST. JOHN’S EVE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY NIKOLÁI VASILÉVICH GÓGOL<span class="sidenote"><a href="#ST_JOHNS_EVE3">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This story, taken from <i>Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka</i>, a
+series of sketches of the life of the Ukrainian peasants, offers a
+good illustration of the author’s art, which was a combination
+of the romantic and realistic elements. In these pages Gógol
+wished to record the myths and legends still current among
+the plain folk of his beloved Ukrainia. The devil naturally
+enough peeps out here and there through the pages of this
+book. Gógol’s devil is a product of the Russian soil, “the
+spirit of mischief and cunning, whom Russian literature is always
+trying to outplay and overcome” (Mme. Jarintzow, <i>Russian
+Poets and Poems</i>).</p>
+
+<p>According to European superstition St. John’s Eve is the
+only evening in the year when his Satanic Majesty reveals himself
+in his proper shape to the eyes of men. If you wish to
+behold his Highness face to face, stand on St. John’s Eve at midnight
+near a mustard-plant. It is suggested by Sir James
+Frazer in his <i>Golden Bough</i> that, in the chilly air of the upper
+world, this prince from a warmer clime may be attracted by
+the warmth of the mustard.</p>
+
+<p>It is believed in many parts of Europe that treasures can be
+found on St. John’s Eve by means of the fern-seed. Even without
+the use of this plant treasures are sometimes said to bloom
+or burn in the earth, or to reveal their presence by a bluish
+flame on Midsummer Eve. As guardian of treasures the devil
+is the successor of the gnome.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_WAGER_N" id="THE_DEVILS_WAGER_N"></a>THE DEVIL’S WAGER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_WAGER">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p><i>The Devil’s Wager</i> is Thackeray’s earliest attempt at story-writing,
+was contributed to a weekly literary paper with the imposing
+title <i>The National Standard, and Journal of Literature,
+Science, Music, Theatricals, and the Fine Arts</i>, of which he
+was proprietor and editor, and was reprinted in the <i>Paris
+Sketch Book</i> (1840). The story first ended with the very
+Thackerayesque touch: “The moral of this story will be given
+in several successive numbers.” In the <i>Paris Sketch Book</i> the
+last three words are changed into “the second edition.” This
+comical tale was illustrated by an excellent wood-cut, representing
+the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after
+him the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is
+wound round Sir Roger’s neck.</p>
+
+<p>In the “Advertisement to the First Edition” of his <i>Paris
+Sketch Book</i>, Thackeray admits the French origin of this as
+well as of his other devil-story, <i>The Painter’s Bargain</i>, to be
+found in the same volume. It was Thackeray’s good fortune to
+live in Paris during the wildest and most brilliant years of
+Romanticism; and while his attitude towards this movement
+and its leaders, as presented in the <i>Paris Sketch Book</i>, is not
+wholly sympathetic, he is indebted to it for his interest in
+supernatural subjects. The Romanticism of Thackeray has
+been denied with great obstinacy and almost passion, for like
+Heinrich Heine, the chief of German Romantic ironists, he
+poked fun at this movement. But “to laugh at what you love,”
+as Mr. George Saintsbury has pointed out in his <i>History of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+the French Novel</i>, “is not only permissible, but a sign of the
+love itself.”</p>
+
+<p>Mercurius makes a pun on the familiar quotation “rara avis”
+from Horace (<i>Sat.</i> 2, 2. 26), where it means a rare bird. This
+expression is commonly applied to a singular person. It is
+also found in the <i>Satires</i> of Juvenal (VI, 165).</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN_N" id="THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN_N"></a>THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_PAINTERS_BARGAIN">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity.
+Satan, contending with God for the possession of the human
+race, was supposed to have developed a passion for catching
+souls. At the death of every man a real fight takes place over
+his soul between an angel, who wishes to lead it to heaven, and
+a devil, who attempts to drag it to hell (Jude 9). In order to
+assure the soul for himself in advance, Satan attempts to purchase
+it from the owner while he is still living—<i>vivente corpore</i>,
+as he tells the <i>restaurateur</i> in Poe’s story. As prince of
+this world he can easily grant even the most extravagant wishes
+of man in exchange for his soul. Office, wealth and pleasure
+are mainly the objects for which a man enters into a pact with
+the Evil One. Count de Luizzi in Frédéric Soulié’s <i>Les Mémoires
+du Diable</i> sells his soul to the devil for an uncommon
+consideration. It is not wealth or pleasure that tempts him.
+What he wants in exchange for his soul is to know the past
+lives of his fellowmen and women, “a thing,” as Mr. Saintsbury
+well remarks, “which a person of sense and taste would
+do anything, short of selling himself to the devil, <i>not</i> to know.”
+The devil fulfils every wish of his contractor for a stipulated
+period of time, at the expiration of which the soul becomes his.
+Pope Innocent VIII, in his fatal bull “Summis desiderantes” of
+the year 1484, officially recognized the possibility of a compact
+with the devil. Increase Mather, the New England preacher,
+also affirms that many men have made “cursed covenants with
+the prince of darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>St. Theophilus, of Cilicia, in the sixth century, was the first
+to make the notable discovery that a man could enter into a
+pact of this nature. The price he set for his soul was a bishopric.
+This story has been superseded during the Renaissance
+period by a similar legend concerning the German Dr. Faustus.
+Other famous personages reputed to have sold their souls to
+the devil for one consideration or another are Don Juan in
+Spain, Twardowski in Poland, Merlin in England, and Robert
+le Diable in France. Socrates, Apuleius, Scaliger and Cagliostro
+are also said to have entered into compacts with him.</p>
+
+<p>In devil-contracts the Evil One insists that his human negotiator
+sign the deed with his own blood, while the man never
+requires the devil to sign it even in ink. The human party to
+the transaction has always had full confidence in the word of
+the fiend. There is a universal belief that the devil invariably
+fulfils his engagement. In no single instance of folk-lore has
+Satan tried to evade the fulfilment of his share in the agreement.
+But the man, in violation of the written pact, has often
+cheated the devil out of his legal due by technical quibbles.
+“It is peculiar to the German tradition,” says Gustav Freytag,
+“that the devil endeavours to fulfil zealously and honestly his
+part of the contract; the deceiver is man.” In regard to fidelity
+to his word, the father of lies has always set an example to his
+victims. “You men,” said Satan, “are cheats; you make all
+sorts of promises so long as you need me, and leave me in the
+lurch as soon as you have got what you wanted.” Mediaeval
+man had no scruples about his breach of contract with the
+devil. He always considered the legal document signed with
+his own blood as “a scrap of paper.” “But still the pact is
+with the enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter, and
+may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war. We are
+very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow
+observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution
+which God decrees conditionally and the devil delights in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>”
+(H.&nbsp;D. Taylor, <i>Mediaeval Mind</i>). We now can understand
+why in Eugene Field’s story “Daniel and the Devil” it seems to
+Satan so strange that he should be asked for a written guarantee
+that he too would fulfil his part of the contract. Apparently
+this was the first time that the devil had any transactions
+with an American business man, who has not even faith
+in Old Nick.</p>
+
+<p>Reference is made in this story by the devil himself to the
+popular saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted.
+Even the devout George Herbert wrote—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“We paint the devil black, yet he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath some good in him all agree.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This story recalls to us the proverb: “Talk of the devil, and
+he will either come or send.”</p>
+
+<p>Washington Irving, as we have seen, thinks that he is not
+always very obliging.</p>
+
+<p>Satan, the father of lies, is said to be the patron of lawyers.
+The men of the London bar formed a “Temple” corps, which
+was dubbed “The Devil’s Own.” The tavern of the lawyers on
+Fleet Street in London was called “The Devil.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="BON-BON_N" id="BON-BON_N"></a>BON-BON<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY EDGAR ALLAN POE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#BON-BON">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality
+than the external world, had many visions, especially of the
+devil. The two seem to have been on a familiar footing. The
+devil, we must admit, filled Poe’s imagination even if we will
+not go so far as to agree with his critics that he had Satan substituted
+for soul. His contemporaries, as is well known, would
+say of him: “He hath a demon, yea, seven devils are entered
+into him.” His detractors actually regarded this unhappy poet
+as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades (cf. <i>North American
+Review</i>, 1856; <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, 1858; <i>Dublin University
+Magazine</i>, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the <i>New
+York Times</i> declared Poe to have been “grub-staked by demons.”</p>
+
+<p>The story “Bon-Bon” offers a specimen of Poe’s grimly grotesque
+humour. It first appeared in the <i>Broadway Journal</i> of
+August, 1835.</p>
+
+<p>The devil of this most un-American of all American authors
+is not the child of New World fancy, but part of European
+imagination. The scenery of the story is aptly laid in the
+land of Robert le Diable.</p>
+
+<p>Poe’s description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in
+accord with the universally accredited conception of his ordinary
+appearance. His brutal hoofs and savage horns and
+beastly tail are all there, only discreetly hid under a dress
+which any gentleman might wear. The devil is very proud of
+this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+that time on, it has been his greatest ambition to be a gentleman,
+in outer appearance at least; and to his credit it must
+be said that he has so well succeeded in his efforts to resemble
+a gentleman that it is now very hard to tell the two apart. The
+devil is accredited in popular imagination with long ears, a
+long (sometimes upturned) nose, a wide mouth, and teeth of a
+lion. It is on account of his fangs that Satan has been called
+a lion by the biblical writers. But although the prince of darkness
+can assume any form in the heavens above, in the earth
+beneath, and in the waters under the earth, he has never appeared
+as a lion. This, I believe, is out of deference to Judah,
+whom his father also called a lion. Hairiness is a pretty general
+characteristic of the devil. His hairy skin he probably inherited
+from the ancient fauns and satyrs. Esau is believed to
+have been a hairy demon. “Old Harry” is a corruption of
+“Old Hairy.” As a rule, Old Nick is not pictured as bald,
+but has a head covered with locks like serpents. These snaky
+tresses, which already “Monk” Lewis wound around the devil’s
+head, are borrowed, according to Sir Walter Scott, from the
+shield of Minerva. His face, however, is usually hairless. A
+beard has rarely been accorded to Satan. His red beard on the
+mediaeval stage probably came from Donar, whom, as Jacob
+Grimm says, the modern notions of the devil so often have in
+the background. Long bearded devils are nowhere normal except
+in the representations of the Eastern Church of the monarch
+of hell as counterpart of the monarch of heaven. The
+eyeless devil is original with our writer. His disciple Baudelaire
+in his story <i>Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire</i>
+presents the second of these three Tempters as an eyeless monster.
+The mediaeval devil had saucer eyes. According to a
+Russian legend, the all-seeing spirit of evil is all covered with
+eyes. The cadaverous aspect of the devil is traditional. With
+but one remarkable exception (the Egyptian Typhon), demons
+are always represented lean. “A devil,” said Caesarius of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+Heisterbach of the thirteenth century, “is usually so thin as to
+cast no shadow” (<i>Dialogus Miraculorum</i>, iii). This characteristic
+is a heritage of the ancient hunger-demon, who, himself a
+shadow, casts no shadow. In the course of the centuries, however,
+the devil has gained flesh. His faded suit of black cloth
+recalls the mediaeval devil who appeared “in his fethers all
+ragged and rent.”</p>
+
+<p>It is not altogether improbable that the ecclesiastical appearance
+of the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as
+the author believes. While Satan cannot be said to be “one of
+those who take to the ministry mostly,” he often likes to slip
+into priestly robes. In the “Temptation of Jesus” by Lucas van
+Leyden the devil is habited as a monk with a pointed cowl.</p>
+
+<p>In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence
+of Adalbert von Chamisso, whose <i>Peter Schlemihl</i>
+(1814) sells his shadow to the devil. In his story <i>The Fisherman
+and His Soul</i> Oscar Wilde considers the shadow of the
+body as the body of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>That the devils in hell eat the damned consigned there for
+punishment is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This
+idea probably is of Oriental origin. The seven Assyrian evil
+spirits have a predilection for human flesh and blood. Ghouls
+and vampires belong to this class of demons.</p>
+
+<p>The devil’s pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented
+by another tine, as is commonly assumed. It is the
+ancient sign of fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm
+by the Hindus in India and the Zuñi and Aztec Indians of North
+America and Mexico. A related symbol is the trident of
+Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was recently carried in a
+children’s May Day parade through Central Park in New York.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL_N" id="THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL_N"></a>THE PRINTER’S DEVIL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span><span class="sidenote" style="font-size: 60%"><a href="#THE_PRINTERS_DEVIL">Story</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>The term “Printer’s Devil” is usually accounted for by the
+fact that Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed
+in his printing shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was
+popularly thought to be an imp of Satan. This expression
+may have a deeper significance. It may owe its origin to
+the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing press, was believed
+to have connections with the Evil One. It will be remembered
+that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries,
+even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science,
+every invention of material benefit to man, was believed to
+have been secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors
+deemed the human mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil
+One, of producing anything beyond their own comprehension.
+The red letters which Fust used at the close of his
+earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and
+date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of
+the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him.
+(M.&nbsp;D. Conway, <i>Demonology and Devil-Lore</i>.) Sacred days,
+as is well known, are printed in the Catholic calendar with
+red letters, and the devil has also employed them in books of
+magic. This is but another instance of the mimicry by “God’s
+Ape” of the sanctities of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour
+prevails, the printer’s devil is the librarian of hell. The books
+over which he has charge must be as numerous as the sands
+on the sea-shore. For nearly every book written without
+priestly command was associated in the good old days with the
+devil. The assertion that Satan hates nothing so much as writing
+or printer’s ink apparently is a very great calumny. He
+has often even been accused of stealing manuscripts in order to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally
+rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph
+Görres, the defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil,
+provoked by his interference in Satanic affairs (he is the
+author of <i>Die christliche Mystik</i>, which is a rich source for
+diabolism, diabolical possession and exorcism), had stolen one
+of his manuscripts; it was, however, found some time afterwards
+in his bookcase, and the devil was completely exonerated.</p>
+
+<p>The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting
+in the light of the present agitation for unbound books
+and a eulogy of the old Franklin Square Library.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW_N" id="THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW_N"></a>THE DEVIL’S MOTHER-IN-LAW<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY FERNÁN CABALLERO<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_MOTHER-IN-LAW16">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Fernán Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia Böhl von
+Faber, Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by
+birth, daughter of the literary historian Johann Böhl von Faber,
+the Johannes of Campe’s <i>Robinson</i> (1779). Her father initiated
+her early into Spanish literature, which he interpreted
+for her in the spirit of the Romantic movement of those early
+days. The interest in mediaeval traditions, which she owes to
+this early training, increased when, later, she went to Catholic
+Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists
+in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of
+that province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval
+legends. In her stories we find perhaps the purest expression
+of mediaevalism in modern times. Fernán Caballero gradually
+drifted to the extreme Right in all questions of religion,
+art and life. She hated every liberal expression in matters of
+faith or art with the fanaticism of a Torquemada. This author
+not only shared the somewhat general Catholic view that all
+Protestants were eternally damned, but she naïvely believed
+that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).</p>
+
+<p>The story of woman’s triumph over the Devil is well characteristic
+of the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly
+called.</p>
+
+<p>The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in
+the work of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called <i>El
+Diablo cojuelo</i> (1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed
+both title and plot for his novel <i>Le Diable boiteux</i> (1707).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle, into which he had been
+confined by a magician, entertains his deliverer with the secret
+sights of a big city at midnight, by unroofing the houses of
+the Spanish capital and showing him the life that was going
+on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from the
+East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in
+local traditions. From that country it spread over the whole
+of Europe. The Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special
+prayers evil spirits could be reduced into obedience and
+confined in black bottles. The tradition forms a part of the
+Solomonic lore, and is frequently told in esoteric works. In
+the cabalistic book <i>Vinculum Spirituum</i>, which is of Eastern
+origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of a certain
+learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle
+of black glass three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two
+of their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (<i>alias</i>
+Belial) the second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards
+cast this bottle into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately
+for the contents, the Babylonians, hoping to find a
+treasure in the well, descended into it, broke the bottle, and
+freed the demons (cf. also <i>The Little Key of Rabbi Solomon,
+containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72 Spirits
+with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi
+Solomon, carefully copied by “Raphael,”</i> London, 1879).
+This legend is also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the
+Djinn in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, which was also treated by the
+German poet Klopstock in his poem “Wintermärchen” (1776).</p>
+
+<p>The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of
+the sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells
+was, according to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and
+witches. The devil in Poe’s story “The Devil in the Belfry”
+(1839) was, indeed, very courageous in invading the belfry.</p>
+
+<p>The concluding part of the story is identical with the
+Machiavellian tale of Belphagor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This tale of the Devil’s mother-in-law first appeared in the
+volume <i>Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces</i> (Seville,
+1859), which was translated the same year into French by
+Germond de Lavigne under the title <i>Nouvelles andalouses</i>. An
+English translation under the title <i>Spanish Fairy Tales</i> appeared
+in 1881. This particular story was rendered again
+into English two years later and included in <i>Tales from Twelve
+Tongues</i>, translated by a British Museum Librarian [Richard
+Garnett?], London, 1883.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER_N" id="THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER_N"></a>THE GENEROUS GAMBLER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_GENEROUS_GAMBLER17">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American
+<i>confrère’s</i> predilection for the devil. He found his models in
+the diabolical scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted
+to the Latin world. “Baudelaire,” said Théophile Gautier, his
+master and friend, “had a singular prepossession for the devil
+as a tempter, in whom he saw a dragon who hurried him into
+sin, infamy, crime, and perversity.” To Baudelaire, the trier
+of men’s souls, the Tempter, was as real a person as he was to
+Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal to do with
+the direction of human destinies. “C’est le Diable qui tient
+les fils qui nous remuent!” Men are mere puppets in the
+hands of the devil. “Baudelaire’s motto,” as Mr. James
+Huneker has well remarked, “might be the reverse of Browning’s
+lines: The Devil is in his heaven. All’s wrong with the
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>Baudelaire’s devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings.
+Each author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to
+free him from that great modern monster, <i>Ennui</i>, which selects
+as its prey the most highly gifted natures. The boredom of
+life—this was, indeed, as this unhappy poet admits, the source
+of all his maladies and of all his miseries. He called it the
+“foulest of vices” and hoped to escape from it “by dreaming
+of the superlative emotional adventure, by indulging in infinite,
+indeterminate desire” (Irving Babbit). His preface to the
+<i>Flowers of Evil</i>, in which he addresses the reader, ends with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+the following statement in regard to the nature of this modern
+beast of prey: “Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
+the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents—the yelling,
+howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul
+menagerie of our vices—there is one which is the most foul,
+the most wicked, the most unclean of all. This vice, although
+it uses neither extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry,
+would willingly make a ruin of the earth, and swallow up all
+the world in a yawn. This is <i>Ennui!</i> who, with his eye moistened
+by an involuntary tear, dreams of scaffolds while smoking
+his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate monster,
+hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!”</p>
+
+<p>In Gorky’s story “The Devil” the devil himself suffers from
+<i>ennui</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan’s
+word, and, therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil
+keep his promise to him. He had little faith in the father of
+lies. In his book called <i>Artificial Paradises</i> (1860) Baudelaire
+expressed the thought that the devil would say to the
+eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as he did in the olden
+days to our first parents, “If you taste of the fruit, you will be
+as the gods,” and that the devil no more kept his word with
+them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the
+god, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than
+the beast.</p>
+
+<p>The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat
+goes back to far antiquity. Goat-formed deities and spirits of
+the woods existed in the religions of India, Assyria, Greece
+and Egypt. The Assyrian god was often associated with the
+goat, which was supposed to possess the qualities for which
+he was worshipped. The he-goat was also the sacred beast
+of Donar or Thor, who was brought to Scandinavia by the
+Phoenicians. (On the relation of satyrs to goats see also James
+G. Frazer, <i>The Golden Bough</i>, vol. VIII, pp. 1 <i>sqq.</i>) At the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+revels on the Blocksberg Satan always appeared as a black
+buck.</p>
+
+<p><i>Le bon diable</i>, which is a favourite phrase in France, points
+to his simplicity of mind rather than generosity of spirit. It
+generally expresses the half-contemptuous pity with which the
+giants, these huge beings with weak minds, were regarded.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that Satan would gamble for a human soul is of
+mediaeval origin and may have been taken by Baudelaire
+from Gérard de Nerval, who in his mystery play <i>Le Prince des
+Sots</i> (1830) has the devil play at dice with an angel, with
+human souls as stakes. As a dice-player Satan resembles
+Wuotan. Mr. H.&nbsp;G. Wells in <i>The Undying Fire</i> (1919) has
+Diabolus play chess with the Deity in Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The devil in this story falls back into speaking Hebrew when
+the days of his ancient celestial glory are brought back to his
+mind. In Louis Ménard’s <i>Le Diable au café</i> the devil calls
+Hebrew a dead language, and as a modern prefers to be called
+by the French equivalent of his original Hebrew name. In
+the Middle Ages the devil’s favourite language was Latin.
+Marlowe’s Mephistopheles also speaks this language. Satan is
+known to be a linguist. “It is the Devil by his several languages,”
+said Ben Jonson.</p>
+
+<p>According to popular belief the devil is a learned scholar
+and a profound thinker. He has all science, philosophy, and
+theology at his tongue’s end.</p>
+
+<p>The Shavian devil in contradistinction to the Baudelairian
+fiend does bitterly complain that he is so little appreciated on
+earth. Walter Scott’s devil (in “Wandering Willie’s Tale,”
+1824) also complains that he has been “sair miscaa’d in the
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>The preacher to whom our author refers is the Jesuit Ravignan,
+who declared that the disbelief in the devil was one of the
+most cunning devices of the great enemy himself. (La plus
+grande force du diable, c’est d’être parvenu à se faire nier.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+Baudelaire’s disciple J.&nbsp;K. Huysmans similarly expresses in his
+novel <i>Là-Bas</i> (1891) the view that “the greatest power of Satan
+lies in the fact that he gets men to deny him.” (Cf. the present
+writer’s essay “The Satanism of Huysmans” in <i>The Open Court</i>
+for April, 1920.) The devil mocks at this theological dictum
+in Pierre Veber’s story “L’Homme qui vendit son âme au
+Diable” (1918). In Perkins’s story “The Devil-Puzzlers” the
+devil expresses his satisfaction over his success in this regard.</p>
+
+<p>The story “The Generous Gambler” first appeared in the
+<i>Figaro</i> of February, 1864, was reprinted under the title of “Le
+Diable” in the <i>Revue du Dix-Neuvième Siècle</i> of June, 1866,
+and was finally included in <i>Poèmes en Prose</i>. This story
+has also been translated into English by Joseph T. Shipley.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES_N" id="THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES_N"></a>THE THREE LOW MASSES<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span><br />
+
+<span style="font-size: 70%">A CHRISTMAS STORY</span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY ALPHONSE DAUDET<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_THREE_LOW_MASSES18">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Daudet and Maupassant furnish the best proof of the assertion
+made in the Introduction to this book that even the Naturalists
+who, as a rule, disdained the phantastic plots of the
+Romanticists, whose imagination was rigorously earth-bound,
+felt themselves nevertheless attracted by devil-lore. Although
+most of Daudet’s subjects are chosen from contemporary
+French life, this short-story treats a devil-legend of the seventeenth
+century. This story as “The Pope’s Mule” and “The
+Elixir of the Reverend Père Gaucher” obviously has no other
+object but to poke fun at the Catholic Church. It belongs to
+the literary type known as the Satirical Supernatural.</p>
+
+<p>This story is characteristic of Daudet’s art, containing as it
+does all of his delicacy and daintiness of pathos, of raillery,
+of humour. It originally appeared in that delightful group of
+stories <i>Lettres de Mon Moulin</i> (1869).</p>
+
+<p>The horns and tail of his Satanic majesty peep out as vividly
+in this book as the disguised devils in Ingoldsby’s <i>Legend of
+the North Countrie</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Although hating all men, the devil has a special hatred for
+the priests, and he delights in bringing them to fall. Satan
+loathes the priests, because, as Anatole France says, they teach
+that “God takes delight in seeing His creatures languish in
+penitence and abstain from His most precious gifts” (<i>Les Dieux
+ont soif</i>, p. 278).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is evident from this story that the popular belief that the
+devil avoids holy edifices is not based on facts. Here the devil
+not only enters the church, but even performs the duties of a
+sacristan at the foot of the altar. According to mediaeval tradition
+the devil has his agents even in the churches. In the
+administration of hell where the tasks are carefully parcelled
+out among the thousands of imps, the church has been assigned
+to the fiend with the poetic name of Tutevillus. It is his duty
+to attend all services in order to listen to the gossips and to
+write down every word they say. After death these women are
+entertained in hell with their own speeches, which this diabolical
+church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has it
+that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a
+beam, on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail,
+right over two village gossips, who chattered so much during
+the Blessed Mass that he soon filled every corner of the parchment
+on both sides. Poor Tutevillus worked so hard that the
+sweat ran in great drops down his brow, and he was ready to
+sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased not to sin with
+their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left whereon to
+record their foul words. So having considered for a little
+while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized
+the other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch
+the parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength,
+jerking back his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving
+such a fierce jerk that he suddenly lost his balance and fell
+head over heels from the beam to the floor of the church.
+(From “The Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry” in F.&nbsp;O.
+Mann’s collection of mediaeval tales.)</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="DEVIL-PUZZLERS_N" id="DEVIL-PUZZLERS_N"></a>DEVIL-PUZZLERS<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS<span class="sidenote"><a href="#DEVIL-PUZZLERS19">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Through Asmodeus the devil became associated with humour
+and gallantry. Asmodeus sharpened his wits in his conversations
+with the wisest of kings. It will be recalled that this
+demon was the familiar spirit of Solomon, whose throne, according
+to Jewish legend, he occupied for three years. Perhaps
+it was not Solomon after all but this diabolical usurper
+who gathered around himself a thousand wives. It is said
+that Asmodeus is as dangerous to women as Lilith is to men.
+He loves to decoy young girls in the shape of a handsome young
+man. His love for the beautiful Sarah is too well known to
+need any comment. He is a fastidious devil, and will not
+have the object of his passion subject to the embrace of any
+other mortal or immortal.</p>
+
+<p>Reference is made by the author to Albert Réville’s epitome
+of Georg Roskoff’s <i>Geschichte des Teufels</i> (Leipzig, 1869), a
+standard work on the history of the devil. The review by this
+French Protestant first appeared in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>
+for 1870, and was translated into English the following year.
+A second edition appeared six years later. Roskoff’s book,
+on the other hand, has never appeared in translation.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval
+schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations:
+<i>An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
+intentiones</i>. Whether a demon buzzing in the air devours our
+good intentions. This will correspond to our saying that hell
+is paved with good intentions. <i>An averia carrucae capta in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia.</i> Whether the carriers of a
+[bishop’s] carriage caught in a forbidden district should be
+punished. We can well understand how even the devil might
+be puzzled by such questions.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Brander Matthews aptly calls this story “diabolically
+philosophical.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVILS_ROUND_N" id="THE_DEVILS_ROUND_N"></a>THE DEVIL’S ROUND<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span><br />
+
+<span style="font-size: 70%">A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF</span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY CHARLES DEULIN<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVILS_ROUND20">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The modern devil is an accomplished gentleman. He is the
+most all-round being in creation. Mynheer van Belzébuth, as
+he is called in this story, is indeed the greatest gambler that
+there is upon or under the earth. On the golf-field as at the
+roulette-table he is hard to beat. It was the devil who invented
+cards, and they are, therefore, called the Devil’s
+Bible, and it was also he who taught the Roman soldiers how
+to cast lots for the raiment of Christ (John xix, 24). Dice
+are also called the devil’s bones.</p>
+
+<p>The devil carries the souls in a sack on his back also in the
+legend of St. Medard. It is told that this saint, while promenading
+one day on the shore of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw
+Satan carrying a bag full of damned souls on his back. The
+heart of this saint was filled with compassion for the poor
+souls and he quickly slit the devil’s bag open, whereupon the
+souls scrambled for liberty:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Away went the Quaker—away went the Baker,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Away went the Friar—that fine fat Ghost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Whose marrow Old Nick Had intended to pick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dressed like a Woodcock, and served on toast!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Away went the nice little Cardinal’s Niece<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the pretty Grisettes, and the Dons from Spain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the Corsair’s crew, And the coin-cliping Jew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they scamper’d, like lamplighters, over the plain!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Witches’ Sabbath is the annual reunion of Satan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+and his worshippers on earth. The witches, mounted on goats
+and broomsticks, flock to desolate heaths and hills to hold
+high revel with their devil.</p>
+
+<p>Beelzebub swears in this story by the horns of his grandfather.
+While the devil is known to have a grandmother, there
+has never been found a trace of his grandfather. Satan has
+probably been adopted by the grandmother of Grendel, the
+Anglo-Saxon evil demon. The horns have been inherited by
+Satan from Dionysos. This Greek god had bull-feet and bull’s
+horns.</p>
+
+<p>The reader, who is interested in the origin of the European
+Carnival (Shrove Tuesday) customs, is referred to the editor’s
+monograph <i>The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy</i> (New
+York: G.&nbsp;E. Stechert &amp; Co., 1920).</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL_N" id="THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL_N"></a>THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_LEGEND_OF_MONT_ST-MICHEL">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>No greater proof of the permanence and persistence of the
+devil as a character in literature can be adduced than the fact
+that this writer, in whom we find the purest expression of Naturalism,
+for whom the visible world was absolutely all that
+there is, was attracted by a devil-legend. But on this point
+he had a good example in his god-father and master Gustave
+Flaubert, who, though a realist of realists, showed deep interest
+in the Tempter of St. Anthony.</p>
+
+<p>This legend of the fraudulent bargain between a sprite and
+a farmer as to alternate upper- and under-ground crops, with
+which “the great vision of the guarded mount” is here connected,
+is of Northern origin, but has travelled South as far as
+Arabia. It will be found in Grimm’s <i>Fairy Tales</i> (No. 189);
+Thiele’s <i>Danish Legends</i> (No. 122), and T. Sternberg’s <i>The
+Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire</i> (p. 140). Rabelais
+used it as a French legend, and in its Oriental form it served
+as a subject for a poem by the German Friedrich Rückert (“Der
+betrogene Teufel”). In all these versions the agreement is
+entered into between the devil (in the Northampshire form it
+is a bogie or some other field spirit) and a peasant. It was
+reserved for Maupassant to make St. Michael get the better
+of Satan on earth as in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>According to this legend the devil broke his leg when, in his
+flight from St. Michael, he jumped off the roof of the castle
+into which he had been lured by the saint. The traditional
+explanation for the devil’s broken leg is his fall from heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+“I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (Luke x, 18).
+All rebellious deities, who were universally supposed to have
+fallen from heaven, have crooked or crippled legs. Hephaestos,
+Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken leg.
+This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning
+flashes. The devil’s mother in the mediaeval German
+mystery-plays walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian
+demon Aeshma daeva, also had a lame foot. In Le Sage’s
+book <i>Le Diable boiteux</i> Asmodeus appears as a limping gentleman,
+who uses two sticks as crutches. According to rabbinical
+tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to
+meet King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil
+inherited the goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius
+and the horse-foot from Loki. The Ethiopic devil’s right foot
+is a claw, and his left a hoof.</p>
+
+<p>The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very
+lazy. Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue.
+“If we were all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil,”
+observed an old Scotch woman to her minister, “it wad be
+muckle better for us.”</p>
+
+<p>The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to
+St. Michael. The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast
+played a conspicuous part in the wars of the sons of William
+the Conqueror. Maupassant uses it as the background for several
+of the chapters of his novel <i>Notre Coeur</i> (1890). The
+mountain also figures in his story “Le Horla” (1886).</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEMON_POPE_N" id="THE_DEMON_POPE_N"></a>THE DEMON POPE<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY RICHARD GARNETT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEMON_POPE26">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The following two stories by Richard Garnett have been
+taken from his book <i>The Twilight of the Gods</i>, which was first
+published anonymously in 1888, and in a “new and augmented
+edition,” with the author’s name, in 1902. The title recalls
+Richard Wagner’s opera <i>Götterdämmerung</i>, but may have been
+directly suggested by Elémir Bourges, whose novel <i>Le Crépuscule
+des dieux</i> appeared four years earlier than Garnett’s
+collection of stories. In his book Richard Garnett plays havoc
+with all religions. The demons, naturally enough, fare worse
+at his hands than the gods. <i>The Twilight of the Gods</i> is a
+panorama of human folly and farce. Franz Cumont has said
+that human folly is a more interesting study than ancient wisdom.
+The author finds a great joy in pointing out all the mysterious
+cobwebs which have collected on the ceiling of man’s
+brain in the course of the ages. Mr. Arthur Symons rightly
+calls this book “a Punch and Judy show of the comedy of
+civilization.”</p>
+
+<p>The story of “The Demon Pope” is based upon a legend of
+a compact between a Pope and the devil. It is believed that
+Gerbert, who later became Pope Silvester II, sold his soul to
+Satan in order to acquire a knowledge of physics, arithmetic
+and music. The fullest account of this legend will be found
+in J.&nbsp;J. Dollinger’s <i>Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle
+Ages</i> (Engl. Translation, 1871). <i>The History of the Devil and
+the Idea of Evil</i> by Paul Carus (1900) contains the following
+passages on this legend:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“An English Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury, says of
+Pope Sylvester II., who was born in France, his secular name being
+Gerbert, that he entered the cloister when still a boy. Full of ambition,
+he flew to Spain where he studied astrology and magic among
+the Saracens. There he stole a magic-book from a Saracen philosopher,
+and returned flying through the air to France. Now he opened a
+school and acquired great fame, so that the king himself became one
+of his disciples. Then he became Bishop of Rheims, where he had a
+magnificent clock and an organ constructed. Having raised the treasure
+of Emperor Octavian which lay hidden in a subterrenean vault at
+Rome, he became Pope. As Pope he manufactured a magic head
+which replied to all his questions. This head told him that he would
+not die until he had read Mass in Jerusalem. So the Pope decided
+never to visit the Holy Land. But once he fell sick, and, asking his
+magic head, was informed that the church’s name in which he had
+read Mass the other day was ‘The Holy Cross of Jerusalem.’ The
+Pope knew at once that he had to die. He gathered all the cardinals
+around his bed, confessed his crime, and, as a penance, ordered his
+body to be cut up alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church
+as unclean.</p>
+
+<p>“Sigabert tells the story of the Pope’s death in a different way.
+There is no penance on the part of the Pope, and the Devil takes his
+soul to hell. Others tell us that the Devil constantly accompanied
+the Pope in the shape of a black dog, and this dog gave him the
+equivocal prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>“The historical truth of the story is that Gerbert was unusually
+gifted and well educated. He was familiar with the wisdom of the
+Saracens, for Borell, Duke of Hither Spain, carried him as a youth to
+his country where he studied mathematics and astronomy. He came
+early in contact with the most influential men of his time, and became
+Pope in 999. He was liberal enough to denounce some of his unworthy
+predecessors as ‘monsters of more than human iniquity,’ and
+as ‘Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God and playing the part of
+the Devil’ (the text inadvertently reads: and playing the part of God);
+but at the same time he pursued an independent and vigorous papal
+policy, foreshadowing in his aims both the pretensions of Gregory the
+Great and the Crusades.”</p></div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="MADAM_LUCIFER_N" id="MADAM_LUCIFER_N"></a>MADAM LUCIFER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY RICHARD GARNETT<span class="sidenote"><a href="#MADAM_LUCIFER27">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Perhaps the most fascinating—and the most dangerous—character
+in the infernal world is this <i>Mater tenebrarum</i>—Our
+Lady of Darkness. “A lady devil,” says Daniel Defoe, “is
+about as dangerous a creature as one could meet.” When
+Lucifer fails to bring a man to his fall, he hands the case over
+to his better half, and it is said that no man has ever escaped
+the siren seductions of this Diabo-Lady. A poem, <i>The Diabo-Lady,
+or a Match in Hell</i>, appeared in London in 1777.</p>
+
+<p>According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna
+is the mother or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or
+grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became
+Satan’s mother or grandmother by adoption. A mother was
+a necessary part of the devil’s equipment. Having set his
+mind to equal Christ in every detail of his life, Satan had to
+get a mother somehow. In his story “The Vision Malefic”
+(1920) Mr. Huneker tells of the appearance of this counterfeit
+Madonna on a Christmas Eve to the organist of a Roman
+Catholic church in New York. Partly out of devotion to her
+and partly also because he could not obtain the sacramental
+blessing of the Church, Satan was forced to remain single.
+In the story “Devil-Puzzlers” by Fred B. Perkins the demon
+Apollyon appears as an old bachelor. “I have a mother, but
+no wife,” he tells the charming Mrs. Hicok. The synagogue
+was more lenient towards the devil. The rabbis did not hesitate
+to perform the marriage ceremony for the diabolical pair.
+According to Jewish tradition the chief of the fallen angels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+married Lilith, Adam’s first wife. She is said to have been in
+her younger days a woman of great beauty, but with a heart
+of ice. Now, of course, she is a regular hell-hag. If we can
+trust Rossetti, who painted her Majesty’s portrait, she still is a
+type of beauty whose fascination is fatal. This woman was
+created by the Lord to be the help-meet of Adam, but mere man
+had no attraction for this superwoman. She is said to have
+started the fight for woman’s emancipation from man, and
+contested Adam’s right to be the head of the family. Their
+married life was very brief. Their incompatibility of character
+was too great. One fine morning Adam found that his
+erstwhile angelical wife had deserted him and run away with
+Lucifer, whom she had formerly known in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The King-Devil apparently always succeeded somehow or
+other in breaking the chains with which, according to legend,
+he had repeatedly been bound and sealed in the lowest depths
+of hell. From antediluvian times the demons appear to have
+been attracted by the daughters of men and to have come frequently
+up to earth to pay court to them. The only devil who
+must always remain in hell is the stoker, Brendli by name.
+The fires of hell must not be allowed to go out.</p>
+
+<p>The anatomically melancholic Burton also tells of a devil
+who was in love with a mortal maiden. Jacques Cazotte tells
+the story of Beelzebub as a woman in love with an earth-born
+man.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LUCIFER_N" id="LUCIFER_N"></a>LUCIFER<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY ANATOLE FRANCE<span class="sidenote"><a href="#LUCIFER28">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This writer has a great sympathy for devil-lore, and many
+of his characters show the cloven hoof. An analyst of illusions,
+he has a profound interest in the greatest of illusions.
+An assailant of every form of superstition, he has a tender
+affection for the greatest of superstitions. An exponent of the
+radical and ironical spirit in French literature, he feels irresistibly
+drawn to the eternal Denier and Mocker.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the Florentine painter Spinello Spinelli, to
+whom Lucifer appeared in a dream to ask him in what place
+he had beheld him under so brutish a form as he had painted
+him, is told in Giorgio Vasari’s <i>Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori,
+Scultori, ed Architteti</i> (1550), which is the basis of the history
+of Italian art. It was treated by Barrili in his novel <i>The
+Devil’s Portrait</i> (1882; Engl. tr. 1885), from whom Anatole
+France may have got the idea for his story. But there is also
+a mediaeval French legend about a monk (<i>Du moine qui
+contrefyt l’ymage du Diable, qui s’en corouça</i>), who was
+forced by the indignant devil to paint him in a less ugly
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>The devil is very sensitive in regard to his appearance. On
+a number of occasions he expressed his bitter resentment at the
+efforts of a certain class of artists to represent him in a hideous
+form (cf. M.&nbsp;D. Conway, <i>Demonology and Devil-Lore</i>).
+Daniel Defoe has well remarked that the devil does not think
+that the people would be terrified half so much if they were to
+converse face to face with him. “Really,” this biographer of
+Satan goes on to say, “it were enough to fright the devil himself
+to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several figures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men.”
+It makes us, indeed, wonder why the devil was always represented
+in a hideous and horrid form. Rationally conceived,
+the devil should by right be the most fascinating object in
+creation. One of his essential functions, temptation, is destroyed
+by his hideousness. To do the work of temptation a
+demon might be expected to approach his intended victim in
+the most fascinating form he could command. This fact is an
+additional proof that the devil was for the early Christians but
+the discarded pagan god, whom they wished to represent as
+ugly and as repulsive as they could.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest known representation of the devil in human
+form is found on an ivory diptych of the time of Charles the
+Bald (9th century). Many artists have since then painted his
+Majesty’s portrait. Schongauer, Dürer, Michelangelo, Titian,
+Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Breughel and other
+masters on canvas vied with each other to present us with a
+real likeness of Satan. None has, however, equalled the power
+of Gustave Doré in the portrayal of the Diabolical. This
+Frenchman was at his best as an artist of the infernal (Dante’s
+“Great Dis” and Milton’s “Satan at the gates of Hell”).</p>
+
+<p>Modern artists frequently represent the devil as a woman.
+Félicien Rops, Max Klinger, and Franz Stuck may be cited as
+illustrations. Apparently the devil has in modern times
+changed sex as well as custom and costume. Victor Hugo has
+said:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Dieu s’est fait homme; soit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Le diable s’est fait femme.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>“Lucifer,” as well as the other stories which form the volume
+<i>The Well of St. Claire</i>, is told by the abbé Jérôme Coignard on
+the edge of Santa Clara’s well at Siena. The book was first
+published serially in the <i>Echo de Paris</i> (1895). It has just
+been rendered into Spanish (<i>El Pozo de Santa Clara</i>).</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_N" id="THE_DEVIL_N"></a>THE DEVIL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY MAXIM GORKY<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL30">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage’s <i>Le Diable
+boiteux</i>. It will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs
+of the houses of Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of a Russian author was, indeed, a very sad affair.
+“In all lands have the writers drunk of life’s cup of bitterness,
+have they been bruised by life’s sharp corners and torn by life’s
+pointed thorns. Chill penury, public neglect, and ill health
+have been the lot of many an author in countries other than
+Russia. But in the land of the Czars men of letters had to face
+problems and perils which were peculiarly their own, and
+which have not been duplicated in any other country on the
+globe.... Every man of letters was under suspicion. The
+government of Russia treated every author as its natural enemy,
+and made him feel frequently the weight of its heavy hand.
+The wreath of laurels on the brow of almost every poet was
+turned by the tyrants of his country into a crown of thorns.”
+(From the present writer’s essay “The Gloom and Glory of
+Russian Literature” in <i>The Open Court</i> for July, 1918.)</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN_N" id="THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN_N"></a>THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BY JOHN MASEFIELD<span class="sidenote"><a href="#THE_DEVIL_AND_THE_OLD_MAN31">Story</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3><i>POSTCRIPT</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>For the benefit of the gentle reader, who is about to shed a
+tear or two over the demise of the devil, the following episode
+from Anatole France’s <i>My Friend’s Book</i> is retold here:</p>
+
+<p>Pierre Nozière (Anatole France) takes his baby-girl to a
+Punch and Judy show, the culmination point of which always
+consists of the duel to the death between Punch and the Devil.
+The terrible battle ends, of course, with the death of the Devil.
+The spectators applaud the heroic act of Punch, but Pierre
+Nozière is not happy over the result of the fight. He thinks
+that it is rather a pity that the Devil has been slain. Paying no
+heed to Suzanne sitting by his side, he goes on musing:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Devil being dead, good-bye to sin! Perhaps Beauty, the Devil’s
+ally, would have to go, too. Perhaps we should never more behold the
+flowers that enchant us, and the eyes for love of which we would lay
+down our lives. What, if that is so, what in the world would become
+of us? Should we still be able to practise virtue? I doubt it. Punch
+did not sufficiently bear in mind that Evil is the necessary counterpart
+of Good, as darkness is of light, that virtue wholly consists of
+effort, and that if there is no more any Devil to fight against, the
+Saints will remain as much out of work as the Sinners. Life will be
+mortally dull. I tell you that when he killed the Devil, Punch
+committed an act of grave imprudence.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Pulchinello came on and made his bow, the curtain fell, and
+all the little boys and girls went home; but still I sat on deep in meditation.
+Mam’zelle Suzanne, perceiving my thoughtful mien, concluded
+that I was in trouble.... Very gently and tenderly she takes hold of
+my hand and asks me why I am unhappy. I confess that I am sorry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+that Punch has slain the Devil. Then she puts her little arms round
+my neck, and putting her lips to my ears, she whispers:</p>
+
+<p>“‘I tell you somefin: Punch, he killed the nigger, but he has not
+killed him for good.’”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>[List of authors and titles contained in the Notes. Names
+are alphabeted after omission of <i>de</i> or <i>von</i>, and titles are
+entered without their initial article. Each title is followed by
+the author’s name in parentheses.]</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><i>Ambrosio, or the Monk</i> (Lewis), <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Anathema</i> (Andréev), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i> (Burton), <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li>Andréev, Leonid, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Artificial Paradises</i> (Baudelaire), <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren</i> (Richter), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Autobiography of Satan</i> (Beard), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Barham, Richard Harris (<a href="#Page_307">307</a>)</li>
+
+<li>Barrili, Anton Giulio, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li>Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Beard, J.&nbsp;R., <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil</i> (Machiavelli), <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Belphagor</i> (an English play), <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Betrogener Teufel</i> (Rückert), <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bon-Bon</i> (Poe), <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li>Bourges, Elémir, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Brevio, Giovanni, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li>Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li>Burton, Richard, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Caballero, Fernán, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Caesarius of Heisterbach, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Campe, Joachim Heinrich, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Carus, Paul, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Cazotte, Jacques, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li>Chamisso, Adalbert, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li>Chappuys, Gabriel, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Chateaubriand, François Auguste René, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Chatterton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Christliche Mystik</i> (Görres), <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Conway, Moncure Daniel, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Crépuscule des Dieux</i> (Bourges), <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>Cumont, Franz, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Daborne, Robert, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Daniel and the Devil</i> (Field), <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Danish Legends</i> (Thiele), <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Dante Alighieri, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>Daudet, Alphonse, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Demon Pope</i> (Garnett), <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Demonology and Devil-Lore</i> (Conway), <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Demonology and Witchcraft</i> (W. Scott), <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li>Deulin, Charles, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil</i> (Gorky), <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil; his Origin, Greatness and Decadence</i> (Réville), <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil and his Dame</i> (Houghton), <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil and the Old Man</i> (Masefield), <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil and Tom Walker</i> (Irving), <a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil in a Nunnery</i> (Mann), <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil in Germany</i> (Freytag), <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil in the Belfry</i> (Poe), <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil is an Ass</i> (Jonson), <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil-Puzzlers</i> (Perkins), <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Fiddle</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Mother-in-Law</i> (Caballero), <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_302">302</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Portrait</i> (Barrili), <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Round</i> (Deulin), <a href="#Page_311">311</a>-<a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Violin</i> (Webster), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Devil’s Wager</i> (Thackeray), <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Diable</i> (Baudelaire), <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Diable au café</i> (Ménard), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Diable boiteux</i> (Le Sage), <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Diablo cojuelo</i> (Guevara), <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire</i> (Sternberg), <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dialogus Miraculorum</i> (Caesarius), <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dieux ont soif</i> (France), <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Dollinger, J.&nbsp;J., <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Du moine qui countrefyt l’ymage du Diable</i>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li>Dunlop, J.&nbsp;C., <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Elixir of the Reverend Père Gaucher</i> (Daudet), <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li><i>En Route</i> (Huysmans), <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Evangelium Nicodemi</i>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka</i> (Gógol), <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages</i> (Dollinger), <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Fairy Tales</i> (Grimm), <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Faust</i> (Goethe), <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Faust</i> (Lenau), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Faustus</i> (Marlowe), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Field, Eugene, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Fisherman and his Soul</i> (Wilde), <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li>Flaubert, Gustave, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Flowers of Evil</i> (Baudelaire), <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li>France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Frazer, James George, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Freytag, Gustav, <a href="#Page_293">293</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>From the Memoirs of Satan</i> (Hauff), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Fulwell, Ulpian, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Goethe, Wolfgang, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Gógol, Nikolái Vasilévich, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Golden Bough</i> (Frazer), <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+
+<li>Gorky, Maxím, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li>Görres, Joseph, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Götterdämmerung</i> (Wagner), <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Grim, the Collier of Croydon</i> (Fulwell), <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Grimm, Jacob, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Guevara, Luis Velez, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Hauff, Wilhelm, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Heine, Heinrich, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li>Henslowe, Philip, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Herbert, George, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Hill, Rowland, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>History of Fiction</i> (Dunlop), <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li><i>History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil</i> (Carus), <a href="#Page_315">315</a>-<a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li><i>History of the French Novel</i> (Saintsbury), <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li>Hoffmann, E. Th. A., <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Homme qui vendit son âme au Diable</i> (Veber), <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Horla</i> (Maupassant), <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Houghton, P.&nbsp;M., <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>Huneker, James, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Huysmans, Joris Karl, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels</i> (Barham), <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li>Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Italian Novelists</i> (Roscoe), <a href="#Page_282">282</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Jarintzow, Mme., <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Là-Bas</i> (Huysmans), <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li>La Fontaine, Jean, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Lavigne, Germond, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Legend of Mont St.-Michel</i> (Maupassant), <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li>Lenau, Nikolaus, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Le Sage, Alain, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li>Lewis, (“Monk”) Matthew, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Lettres de mon Moulin</i> (Daudet), <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Little Key of Rabbi Solomon</i>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Lucifer</i> (France), <a href="#Page_319">319</a>-<a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Machiavel and the Devil</i> (Daborne and Henslowe), <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Machiavelli, Niccolò, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Madam Lucifer</i> (Garnett), <a href="#Page_317">317</a>-<a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Man and Superman</i> (Shaw), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Mann, Francis Oscar, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Masefield, John, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>Maupassant, Guy, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Mediaeval Mind</i> (Taylor), <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Mémoires du Diable</i> (Soulié), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Memoirs of Satan</i> (Hauff), <a href="#Page_286">286</a>-<a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Ménard, Louis, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Milton, John, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li><i>My Friend’s Book</i> (France), <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Nerval [Labrunie], Gérard, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Notre Coeur</i> (Maupassant), <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Nouvelles andalouses</i> (Caballero), <a href="#Page_301">301</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Origin of German Carnival Comedy</i> (Rudwin), <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Painter’s Bargain</i> (Thackeray), <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Paris Sketch Book</i> (Thackeray), <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Parlement of Devils</i>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Parlement of Foules</i>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Parliament of Sprites (Chatterton), <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Peabody, Josephine Preston, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li>Perkins, Frederick Beecher, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Peter Schlemihl</i> (Chamisso), <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Pied Piper of Hamelin</i> (Browning), <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Piper</i> (Peabody), <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li>Poe, Edgar Allan, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Poèmes en Prose</i> (Baudelaire), <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Pope’s Mule</i> (Daudet), <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Pozo de Santa Clara</i> (France), <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Prince des Sots</i> (Nerval), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Printer’s Devil</i>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-<a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Rabelais, François, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Réville, Albert, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Riche, Barnabe, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li>Richter, Jean Paul, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Robinson der Jüngers</i> (Campe), <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Roscoe, Thomas, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li>Roskoff, Georg, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Rückert, Friedrich, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Rudwin, Maximilian J., <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Russian Poets and Poems</i> (Jarintzow), <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Sachs, Hans, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>St. John’s Eve</i> (Gógol), <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>Saintsbury, George, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li>Sansovino, Francesco, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Satan’s Diary</i> (Andréev), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Satanism of Huysmans</i> (Rudwin), <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Satires</i> (Horace), <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+
+<li>Schmidt, Julian, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li>Scott, Walter, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Selections from the Devil’s Papers</i> (Richter), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Shakespeare, William, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Shaw, George Bernard, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Shipley, Joseph T., <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Sonata del Diavolo</i> (Tartini), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Sonate du Diable</i> (Nerval), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Soulié, Frédéric, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Spanish Fairy Tales</i> (Caballero), <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Staël, Madame, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Sternberg, T., <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li>Stevenson, Robert Louis, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Straparola, Giovan-Francesco, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Supreme Sin</i> (Huneker), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Symons, Arthur, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Tales from Twelve Tongues</i> (Garnett?), <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li>Tartini, Giuseppe, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li>Tasso, Torquato, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Taylor, H.&nbsp;D., <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Temptation of St. Anthony</i> (Flaubert), <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire</i> (Baudelaire), <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Teufel in Berlin</i> (Hoffmann), <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Teufel mit der Geige</i> (Gengenbach), <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Teutonic Mythology</i> (Grimm), <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li>Thackeray, William Makepeace, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Thiele, Just Mathias, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Thrawn Janet</i> (Stevenson), <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Three Low Masses</i> (Daudet), <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Twilight of the Gods</i> (Garnett), <a href="#Page_315">315</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li><i>Undying Fire</i> (Wells), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Vasari, Giorgio, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Veber, Pierre, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Vinculum Spirituum</i>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Violon du Diable</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Vision Malefic</i> (Huneker), <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry</i> (Mann), <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti</i> (Vasari), <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li>&nbsp;</li>
+
+<li>Wagner, Richard, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Wandering Willie’s Tale</i> (Scott), <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Webster, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Well of St. Claire</i> (France), <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li>
+
+<li>Wells, H.&nbsp;G., <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+
+<li>Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Wintermärchen</i> (Klopstock), <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: 80%; padding-top: 4em">THE END</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Devil Stories
+       An Anthology
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Maximilian J. Rudwin
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2010 [EBook #31754]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVIL STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL STORIES
+
+AN ANTHOLOGY
+
+SELECTED AND EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL COMMENTS
+
+BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+    _"Mortal, mock not at the Devil,
+      Life is short and soon will fail,
+    And the 'fire everlasting'
+      Is no idle fairy-tale."_
+                               --HEINE.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+ALFRED . A . KNOPF
+
+MCMXXI
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL LORE
+
+ANTHOLOGIES OF DIABOLICAL LITERATURE EDITED BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
+
+I. DEVIL STORIES [First Series]
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+  DEVIL PLAYS
+  DEVIL ESSAYS
+  DEVIL LEGENDS
+  THE BOOK OF LADY LILITH
+  ANTHOLOGY OF SATANIC VERSE
+  BIBLIOGRAPHIA DIABOLICA
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS BY MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN_
+
+
+The Prophet and Disputation
+Scenes in the Religious Drama
+of the German Middle Ages.
+
+The Devil Scenes in the Religious
+Drama of the German Middle
+Ages.
+
+The Devil in the German Religious
+Plays of the Middle
+Ages and the Reformation.
+[Hesperia: Johns Hopkins
+Studies in Modern Philology,
+No. 6.]
+
+The Origin of the German Carnival
+Comedy.
+
+
+_In Preparation:_
+
+The Devil in Modern French
+Literature.
+
+
+
+
+TO ALL STUDENTS OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN LITERATURE
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The preparation of this book would have been out of the question
+without the co-operation of authors and publishers. Proper
+acknowledgment has been given on the first page of each selection to
+the publishers who have granted us permission to reprint it. We take
+this opportunity to express once more our deep appreciation of the
+courtesies extended to us by all the parties concerned in the material
+between the covers of this book. Special thanks are offered to Mr.
+John Masefield for his permission to republish his story, and to
+Messrs. Arthur Symons and Leo Wiener and to Miss Isabel F. Hapgood for
+their permission to use their translations of the foreign stories
+which we have selected. To Professor Henry Alfred Todd and Dr. Dorothy
+Scarborough, of Columbia University, who have kindly read portions of
+the manuscript, the editor is indebted for a number of helpful
+suggestions. He adds his thanks to Professor Raymond Weeks, also of
+Columbia University, who called his attention to the Daudet story, and
+to his former colleague, Professor Otto A. Greiner, of Purdue
+University, who was good enough to read part of the proofs.
+
+                                             THE PUBLISHER.
+                                                THE EDITOR.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY 1
+  _A Mediaeval Tale By Francis Oscar Mann_
+
+BELPHAGOR, OR THE MARRIAGE OF THE DEVIL (1549) 14
+  _From the Italian of Niccolo Machiavelli_
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER (1824) 28
+  _By Washington Irving_
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN (1828) 46
+  _From the German of Wilhelm Hauff_
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE (1830) 56
+  _From the Russian of Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol_
+  _Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood_
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER (1833) 79
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN (1834) 93
+  _By William Makepeace Thackeray_
+
+BON-BON (1835) 112
+  _By Edgar Allan Poe_
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL (1836) 136
+  _Anonymous_
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW (1859) 149
+  _From the Spanish by Fernan Caballero_
+  _Translated by J. H. Ingram_
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER (1864) 162
+  _From the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire_
+  _Translated by Arthur Symons_
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES (1869) 167
+  _A Christmas Story From the French of Alphonse Daudet_
+  _Translated by Robert Routeledge_
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS (1871) 179
+  _By Frederick Beecher Perkins_
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND (1874) 203
+  _A Tale of Flemish Golf From the French of Charles Deulin_
+  _Translated by Isabel Bruce_
+  _With an introductory note by Andrew Lang_
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL (1888) 222
+  _From the French of Guy de Maupassant_
+
+THE DEMON POPE (1888) 228
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+MADAM LUCIFER (1888) 242
+  _By Richard Garnett_
+
+LUCIFER (1895) 250
+  _From the French of Anatole France_
+  _Translated by Alfred Allinson_
+
+THE DEVIL (1899) 257
+  _From the Russian of Maxim Gorky_
+  _Translated by Leo Wiener_
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN (1905) 268
+  _By John Masefield_
+
+NOTES 279
+
+INDEX 325
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Of all the myths which have come down to us from the East, and of all
+the creations of Western fancy and belief, the Personality of Evil has
+had the strongest attraction for the mind of man. The Devil is the
+greatest enigma that has ever confronted the human intelligence. So
+large a place has Satan taken in our imagination, and we might also
+say in our heart, that his expulsion therefrom, no matter what
+philosophy may teach us, must for ever remain an impossibility. As a
+character in imaginative literature Lucifer has not his equal in
+heaven above or on the earth beneath. In contrast to the idea of Good,
+which is the more exalted in proportion to its freedom from
+anthropomorphism, the idea of Evil owes to the presence of this
+element its chief value as a poetic theme. The discrowned archangel
+may have been inferior to St. Michael in military tactics, but he
+certainly is his superior in matters literary. The fair angels--all
+frankness and goodness--are beyond our comprehension, but the fallen
+angels, with all their faults and sufferings, are kin to us.
+
+There is a legend that the Devil has always had literary aspirations.
+The German theosophist Jacob Boehme relates that when Satan was asked
+to explain the cause of God's enmity to him and his consequent
+downfall, he replied: "I wanted to be an author." Whether or not the
+Devil has ever written anything over his own signature, he has
+certainly helped others compose their greatest works. It is a
+significant fact that the greatest imaginations have discerned an
+attraction in Diabolus. What would the world's literature be if from
+it we eliminated Dante's _Divine Comedy_, Calderon's _Marvellous
+Magician_, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Goethe's _Faust_, Byron's _Cain_,
+Vigny's _Eloa_, and Lermontov's _Demon_? Sorry indeed would have been
+the plight of literature without a judicious admixture of the
+Diabolical. Without the Devil there would simply be no literature,
+because without his intervention there would be no plot, and without a
+plot the story of the world would lose its interest. Even now, when
+the belief in the Devil has gone out of fashion, and when the very
+mention of his name, far from causing men to cross themselves, brings
+a smile to their faces, Satan has continued to be a puissant personage
+in the realm of letters. As a matter of fact, Beelzebub has perhaps
+received his greatest elaboration at the hands of writers who believed
+in him just as little as Shakespeare did in the ghost of Hamlet's
+father.
+
+Commenting on Anatole France's _The Revolt of the Angels_, an American
+critic has recently written: "It is difficult to rehabilitate
+Beelzebub, not because people are of one mind concerning Beelzebub,
+but because they are of no mind at all." How this demon must have
+laughed when he read these lines! Why, he needs no rehabilitation. The
+Devil has never been absent from the world of letters, just as he has
+never been missing from the world of men. Since the days of Job, Satan
+has taken a deep interest in the affairs of the human race; and while
+most writers content themselves with recording his activities on this
+planet, there never have been lacking men of sufficient courage to
+call upon the prince of darkness in his proper dominions in order to
+bring back to us, for our instruction and edification, a report of his
+work there. The most distinguished poet his infernal Highness has ever
+entertained at his court, it will be recalled, was Dante. The mark
+which the scorching fires of hell left on Dante's face, was to his
+contemporaries sufficient proof of the truth of his story.
+
+The subject-matter of literature may always have been in a state of
+flux, but the Devil has been present in all the stages of literary
+evolution. All schools of literature in all ages and in all languages
+set themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously, to represent and
+interpret the Devil, and each school has treated him in its own
+characteristic manner.
+
+The Devil is an old character in literature. Perhaps he is as old as
+literature itself. He is encountered in the story of the paradisiacal
+sojourn of our first ancestors, and from that day on, Satan has
+appeared unfailingly, in various forms and with various functions, in
+all the literatures of the world. His person and his power continued
+to develop and to multiply with the advance of the centuries, so that
+in the Middle Ages the world fairly pullulated with demons. From his
+minor place in the biblical books, the Devil grew to a position of
+paramount importance in mediaeval literature. The Reformation, which
+was a movement of progress in so many respects, left his position
+intact. Indeed, it rather increased his power by withdrawing from the
+saints the right of intercession in behalf of the sinners. Neither the
+Renaissance of ancient learning nor the institution of modern science
+could prevail against Satan. As a matter of fact, the growth of the
+interest in the Devil has been on a level with the development of the
+spirit of philosophical inquiry. French classicism, to be sure,
+occasioned a setback for our hero. As a member of the Christian
+hierarchy of supernatural personages, the Devil could not help but be
+affected by the ban under which Boileau placed Christian
+supernaturalism. But even the eighteenth century, a period so inimical
+to the Supernatural, produced two master-devils in fiction: Le Sage's
+Asmodeus and Cazotte's Beelzebub--worthy members of the august company
+of literary Devils.
+
+But as if to make amends for its long lack of appreciation of the
+Devil's literary possibilities, France, in the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, brought about a distinct reaction in his favour.
+The sympathy extended by that country of revolutionary progress to all
+victims and to all rebels, whether individuals or classes or nations,
+could not well be denied to the celestial outlaw. The fighters for
+political, social, intellectual, and emotional liberty on earth, could
+not withhold their admiration from the angel who demanded freedom of
+thought and independence of action in heaven. The rebel of the
+Empyrean was hailed as the first martyr in the cause of liberty, and
+his rehabilitation in heaven was demanded by the rebels on earth.
+Satan became the symbol of the restless, hapless nineteenth century.
+Through his mouth that age uttered its protest against the monarchs
+of heaven and earth. The Romantic generation of 1830 thought the world
+more than ever out of joint, and who was better fitted than the Devil
+to express their dissatisfaction with the celestial government of
+terrestrial affairs? Satan is the eternal Malcontent. To Hamlet,
+Denmark seemed gloomy; to Satan, the whole world appears dark. The
+admiration of the Romanticists for Satan was mixed with pity and
+sympathy--so much his melancholy endeared him to their sympathies, so
+kindred it seemed to their human weakness. The Romanticists felt a
+deep admiration for solitary grandeur. This "knight of the doleful
+countenance," laden with a curse and drawing misfortune in his train,
+was the ideal Romantic hero. Was he not indeed the original _beau
+tenebreux_? Thus Satan became the typical figure of that period and
+its poetry. It has been well remarked that if Satan had not existed,
+the Romanticists would have invented him. The Devil's influence on the
+Romantic School was so strong and so sustained that soon it was named
+after him. The terms Romantic and Satanic came to be wellnigh
+synonymous. The interest which the French Romanticists showed in the
+Devil, moreover, passed beyond the boundaries of France and the limits
+of the nineteenth century. The Symbolists, for whom the mysteries of
+Erebus had a potent attraction, were simply obsessed by Satan. But
+even the Naturalists, who certainly were not haunted by phantoms,
+often succumbed to his charms. Foreign writers turning for inspiration
+to France, where the literature of the last century reached its
+highest perfection, were also caught in the French enthusiasm for the
+Devil.
+
+Needless to say that this Devil is not the evil spirit of mediaeval
+dogma. The Romantic Devil is an altogether new species of the _genus
+diaboli_. There are fashions in Devils as in dresses, and what is a
+Devil in one country or one century may not pass muster in another. It
+is related that after the glory of Greece had departed, a mariner,
+voyaging along her coast by night, heard from the woods the cry:
+"Great Pan is dead!" But Pan was not dead; he had fallen asleep to
+awake again as Satan. In like manner, when the eighteenth century
+believed Satan to be dead, he was, as a matter of fact, only
+recuperating his energies for a fresh start in a new form. His new
+avatar was Prometheus. Satan continued to be the enemy of God, but he
+was no longer the enemy of man. Instead of a demon of darkness he
+became a god of grace. This champion of celestial combat was not
+actuated by hatred and envy of man, as Christianity was thought to
+teach us, but by love and pity for humankind. The strongest expression
+of this idea of the Devil in modern literature has been given by
+August Strindberg, whose Lucifer is a compound of Prometheus, Apollo
+and Christ. However, this interpretation of the Devil, whatever value
+it may have from the point of view of originality, is aesthetically as
+well as theologically not acceptable. Such a revaluation of an old
+value offends our intellect while it touches our heart. All successful
+treatment of the Devil in literature and art must be made to
+correspond with the norm of popular belief. In art we are all
+orthodox, whatever our views may be in religion. This new conception
+of Satan will be found chiefly in poetry, while the popular concept
+has been continued in prose. But even here a gradual evolution of the
+idea of the Devil will be observed. The nineteenth century Demon is an
+improvement on his _confrere_ of the thirteenth. He differs from his
+older brother as a cultivated flower from a wild blossom. The Devil as
+a human projection is bound to partake in the progress of human
+thought. Says Mephistopheles:
+
+    "Culture, which the whole world licks,
+    Also unto the Devil sticks."
+
+The Devil advances with the progress of civilization, because he is
+what men make him. He has benefited by the modern levelling tendency
+in characterization. Nowadays supernatural personages, like their
+human creators, are no longer painted either as wholly white or as
+wholly black, but in various shades of grey. The Devil, as Renan has
+aptly remarked, has chiefly benefited by this relativist point of
+view. The Spirit of Evil is better than he was, because evil is no
+longer so bad as it was. Satan, even in the popular mind, is no longer
+a villain of the deepest dye. At his worst he is the general
+mischief-maker of the universe, who loves to stir up the earth with
+his pitch-fork. In modern literature the Devil's chief function is
+that of a satirist. This fine critic directs the shafts of his sarcasm
+against all the faults and foibles of men. He spares no human
+institution. In religion, art, society, marriage--everywhere his
+searching eye can detect the weak spots. The latest demonstration of
+the Devil's ability as a satirist of men and morals is furnished by
+Mark Twain in his posthumous romance _The Mysterious Stranger_.
+
+The Devil Lore Series, which opens with this book of Devil Stories, is
+to serve as documentary evidence of man's abiding interest in the
+Devil. It will be a sort of portrait-gallery of the literary
+delineations of Satan. The Anthologies of Diabolical Literature may be
+considered, I trust, without any risk of offence to any theological or
+philosophical prepossession. To those alike who accept and who reject
+the belief in the Devil's spiritual entity apart from man's, there
+must be profit and pleasure in the contemplation of his literary
+incarnations. As regards the Devil's fitness as a literary character,
+all intelligent men and women, believers and unbelievers, may be
+assumed to have but one opinion.
+
+This Series is wholly devoted to the Christian Devil with the total
+disregard of his cousins in the other faiths. There will, however, be
+found a strong Jewish element in Christian demonology. It must be
+borne in mind that our literature has become saturated through
+Christian channels with the traditions of the parent creed.
+
+This collection has been limited to twenty tales. Within the bounds
+thus set, an effort has been made to have this book as representative
+of national and individual conceptions of the Devil as possible. The
+tales have been taken from many times and tongues. Selection has been
+made not only among writers, but also among the stories of each
+writer. In two instances, however, where the choice was not so easy,
+an author is represented by two specimens from his pen.
+
+The stories have been arranged in chronological order to show the
+constant and continuous appeal on the part of the Devil to our
+story-writers. The mediaeval tale, although published last, was
+placed first. For obvious reasons, this story has not been given in
+its original form, but in its modernized version. While this is not
+meant to be a nursery-book, it has been made _virginibus puerisque_,
+and for this reason, selections from Boccaccio, Rabelais and Balzac
+could not find their way into these pages. Moreover, as this volume
+was limited to narratives in prose, devil's tales in verse by Chaucer,
+Hans Sachs and La Fontaine could not be considered, either.
+Nevertheless this collection is sufficiently comprehensive to please
+all tastes in Devils. The reader will find between the covers of this
+book Devils fascinating and fearful, Devils powerful and picturesque,
+Devils serious and humorous, Devils pathetic and comic, Devils
+phantastic and satiric, Devils gruesome and grotesque. I have tried,
+though, to keep them all in good humour throughout the book, and can
+accordingly assure the reader that he need fear no harm from an
+intimate acquaintance with the diabolical company to which he is
+herewith introduced.
+
+                                       MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY[1]
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+    [1] Taken by permission from _The Devil in a Nunnery and
+    other Mediaeval Tales_, by Francis Oscar Mann, published by
+    P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1914.
+
+Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see on a seven days'
+journey. Neither was it any less pleasant in the days of our Lord King
+Edward, the third of that name, he who fought and put the French to
+shameful discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another
+hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he now sleeps in the
+great Church at Westminster.
+
+Buckinghamshire is full of smooth round hills and woodlands of
+hawthorn and beech, and it is a famous country for its brooks and
+shaded waterways running through the low hay meadows. Upon its hills
+feed a thousand sheep, scattered like the remnants of the spring snow,
+and it was from these that the merchants made themselves fat purses,
+sending the wool into Flanders in exchange for silver crowns. There
+were many strong castles there too, and rich abbeys, and the King's
+Highway ran through it from North to South, upon which the pilgrims
+went in crowds to worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.
+Thereon also rode noble knights and stout men-at-arms, and these you
+could follow with the eye by their glistening armour, as they wound
+over hill and dale, mile after mile, with shining spears and shields
+and fluttering pennons, and anon a trumpet or two sounding the same
+keen note as that which rang out dreadfully on those bloody fields of
+France. The girls used to come to the cottage doors or run to hide
+themselves in the wayside woods to see them go trampling by; for
+Buckinghamshire girls love a soldier above all men. Nor, I warrant
+you, were jolly friars lacking in the highways and the by-ways and
+under the hedges, good men of religion, comfortable of penance and
+easy of life, who could tip a wink to a housewife, and drink and crack
+a joke with the good man, going on their several ways with tight
+paunches, skins full of ale and a merry salutation for every one. A
+fat pleasant land was this Buckinghamshire; always plenty to eat and
+drink therein, and pretty girls and lusty fellows; and God knows what
+more a man can expect in a world where all is vanity, as the Preacher
+truly says.
+
+There was a nunnery at Maids Moreton, two miles out from Buckingham
+Borough, on the road to Stony Stratford, and the place was called
+Maids Moreton because of the nunnery. Very devout creatures were the
+nuns, being holy ladies out of families of gentle blood. They
+punctually fulfilled to the letter all the commands of the pious
+founder, just as they were blazoned on the great parchment Regula,
+which the Lady Mother kept on her reading-desk in her little cell. If
+ever any of the nuns, by any chance or subtle machination of the Evil
+One, was guilty of the smallest backsliding from the conduct that
+beseemed them, they made full and devout confession thereof to the
+Holy Father who visited them for this purpose. This good man loved
+swan's meat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed to
+provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and whatsoever
+penance he laid upon them they performed to the utmost, and with due
+contrition of heart.
+
+From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently carried out the
+services of Holy Mother Church. After dinner, one read aloud to them
+from the Rule, and again after supper there was reading from the life
+of some notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample
+for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage. For the rest, they
+tended their herb garden, reared their chickens, which were famous for
+miles around, and kept strict watch over their haywards and
+swineherds. If time was when they had nothing more important on hand,
+they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages imaginable for the
+Bishop, the Bishop's Chaplain, the Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot
+and other godly men of religion round about, who were forced often to
+bleed themselves for their health's sake and their eternal salvation,
+so that these venerable men in process of time came to have by them
+great chests full of these useful articles. If little tongues wagged
+now and then as the sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who
+shall blame them, _Eva peccatrice_? Not I; besides, some of them were
+something stricken in years, and old women are garrulous and hard to
+be constrained from chattering and gossiping. But being devout women
+they could have spoken no evil.
+
+One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at supper, the
+Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged up and down the hall at
+the long trestled tables. The Abbess had just said "_Gratias_" and
+the sisters had sung "_Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula
+saeculorum, Amen_," when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and, with
+many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the hands, sidled himself
+up upon the dais, and, permission having been given him, spoke to the
+Lady Mother thus:
+
+"Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who asks refreshment
+and a night's lodging." It is true he spoke softly, but little pink
+ears are sharp of hearing, and nuns, from their secluded way of life,
+love to hear news of the great world.
+
+"Send him away," said the Abbess. "It is not fit that a man should lie
+within this house."
+
+"Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he should starve of
+hunger and exhaustion on his way to do penance and worship at the Holy
+Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban."
+
+"What kind of pilgrim is he?"
+
+"Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears of a reverend and
+gracious aspect, a young man well spoken and well disposed. Madam
+knows it waxeth late, and the ways are dark and foul."
+
+"I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages and good
+works, to faint and starve by the wayside. Let him sleep with the
+haywards."
+
+"But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance and conversation;
+saving your reverence, I would not wish to ask him to eat and sleep
+with churls."
+
+"He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter and eat of our poor
+table."
+
+"Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command. He hath with him,
+however, an instrument of music and would fain cheer you with
+spiritual songs."
+
+A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches of the great
+hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.
+
+"Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light juggler, a singer
+of vain songs, a mocker. I would not have these quiet halls disturbed
+by wanton music and unholy words. God forbid." And she crossed
+herself.
+
+"Madam, I will answer for it."
+
+The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went down the middle of
+the hall, his keys rattling at his belt. A little buzz of conversation
+rose from the sisters and went up to the oak roof-trees, like the
+singing of bees. The Abbess told her beads.
+
+The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God knows what manner of
+man he was; I cannot tell you. He certainly was lean and lithe like a
+cat, his eyes danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks
+and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit's that lives on roots and
+ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went like the tune of a May game,
+and he screwed and twisted his scarlet-jerkined body in time with
+them. In his left hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his
+right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones of those
+who heard it, and teased every delicate nerve in the body. Such a tune
+would have tickled the ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go
+pilgrimaging certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the young nuns
+tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they showed their red gums,
+it is hard to tell. Even the Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though
+she tried to frown a moment later.
+
+The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal devil in his
+legs making the nuns think of the games the village folk play all
+night in the churchyard on Saint John's Eve.
+
+"Gracious Mother," he cried, bowing deeply and in comely wise, "allow
+a poor pilgrim on his way to confess and do penance at the shrine of
+Saint Alban to take food in your hall, and to rest with the haywards
+this night, and let me thereof make some small recompense with a few
+sacred numbers, such as your pious founder would not have disdained to
+hear."
+
+"Young man," returned the Abbess, "right glad am I to hear that God
+has moved thy heart to godly works and to go on pilgrimages, and
+verily I wish it may be to thy soul's health and to the respite of thy
+pains hereafter. I am right willing that thou shouldst refresh thyself
+with meat and rest at this holy place."
+
+"Madam, I thank thee from my heart, but as some slight token of
+gratitude for so large a favour, let me, I pray thee, sing one or two
+of my divine songs, to the uplifting of these holy Sisters' hearts."
+
+Another burst of chatter, louder than before, from the benches in the
+hall. One or two of the younger Sisters clapped their plump white
+hands and cried, "Oh!" The Lady Abbess held up her hand for silence.
+
+"Verily, I should be glad to hear some sweet songs of religion, and I
+think it would be to the uplifting of these Sisters' hearts. But,
+young man, take warning against singing any wanton lines of vain
+imagination, such as the ribalds use on the highways, and the idlers
+and haunters of taverns. I have heard them in my youth, although my
+ears tingle to think of them now, and I should think it shame that any
+such light words should echo among these sacred rafters or disturb the
+slumber of our pious founder, who now sleeps in Christ. Let me remind
+you of what saith Saint Jeremie, _Onager solitarius, in desiderio
+animae suae, attraxit ventum amoris_; the wild ass of the wilderness,
+in the desire of his heart, snuffeth up the wind of love; whereby that
+holy man signifies that vain earthly love, which is but wind and air,
+and shall avail nothing at all, when this weak, impure flesh is
+sloughed away."
+
+"Madam, such songs as I shall sing, I learnt at the mouth of our holy
+parish priest, Sir Thomas, a man of all good learning and purity of
+heart."
+
+"In that case," said the Abbess, "sing in God's name, but stand at the
+end of the hall, for it suits not the dignity of my office a man
+should stand so near this dais."
+
+Whereon the pilgrim, making obeisance, went to the end of the hall,
+and the eyes of all the nuns danced after his dancing legs, and their
+ears hung on the clear, sweet notes he struck out of his cithern as he
+walked. He took his place with his back against the great hall door,
+in such attitude as men use when they play the cithern. A little
+trembling ran through the nuns, and some rose from their seats and
+knelt on the benches, leaning over the table, the better to see and
+hear him. Their eyes sparkled like dew on meadowsweet on a fair
+morning.
+
+Certainly his fingers were bewitched or else the devil was in his
+cithern, for such sweet sounds had never been heard in the hall since
+the day when it was built and consecrated to the service of the
+servants of God. The shrill notes fell like a tinkling rain from the
+high roof in mad, fantastic trills and dying falls that brought all
+one's soul to one's lips to suck them in. What he sang about, God only
+knows; not one of the nuns or even the holy Abbess herself could have
+told you, although you had offered her a piece of the True Cross or a
+hair of the Blessed Virgin for a single word. But a divine yearning
+filled all their hearts; they seemed to hear ten thousand thousand
+angels singing in choruses, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia; they floated
+up on impalpable clouds of azure and silver, up through the blissful
+paradises of the uppermost heaven; their nostrils were filled with the
+odours of exquisite spices and herbs and smoke of incense; their eyes
+dazzled at splendours and lights and glories; their ears were full of
+gorgeous harmonies and all created concords of sweet sounds; the very
+fibres of being were loosened within them, as though their souls would
+leap forth from their bodies in exquisite dissolution. The eyes of the
+younger nuns grew round and large and tender, and their breath almost
+died upon their velvet lips. As for the old nuns, the great, salt
+tears coursed down their withered cheeks and fell like rain on their
+gnarled hands. The Abbess sat on her dais with her lips apart, looking
+into space, ten thousand thousand miles away. But no one saw her and
+she saw no one; every one had forgotten every one else in that
+delicious intoxication.
+
+Then with a shrill cry, full of human yearnings and desire, the
+minstrel came to a sudden stop--
+
+    "Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
+      And the small rain will down rain?
+    Christ, if my love were in my arms,
+      And I in my bed again."
+
+Silence!--not one of the holy Sisters spoke, but some sighed; some put
+their hands over their hearts, and one put her hand in her hood, but
+when she felt her hair shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again
+sharply, as though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, "O Jesu."
+
+Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to speak in a cracked,
+high voice, quickly and monotonously, as though she spoke in a dream.
+Her eyes were wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. "God knows,"
+she said, "I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all those who be maids
+here, to be mindful of the woods. For they are green, but they are
+deep and dark, and it is merry in the springtime with the thick turf
+below and the good boughs above, all alone with your heart's
+darling--all alone in the green wood. But God help me, he would not
+stay any more than snow at Easter. I thought just now that I was back
+with him in the woods. God keep all those that be maids from the green
+woods."
+
+The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate,
+was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though
+she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely
+shoulders rise and fall. "Blessed Virgin," she cried. "Ah, ye ask too
+much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know," and her grey eyes
+filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the
+table, and sobbed aloud.
+
+Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig
+dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters
+privily mocked, "It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have
+held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into
+mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into
+earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips
+again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy
+Mother! Holy Mother!"
+
+"He must come oftener," said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little
+nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a
+plum. "I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of
+apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every
+time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in
+the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring
+again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples."
+
+Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her
+arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself.
+
+      "Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay."
+
+She moaned to herself, "I have seen the village women go to the well,
+carrying their babies with them, and they laugh as they go by on the
+way. Their babies hold them tight round the neck, and their mothers
+comfort them, saying, 'Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my
+sweeting.' Christ and the blessed Saints know that I have never felt a
+baby's little hand in my bosom--and now I shall die without it, for I
+am old and past the age of bearing children."
+
+      "Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay;
+    To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy,
+      Lulla, lullay, lullay."
+
+"I have heard them on a May morning, with their pipes and tabors and
+jolly, jolly music," cried Sister Helen; "I have seen them too, and my
+heart has gone with them to bring back the white hawthorn from the
+woods. 'A man and a maid to a hawthorn bough,' as it says in the song.
+They sing outside my window all Saint John's Eve so that I cannot say
+my prayers for the wild thoughts they put into my brain, as they go
+dancing up and down in the churchyard; I cannot forget the pretty
+words they say to each other, 'Sweet love, a kiss'; 'kiss me, my love,
+nor let me go'; 'As I went through the garden gate'; 'A bonny black
+knight, a bonny black knight, and what will you give to me? A kiss,
+and a kiss, and no more than a kiss, under the wild rose tree.' Oh,
+Mary Mother, have pity on a poor girl's heart, I shall die, if no one
+love me, I shall die."
+
+"In faith, I am truly sorry, William," said Sister Agnes, who was
+gaunt and hollow-eyed with long vigils and overfasting, for which the
+good father had rebuked her time after time, saying that she
+overtasked the poor weak flesh. "I am truly sorry that I could not
+wait. But the neighbours made such a clamour, and my father and mother
+buffeted me too sorely. It is under the oak tree, no more than a foot
+deep, and covered with the red and brown leaves. It was a pretty sight
+to see the red blood on its neck, as white as whalebone, and it
+neither cried nor wept, so I put it down among the leaves, the pretty
+poppet; and it was like thee, William, it was like thee. I am sorry I
+did not wait, and now I'm worn and wan for thy sake, this many a long
+year, and all in vain, for thou never comst. I am an old woman now,
+and I shall soon be quiet and not complain any more."
+
+Some of the Sisters were sobbing as if their hearts would break; some
+sat quiet and still, and let the tears fall from their eyes unchecked;
+some smiled and cried together; some sighed a little and trembled like
+aspen leaves in a southern wind. The great candles in the hall were
+burning down to their sockets. One by one they spluttered out. A
+ghostly, flickering light fell upon the legend over the broad dais,
+"_Connubium mundum sed virginitas paradisum complet_"--"Marriage
+replenisheth the World, but virginity Paradise."
+
+"Dong, dong, dong." Suddenly the great bell of the Nunnery began to
+toll. With a cry the Abbess sprang to her feet; there were tear stains
+on her white cheeks, and her hand shook as she pointed fiercely to the
+door.
+
+"Away, false pilgrim," she cried. "Silence, foul blasphemer! _Retro
+me, Satanas._" She crossed herself again and again, saying _Pater
+Noster_.
+
+The nuns screamed and trembled with terror. A little cloud of blue
+smoke arose from where the minstrel had stood. There was a little
+tongue of flame, and he had disappeared. It was almost dark in the
+hall. A few sobs broke the silence. The dying light of a single candle
+fell on the form of the Lady Mother.
+
+"Tomorrow," she said, "we shall fast and sing _Placebo_ and _Dirige_
+and the _Seven Penitential Psalms_. May the Holy God have mercy upon
+us for all we have done and said and thought amiss this night. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+We read in the ancient archives of Florence the following account, as
+it was received from the lips of a very holy man, greatly respected by
+every one for the sanctity of his manners at the period in which he
+lived. Happening once to be deeply absorbed in his prayers, such was
+their efficacy, that he saw an infinite number of condemned souls,
+belonging to those miserable mortals who had died in their sins,
+undergoing the punishment due to their offences in the regions below.
+He remarked that the greater part of them lamented nothing so bitterly
+as their folly in having taken wives, attributing to them the whole of
+their misfortunes. Much surprised at this, Minos and Rhadamanthus,
+with the rest of the infernal judges, unwilling to credit all the
+abuse heaped upon the female sex, and wearied from day to day with its
+repetition, agreed to bring the matter before Pluto. It was then
+resolved that the conclave of infernal princes should form a committee
+of inquiry, and should adopt such measures as might be deemed most
+advisable by the court in order to discover the truth or falsehood of
+the calumnies which they heard. All being assembled in council, Pluto
+addressed them as follows: "Dearly beloved demons! though by celestial
+dispensation and the irreversible decree of fate this kingdom fell to
+my share, and I might strictly dispense with any kind of celestial or
+earthly responsibility, yet, as it is more prudent and respectful to
+consult the laws and to hear the opinion of others, I have resolved to
+be guided by your advice, particularly in a case that may chance to
+cast some imputation upon our government. For the souls of all men
+daily arriving in our kingdom still continue to lay the whole blame
+upon their wives, and as this appears to us impossible, we must be
+careful how we decide in such a business, lest we also should come in
+for a share of their abuse, on account of our too great severity; and
+yet judgment must be pronounced, lest we be taxed with negligence and
+with indifference to the interests of justice. Now, as the latter is
+the fault of a careless, and the former of an unjust judge, we,
+wishing to avoid the trouble and the blame that might attach to both,
+yet hardly seeing how to get clear of it, naturally enough apply to
+you for assistance, in order that you may look to it, and contrive in
+some way that, as we have hitherto reigned without the slightest
+imputation upon our character, we may continue to do so for the
+future."
+
+The affair appearing to be of the utmost importance to all the princes
+present, they first resolved that it was necessary to ascertain the
+truth, though they differed as to the best means of accomplishing this
+object. Some were of opinion that they ought to choose one or more
+from among themselves, who should be commissioned to pay a visit to
+the world, and in a human shape endeavour personally to ascertain how
+far such reports were grounded in truth. To many others it appeared
+that this might be done without so much trouble merely by compelling
+some of the wretched souls to confess the truth by the application of
+a variety of tortures. But the majority being in favour of a journey
+to the world, they abided by the former proposal. No one, however,
+being ambitious of undertaking such a task, it was resolved to leave
+the affair to chance. The lot fell upon the arch-devil Belphagor, who,
+previous to the Fall, had enjoyed the rank of archangel in a higher
+world. Though he received his commission with a very ill grace, he
+nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto's imperial mandate, and
+prepared to execute whatever had been determined upon in council. At
+the same time he took an oath to observe the tenor of his
+instructions, as they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and
+ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were to the following
+effect:--_Imprimis_, that the better to promote the object in view, he
+should be furnished with a hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly,
+that he should make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the
+world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he should enter
+into the marriage state; and lastly, that he should live with his wife
+for the space of ten years. At the expiration of this period, he was
+to feign death and return home, in order to acquaint his employers, by
+the fruits of experience, what really were the respective conveniences
+and inconveniences of matrimony. The conditions further ran, that
+during the said ten years he should be subject to all kinds of
+miseries and disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty,
+prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall, unless, indeed,
+he could contrive by his own skill and ingenuity to avoid them. Poor
+Belphagor having signed these conditions and received the money,
+forthwith came into the world, and having set up his equipage, with a
+numerous train of servants, he made a very splendid entrance into
+Florence. He selected this city in preference to all others, as being
+most favourable for obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and
+having assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he took a
+house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because he was unable to
+explain the instructions under which he acted, he gave out that he was
+a merchant, who having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria,
+and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo, whence he had lastly
+set out for Italy, with the intention of marrying and settling there,
+as one of the most polished and agreeable countries he knew.
+
+Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently about thirty
+years of age, and he lived in a style of life that showed he was in
+pretty easy circumstances, if not possessed of immense wealth. Being,
+moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted the notice
+of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and
+small incomes. The former of these were soon offered to him, from
+among whom Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl of the name of Onesta,
+a daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had also three sons, all grown up,
+and three more daughters, also nearly marriageable. Though of a noble
+family and enjoying a good reputation in Florence, his father-in-law
+was extremely poor, and maintained as poor an establishment.
+Roderigo, therefore, made very splendid nuptials, and omitted nothing
+that might tend to confer honour upon such a festival, being liable,
+under the law which he received on leaving his infernal abode, to feel
+all kinds of vain and earthly passions. He therefore soon began to
+enter into all the pomps and vanities of the world, and to aim at
+reputation and consideration among mankind, which put him to no little
+expense. But more than this, he had not long enjoyed the society of
+his beloved Onesta, before he became tenderly attached to her, and was
+unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now,
+along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had
+brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of
+pride, that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her; for
+her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss
+to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became
+infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo's
+attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an
+ascendancy over him and rule him with a rod of iron. Not content with
+this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with
+all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most
+indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her
+father, her brothers, her friends, and relatives, the duty of the
+matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some
+time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the
+follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her
+taste for dress, and every article of the newest fashion, in which
+our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual
+habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was
+obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in
+portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish
+one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with
+silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater's
+establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his
+fortune was soon consumed. At length the Carnival season was at hand;
+the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as
+usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to
+vie with each other in the splendour of their parties, and the Lady
+Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance,
+insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their
+feasts. For the reasons above stated, he submitted to her will; nor,
+indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult
+it might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of
+preserving the peace and comfort of his household, and of awaiting
+quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case,
+inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height
+of asperity by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to
+act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the
+house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable
+life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered in consequence of
+having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs it is impossible to
+express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with
+him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than
+longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself,
+amidst this turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the
+ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of
+the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being
+still in good credit, in order to support his rank he resorted to
+bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against
+him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy
+speculators in that market. Just as his case became extremely
+delicate, there arrived sudden tidings both from East and West that
+one of his wife's brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo's
+profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich
+cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he
+himself was lost. No sooner did this affair transpire than his
+creditors assembled, and supposing it must be all over with him,
+though their bills had not yet become due, they resolved to keep a
+strict watch over him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his
+part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling how deeply
+he was bound by the Stygian law, determined at all hazards to make his
+escape. So taking horse one morning early, as he luckily lived near
+the Prato gate, in that direction he went off. His departure was soon
+known; the creditors were all in a bustle; the magistrates were
+applied to, and the officers of justice, along with a great part of
+the populace, were dispatched in pursuit. Roderigo had hardly
+proceeded a mile before he heard this hue and cry, and the pursuers
+were soon so close at his heels that the only resource he had left was
+to abandon the highroad and take to the open country, with the hope of
+concealing himself in the fields. But finding himself unable to make
+way over the hedges and ditches, he left his horse and took to his
+heels, traversing fields of vines and canes, until he reached
+Peretola, where he entered the house of Matteo del Bricca, a labourer
+of Giovanna del Bene. Finding him at home, for he was busily providing
+fodder for his cattle, our hero earnestly entreated him to save him
+from the hands of his adversaries close behind, who would infallibly
+starve him to death in a dungeon, engaging that if Matteo would give
+him refuge, he would make him one of the richest men alive, and afford
+him such proofs of it before he took his leave as would convince him
+of the truth of what he said; and if he failed to do this, he was
+quite content that Matteo himself should deliver him into the hands of
+his enemies.
+
+Now Matteo, although a rustic, was a man of courage, and concluding
+that he could not lose anything by the speculation, he gave him his
+hand and agreed to save him. He then thrust our hero under a heap of
+rubbish, completely enveloping him in weeds; so that when his pursuers
+arrived they found themselves quite at a loss, nor could they extract
+from Matteo the least information as to his appearance. In this
+dilemma there was nothing left for them but to proceed in the pursuit,
+which they continued for two days, and then returned, jaded and
+disappointed, to Florence. In the meanwhile, Matteo drew our hero from
+his hiding-place, and begged him to fulfil his engagement. To this
+his friend Roderigo replied: "I confess, brother, that I am under
+great obligations to you, and I mean to return them. To leave no doubt
+upon your mind, I will inform you who I am;" and he proceeded to
+acquaint him with all the particulars of the affair: how he had come
+into the world, and married, and run away. He next described to his
+preserver the way in which he might become rich, which was briefly as
+follows: As soon as Matteo should hear of some lady in the
+neighbourhood being said to be possessed, he was to conclude that it
+was Roderigo himself who had taken possession of her; and he gave him
+his word, at the same time, that he would never leave her until Matteo
+should come and conjure him to depart. In this way he might obtain
+what sum he pleased from the lady's friends for the price of
+exorcizing her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan, Roderigo
+disappeared.
+
+Not many days elapsed before it was reported in Florence that the
+daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei, a lady married to Buonajuto
+Tebalducci, was possessed by the devil. Her relations did not fail to
+apply every means usual on such occasions to expel him, such as making
+her wear upon her head St. Zanobi's cap, and the cloak of St. John of
+Gualberto; but these had only the effect of making Roderigo laugh. And
+to convince them that it was really a spirit that possessed her, and
+that it was no flight of the imagination, he made the young lady talk
+Latin, hold a philosophical dispute, and reveal the frailties of many
+of her acquaintance. He particularly accused a certain friar of having
+introduced a lady into his monastery in male attire, to the no small
+scandal of all who heard it, and the astonishment of the brotherhood.
+Messer Ambrogio found it impossible to silence him, and began to
+despair of his daughter's cure. But the news reaching Matteo, he lost
+no time in waiting upon Ambrogio, assuring him of his daughter's
+recovery on condition of his paying him five hundred florins, with
+which to purchase a farm at Peretola. To this Messer Ambrogio
+consented; and Matteo immediately ordered a number of masses to be
+said, after which he proceeded with some unmeaning ceremonies
+calculated to give solemnity to his task. Then approaching the young
+lady, he whispered in her ear: "Roderigo, it is Matteo that is come.
+So do as we agreed upon, and get out." Roderigo replied: "It is all
+well; but you have not asked enough to make you a rich man. So when I
+depart I will take possession of the daughter of Charles, king of
+Naples, and I will not leave her till you come. You may then demand
+whatever you please for your reward; and mind that you never trouble
+me again." And when he had said this, he went out of the lady, to the
+no small delight and amazement of the whole city of Florence.
+
+It was not long again before the accident that had happened to the
+daughter of the king of Naples began to be buzzed about the country,
+and all the monkish remedies having been found to fail, the king,
+hearing of Matteo, sent for him from Florence. On arriving at Naples,
+Matteo, after a few ceremonies, performed the cure. Before leaving the
+princess, however, Roderigo said: "You see, Matteo, I have kept my
+promise and made a rich man of you, and I owe you nothing now. So,
+henceforward you will take care to keep out of my way, lest as I have
+hitherto done you some good, just the contrary should happen to you in
+future." Upon this Matteo thought it best to return to Florence, after
+receiving fifty thousand ducats from his majesty, in order to enjoy
+his riches in peace, and never once imagined that Roderigo would come
+in his way again. But in this he was deceived; for he soon heard that
+a daughter of Louis, king of France, was possessed by an evil spirit,
+which disturbed our friend Matteo not a little, thinking of his
+majesty's great authority and of what Roderigo had said. Hearing of
+Matteo's great skill, and finding no other remedy, the king dispatched
+a messenger for him, whom Matteo contrived to send back with a variety
+of excuses. But this did not long avail him; the king applied to the
+Florentine council, and our hero was compelled to attend. Arriving
+with no very pleasant sensations at Paris, he was introduced into the
+royal presence, when he assured his majesty that though it was true he
+had acquired some fame in the course of his demoniac practice, he
+could by no means always boast of success, and that some devils were
+of such a desperate character as not to pay the least attention to
+threats, enchantments, or even the exorcisms of religion itself. He
+would, nevertheless, do his majesty's pleasure, entreating at the same
+time to be held excused if it should happen to prove an obstinate
+case. To this the king made answer, that be the case what it might, he
+would certainly hang him if he did not succeed. It is impossible to
+describe poor Matteo's terror and perplexity on hearing these words;
+but at length mustering courage, he ordered the possessed princess to
+be brought into his presence. Approaching as usual close to her ear,
+he conjured Roderigo in the most humble terms, by all he had ever done
+for him, not to abandon him in such a dilemma, but to show some sense
+of gratitude for past services and to leave the princess. "Ah! thou
+traitorous villain!" cried Roderigo, "hast thou, indeed, ventured to
+meddle in this business? Dost thou boast thyself a rich man at my
+expense? I will now convince the world and thee of the extent of my
+power, both to give and to take away. I shall have the pleasure of
+seeing thee hanged before thou leavest this place." Poor Matteo
+finding there was no remedy, said nothing more, but, like a wise man,
+set his head to work in order to discover some other means of
+expelling the spirit; for which purpose he said to the king, "Sire, it
+is as I feared: there are certain spirits of so malignant a character
+that there is no keeping any terms with them, and this is one of them.
+However, I will make a last attempt, and I trust that it will succeed
+according to our wishes. If not, I am in your majesty's power, and I
+hope you will take compassion on my innocence. In the first place, I
+have to entreat that your majesty will order a large stage to be
+erected in the centre of the great square, such as will admit the
+nobility and clergy of the whole city. The stage ought to be adorned
+with all kinds of silks and with cloth of gold, and with an altar
+raised in the middle. Tomorrow morning I would have your majesty, with
+your full train of lords and ecclesiastics in attendance, seated in
+order and in magnificent array, as spectators of the scene at the said
+place. There, after having celebrated solemn mass, the possessed
+princess must appear; but I have in particular to entreat that on one
+side of the square may be stationed a band of men with drums,
+trumpets, horns, tambours, bagpipes, cymbals, and kettle-drums, and
+all other kinds of instruments that make the most infernal noise. Now,
+when I take my hat off, let the whole band strike up, and approach
+with the most horrid uproar towards the stage. This, along with a few
+other secret remedies which I shall apply, will surely compel the
+spirit to depart."
+
+These preparations were accordingly made by the royal command; and
+when the day, being Sunday morning, arrived, the stage was seen
+crowded with people of rank and the square with the people. Mass was
+celebrated, and the possessed princess conducted between two bishops,
+with a train of nobles, to the spot. Now, when Roderigo beheld so vast
+a concourse of people, together with all this awful preparation, he
+was almost struck dumb with astonishment, and said to himself, "I
+wonder what that cowardly wretch is thinking of doing now? Does he
+imagine I have never seen finer things than these in the regions
+above--ay! and more horrid things below? However, I will soon make him
+repent it, at all events." Matteo then approaching him, besought him
+to come out; but Roderigo replied, "Oh, you think you have done a fine
+thing now! What do you mean to do with all this trumpery? Can you
+escape my power, think you, in this way, or elude the vengeance of the
+king? Thou poltroon villain, I will have thee hanged for this!" And
+as Matteo continued the more to entreat him, his adversary still
+vilified him in the same strain. So Matteo, believing there was no
+time to be lost, made the sign with his hat, when all the musicians
+who had been stationed there for the purpose suddenly struck up a
+hideous din, and ringing a thousand peals, approached the spot.
+Roderigo pricked up his ears at the sound, quite at a loss what to
+think, and rather in a perturbed tone of voice he asked Matteo what it
+meant. To this the latter returned, apparently much alarmed: "Alas!
+dear Roderigo, it is your wife; she is coming for you!" It is
+impossible to give an idea of the anguish of Roderigo's mind and the
+strange alteration which his feelings underwent at that name. The
+moment the name of "wife" was pronounced, he had no longer presence of
+mind to consider whether it were probable, or even possible, that it
+could be her. Without replying a single word, he leaped out and fled
+in the utmost terror, leaving the lady to herself, and preferring
+rather to return to his infernal abode and render an account of his
+adventures, than run the risk of any further sufferings and vexations
+under the matrimonial yoke. And thus Belphagor again made his
+appearance in the infernal domains, bearing ample testimony to the
+evils introduced into a household by a wife; while Matteo, on his
+part, who knew more of the matter than the devil, returned
+triumphantly home, not a little proud of the victory he had achieved.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER[2]
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+    [2] Courtesy of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers, New York &
+    London.
+
+A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet,
+winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
+Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp or morass. On one side
+of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
+rises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow
+a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
+gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
+treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
+bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of
+the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
+kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
+landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
+stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
+money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
+he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
+ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
+wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
+there hanged for a pirate.
+
+About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent
+in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
+there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of
+Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself: they were so miserly
+that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
+lay hands on, she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
+alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying
+about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the
+conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
+property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone, and
+had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of
+sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
+traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as
+articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a
+thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
+pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he
+would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
+and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
+
+The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a
+tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.
+Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
+face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to
+words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely
+wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and
+clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his
+way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
+
+One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
+neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward,
+through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route.
+The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some
+of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat
+for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and
+quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green
+surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering
+mud: there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the
+tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake; where the trunks of pines
+and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators
+sleeping in the mire.
+
+Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
+forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
+precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a
+cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the
+sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck rising
+on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm
+piece of ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of
+the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during
+their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of
+fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used
+as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
+of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the
+level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks
+and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the
+dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
+
+It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
+fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would
+have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for
+the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
+down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the
+savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil
+spirit.
+
+Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of
+the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen
+hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving
+with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
+turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something
+hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull,
+with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on
+the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
+been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
+taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
+
+"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt from
+it.
+
+"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes,
+and beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the
+stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard
+nor seen any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on
+observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the
+stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a
+rude half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his
+body; but his face was neither black nor copper-colour, but swarthy
+and dingy, and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to
+toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that
+stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his
+shoulder.
+
+He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
+
+"What are you doing on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse
+growling voice.
+
+"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer, "no more your grounds than
+mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."
+
+"Deacon Peabody be d--d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he
+will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those of
+his neighbours. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
+
+Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
+of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
+core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
+high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
+scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed
+wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
+around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
+great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The
+one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been
+hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
+rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it
+was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
+
+"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of
+triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
+winter."
+
+"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's
+timber?"
+
+"The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged
+to me long before one of your whitefaced race put foot upon the soil."
+
+"And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.
+
+"Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries;
+the black miner in others. In this neighbourhood I am known by the
+name of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated
+this spot, and in honour of whom they now and then roasted a white
+man, by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
+exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the
+persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and
+prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand-master of the Salem
+witches."
+
+"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom,
+sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."
+
+"The same, at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil
+nod.
+
+Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;
+though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
+think that to meet with such a singular personage, in this wild,
+lonely place, would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a
+hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with
+a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
+
+It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest
+conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told
+him of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate, under the
+oak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
+under his command, and protected by his power, so that none could find
+them but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place
+within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for
+him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
+conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed
+them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to
+think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money was
+in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger
+paused. "What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?"
+said Tom. "There's my signature," said the black man, pressing his
+finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets
+of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into
+the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and
+so on, until he totally disappeared.
+
+When Tom reached home, he found the black print of a finger burnt, as
+it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
+
+The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
+Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
+papers with the usual flourish, that "A great man had fallen in
+Israel."
+
+Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
+and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom,
+"who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
+no illusion.
+
+He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
+an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was
+awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to
+comply with the black man's terms, and secure what would make them
+wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself
+to the Devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
+flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and
+bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she
+talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her.
+
+At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and
+if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same
+fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort
+towards the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When
+she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke
+something of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing at
+the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
+terms: she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it
+was she forbore to say.
+
+The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron
+heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight
+came, but she did not make her appearance: morning, noon, night
+returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
+safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
+silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
+Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
+she was never heard of more.
+
+What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
+pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
+confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
+way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
+slough; others, more charitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
+household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
+surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
+the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
+was said a great black man, with an ax on his shoulder, was seen late
+that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in
+a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
+
+The most current and probable story, however, observes, that Tom
+Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property,
+that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During
+a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no
+wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was
+nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he
+flew screaming by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a
+neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of
+twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to flit about, his
+attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows hovering about
+a cypress-tree. He looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check
+apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture
+perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy; for
+he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the
+household valuables.
+
+"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly to himself,
+"and we will endeavour to do without the woman."
+
+As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and
+sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
+the checked apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and
+liver tied up in it!
+
+Such, according to this most authentic old story, was all that was to
+be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the
+black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but
+though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil,
+yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must
+have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of
+cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair,
+that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of
+the woodman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged
+his shoulders, as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
+"Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of
+it!"
+
+Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of
+his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like
+gratitude towards the black woodman, who, he considered, had done him
+a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance
+with him, but for some time without success; the old black-legs played
+shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for
+calling for: he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his
+game.
+
+At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the
+quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the
+promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
+woodman's dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the
+swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances with
+great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
+
+By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
+haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's
+treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
+generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but
+there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
+inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
+means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
+Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he
+should fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused: he
+was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not
+tempt him to turn slave-trader.
+
+Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but
+proposed, instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil being
+extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
+his peculiar people.
+
+To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
+
+"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
+man.
+
+"I'll do it tomorrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
+
+"You shall lend money at two per cent. a month."
+
+"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
+
+"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchants to
+bankruptcy"--
+
+"I'll drive them to the d--l," cried Tom Walker.
+
+"You are the usurer for my money!" said black-legs with delight. "When
+will you want the rhino?"
+
+"This very night."
+
+"Done!" said the devil.
+
+"Done!" said Tom Walker.--So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
+
+A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a
+counting-house in Boston.
+
+His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a
+good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the time
+of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time
+of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills,
+the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for
+speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements;
+for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with
+maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where,
+but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great
+speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country,
+had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making
+sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the
+dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients
+were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the
+consequent cry of "hard times."
+
+At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as
+usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
+and adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber;
+the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short,
+every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
+sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
+
+Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and acted like a
+"friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
+security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
+hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
+squeezed his customers closer and closer: and sent them at length, dry
+as a sponge, from his door.
+
+In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty
+man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'Change. He built himself, as
+usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of
+it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a
+carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the
+horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and
+screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the
+souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
+
+As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
+things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the
+next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black
+friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
+He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He
+prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force
+of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during
+the week, by the clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians
+who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck
+with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in
+their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious
+as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his
+neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
+became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the
+expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In
+a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
+
+Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
+lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
+might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a
+small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
+counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
+people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green
+spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to
+drive some usurious bargain.
+
+Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and
+that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled
+and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed
+that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which
+case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was
+determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This,
+however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take
+such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the
+authentic old legend; which closes his story in the following manner.
+
+One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
+thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his
+white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of
+foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an
+unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatest
+friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months'
+indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
+day.
+
+"My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish," said the
+land-jobber. "Charity begins at home," replied Tom; "I must take care
+of myself in these hard times."
+
+"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.
+
+Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The devil take me," said he, "if
+I have made a farthing!"
+
+Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped
+out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which
+neighed and stamped with impatience.
+
+"Tom, you're come for," said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank
+back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
+coat-pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage
+he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The
+black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the
+lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the
+thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and
+stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down
+the street; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning-gown
+fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the
+pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black
+man, he had disappeared.
+
+Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who
+lived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of the
+thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
+along the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure,
+such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the
+fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp towards
+the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in
+that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
+
+The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
+shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and
+tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement
+of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have
+been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's
+effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
+his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to
+cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with
+chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his
+half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire
+and was burnt to the ground.
+
+Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
+griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
+to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd's
+money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and old
+Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
+horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
+troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
+into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent
+throughout New England, of "The Devil and Tom Walker."
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen
+other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl
+of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at
+the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of
+departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had
+slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and
+played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of
+nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have
+woven new chains around us.
+
+This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for
+our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend
+Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his
+apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would
+certainly be in time for tea and supper.
+
+The enjoyment of his society had already become such a necessity, that
+this piece of information made us helpless and ill at ease.
+
+The conversation turned naturally on our absent friend and his
+striking, brilliant apparition among us. It was strange, but I could
+not get it out of my head that I had already met with him in my walk
+through life, but in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was,
+it still forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I
+called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection of a man who
+in his whole demeanour, but more especially in his glance, had the
+greatest resemblance to him. The one of whom I now speak was a foreign
+physician, who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived at
+first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd of worshippers
+collected around him. The thought of this man was always a melancholy
+one, for it was asserted that some serious misfortune always followed
+his visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled
+him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the same person.
+
+I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea that incessantly
+haunted me, and how unpleasant it was to identify so horrible a being
+as the stranger who had so afflicted my native city, with our mutual
+friend who had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will
+seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that all my
+neighbours were full of precisely the same idea, and that all fancied
+they had seen our agreeable companion in some entirely different
+shape.
+
+"You are enough to make one downright melancholy," said Baroness von
+Thingen, who sat near me; "you make our friend Natas out to be the
+Wandering Jew, or God knows what more!"
+
+A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had joined our circle
+some days before, and passed his time in quiet, silent enjoyment,
+enlivened by an occasional deep conference with the Rhine wine, had
+kept smiling to himself during what he called our "comparative
+anatomy," and twirling his huge snuff-box between his fingers with
+such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like a coach-wheel.
+
+"I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to make," exclaimed he
+at last. "Under your favour, gracious lady, I do not look upon him as
+being precisely the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very strange
+mortal. As long as he was present, the thought would, it is true, now
+and then flash up in my mind, 'You have seen this man before, but pray
+where was it?' but these recollections were driven away as if by magic
+whenever he fastened upon me those dark wandering eyes of his."
+
+"So was it with me--and with me--and with me," exclaimed we all in
+astonishment.
+
+"Hem! hem!" smiled the Professor. "Even now the scales seem to fall
+from my eyes, and I see that he is the very same person I saw in
+Stuttgart twelve years ago."
+
+"What, you have seen him then, and in what circumstances?" asked Lady
+von Thingen eagerly, and almost blushed at the eagerness she
+displayed.
+
+The Professor took a pinch of snuff, shook the superfluous grains off
+his waistcoat, and answered--"It may be now about twelve years since I
+was forced by a law-suit to spend some months in Stuttgart. I lived at
+one of the best hotels, and generally dined with a large company at
+the table d'hote. Once upon a time I made my first appearance at table
+after a lapse of several days, during which I had been forced to keep
+my room. The company were talking very eagerly about a certain Signor
+Barighi, who for some time past had been delighting the other visitors
+with his lively wit, and his fluency in all languages. All were
+unanimous in his praise, but they could not exactly agree as to his
+occupation; some making him out a diplomatist, others a teacher of
+languages, a third party a distinguished political exile, and a fourth
+a spy of the police. The door opened, all seemed silent, even
+confused, at having carried on the dispute in so loud a tone; I judged
+that the person spoken of must be among us, and saw--"
+
+"Who, pray?"
+
+"Under favour, the same person who has amused us so agreeably for some
+days past. There was nothing supernatural in this, to be sure, but
+listen a moment; for two days Signor Barighi, as the stranger was
+called, had given a new relish to our meals by his brilliant
+conversation, when mine host interrupted us suddenly--'Gentlemen,'
+said he, 'prepare yourself for an unique entertainment which will be
+provided for you tomorrow.'
+
+"We asked what this meant, and a grey headed captain, who had presided
+at the hotel table many years, informed us of the joke as
+follows--Exactly opposite this dining room, an old bachelor lives,
+solitary and alone, in a large deserted house; he is a retired
+Counsellor of State--lives on a handsome premium, and has an enormous
+fortune besides. He is, however, a downright fool, and has some of the
+strangest peculiarities; thus, for instance, he often gives himself
+entertainments on a scale of extravagant luxury. He orders covers for
+twelve, from the hotel, he has excellent wines in his cellar, and one
+or the other of our waiters has the honour to attend table. You think,
+perhaps, that at these feasts he feeds the hungry, and gives drink to
+the thirsty--no such thing; on the chairs lie old yellow leaves of
+parchment, from the family record, and the old hunks is as jovial as
+if he had the merriest set of fellows around him; he talks and laughs
+with them, and the whole thing is said to be so fearful to look upon,
+that the youngest waiters are always sent over, for whoever has been
+to one such supper will enter the deserted house no more.
+
+"The day before yesterday he had a supper, and our new waiter, Frank,
+there, calls heaven and earth to witness that nobody shall ever induce
+him to go there a second time. The next day after the entertainment
+comes the Counsellor's second freak. Early in the morning he leaves
+the city, and comes back the morning after; not, however, to his own
+house, which during this time is fast locked and bolted, but into this
+hotel. Here he treats people he has been in the habit of seeing for a
+whole year, as strangers; dines, and afterwards places himself at one
+of the windows, and examines his own house across the way from top to
+bottom.
+
+"'Who does that house opposite belong to?' he then asks the host.
+
+"The other regularly bows and answers, 'It belongs to the Counsellor
+of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency's service.'"
+
+"But, Professor," here observed I, "what has this silly Hasentreffer
+of yours to do with our Natas?"
+
+"A moment's patience, Doctor," answered the Professor, "the light will
+soon break in upon you. Hasentreffer then examines the house, and learns
+that it belongs to Hasentreffer. 'Oh, what!' he asks, 'the same that was
+a student with me at Tibsingen'--then throws open the window, stretches
+his powdered head out, and calls out--'Ha-asentreffer--Ha-asentreffer!'
+
+"Of course no one answers, but he remarks: 'The old fellow would never
+forgive me if I was not to look in on him for a moment,' then takes up
+his hat and cane, unlocks his own house, goes in, and all goes on
+after as before.
+
+"All of us," the Professor proceeded in his story, "were greatly
+astonished at this singular story, and highly delighted at the idea of
+the next day's merriment. Signor Barighi, however, obliged us to
+promise that we would not betray him, as he said he was preparing a
+capital joke to play off on the Counsellor.
+
+"We all met at the table d'hote earlier than usual, and besieged the
+windows. An old tumble down carriage, drawn by two blind steeds, came
+crawling down the street; it stopped before the hotel. There's
+Hasentreffer, there's Hasentreffer, was echoed by every mouth; and we
+were filled with extravagant merriment when we saw the little man get
+out, neatly powdered, dressed in an iron grey surtout with a huge
+meerschaum in hand. An escort of at least ten servants followed him
+in, and in this guise he entered the dining-room.
+
+"We sat down at once. I have seldom laughed as much as I did then; for
+the old chap insisted, with the greatest coolness, that he came direct
+from Carrel, and that he had six days before been extremely well
+entertained at the Swan Inn at Frankfort. Barighi must have
+disappeared before the dessert, for when the Counsellor left the
+table, and the other guests, full of curiosity, imitated his example,
+Barighi was nowhere to be seen.
+
+"The Counsellor took his seat at the window; we all followed his
+example and watched his movements. The house opposite seemed desolate
+and uninhabited. Grass grew on the threshold, the shutters were
+closed, and on some of them birds seemed to have built their nests.
+
+"'A fine house that, opposite,' said the old man to our host, who kept
+standing behind him in the third position. 'Who does it belong to?'
+
+"'To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency's
+service.'
+
+"'Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a fellow-student with me,'
+exclaimed he; 'he would never forgive me if I was not to inform him that
+I was here.' He opened the window,--'Ha-asentreffer--Hasentreffer!' cried
+he, in a hoarse voice. But who can paint our terror, when opposite, in
+the empty house, which we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a
+window-shutter was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it
+peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his chintz
+morning-gown and white nightcap, under which a few thin grey locks
+were visible; this, this exactly, was his usual morning costume. Down
+to the minutest wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the
+street was precisely the same as the one that stood by our side. But
+a panic seized us, when the figure in the morning-gown called out
+across the street, in just the same hoarse voice, 'What do you want?
+who are you calling to, hey?'
+
+"'Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?' said the one on our
+side of the way, pale as death, in a trembling voice, and quaking as
+he leaned against the window for support.
+
+"'I'm the man,' squeaked the other, and nodded his head in a friendly
+way; 'have you any commands for me?'
+
+"'But I'm the man too,' said our friend mournfully, 'how can it be
+possible?'
+
+"'You are mistaken, my dear friend,' answered he across the way, 'you
+are the thirteenth, be good enough just to step across the street to
+my house, and let me twist your neck for you! it is by no means
+painful.'
+
+"'Waiter! my hat and stick,' said the Counsellor, pale as death, and
+his voice escaped in mournful tones from his hollow chest. 'The devil
+is in my house and seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you,
+gentlemen,' added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon
+left the room.
+
+"'What does this mean?' we asked each other; 'are we all beside
+ourselves?'
+
+"The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking quietly out of the
+window, while our good silly old friend crossed the street at his
+usual formal pace. At the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys
+out of his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door--he of the
+morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in.
+
+"The latter now withdrew from the window, and we saw him go forward to
+meet our acquaintance at the room-door.
+
+"Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear, and trembled.
+'Gentlemen,' said the former, 'God pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of
+those two must be the devil in human shape.' We laughed at our host,
+and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of Barighi's; but
+our host assured us that no one could have obtained access to the
+house except he was in possession of the Counsellor's very
+artificially contrived keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table
+not ten minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could he have
+disguised himself so completely in so short a time, even supposing him
+to have known how to unlock a strange house? He added, that the two
+were so fearfully like one another, that he who had lived in the
+neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish the true one from
+the counterfeit. 'But, for God's sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the
+horrid shrieks opposite?'
+
+"We rushed to the window--terrible and fearful voices rang across from
+the empty house; we fancied we saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his
+image in the morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On a
+sudden all was quiet.
+
+"We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed to cross over
+to the house--we all agreed to it. We crossed the street--the huge
+bell at the old man's door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard
+in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith's--the door was
+broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide
+silent staircase--all the doors were fastened; at length one was
+opened. In a splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey
+frock-coat torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible
+disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.
+
+"Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found, neither in
+Stuttgart nor elsewhere."
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE[3]
+
+BY NIKOLAI VASILEVICH GOGOL
+
+
+    [3] From _St. John's Eve and Other Stories_, translated by
+    Isabel F. Hapgood from the Russian of N. V. Gogol.
+    (Copyright, 1886, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. By permission of
+    the Publishers.)
+
+Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day
+of his death, he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were
+times, when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he
+would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to
+recognize it. Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for
+us simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are
+scribblers, or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the
+usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort
+of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C
+book, every month, or even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed
+this same story out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot
+about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom
+I have mentioned, and one of whose tales you have already read, I
+think, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and,
+opening it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich was on the
+point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected
+that he had forgotten to wind thread about them, and stick them
+together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand
+something about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I
+undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when all at once he
+caught me by the hand, and stopped me.
+
+"Stop! tell me first what you are reading."
+
+I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.
+
+"What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich? These were your very
+words."
+
+"Who told you that they were my words?"
+
+"Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: _Related by such
+and such a sacristan_."
+
+"Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a
+Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? _'Twas just the same as though one
+hadn't his wits about him!_ Listen, I'll tell it to you on the spot."
+
+We moved up to the table, and he began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten
+rolls and makovniki[4] with honey in the other world!) could tell a
+story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't
+stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for
+the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a
+tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you
+snatch your cap, and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old
+mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when the frost was
+crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow
+panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb,
+drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her
+foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.
+
+    [4] Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.
+
+The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something,
+lighted us within our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us
+children, collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not
+crawled off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great age.
+But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
+the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and
+Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some
+deed of old which always sent a shiver through our frames, and made
+our hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes such terror took
+possession of us in consequence of them, that, from that evening on,
+Heaven knows what a marvel everything seemed to us. If you chanced to
+go out of the cottage after nightfall for anything, you imagine that a
+visitor from the other world has lain down to sleep in your bed; and I
+should not be able to tell this a second time were it not that I had
+often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the
+bed, for the Evil One rolled up in a ball! But the chief thing about
+grandfather's stories was, that he never had lied in his life; and
+whatever he said was so, was so.
+
+I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that
+there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can
+even read civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a
+simple prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and
+would show all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people
+laugh at everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad
+in the world! What then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to
+love me if it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once
+he said something about witches; ... What then? Along comes one of
+these head-breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to
+God that I have lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to
+whom it would be easier to lie in confession than it would for our
+brothers and equals to take snuff, and those people would deny the
+existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and
+they won't even tell what it was! There's no use in talking about
+them!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
+hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half
+a score of miserable izbas, unplastered, badly thatched, were
+scattered here and there about the fields. There was not an enclosure
+or a decent shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the
+wealthy lived: and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why,
+a hole in the ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke
+could you tell that a God-created man lived there. You ask, why they
+lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a
+wandering, Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign
+lands; it was rather because there was no reason for setting up a
+well-ordered khata[5]. How many people were wandering all over the
+country,--Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that
+their own countrymen might make a descent, and plunder everything.
+Anything was possible.
+
+    [5] Wooden house.
+
+In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
+appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about,
+got drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was
+not a hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, and he seemed to
+have dropped from the sky, and went flying about the street of the
+village, of which no trace now remains, and which was not more than a
+hundred paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks
+he met; then there were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka
+flowed like water.... He would address the pretty girls, and give them
+ribbons, earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do
+with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about
+accepting his presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through
+unclean hands. My grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at the time,
+in which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often had his
+carouses, said that no consideration on the face of the earth would
+have induced her to accept a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid
+accepting? Fear seized on every one when he knit his bristly brows,
+and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet, God knows
+whither: but if you accept, then the next night some fiend from the
+swamp, with horns on his head, comes to call, and begins to squeeze
+your neck, when there is a string of beads upon it; or bite your
+finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag you by the hair, if
+ribbons are braided in it. God have mercy, then, on those who owned
+such gifts! But here was the difficulty: it was impossible to get rid
+of them; if you threw them into the water, the diabolical ring or
+necklace would skim along the surface, and into your hand.
+
+There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember
+rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed
+memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to Church, even on
+Easter, he determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.
+Well, he hardly escaped with his life. "Hark ye, pannotche!"[6] he
+thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of
+meddling in other people's, if you don't want that goat's throat of
+yours stuck together with boiling kutya."[7] What was to be done with
+this unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented himself with
+announcing that any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk
+would be counted a Catholic, an enemy of Christ's church, not a member
+of the human race.
+
+    [6] Sir.
+
+    [7] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins,
+    which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial
+    masses.
+
+In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer
+whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered
+either his father or mother. The church starost,[8] it is true, said
+that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my
+grandfather's aunt would not hear to that, and tried with all her
+might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them
+about as much as we need last year's snow. She said that his father
+had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only
+knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as
+a eunuch, had made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths
+and maidens about his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only
+had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue
+crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by his side, a whip in one
+hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpass
+all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter
+had was a grey svitka with more holes in it than there are gold pieces
+in a Jew's pocket. And that was not the worst of it, but this: that
+Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have
+chanced to see. My deceased grandfather's aunt used to say--and you
+know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call
+anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this Cossack
+maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just
+bathed in God's dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and coquets
+with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such as our
+maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow
+pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched
+as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight
+of which the youth smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs
+of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as
+young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs
+interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons), fell in curls over her
+kuntush.[9] Eh! may I never intone another alleluia in the choir, if I
+would not have kissed her, in spite of the grey which is making its
+way all through the old wool which covers my pate, and my old woman
+beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know what happens when
+young men and maids live side by side. In the twilight the heels of
+red boots were always visible in the place where Pidorka chatted with
+her Petrus. But Korzh would never have suspected anything out of the
+way, only one day--it is evident that none but the Evil One could have
+inspired him--Petrus took it into his head to kiss the Cossack
+maiden's rosy lips with all his heart in the passage, without first
+looking well about him; and that same Evil One--may the son of a dog
+dream of the holy cross!--caused the old greybeard, like a fool, to
+open the cottage-door at that same moment. Korzh was petrified,
+dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky
+kisses had completely stunned him. It surprised him more than the blow
+of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik generally
+drives out his intoxication for lack of fusees and powder.
+
+    [8] Elder.
+
+    [9] Upper garment in Little Russia.
+
+Recovering himself, he took his grandfather's hunting-whip from the
+wall, and was about to belabour Peter's back with it, when Pidorka's
+little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other,
+and, grasping his father's legs with his little hands, screamed out,
+"Daddy, daddy! don't beat Petrus!" What was to be done? A father's
+heart is not made of stone. Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he
+led him quietly from the house. "If you ever show yourself in my
+cottage again, or even under the windows, look out, Petro! by Heaven,
+your black moustache will disappear; and your black locks, though
+wound twice about your ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name
+is not Terentii Korzh." So saying, he gave him a little taste of his
+fist in the nape of his neck, so that all grew dark before Petrus, and
+he flew headlong. So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow seized
+upon our doves; and a rumour was rife in the village, that a certain
+Pole, all embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre, spurs, and
+pockets jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan
+Taras goes through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh's
+house. Now, it is well known why the father is visited when there is a
+black-browed daughter about. So, one day, Pidorka burst into tears,
+and clutched the hand of her Ivas. "Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly
+to Petrus, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him all: I
+would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his white face,
+but my fate decrees not so. More than one towel have I wet with
+burning tears. I am sad, I am heavy at heart. And my own father is my
+enemy. I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not love. Tell him they
+are preparing a wedding, but there will be no music at our wedding:
+ecclesiastics will sing instead of pipes and kobzas.[10] I shall not
+dance with my bridegroom: they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be
+my dwelling,--of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross will
+stand upon the roof."
+
+    [10] Eight-stringed musical instrument.
+
+Petro stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent
+child lisped out Pidorka's words to him. "And I, unhappy man, thought
+to go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my
+beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us. I will have a
+wedding, too, dear little fish, I, too; but no ecclesiastics will be
+at that wedding. The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over
+me; the smooth field will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my
+roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash
+the Cossack's bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. But what am I?
+Of whom, to whom, am I complaining? 'Tis plain, God willed it so. If I
+am to be lost, then so be it!" and he went straight to the tavern.
+
+My late grandfather's aunt was somewhat surprised on seeing Petrus in
+the tavern, and at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and she
+stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy,
+about half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his
+woe. The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter
+than wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground. "You have
+sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him. He looked
+round--Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like a brush, his
+eyes like those of a bull. "I know what you lack: here it is." Then
+he jingled a leather purse which hung from his girdle, and smiled
+diabolically. Petro shuddered. "He, he, he! yes, how it shines!" he
+roared, shaking out ducats into his hand: "he, he, he! and how it
+jingles! And I only ask one thing for a whole pile of such
+shiners."--"It is the Evil One!" exclaimed Petro:--"Give them here! I
+am ready for anything!" They struck hands upon it. "See here, Petro,
+you are ripe just in time: tomorrow is St. John the Baptist's day.
+Only on this one night in the year does the fern blossom. Delay not. I
+will await thee at midnight in the Bear's ravine."
+
+I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the woman brings
+their corn, with as much anxiety as Petrus awaited the evening. And,
+in fact, he looked to see whether the shadows of the trees were not
+lengthening, if the sun were not turning red towards setting; and, the
+longer he watched, the more impatient he grew. How long it was!
+Evidently, God's day had lost its end somewhere. And now the sun is
+gone. The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark.
+It grows colder in the fields. It gets dusky, and more dusky, and at
+last quite dark. At last! With heart almost bursting from his bosom,
+he set out on his way, and cautiously descended through the dense
+woods into the deep hollow called the Bear's ravine. Basavriuk was
+already waiting there. It was so dark, that you could not see a yard
+before you. Hand in hand they penetrated the thin marsh, clinging to
+the luxuriant thorn-bushes, and stumbling at almost every step. At
+last they reached an open spot. Petro looked about him: he had never
+chanced to come there before. Here Basavriuk halted.
+
+"Do you see, before you stand three hillocks? There are a great many
+sorts of flowers upon them. But may some power keep you from plucking
+even one of them. But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look
+not round, no matter what may seem to be going on behind thee."
+
+Petro wanted to ask--and behold, he was no longer there. He approached
+the three hillocks--where were the flowers? He saw nothing. The wild
+steppe-grass darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance.
+But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole bed of
+flowers, all wonderful, all strange: and there were also the simple
+fronds of fern. Petro doubted his senses, and stood thoughtfully
+before them, with both hands upon his sides.
+
+"What prodigy is this? one can see these weeds ten times in a day:
+what marvel is there about them? was not devil's-face laughing at me?"
+
+Behold! the tiny flower-bud crimsons, and moves as though alive. It is
+a marvel, in truth. It moves, and grows larger and larger, and flashes
+like a burning coal. The tiny star flashes up, something bursts
+softly, and the flower opens before his eyes like a flame, lighting
+the others about it. "Now is the time," thought Petro, and extended
+his hand. He sees hundreds of shaggy hands reach from behind him, also
+for the flower; and there is a running about from place to place, in
+the rear. He half shut his eyes, plucked sharply at the stalk, and the
+flower remained in his hand. All became still. Upon a stump sat
+Basavriuk, all blue like a corpse. He moved not so much as a finger.
+His eyes were immovably fixed on something visible to him alone: his
+mouth was half open and speechless. All about, nothing stirred. Ugh!
+it was horrible!--But then a whistle was heard, which made Petro's
+heart grow cold within him; and it seemed to him that the grass
+whispered, and the flowers began to talk among themselves in delicate
+voices, like little silver bells; the trees rustled in waving
+contention;--Basavriuk's face suddenly became full of life and his
+eyes sparkled. "The witch has just returned," he muttered between his
+teeth. "See here, Petro: a beauty will stand before you in a moment;
+do whatever she commands; if not--you are lost for ever." Then he
+parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick, and before him stood a tiny
+izba, on chicken's legs, as they say. Basavriuk smote it with his
+fist, and the wall trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them,
+and with a whine, transforming itself into a cat, flew straight at his
+eyes. "Don't be angry, don't be angry, you old Satan!" said Basavriuk,
+employing such words as would have made a good man stop his ears.
+Behold, instead of a cat, an old woman with a face wrinkled like a
+baked apple, and all bent into a bow: her nose and chin were like a
+pair of nut-crackers. "A stunning beauty!" thought Petro; and cold
+chills ran down his back. The witch tore the flower from his hand,
+bent over, and muttered over it for a long time, sprinkling it with
+some kind of water. Sparks flew from her mouth, froth appeared on her
+lips.
+
+"Throw it away," she said, giving it back to Petro.
+
+Petro threw it, and what wonder was this? the flower did not fall
+straight to the earth, but for a long while twinkled like a fiery ball
+through the darkness, and swam through the air like a boat: at last it
+began to sink lower, and fell so far away, that the little star,
+hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible. "Here!" croaked
+the old woman, in a dull voice: and Basavriuk, giving him a spade,
+said, "Dig here, Petro: here you will find more gold than you or Korzh
+ever dreamed of."
+
+Petro spat on his hands, seized the spade, applied his foot, and
+turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time.... There was
+something hard: the spade clinked, and would go no farther. Then his
+eyes began to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried to
+seize it; but the chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther,
+and deeper still: and behind him he heard a laugh, more like a
+serpent's hiss. "No, you shall not see the gold until you procure
+human blood," said the witch, and led up to him a child of six,
+covered with a white sheet, indicating by a sign that he was to cut
+off his head. Petro was stunned. A trifle, indeed, to cut off a man's
+or even an innocent child's head for no reason whatever! In wrath he
+tore off the sheet enveloping his head, and behold! before him stood
+Ivas. And the poor child crossed his little hands, and hung his
+head.... Petro flew upon the witch with the knife like a madman, and
+was on the point of laying hands on her....
+
+"What did you promise for the girl?" ... thundered Basavriuk; and like
+a shot he was on his back. The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame
+flashed from the earth; it illumined it all inside, and it was as if
+moulded of crystal; and all that was within the earth became visible,
+as if in the palm of the hand. Ducats, precious stones in chests and
+kettles, were piled in heaps beneath the very spot they stood on. His
+eyes burned, ... his mind grew troubled.... He grasped the knife like
+a madman, and the innocent blood spurted into his eyes. Diabolical
+laughter resounded on all sides. Misshaped monsters flew past him in
+herds. The witch, fastening her hands in the headless trunk, like a
+wolf, drank its blood.... All went round in his head. Collecting all
+his strength, he set out to run. Everything turned red before him. The
+trees seemed steeped in blood, and burned and groaned. The sky glowed
+and glowered.... Burning point, like lightning, flickered before his
+eyes. Utterly exhausted, he rushed into his miserable hovel, and fell
+to the ground like a log. A death-like sleep overpowered him.
+
+Two days and two nights did Petro sleep, without once awakening. When
+he came to himself, on the third day, he looked long at all the
+corners of his hut; but in vain did he endeavour to recollect; his
+memory was like a miser's pocket, from which you cannot entice a
+quarter of a kopek. Stretching himself, he heard something clash at
+his feet. He looked--two bags of gold. Then only, as if in a dream, he
+recollected that he had been seeking some treasure, that something had
+frightened him in the woods.... But at what price he had obtained it,
+and how, he could by no means understand.
+
+Korzh saw the sacks,--and was mollified. "Such a Petrus, quite unheard
+of! yes, and did I not love him? Was he not to me as my own son?" And
+the old fellow carried on his fiction until it reduced him to tears.
+Pidorka began to tell him some passing gipsies had stolen Ivas; but
+Petro could not even recall him--to such a degree had the Devil's
+influence darkened his mind! There was no reason for delay. The Pole
+was dismissed, and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls were baked,
+towels and handkerchiefs embroidered; the young people were seated at
+table; the wedding-loaf was cut; banduras, cymbals, pipes, kobzi,
+sounded, and pleasure was rife....
+
+A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the present day. My
+grandfather's aunt used to tell--what doings!--how the maidens--in
+festive head-dresses of yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which
+they bound gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the
+seams with red silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers; in morocco
+shoes, with high iron heels--danced the gorlitza as swimmingly as
+peacocks, and as wildly as the whirlwind; how the youths--with their
+ship-shaped caps upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, with a
+little slit at the nape where the hair-net peeped through, and two
+horns projecting, one in front and another behind, of the very finest
+black lambskin; in kuntushas of the finest blue silk with red
+borders--stepped forward one by one, their arms akimbo in stately
+form, and executed the gopak; how the lads--in tall Cossack caps, and
+light cloth svitkas, girt with silver embroidered belts, their short
+pipes in their teeth--skipped before them, and talked nonsense. Even
+Korzh could not contain himself, as he gazed at the young people, from
+getting gay in his old age. Bandura in hand, alternately puffing at
+his pipe and singing, a brandy-glass upon his head, the greybeard
+began the national dance amid loud shouts from the merry-makers. What
+will not people devise in merry mood! They even began to disguise
+their faces. They did not look like human beings. They are not to be
+compared with the disguises which we have at our weddings nowadays.
+What do they do now? Why, imitate gipsies and Moscow pedlars. No! then
+one used to dress himself as a Jew, another as the Devil: they would
+begin by kissing each other, and end by seizing each other by the
+hair.... God be with them! you laughed till you held your sides. They
+dressed themselves in Turkish and Tartar garments. All upon them
+glowed like a conflagration ... and then they began to joke and play
+pranks.... Well, then away with the saints!
+
+An amusing thing happened to my grandfather's aunt, who was at this
+wedding. She was dressed in a voluminous Tartar robe, and, wineglass
+in hand, was entertaining the company. The Evil One instigated one man
+to pour vodka over her from behind. Another, at the same moment,
+evidently not by accident, struck a light, and touched it to her; ...
+the flame flashed up; poor aunt, in terror, flung her robe from her,
+before them all.... Screams, laughter, jests, arose, as if at a fair.
+In a word, the old folks could not recall so merry a wedding.
+
+Pidorka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman and lady. There was
+plenty of everything, and everything was handsome.... But honest
+people shook their heads when they looked at their way of living.
+"From the Devil no good can come," they unanimously agreed. "Whence,
+except from the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth? Where
+else could he get such a lot of gold? Why, on the very day that he got
+rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?" Say, if you can, that
+people imagine things! In fact, a month had not passed, and no one
+would have recognized Petrus. Why, what had happened to him? God
+knows. He sits in one spot, and says no word to any one: he thinks
+continually, and seems to be trying to recall something. When Pidorka
+succeeds in getting him to speak, he seems to forget himself, carries
+on a conversation, and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently
+glances at the sacks, "Stop, stop! I have forgotten," he cries, and
+again plunges into revery, and again strives to recall something.
+Sometimes when he has sat long in a place, it seems to him as though
+it were coming, just coming back to mind, ... and again all fades
+away. It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern: they bring him
+vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to him. Some one comes
+along, and strikes him on the shoulder; ... but beyond that everything
+is veiled in darkness before him. The perspiration streams down his
+face, and he sits exhausted in the same place.
+
+What did not Pidorka do? She consulted the sorceress; and they poured
+out fear, and brewed stomach-ache,[11]--but all to no avail. And so
+the summer passed. Many a Cossack had mowed and reaped: many a
+Cossack, more enterprising than the rest, had set off upon an
+expedition. Flocks of ducks were already crowding our marshes, but
+there was not even a hint of improvement.
+
+    [11] "To pour out fear," is done with us in case of fear;
+    when it is desired to know what caused it, melted lead or wax
+    is poured into water and the object whose form it assumes is
+    the one which frightened the sick person; after this, the
+    fear departs. _Sonvashnitza_ is brewed for giddiness, and
+    pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is burned,
+    thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled
+    with water, which is placed on the patient's stomach: after
+    an incantation, he is given a spoonful of this water to
+    drink.
+
+It was red upon the steppes. Ricks of grain, like Cossacks' caps,
+dotted the fields here and there. On the highway were to be
+encountered wagons loaded with brushwood and logs. The ground had
+become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had
+the snow begun to besprinkle the sky, and the branches of the trees
+were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the
+red-breasted finch hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish
+Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with
+huge sticks, chased wooden tops upon the ice; while their fathers lay
+quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals with lighted pipes in
+their lips, to growl, in regular fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to
+take the air, and thresh the grain spread out in the barn. At last the
+snow began to melt, and the ice rind slipped away: but Petro remained
+the same; and, the longer it went on, the more morose he grew. He sat
+in the middle of the cottage as though nailed to the spot, with the
+sacks of gold at his feet. He grew shy, his hair grew long, he became
+terrible; and still he thought of but one thing, still he tried to
+recall something, and got angry and ill-tempered because he could not
+recall it. Often, rising wildly from his seat, he gesticulates
+violently, fixes his eyes on something as though desirous of catching
+it: his lips move as though desirous of uttering some long-forgotten
+word--and remain speechless. Fury takes possession of him: he gnaws
+and bites his hands like a man half crazy, and in his vexation tears
+out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he falls into
+forgetfulness, as it were, and again begins to recall, and is again
+seized with fury and fresh tortures.... What visitation of God is
+this?
+
+Pidorka was neither dead nor alive. At first it was horrible to her to
+remain alone in the cottage; but, in course of time, the poor woman
+grew accustomed to her sorrow. But it was impossible to recognize the
+Pidorka of former days. No blush, no smile: she was thin and worn with
+grief, and had wept her bright eyes away. Once, some one who evidently
+took pity on her, advised her to go to the witch who dwelt in the
+Bear's ravine, and enjoyed the reputation of being able to cure every
+disease in the world. She determined to try this last remedy: word by
+word she persuaded the old woman to come to her. This was St. John's
+Eve, as it chanced. Petro lay insensible on the bench, and did not
+observe the new-comer. Little by little he rose, and looked about him.
+Suddenly he trembled in every limb, as though he were on the scaffold:
+his hair rose upon his head, ... and he laughed such a laugh as
+pierced Pidorka's heart with fear. "I have remembered, remembered!"
+he cried in terrible joy; and, swinging a hatchet round his head, he
+flung it at the old woman with all his might. The hatchet penetrated
+the oaken door two vershok.[12] The old woman disappeared; and a child
+of seven in a white blouse, with covered head, stood in the middle of
+the cottage.... The sheet flew off. "Ivas!" cried Pidorka, and ran to
+him; but the apparition became covered from head to foot with blood,
+and illumined the whole room with red light.... She ran into the
+passage in her terror, but, on recovering herself a little, wished to
+help him; in vain! the door had slammed to behind her so securely that
+she could not open it. People ran up, and began to knock: they broke
+in the door, as though there were but one mind among them. The whole
+cottage was full of smoke; and just in the middle, where Petrus had
+stood, was a heap of ashes, from which smoke was still rising. They
+flung themselves upon the sacks: only broken potsherds lay there
+instead of ducats. The Cossacks stood with staring eyes and open
+mouths, not daring to move a hair, as if rooted to the earth, such
+terror did this wonder inspire in them.
+
+    [12] Three inches and a half.
+
+I do not remember what happened next. Pidorka took a vow to go upon a
+pilgrimage, collected the property left her by her father, and in a
+few days it was as if she had never been in the village. Whither she
+had gone, no one could tell. Officious old women would have dispatched
+her to the same place whither Petro had gone; but a Cossack from Kiev
+reported that he had seen, in a cloister, a nun withered to a mere
+skeleton, who prayed unceasingly; and her fellow-villagers recognized
+her as Pidorka, by all the signs,--that no one had ever heard her
+utter a word; that she had come on foot, and had brought a frame for
+the ikon of God's mother, set with such brilliant stones that all were
+dazzled at the sight.
+
+But this was not the end, if you please. On the same day that the Evil
+One made way with Petrus, Basavriuk appeared again; but all fled from
+him. They knew what sort of a bird he was,--none else than Satan, who
+had assumed human form in order to unearth treasures; and, since
+treasures do not yield to unclean hands, he seduced the young. That
+same year, all deserted their earth huts, and collected in a village;
+but, even there, there was no peace, on account of that accursed
+Basavriuk. My late grandfather's aunt said that he was particularly
+angry with her, because she had abandoned her former tavern, and tried
+with all his might to revenge himself upon her. Once the village
+elders were assembled in the tavern, and, as the saying goes, were
+arranging the precedence at the table, in the middle of which was
+placed a small roasted lamb, shame to say. They chattered about this,
+that, and the other,--among the rest about various marvels and strange
+things. Well, they saw something; it would have been nothing if only
+one had seen it, but all saw it; and it was this: the sheep raised his
+head; his goggling eyes became alive and sparkled; and the black,
+bristling moustache, which appeared for one instant, made a
+significant gesture at those present. All, at once, recognized
+Basavriuk's countenance in the sheep's head: my grandfather's aunt
+thought it was on the point of asking for vodka.... The worthy elders
+seized their hats, and hastened home.
+
+Another time, the church starost himself, who was fond of an
+occasional private interview with my grandfather's brandy-glass, had
+not succeeded in getting to the bottom twice, when he beheld the glass
+bowing very low to him. "Satan take you, let us make the sign of the
+cross over you!" ... And the same marvel happened to his better half.
+She had just begun to mix the dough in a huge kneading-trough, when
+suddenly the trough sprang up. "Stop, stop! where are you going?"
+Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went skipping all about the
+cottage.... You may laugh, but it was no laughing-matter to your
+grandfathers. And in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the
+village with holy water, and chase the Devil through the streets with
+his brush; and my late grandfather's aunt long complained, that, as
+soon as it was dark, some one came knocking at her door, and
+scratching at the wall.
+
+Well! All appears to be quiet now, in the place where our village
+stands; but it was not so very long ago--my father was still
+alive--that I remember how a good man could not pass the ruined
+tavern, which a dishonest race had long managed for their own
+interest. From the smoke-blackened chimneys, smoke poured out in a
+pillar, and rising high in the air, as if to take an observation,
+rolled off like a cap, scattering burning coals over the steppe; and
+Satan (the son of a dog should not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully
+in his lair, that the startled ravens rose in flocks from the
+neighbouring oak-wood, and flew through the air with wild cries.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save
+church-yard ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of
+graves, and all eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the pool.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking stars, and the wicked and
+devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+good men astray.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owl, as he flappeth
+along lazily; or the magician, as he rideth on his infernal
+broomstick, whistling through the air like the arrows of a Yorkshire
+archer.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that two
+beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse
+with each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the
+heathens feigned), but of demons; and the second, with whom he held
+company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir
+Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre,
+Villacerf and autre lieux. But the great die as well as the humble;
+and nothing remained of brave Roger now, but his coffin and his
+deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had
+bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was
+stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking
+into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo,
+would groan and roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatory, being
+bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and
+roast in saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through
+the clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for
+want of a single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the demon. "You were on earth so wicked, that
+not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame a
+creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
+subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honour, as am I also:" and to show his authority,
+he lashed with his tail the ribs of the wretched Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for
+my sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail,
+by her prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that
+every day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks
+which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor
+carcass, were now not applied above once a week; the roasting had
+ceased, the boiling had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept
+up, to remind me of my situation."
+
+"A gentle stew," said the demon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been
+a blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the demon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of the
+prayer." And hereat the wretched spirit began to weep and whine
+piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the
+tail of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the demon; "but I know of no
+remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without a doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth,
+except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+saved."
+
+"Aves with them are _rarae_ aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that no
+one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what has a
+poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup
+of cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year,
+that none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the demon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
+Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
+banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the demon: "with the baron or the
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that
+it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
+visitors. Her fair cheek rested in her white arm, and her white arm
+on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported
+by sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book
+of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
+amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed
+for ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. "The jade is at her old
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villainous
+page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle
+(for a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of
+his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. "What's
+o'clock?" said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is he
+come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the
+love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a
+year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single
+ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee tomorrow, uncle."
+
+"Tonight, or never."
+
+"Well, tonight be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
+her the prayer-book, from under the table; but he had no sooner
+touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. "It
+was hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own particular
+pitchfork." And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid
+of her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the demon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
+and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+    "Now the toils of day are over,
+      And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+    Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+      The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+    "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+      Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+    And summoning the stars to guard
+      The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the
+song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratia plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+    "The faithful night! Now all things lie
+      Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+    In pious hope I hither hie,
+      And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+    "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+      (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+    Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+      My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron. "Upon my soul, this is too bad!" and he
+thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But _she_ only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to the
+lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
+words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar,
+Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will
+come the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
+page sung away till morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and
+Mercurius slunk silently out of the window. "Had I hanged that knave
+Edward, as I did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung
+mine ave, and I should have been by this time an angel in heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedlar, who shall,
+finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair
+Mathilde. So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying,
+we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much
+for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he
+would not, and he could not cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the
+brother might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
+there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
+signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk," and the
+gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master.
+Mercurius was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid
+countenance into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him
+wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a
+person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of
+the company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
+which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honour to act as his counsellor and
+attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the demon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?" But Sir Randal looked very
+blank at this proposition. "I mean life spiritual, Randal," said Sir
+Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing
+all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so
+popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his
+first appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with
+him, and used his utmost eloquence and endeavours to convert the
+devil; the knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the
+men-at-arms forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded
+round the two strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse.
+The ghostly man, however, had little chance in the controversy, and
+certainly little learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him.
+"Father Peter," said he, "our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want
+of a single ave: wilt thou say it for him?" "Willingly, my lord," said
+the monk, "with my book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to
+read, without which aid it appeared that the holy father could not
+manage the desired prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his
+devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father
+Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent
+ditty:--
+
+    "Some love the matin-chimes, which tell
+      The hour of prayer to sinner:
+    But better far's the mid-day bell,
+      Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+    For when I see a smoking fish,
+      Or capon drowned in gravy,
+    Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+      Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+    "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+      Whereon I sit so jolly;
+    A smiling rosy country wench
+      My saint and patron holy.
+    I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+      I press her ringlets wavy.
+    And in her willing ear I speak
+      A most religious ave.
+
+    "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+      And holy saints forgiving;
+    For sure he leads a right good life
+      Who thus admires good living.
+    Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+      Our blood celestial ichor:
+    Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+      They may not change our liquor!"
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
+an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms,
+and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most
+melodious and emphatic glee. "I am sorry, fair uncle," hiccupped Sir
+Randal, "that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a
+more orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
+another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last
+confessor." And he wished his nephew a surly goodnight, as he prepared
+to quit the room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
+his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humour. He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
+his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods,
+and the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two
+in Champagne found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the
+court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage
+and cloister, until they reached the door of the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer;
+his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead
+of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew;
+and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his
+wager with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period, had
+the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little
+chance with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his
+soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight; "and
+thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
+of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
+alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee; however, thou
+mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
+will stand without for five minutes when it will be time to commence
+our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's room
+more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he
+stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his
+long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver
+rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I am,"
+said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from
+pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who
+was inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago that
+the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy
+wicked compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy miserable
+brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he may escape from
+paying the awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath deceived
+me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
+return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a
+saint), "I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated,
+and sped hither to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the Saint, 'hath but
+one day more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject
+of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying
+an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy monk,
+"I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body and
+soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger, fiercely;
+"pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. "Amen!"
+said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it
+was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do not
+fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: _but this time
+the devil had not his tail round his neck_. "I will let thee off thy
+bet," said he to the demon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the demon, politely, "that our ways
+separate here." Sir Roger sailed gaily upwards: while Mercurius having
+bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth,
+and perhaps lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the
+devil dashed him against the iron spikes and buttresses of the
+church.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
+came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
+butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerable for cutlets) to quit
+the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair
+creature's name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as
+ever a man would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the
+painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any
+of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in
+numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
+Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge,
+who was by this time the offspring of their affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
+lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+household; baker's bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father,
+unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and
+swore that his daughter, and the dauber, her husband, should have no
+more of his wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and
+crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do
+without: but in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish,
+and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a
+kind of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they,
+in course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great
+warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a
+washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and
+arm-chairs. Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a second
+father in _her uncle_,--a base pun, which showed that her mind was
+corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple Griskinissa
+of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humour
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
+foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear,
+and the peach-colour on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and
+crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck
+fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair,
+wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once
+so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of
+his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck,
+and cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the
+neighbours could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings;
+bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the
+floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering
+through the windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and
+Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the
+brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a
+picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced
+a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and
+swore in the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of genius!" cried
+he, "was I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be
+bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the
+world, or sold only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has
+misled me; cursed be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or
+steal, let me sell myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil,
+I should not be more wretched than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder
+of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
+"Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze;
+when, as sure as I'm living, a little imp spurted out from the hole
+upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily
+manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to
+be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then
+he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the
+poor painter what he wanted with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself
+at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out, with his
+heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the
+allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
+am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me
+a little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and with one of Mr. Macready's
+best looks, said,--
+
+    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+    Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but
+felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
+of his new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
+how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
+the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
+the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of
+an article which, in itself, is a supposition--a valueless, windy,
+uncertain property of yours, called by some poet of your own, I think,
+an _animula_, _vagula_, _blandula_--bah! there is no use beating about
+the bush--I mean _a soul_. Come, let me have it; you know you will
+sell it some other way, and not get such good pay for your
+bargain!"--and, having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his
+fob a sheet as big as a double _Times_, only there was a different
+_stamp_ in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
+to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
+found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
+skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over
+the paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven
+years, and at the end of that time was to become the property of
+the--; =provided= that during the course of the seven years, every
+single wish which he might form should be gratified by the other of
+the contracting parties; otherwise the deed became null and nonavenue,
+and Gambouge should be left "to go to the--his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with
+poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at
+this day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask
+will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me,
+it is the best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like
+scandal. But if you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and
+out of the course of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of
+this you are the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but
+whether up the chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture
+or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of
+delight, as, heaven forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be,
+if he were allowed an opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon. "I wonder whether this be a reality or a
+dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means
+to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I
+could see a capon and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so;
+and lo! there was a _restaurateur's_ boy at the door, supporting a
+tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a
+tall amber-coloured flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did _ask for_ these things."
+But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on
+his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew they were for
+old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived
+on the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
+the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning
+his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+inevitable bill which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the back-bone, "what a
+dinner! what wine!--and how gaily served up too!" There were silver
+forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver
+dish. "Why the money for this dish and these spoons," cried Simon,
+"would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH"--and here Simon
+whistled, and turned round to see that no one was peeping--"I wish
+the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought Simon
+to himself; "why should not I _take them_?" and take them he did.
+"Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I would as
+soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout,
+and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he
+was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the
+pawnbroker--that establishment which is called in France the Mont de
+Piete. "I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon,
+"with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. "I can give you
+nothing upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Cafe Morisot,' Rue de la
+Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper." And, so
+saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he
+wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for
+crime--_when crime is found out!_--otherwise, conscience takes matters
+much more easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
+virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is no
+reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have
+half the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. "Give
+me half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these
+pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
+"seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
+gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
+less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
+up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon
+it was inscribed the simple number, 152. "A gambling-house," thought
+Gambouge. "I WISH I had half the money that is now on the table, up
+stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of _rouge et noir_. Gambouge's five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was
+more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
+round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after
+Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
+thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
+the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, "now it is that I
+begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about merit," he cried; "talk
+about fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of
+_zeroes_." And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
+received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
+lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds upon the table. Suffice it to say,
+that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
+bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had
+been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a
+prince for half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had
+a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He
+repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
+_restaurateur's_ plate. "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an
+action like this of a man who has a property like mine!" So he went
+back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable. "My
+friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most sacred:
+I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy money. In the
+name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully sold
+thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
+that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I will never sell it at
+all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of
+five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is
+the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
+months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I _stole_ that
+plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
+houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer
+the thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did
+wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
+"sign me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote
+according to Gambouge's dictation: "Received, for thirteen ounces of
+plate, twenty pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou
+art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds'
+worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a
+convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money,
+or I will bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
+up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now
+returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner,
+and restored the plate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a
+profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown
+rich, grew likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father.
+He fed the poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And
+I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre,
+in similar circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon
+Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
+than ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he
+went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and _vice versa_: in fact,
+she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a
+cat in the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be
+supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the most
+miserable dog in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point of
+drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and during a
+considerable number of hours in each day, he thus dissipated,
+partially, his domestic chagrin. O philosophy! we may talk of thee:
+but, except at the bottom of the wine-cup, where thou liest like
+truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
+was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes,
+and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six
+years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as
+that which we have described at the commencement of this history. He
+had grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to
+mass, and had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to
+consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole
+matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
+desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no other
+than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that
+bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church
+comfortably together, and entered afterwards a _cafe_, where they sat
+down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his
+button-hole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the
+marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.
+"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, and
+began reading the papers of the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux anglais?
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of _The Times_ to
+Mr. Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled, politely, and examined the proffered page. "It is
+enormous," he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is."
+
+Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked
+at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. "Come, M. l'Abbe,"
+he said; "the heat and glare of this place are intolerable."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The stranger rose with them. "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abbe here, who
+will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it
+necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at
+church_, as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper
+signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
+live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had
+consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers
+of the Palais. But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his
+poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted
+could give him a pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
+all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee. "My friend," said he, "I have it! Eureka!--I have found
+it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit
+college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and
+tell his Holiness you will double all if he will give you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome
+_ventre a terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition,
+and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in
+due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise. Diabolus! your
+contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe
+on the road to salvation." In a fervour of gratitude he clasped the
+hand of his confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the
+cheeks of these good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them holding his sides, and lashing his tail
+about, as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+_that_?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner. "M. l'Abbe
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper
+may pass current _here_, it is not worth twopence in our country. What
+do I care about the Pope's absolution? You might just as well be
+absolved by your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abbe, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
+which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, "go
+thy ways, old fellow, that _cock won't fight_." And he retired up the
+chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail
+scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed,
+or a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine
+than to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
+such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
+under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night
+or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and
+cursed his stars that he ever had married the butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in
+the city of Paris--he gaily presided at one end of his table, while
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other
+extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+appear. The old ladies screamed and hoped he would not appear naked;
+the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
+company. "I will not show my _credentials_," he said, blushing, and
+pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the
+person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months
+to come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit
+the bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honour, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying
+his hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will you
+be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
+anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who,
+in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest
+and fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. "Simon!" said she,
+"is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to
+obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract has
+to run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half
+a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her
+caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which
+falls from her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I
+will deliver myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G----, when flogged by Lord B----, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus
+did now. "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--ten
+more--a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy
+water, but don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs.
+Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly. "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every
+person in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped
+down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and
+lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty
+pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped
+Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through
+the keyhole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. "You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been asleep
+these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box on the
+ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
+Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
+and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+    Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,
+    Je suis plus savant que Balzac--
+    Plus sage que Pibrac;
+    Mon bras seul faisant l'attaque
+    De la nation cossaque,
+    La mettroit au sac;
+    De Charon je passerois le lac
+    En dormant dans son bac;
+    J'irois au fier Eac,
+    Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac,
+    Presenter du tabac.
+                       --_French Vaudeville._
+
+That Pierre Bon-Bon was a _restaurateur_ of uncommon qualifications,
+no man who, during the reign of ----, frequented the little _cafe_ in
+the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at
+liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree,
+skilled in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more
+especially undeniable. His _pates a la fois_ were beyond doubt
+immaculate; but what pen can do justice to his essays _sur la
+Nature_--his thoughts _sur l'Ame_--his observations _sur l'Esprit_? If
+his _omelettes_--if his _fricandeaux_ were inestimable, what
+_litterateur_ of that day would not have given twice as much for an
+"_Idee de Bon-Bon_" as for all the trash of all the "_Idees_" of all
+the rest of the _savants_? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no
+other man had ransacked--had read more than any other would have
+entertained a notion of reading--had understood more than any other
+would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although,
+while he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to
+assert "that his _dicta_ evinced neither the purity of the Academy,
+nor the depth of the Lyceum"--although, mark me, his doctrines were by
+no means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that
+they were difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of
+their self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them
+abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon--but let this go no further--it is to
+Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The
+former was indeed not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an
+Aristotelian--nor did he, like the modern Leibnitz, waste those
+precious hours which might be employed in the invention of a
+_fricassee_ or, _facili gradu_, the analysis of a sensation, in
+frivolous attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of
+ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was Ionic--Bon-Bon was equally
+Italic. He reasoned _a priori_--He reasoned _a posteriori_. His ideas
+were innate--or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond--he
+believed in Bossarion. Bon-Bon was emphatically a--Bon-Bonist.
+
+I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of _restaurateur_. I
+would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in
+fulfilling his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a
+proper estimation of their dignity and importance. Far from it. It
+was impossible to say in which branch of his profession he took the
+greater pride. In his opinion the powers of the intellect held
+intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. I am not
+sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the Chinese, who hold
+that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all events were
+right, he thought, who employed the same word for the mind and the
+diaphragm.[13] By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of
+gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the
+metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings--and what great man
+has not a thousand?--if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they
+were failings of very little importance--faults indeed which, in other
+tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.
+As regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it
+in this history but for the remarkable prominency--the extreme _alto
+relievo_--in which it jutted out from the plane of his general
+disposition. He could never let slip an opportunity of making a
+bargain.
+
+    [13] [Greek: Phrenes].
+
+Not that he was avaricious--no. It was by no means necessary to the
+satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own
+proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected--a trade of any
+kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances--a triumphant smile
+was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a
+knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.
+
+At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humour so peculiar
+as the one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark.
+At the epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity _not_ attracted
+observation, there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon
+reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon
+was found to differ widely from the downright grin with which he would
+laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown
+out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made
+in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of
+unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations
+implanted by the author of all evil for wise purposes of his own.
+
+The philosopher had other weaknesses--but they are scarcely worthy our
+serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary
+profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle.
+Whether this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid
+proof, of such profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far
+as I can learn, did not think the subject adapted to minute
+investigation;--nor do I. Yet in the indulgence of a propensity so
+truly classical, it is not to be supposed that the _restaurateur_
+would lose sight of that intuitive discrimination which was wont to
+characterize, at one and the same time, his _essais_ and his
+_omelettes_. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted
+hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With
+him Sauternes was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport
+with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over
+Clos-Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had
+it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the
+peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded--but this was by
+no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, _that_ trait of mind in
+the philosophic Bon-Bon _did_ begin at length to assume a character of
+strange intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with
+the _diablerie_ of his favourite German studies.
+
+To enter the little _cafe_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre was, at the
+period of our tale, to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius. Bon-Bon
+was a man of genius. There was not a _sous-cuisinier_ in Rouen who
+could not have told you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat
+knew it, and forbore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of
+genius. His large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the
+approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a
+sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of
+the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true
+that much of this habitual respect might have been attributed to the
+personal appearance of the metaphysician. A distinguished exterior
+will, I am constrained to say, have its way even with a beast; and I
+am willing to allow much in the outward man of the _restaurateur_
+calculated to impress the imagination of the quadruped. There is a
+peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the little great--if I may be
+permitted so equivocal an expression--which mere physical bulk alone
+will be found at all times inefficient in creating. If, however,
+Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his head was
+diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the rotundity
+of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon
+the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
+his acquirements--in its immensity a fitting habitation for his
+immortal soul.
+
+I might here--if it so pleased me--dilate upon the matter of
+habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external
+metaphysician. I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short,
+combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped
+white flannel cap and tassels--that his pea-green jerkin was not after
+the fashion of those worn by the common class of _restaurateurs_ at
+that day--that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning
+costume permitted--that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that
+barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the
+garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured
+velvet of Genoa--that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously
+filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the
+exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding
+and embroidery--that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
+material called _aimable_--that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form
+a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson
+devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the
+morning--and that his _tout ensemble_ gave rise to the remarkable
+words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, "that it was
+difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,
+or the rather a very Paradise of perfection." I might, I say,
+expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,--but I forbear; merely
+personal details may be left to historical novelists,--they are
+beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.
+
+I have said that "to enter the _cafe_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre
+was to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius"--but then it was only
+the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_.
+A sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one
+side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _pate_. On
+the back were visible in large letters _Oeuvres de Bon-Bon_. Thus was
+delicately shadowed forth the twofold occupation of the proprietor.
+
+Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building
+presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique
+construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the _cafe_.
+In a corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An
+array of curtains, together with a canopy _a la grecque_, gave it an
+air at once classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonally
+opposite, appeared, in direct family communion, the properties of the
+kitchen and the _bibliotheque_. A dish of polemics stood peacefully
+upon the dresser. Here lay an ovenful of the latest ethics--there a
+kettle of duodecimo _melanges_. Volumes of German morality were hand
+and glove with the gridiron--a toasting-fork might be discovered by
+the side of Eusebius--Plato reclined at his ease in the
+frying-pan--and contemporary manuscripts were filed away upon the
+spit.
+
+In other respects the _Cafe de Bon-Bon_ might be said to differ little
+from the usual _restaurants_ of the period. A large fireplace yawned
+opposite the door. On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard
+displayed a formidable array of labelled bottles.
+
+It was here, about twelve o'clock one night, during the severe winter
+of ----, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having listened for some time to
+the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity--that
+Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked
+the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific
+mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of
+blazing fagots.
+
+It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or
+twice during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to
+its centre with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies
+of the wall, and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully
+the curtains of the philosopher's bed, and disorganized the economy of
+his _pate_-pans and papers. The huge folio sign that swung without,
+exposed to the fury of the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a
+moaning sound from its stanchions of solid oak.
+
+It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his
+chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a
+perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity
+of his meditations. In attempting _des oeufs a la Princesse_, he had
+unfortunately perpetrated an _omelette a la Reine_; the discovery of a
+principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew;
+and last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable
+bargains which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing
+to a successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these
+unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some
+degree of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is
+so well calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate
+vicinity the large black water-dog we have spoken of before, and
+settling himself uneasily in his chair, he could not help casting a
+wary and unquiet eye toward those distant recesses of the apartment
+whose inexorable shadows not even the red fire-light itself could more
+than partially succeed in overcoming. Having completed a scrutiny
+whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible to himself, he drew
+close to his seat a small table covered with books and papers, and
+soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous
+manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.
+
+He had been thus occupied for some minutes, when "I am in no hurry,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon," suddenly whispered a whining voice in the
+apartment.
+
+"The devil!" ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning
+the table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.
+
+"Very true," calmly replied the voice.
+
+"Very true!--what is very true?--how came you here?" vociferated the
+metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at
+full length upon the bed.
+
+"I was saying," said the intruder, without attending to the
+interrogatories,--"I was saying that I am not at all pushed for
+time--that the business, upon which I took the liberty of calling, is
+of no pressing importance--in short, that I can very well wait until
+you have finished your Exposition."
+
+"My Exposition!--there now!--how do _you_ know?--how came _you_ to
+understand that I was writing an Exposition--good God!"
+
+"Hush!" replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising
+quickly from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an
+iron lamp that depended overhead swung convulsively back from his
+approach.
+
+The philosopher's amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the
+stranger's dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure,
+exceedingly lean, but much above the common height, were rendered
+minutely distinct by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted
+tight to the skin, but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a
+century ago. These garments had evidently been intended for a much
+shorter person than their present owner. His ankles and wrists were
+left naked for several inches. In his shoes, however, a pair of very
+brilliant buckles gave the lie to the extreme poverty implied by the
+other portions of his dress. His head was bare, and entirely bald,
+with the exception of the hinder-part, from which depended a _queue_
+of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles, with side glasses,
+protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and at the same
+time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their colour or their
+conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a
+shirt; but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
+precision around the throat, and the ends, hanging down formally side
+by side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an
+ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and
+demeanour might have very well sustained a conception of that nature.
+Over his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an
+instrument resembling the _stylus_ of the ancients. In a breast-pocket
+of his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with
+clasps of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned
+outwardly from the person as to discover the words "_Rituel
+Catholique_" in white letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy
+was interestingly saturnine--even cadaverously pale. The forehead was
+lofty, and deeply furrowed with the ridges of contemplation. The
+corners of the mouth were drawn down into an expression of the most
+submissive humility. There was also a clasping of the hands, as he
+stepped towards our hero--a deep sigh--and altogether a look of such
+utter sanctity as could not have failed to be unequivocally
+prepossessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the countenance of the
+metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory survey of his
+visitor's person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted
+him to a seat.
+
+There would however be a radical error in attributing this
+instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher to any one of
+those causes which might naturally be supposed to have had an
+influence. Indeed, Pierre Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to
+understand of his disposition, was of all men the least likely to be
+imposed upon by any speciousness of exterior deportment. It was
+impossible that so accurate an observer of men and things should have
+failed to discover, upon the moment, the real character of the
+personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To say no more,
+the conformation of his visitor's feet was sufficiently remarkable--he
+maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hat--there was a
+tremulous swelling about the hinder-part of his breeches--and the
+vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. Judge, then, with what
+feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself thrown thus at once
+into the society of a person for whom he had at all times entertained
+the most unqualified respect. He was, however, too much of the
+diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in
+regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to appear at
+all conscious of the high honour he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by
+leading his guest into conversation, to elicit some important ethical
+ideas, which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated
+publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same time
+immortalize himself--ideas which, I should have added, his visitor's
+great age, and well-known proficiency in the science of morals, might
+very well have enabled him to afford.
+
+Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit
+down, while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the
+fire, and place upon the now re-established table some bottles of
+Mousseaux. Having quickly completed these operations, he drew his
+chair _vis-a-vis_ to his companion's, and waited until the latter
+should open the conversation. But plans even the most skilfully
+matured are often thwarted in the outset of their application--and
+the _restaurateur_ found himself _nonplussed_ by the very first words
+of his visitor's speech.
+
+"I see you know me, Bon-Bon," said he; "ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hi!
+hi! hi--ho! ho! ho!--hu! hu! hu!"--and the Devil, dropping at once the
+sanctity of his demeanour, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from
+ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and,
+throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and
+uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches,
+joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off a tangent,
+stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.
+
+Not so the philosopher: he was too much a man of the world either to
+laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation
+of the cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see
+the white letters which formed the words "_Rituel Catholique_" on the
+book in his guest's pocket, momently changing both their colour and
+their import, and in a few seconds, in place of the original title,
+the words "_Registre des Condamnes_" blaze forth in characters of red.
+This startling circumstance, when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor's
+remark, imparted to his manner an air of embarrassment which probably
+might not otherwise have been observed.
+
+"Why, sir," said the philosopher, "why, sir, to speak sincerely--I
+believe you are--upon my word--the d--dest--that is to say, I think--I
+imagine--I _have_ some faint--some _very_ faint idea--of the
+remarkable honour--"
+
+"Oh!--ah!--yes!--very well!" interrupted his Majesty; "say no more--I
+see how it is." And hereupon, taking off his green spectacles, he
+wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited
+them in his pocket.
+
+If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his
+amazement was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented
+itself to view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of
+curiosity to ascertain the colour of his guest's, he found them by no
+means black, as he had anticipated--nor grey, as might have been
+imagined--nor yet hazel nor blue--nor indeed yellow nor red--nor
+purple--nor white--nor green--nor any other colour in the heavens
+above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In
+short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no
+eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications of their having
+existed at any previous period--for the space where eyes should
+naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead level
+of flesh.
+
+It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some
+inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon; and the reply of
+his Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.
+
+"Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon--eyes! did you say?--oh!--ah!--I perceive! The
+ridiculous prints, eh, which are in circulation, have given you a
+false idea of my personal appearance. Eyes!--true. Eyes, Pierre
+Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place--_that_, you would say,
+is the head?--right--the head of a worm. To _you_, likewise, these
+optics are indispensable--yet I will convince you that my vision is
+more penetrating than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner--a
+pretty cat--look at her--observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you behold
+the thoughts--the thoughts, I say--the ideas--the reflections--which
+are being engendered in her pericranium? There it is now--you do not!
+She is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of
+her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of
+ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of
+metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of
+my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance,
+liable at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron or a pitchfork. To
+you, I allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavour,
+Bon-Bon, to use them well; _my_ vision is the soul."
+
+Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and
+pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without
+scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.
+
+"A clever book that of yours, Pierre," resumed his Majesty, tapping
+our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his
+glass after a thorough compliance with his visitor's injunction. "A
+clever book that of yours, upon my honour. It's a work after my own
+heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be
+improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That
+philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as
+much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a
+blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and
+for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity.
+I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral
+truth I am alluding?"
+
+"Cannot say that I--"
+
+"Indeed!--why it was I who told Aristotle that, by sneezing, men
+expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis."
+
+"Which is--hiccup!--undoubtedly the case," said the metaphysician,
+while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseaux, and
+offering his snuff-box to the fingers of his visitor.
+
+"There was Plato, too," continued his Majesty, modestly declining the
+snuff-box and the compliment it implied--"there was Plato, too, for
+whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew
+Plato, Bon-Bon?--ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at
+Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for
+an idea. I bade him write down that '[Greek: ho nous estin aulos].' He
+said that he would do so, and went home, while I stepped over to the
+pyramids. But my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even
+to aid a friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind the
+philosopher's chair as he was inditing the '[Greek: aulos].'
+
+"Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down.
+So the sentence now reads '[Greek: ho nous estin augos],' and is, you
+perceive, the fundamental doctrine in his metaphysics."
+
+"Were you ever at Rome?" asked the _restaurateur_, as he finished his
+second bottle of Mousseaux, and drew from the closet a larger supply
+of Chambertin.
+
+"But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time," said the
+Devil, as if reciting some passage from a book--"there was a time when
+occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft
+of all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the
+people, and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive
+power--at that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon--at that time _only_ I was in
+Rome, and I have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of
+its philosophy."[14]
+
+    [14] Ils ecrivaient sur la philosophie (_Cicero_,
+    _Lucretius_, _Seneca_), mais c'etait la philosophie
+    grecque.--_Condorcet._
+
+"What do you think of--what do you think of--hiccup!--Epicurus?"
+
+"What do I think of _whom_?" said the Devil, in astonishment; "you
+surely do not mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of
+Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir?--I am Epicurus! I am the same
+philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated
+by Diogenes Laertes."
+
+"That's a lie!" said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a
+little into his head.
+
+"Very well!--very well, sir!--very well, indeed, sir!" said his
+Majesty, apparently much flattered.
+
+"That's a lie!" repeated the _restaurateur_, dogmatically; "that's
+a--hiccup!--a lie!"
+
+"Well, well, have it your own way!" said the Devil, pacifically, and
+Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at an argument, thought it his duty
+to conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.
+
+"As I was saying," resumed the visitor--"as I was observing a little
+while ago, there are some very _outre_ notions in that book of yours,
+Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug
+about the soul? Pray, sir, what _is_ the soul?"
+
+"The--hiccup!--soul," replied the metaphysician, referring to his MS.,
+"is undoubtedly--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Indubitably--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Indisputably--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Evidently--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Incontrovertibly--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Hiccup!--"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"And beyond all question, a--"
+
+"No, sir, the soul is no such thing!" (Here the philosopher, looking
+daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third
+bottle of Chambertin.)
+
+"Then--hiccup!--pray, sir--what--what is it?"
+
+"That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon," replied his
+Majesty, musingly. "I have tasted--that is to say, I have known some
+very bad souls, and some too--pretty good ones." Here he smacked his
+lips, and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in
+his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.
+
+He continued:
+
+"There was the soul of Cratinus--passable: Aristophanes--racy:
+Plato--exquisite--not _your_ Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your
+Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus--faugh! Then let me
+see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius.
+Then there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus
+Flaccus,--dear Quinty! as I called him when he sang a _saeculare_ for
+my amusement, while I toasted him, in pure good humour, on a fork. But
+they want _flavour_, these Romans. One fat Greek is worth a dozen of
+them, and besides will _keep_, which cannot be said of a Quirite. Let
+us taste your Sauterne."
+
+Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the _nil admirari_, and
+endeavoured to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however,
+conscious of a strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail.
+Of this, although extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher
+took no notice:--simply kicking the dog, and requesting him to be
+quiet. The visitor continued:
+
+"I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;--you know I am
+fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso,
+to my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong
+twang of Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus--and
+Titus Livius was positively Polybius and none other."
+
+"Hiccup!" here replied Bon-Bon, and his Majesty proceeded:
+
+"But if I _have_ a _penchant_, Monsieur Bon-Bon--if I _have_ a
+_penchant_, it is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is
+not every dev--I mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to
+_choose_ a philosopher. Long ones are _not_ good; and the best, if not
+carefully shelled, are apt to be a little rancid on account of the
+gall."
+
+"Shelled!!"
+
+"I mean taken out of the carcass."
+
+"What do you think of a--hiccup!--physician?"
+
+"_Don't_ mention them!--ugh! ugh!" (Here his Majesty retched
+violently.) "I never tasted but one--that rascal Hippocrates!--smelt
+of asafoetida--ugh! ugh! ugh!--caught a wretched cold washing him in
+the Styx--and after all he gave me the cholera-morbus."
+
+"The--hiccup!--wretch!" ejaculated Bon-Bon, "the--hiccup!--abortion of
+a pill-box!"--and the philosopher dropped a tear.
+
+"After all," continued the visitor, "after all, if a dev--if a
+gentleman wishes to _live_, he must have more talents than one or two;
+and with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Why we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know
+that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to
+keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death,
+unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is _not_ good), they
+will--smell--you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be
+apprehended when the souls are consigned to us in the usual way."
+
+"Hiccup!--hiccup!--good God! how _do_ you manage?"
+
+Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the
+Devil half started from his seat;--however, with a slight sigh, he
+recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: "I
+tell you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we _must_ have no more swearing."
+
+The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough
+comprehension and acquiescence, and the visitor continued:
+
+"Why, there are _several_ ways of managing. The most of us starve:
+some put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits
+_vivente corpore_, in which case I find they keep very well."
+
+"But the body!--hiccup!--the body!!"
+
+"The body, the body--well, what of the body?--oh! ah! I perceive. Why,
+sir, the body is not _at all_ affected by the transaction. I have made
+innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never
+experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and Nero,
+and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and--and a thousand
+others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter
+part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why isn't
+there A--, now, whom you know as well as I? Is _he_ not in possession
+of all his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener
+epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who--but, stay! I have his
+agreement in my pocket-book."
+
+Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a
+number of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the
+letters _Machi_--_Maza_--_Robesp_--with the words _Caligula_,
+_George_, _Elizabeth_. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of
+parchment, and from it read aloud the following words:
+
+"In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary
+to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d'or,
+I, being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the
+bearer of this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the
+shadow called my soul. (Signed) A...."[15] (Here His Majesty repeated
+a name which I do not feel myself justified in indicating more
+unequivocally.)
+
+    [15] Query.--_Arouet?_
+
+"A clever fellow that," resumed he; "but, like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon,
+he was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a
+shadow! Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--hu! hu! hu! Only think of a
+_fricasseed_ shadow!"
+
+"_Only_ think--hiccup!--of a _fricasseed_ shadow!" exclaimed our hero,
+whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of
+His Majesty's discourse. "Only think of a--hiccup!--_fricasseed_
+shadow!! Now, damme!--hiccup!--humph! If _I_ would have been such
+a--hiccup!--nincompoop! _My_ soul, Mr.--humph!"
+
+"_Your_ soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?"
+
+"Yes, sir--hiccup!--_my_ soul is--"
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"_No_ shadow, damme!"
+
+"Did you mean to say--"
+
+"Yes, sir, _my_ soul is--hiccup!--humph!--yes, sir."
+
+"Did you not intend to assert--"
+
+"_My_ soul is--hiccup!--peculiarly qualified for--hiccup!--a--"
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"Stew."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"_Soufflee._"
+
+"Eh!"
+
+"_Fricassee._"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"_Ragout_ and _fricandeau_--and see here, my good fellow! I'll let you
+have it--hiccup!--a bargain." Here the philosopher slapped His Majesty
+upon the back.
+
+"Couldn't think of such a thing," said the latter calmly, at the same
+time rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.
+
+"Am supplied at present," said His Majesty.
+
+"Hic-cup!--e-h?" said the philosopher.
+
+"Have no funds on hand."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Besides, very unhandsome in me--"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"To take advantage of--"
+
+"Hic-cup!"
+
+"Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation."
+
+Here the visitor bowed and withdrew--in what manner could not
+precisely be ascertained--but in a well-concerted effort to discharge
+a bottle at "the villain," the slender chain was severed that depended
+from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of
+the lamp.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL
+
+
+As I was sitting in my armchair and preparing an essay on the Devil in
+literature, sleep overpowered me; the pen fell from my hands, and my
+head reclined upon the desk. I had been thinking so much about the
+Devil in my waking hours, that the same idea pursued me after I had
+fallen asleep. I heard a gentle rap at the door, and having bawled out
+as usual, "Come in," a little gentleman entered, wrapped in a large
+blue cloth cloak, with a slouched hat, and goggles over his eyes.
+After bowing and scraping with considerable ceremony, he took off his
+hat, and threw his cloak over the back of a chair, when I immediately
+perceived that my visitor was no mortal. His face was hideously ugly;
+the skin appearing very much like wet paper, and the forehead covered
+with those cabalistic signs whose wondrous significance is best known
+to those who correct the press. On the end of his long hooked nose
+there seemed to me to be growing, like a carbuncle, the first letter
+of the alphabet, glittering with ink and ready to print. I observed,
+also, that each of his fingers and toes, or rather claws, was in the
+same manner terminated by one of the letters of the alphabet; and as
+he slashed round his tail to brush a fly off his nose, I noticed that
+the letter Z formed the extremity of that useful member. While I was
+looking with no small astonishment and some trepidation at my
+extraordinary visitor, he took occasion to inform me that he had
+taken liberty to call, as he was afraid I might forget him in the
+treatise which I was writing--an omission which he assured me would
+cause him no little mortification. "In me," says he, "you behold the
+prince and patron of printers' devils. My province is to preside over
+the hell of books; and if you will only take the trouble to accompany
+me a little way, I will show you some of the wonders of that world."
+As my imagination had lately been much excited by perusing Dante's
+_Inferno_, I was delighted with an adventure which promised to turn
+out something like his wonderful journey, and I readily consented to
+visit my new friend's dominions, and we sallied forth together. As we
+pursued our way, my conductor endeavoured to give me some information
+respecting the world I was about to enter, in order to prepare me for
+the wonders I should encounter there. "You must know," remarked he,
+"that books have souls as well as men; and the moment any work is
+published, whether successful or not, its soul appears in precisely
+the same form in another world; either in this domain, which is
+subject to me, or in a better region, over which I have no control. I
+have power only to exhibit the place of punishment for bad books,
+periodicals, pamphlets, and, in short, publications of every kind."
+
+We now arrived at the mouth of a cavern, which I did not remember to
+have ever noticed before, though I had repeatedly passed the spot in
+my walks. It looked to me more like the entrance to a coalmine than
+anything else, as the sides were entirely black. Upon examining them
+more closely, I found that they were covered with a black fluid which
+greatly resembled printer's ink, and which seemed to corrode and wear
+away the rocks of the cavern wherever it touched them. "We have lately
+received a large supply of political publications," said my companion;
+"and hell is perfectly saturated with their maliciousness. We carry on
+a profitable trade upon the earth, by retailing this ink to the
+principal political editors. Unfortunately, it is not found to answer
+very well for literary publications, though they have tried it with
+considerable success in printing the London _Quarterly_ and several of
+the other important reviews."
+
+The cavern widened as we advanced, and we came presently into a vast
+open plain, which was bounded on one side by a wall so high that it
+seemed to reach the very heavens. As we approached the wall I observed
+a vast gateway before us, closed up by folding doors. The gates opened
+at our approach, and we entered. I found myself in a warm sandy
+valley, bounded on one side by a steep range of mountains. A feeble
+light shone upon it, much like that of a sick chamber, and the air
+seemed confined and stifling like that of the abode of illness. My
+ears were assailed by a confused whining noise, as if all the litters
+of new-born puppies, kittens with their eyes unopened, and babes just
+come to light, in the whole world, were brought into one spot, and
+were whelping, mewing, and squalling at once. I turned in mute wonder
+to my guide for explanation; and he informed me that I now beheld the
+destined abode of all still-born and abortive publications; and the
+infantine noises which I heard were only their feeble wailing for the
+miseries they had endured in being brought into the world. I now saw
+what the feebleness of the light had prevented my observing before,
+that the soil was absolutely covered with books of every size and
+shape, from the little diamond almanac up to the respectable quarto. I
+saw folios there. These books were crawling about and tumbling over
+each other like blind whelps, uttering, at the same time, the most
+mournful cries. I observed one, however, which remained quite still,
+occasionally groaning a little, and appeared like an overgrown toad
+oppressed with its own heaviness. I drew near, and read upon the back,
+"_Resignation_, a Novel." The cover flew open, and the title-page
+immediately began to address me. I walked off, however, as fast as
+possible, only distinguishing a few words about "the injustice and
+severity of critics;" "bad taste of the public;" "very well
+considering;" "first effort;" "feminine mind," &c. &c. I presently
+discovered a very important-looking little book, stalking about among
+the rest in a great passion, kicking the others out of the way, and
+swearing like a trooper; till at length, apparently exhausted with its
+efforts, it sunk down to rise no more. "Ah ha!" exclaimed my little
+diabolical friend, "here is a new comer; let's see who he is;" and
+coming up, he turned it over with his foot so that we could see the
+back of it, upon which was printed "_The Monikins_, by the Author of,
+&c. &c." I noticed that the book had several marks across it, as if
+some one had been flogging the unfortunate work. "It is only the marks
+of the scourge," said my companion, "which the critics have used
+rather more severely, I think, than was necessary." I expected, after
+all the passion I had seen, and the great importance of feeling,
+arrogance, and vanity the little work had manifested, that it would
+have some pert remarks to make to us; but it was so much exhausted
+that it could not say a word. At the bottom of the valley was a small
+pond of a milky hue, from which there issued a perfume very much like
+the smell of bread and butter. An immense number of thin, prettily
+bound manuscript books were soaking in this pond of milk, all of
+which, I was informed, were _Young Ladies' Albums_, which it was
+necessary to souse in the slough, to prevent them from stealing
+passages from the various works about them. As soon as I heard what
+they were, I ran away with all my speed, having a mortal dread of
+these books.
+
+We had now traversed the valley, and, approaching the barrier of
+mountains, we found a passage cut through, which greatly resembled the
+Pausilipo, near Naples; it was closed on the side towards the valley,
+only with a curtain of white paper, upon which were printed the names
+of the principal reviews, which my conductor assured me were enough to
+prevent any of the unhappy works we had seen from coming near the
+passage.
+
+As we advanced through the mountains, occasional gleams of light
+appeared before us, and immediately vanished, leaving us in darkness.
+My guide, however, seemed to be well acquainted with the way, and we
+went on fearlessly till we emerged into an open field, lighted up by
+constant flashes of lightning, which glared from every side; the air
+was hot, and strongly impregnated with sulphur. "Each department of my
+dominions," said the Devil, "receives its light from the works which
+are sent there. You are now surrounded by the glittering but
+evanescent coruscations of the more recent novels. This department of
+hell was never very well supplied till quite lately, though Fielding,
+Smollett, Maturin, and Godwin, did what they could for us. Our
+greatest benefactors have been Disraeli, Bulwer, and Victor Hugo; and
+this glare of light, so painful to our eyes, proceeds chiefly from
+their books." There was a tremendous noise like the rioting of an army
+of drunken men, with horrible cries and imprecations, and fiend-like
+laughing, which made my blood curdle; and such a scrambling and
+fighting among the books, as I never saw before. I could not imagine
+at first what could be the cause of this, till I discovered at last a
+golden hill rising up like a cone in the midst of the plane, with just
+room enough for one book on the summit; and I found that the novels
+were fighting like so many devils for the occupation of this place.
+One work, however, had gained possession of it, and seemed to maintain
+its hold with a strength and resolution which bade defiance to the
+rest. I could not at first make out the name of this book, which
+seemed to stand upon its golden throne like the Prince of Hell; but
+presently the whole arch of the heavens glared with new brilliancy,
+and the magic name of _Vivian Grey_ flashed from the book in letters
+of scorching light. I was much afraid, however, that _Vivian_ would
+not long retain his post; for I saw _Pelham_ and _Peregrine Pickle_,
+and the terrible _Melmoth_ with his glaring eyes, coming together to
+the assault, when a whirlwind seized them all four and carried them
+away to a vast distance, leaving the elevation vacant for some other
+competitor. "There is no peace to the wicked, you see," said my
+Asmodeus. "These books are longing for repose, and they can get none
+on account of the insatiable vanity of their authors, whose desire for
+distinction made them careless of the sentiments they expressed and
+the principles they advocated. The great characteristic of works of
+this stamp is action, intense, painful action. They have none of that
+beautiful serenity which shines in Scott and Edgeworth; and they are
+condemned to illustrate, by an eternity of contest here, the restless
+spirit with which they are inspired."
+
+While I was looking on with fearful interest in the mad combat before
+me, the horizon seemed to be darkened, and a vast cloud rose up in the
+image of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stretched from the east to the
+west till he covered the firmament. In his talons he carried an open
+book, at the sight of which the battle around me was calmed; the
+lightnings ceased to flash, and there was an awful stillness. Then
+suddenly there glared from the book a sheet of fire, which rose in
+columns a thousand feet high, and filled the empyrean with intense
+light; the pillars of flame curling and wreathing themselves into
+monstrous letters, till they were fixed in one terrific glare, and I
+read--"BYRON." Even my companion quailed before the awful light, and I
+covered my face with my hands. When I withdrew them, the cloud and the
+book had vanished, and the contest was begun again--"You have seen the
+Prince of this division of hell," said my guide.
+
+We now began rapidly to descend into the bowels of the earth; and,
+after sinking some thousand feet, I found myself on terra firma again,
+and walking a little way, we came to a gate of massive ice, over which
+was written in vast letters--"My heritage is despair." We passed
+through, and immediately found ourselves in a vast basin of lead,
+which seemed to meet the horizon on every side. A bright light shone
+over the whole region; but it was not like the genial light of the
+sun. It chilled me through; and every ray that fell upon me seemed
+like the touch of ice. The deepest silence prevailed; and though the
+valley was covered with books, not one moved or uttered a sound. I
+drew near to one, and I shivered with intense cold as I read upon
+it--"Voltaire." "Behold," said the demon, "the hell of infidel books;
+the light which emanates from them is the light of reason, and they
+are doomed to everlasting torpor." I found it too cold to pursue my
+investigations any farther in this region, and I gladly passed on from
+the leaden gulf of Infidelity.
+
+I had no sooner passed the barrier which separated this department
+from the next, than I heard a confused sound like the quacking of
+myriads of ducks and geese, and a great flapping of wings; of which I
+soon saw the cause. "You are in the hell of newspapers," said my
+guide. And sure enough, when I looked up I saw thousands of newspapers
+flying about with their great wooden back-bones, and the padlock
+dangling like a bobtail at the end, flapping their wings and hawking
+at each other like mad. After circling about in the air for a little
+while, and biting and tearing each other as much as they could, they
+plumped down, head first, into a deep black-looking pool, and were
+seen no more. "We place these newspapers deeper in hell than the
+Infidel publications," said the Devil; "because they are so much more
+extensively read, and thereby do much greater mischief. It is a kind
+of pest of which there is no end; and we are obliged to allot the
+largest portion of our dominions to containing them."
+
+We now came to an immense pile of a leaden hue, which I found at last
+to consist of old worn-out type, which was heaped up to form the wall
+of the next division. A monstrous u, turned bottom upwards (in this
+way [Symbol: inverted U]) formed the arch of a gateway through which
+we passed; and then traversed a draw-bridge, which was thrown across a
+river of ink, upon whose banks millions of horrible little demons were
+sporting. I presently saw that they were employed in throwing into the
+black stream a quantity of books which were heaped up on the shore. As
+I looked down into the stream, I saw that they were immediately
+devoured by the most hideous and disgusting monsters which were
+floundering about there. I looked at one book, which had crawled out
+after being thrown into the river; it was dripping with filth, but I
+distinguished on the back the words--_Don Juan_. It had hardly climbed
+up the bank, however, when one of the demons gave it a kick, and sent
+it back into the stream, where it was immediately swallowed. On the
+back of some of the books which the little imps were tossing in, I saw
+the name of--_Rochester_, which showed me the character of those which
+were sent into this division of the infernal regions.
+
+Beyond this region rose up a vast chain of mountains, which we were
+obliged to clamber over. After toiling for a long time, we reached the
+summit, and I looked down upon an immense labyrinth built upon the
+plain below, in which I saw a great number of large folios, stalking
+about in solemn pomp, each followed by a number of small volumes and
+pamphlets, like so many pages or footmen watching the beck of their
+master. "You behold here," said the demon, "all the false works upon
+theology which have been written since the beginning of the Christian
+era. They are condemned to wander about to all eternity in the
+hopeless maze of this labyrinth, each folio drawing after it all the
+minor works to which it gave origin." A faint light shone from these
+ponderous tomes; but it was like the shining of a lamp in a thick
+mist, shorn of its rays, and illuminating nothing around it. And if my
+companion had not held a torch before me, I should not have discerned
+the outlines of this department of the Infernal world. As my eye
+became somewhat accustomed to the feeble light, I discovered beyond
+the labyrinth a thick mist, which appeared to rise from some river or
+lake. "That," said my companion, "is the distinct abode of German
+Metaphysical works, and other treatises of a similar unintelligible
+character. They are all obliged to pass through a press; and if there
+is any sense in them, it is thus separated from the mass of nonsense
+in which it is imbedded, and is allowed to escape to a better world.
+Very few of the works, however, are found to be materially diminished
+by passing through the press." We had now crossed the plain, and stood
+near the impenetrable fog, which rose up like a wall before us. In
+front of it was the press managed by several ugly little demons, and
+surrounded by an immense number of volumes of every size and shape,
+waiting for the process which all were obliged to undergo. As I was
+watching their operations, I saw two very respectable German folios,
+with enormous clasps, extended like arms, carrying between them a
+little volume, which they were fondling like a pet child with marks of
+doting affection. These folios proved to be two of the most abstruse,
+learned, and incomprehensible of the metaphysical productions of
+Germany; and the bantling which they seemed to embrace with so much
+affection, was registered on the back--"_Records of a School_." I did
+not find that a single ray of intelligence had been extracted from
+either of the two after being subjected to the press. As soon as the
+volumes had passed through the operation of yielding up all the little
+sense they contained, they plunged into the intense fog, and
+disappeared for ever.
+
+We next approached the verge of a gulf, which appeared to be
+bottomless; and there was dreadful noise, like the war of the
+elements, and forked flames shooting up from the abyss, which reminded
+me of the crater of Vesuvius. "You have now reached the ancient limits
+of hell," said the demon, "and you behold beneath your feet the
+original chaos on which my domains are founded. But within a few years
+we have been obliged to build a yet deeper division beyond the gulf,
+to contain a class of books that were unknown in former times." "Pray,
+what class can be found," I asked, "worse than those which I have
+already seen, and for which it appears hell was not bad enough?" "They
+are American re-prints of English publications," replied he, "and they
+are generally works of such a despicable character, that they would
+have found their way here without being republished; but even where
+the original work was good, it is so degenerated by the form under
+which it re-appears in America, that its merit is entirely lost, and
+it is only fit for the seventh and lowest division of hell."
+
+I now perceived a bridge spanning over the gulf, with an arch that
+seemed as lofty as the firmament. We hastily passed over, and found
+that the farthest extremity of the bridge was closed by a gate, over
+which was written three words. "They are the names of the three furies
+who reign over this division," said my guide. I of course did not
+contradict him; but the words looked very much like some I had seen
+before; and the more I examined them, the more difficult was it to
+convince myself that the inscription was not the same thing as the
+sign over a certain publishing house in Philadelphia.
+
+"These," said the Devil, "are called the three furies of the hell of
+books; not from the mischief they do there to the works about them,
+but for the unspeakable wrong they did to the same works upon the
+earth, by re-printing them in their hideous brown paper editions." As
+soon as they beheld me, they rushed towards me with such piteous
+accents and heart-moving entreaties, that I would intercede to save
+them from their torment, that I was moved with the deepest compassion,
+and began to ask my conductor if there were no relief for them. But he
+hurried me away, assuring me that they only wanted to sell me some of
+their infernal editions, and the idea of owning any such property was
+so dreadful that it woke me up directly.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW[16]
+
+BY FERNAN CABALLERO
+
+
+    [16] From _Spanish Fairy Tales_. By Fernan Caballero.
+    Translated by J. H. Ingram. (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
+    Co., 1881. By permission of the Publishers.)
+
+In a town, named Villagananes, there was once an old widow uglier than
+the sergeant of Utrera, who was considered as ugly as ugly could be;
+drier than hay; older than foot-walking, and more yellow than the
+jaundice. Moreover, she had so crossgrained a disposition that Job
+himself could not have tolerated her. She had been nicknamed "Mother
+Holofernes," and she had only to put her head out of doors to put all
+the lads to flight. Mother Holofernes was as clean as a new pin, and
+as industrious as an ant, and in these respects suffered no little
+vexation on account of her daughter Panfila, who was, on the contrary,
+so lazy, and such an admirer of the Quietists, that an earthquake
+would not move her. So it came to pass that Mother Holofernes began
+quarrelling with her daughter almost from the day that the girl was
+born.
+
+"You are," she said, "as flaccid as Dutch tobacco, and it would take a
+couple of oxen to draw you out of your room. You fly work as you would
+the pest, and nothing pleases you but the window, you shameless girl.
+You are more amorous than Cupid himself, but, if I have any power, you
+shall live as close as a nun."
+
+On hearing all this, Panfila got up, yawned, stretched herself, and
+turning her back on her mother, went to the street door. Mother
+Holofernes, without paying attention to this, began to sweep with most
+tremendous energy, accompanying the noise of the broom with a
+monologue of this tenor:--
+
+"In my time girls had to work like men."
+
+The broom gave the accompaniment of _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And lived as secluded as nuns."
+
+And the broom went _shis_, _shis_, _shis_.
+
+"Now they are a pack of fools."--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"Of idlers."--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And think of nothing but husbands.--_Shis_, _shis_.
+
+"And are a lot of good-for-nothings."
+
+The broom following with its chorus.
+
+By this time she had nearly reached the street door, when she saw her
+daughter making signs to a youth; and the handle of the broom, as the
+handiest implement, descended upon the shoulders of Panfila, and
+effected the miracle of making her run. Next, Mother Holofernes,
+grasping the broom, made for the door; but scarcely had the shadow of
+her head appeared, than it produced the customary effect, and the
+aspirant disappeared so swiftly that it seemed as if he must have had
+wings on his feet.
+
+"Drat that fellow!" shouted the mother; "I should like to break all
+the bones in his body."
+
+"What for? Why should I not think of getting married?"
+
+"What are you saying? You get married, you fool! not while I live!"
+
+"Why were you married, madam? and my grandmother? and my great
+grandmother?"
+
+"Nicely I have been repaid for it, by you, you sauce-box! And
+understand me, that if I chose to get married, and your grandmother
+also, and your great grandmother also, I do not intend that you shall
+marry; nor my granddaughter, nor my great granddaughter! Do you hear
+me?"
+
+In these gentle disputes the mother and daughter passed their lives,
+without any other result than that the mother grumbled more and more
+every day, and the daughter became daily more and more desirous of
+getting a husband.
+
+Upon one occasion, when Mother Holofernes was doing the washing, and
+as the lye was on the point of boiling, she had to call her daughter
+to help her lift the caldron, in order to pour its contents on to the
+tub of clothes. The girl heard her with one ear, but with the other
+was listening to a well-known voice which sang in the street:--
+
+    "I would like to love thee,
+      Did thy mother let me woo!
+    May the demon meddle
+      In all she tries to do!"
+
+The sound outside being more attractive for Panfila than the caldron
+within, she did not hasten to her mother, but went to the window.
+Mother Holofernes, meanwhile, seeing that her daughter did not come,
+and that time was passing, attempted to lift the caldron by herself,
+in order to pour the water upon the linen; and as the good woman was
+small, and not very strong, it turned over, and burnt her foot. On
+hearing the horrible groans Mother Holofernes made, her daughter went
+to her.
+
+"Wretch, wretch!" cried the enraged Mother Holofernes to her daughter,
+"may you love Barabbas! And as for marrying--may Heaven grant you may
+marry the Evil One himself!"
+
+Sometime after this accident an aspirant presented himself: he was a
+little man, young, fair, red-haired, well-mannered, and had
+well-furnished pockets. He had not a single fault, and Mother
+Holofernes was not able to find any in all her arsenal of negatives.
+As for Panfila, it wanted little to send her out of her senses with
+delight. So the preparations for the wedding were made, with the usual
+grumbling accompaniment on the part of the bridegroom's future
+mother-in-law. Everything went on smoothly straightforward, and
+without a break--like a railroad--when, without knowing why, the
+popular voice--a voice which is as the personification of
+conscience,--began to rise in a murmur against the stranger, despite
+the fact that he was affable, humane, and liberal; that he spoke well
+and sang better; and freely took the black and horny hands of the
+labourers between his own white and beringed fingers. They began to
+feel neither honoured nor overpowered by so much courtesy; his
+reasoning was always so coarse, although forcible and logical.
+
+"By my faith!" said Uncle Blas; "why does this ill-faced gentleman
+call me Mr. Blas, as if that would make me any better? What does it
+look like to you?"
+
+"Well, as for me," said Uncle Gil, "did he not come to shake hands
+with me as if we had some plot between us? Did he not call me citizen?
+I, who have never been out of the village, and never want to go."
+
+As for Mother Holofernes, the more she saw of her future son-in-law,
+the less regard she had for him. It seemed to her that between that
+innocent red hair and the cranium were located certain protuberances
+of a very curious kind; and she remembered with emotion that
+malediction she had uttered against her daughter on that ever
+memorable day on which her foot was injured and her washing spoilt.
+
+At last, the wedding day arrived. Mother Holofernes had made pastry
+and reflections--the former sweet, the latter bitter; a great _olla
+podrida_ for the food, and a dangerous project for supper; she had
+prepared a barrel of wine that was generous, and a line of conduct
+that was not. When the bridal pair were about to retire to the nuptial
+chamber, Mother Holofernes called her daughter aside, and said: "When
+you are in your room, be careful to close the door and windows; shut
+all the shutters, and do not leave a single crevice open but the
+keyhole of the door. Take with you this branch of consecrated olive,
+and beat your husband with it as I advise you; this ceremony is
+customary at all marriages, and signifies that the woman is going to
+be master, and is followed in order to sanction and establish the
+rule."
+
+Panfila, for the first time obedient to her mother, did everything
+that she had prescribed.
+
+No sooner did the bridegroom espy the branch of consecrated olive in
+the hands of his wife, than he attempted to make a precipitous
+retreat. But when he found the doors and windows closed, and every
+crevice stopped up, seeing no other means of escape than by passing
+through the keyhole, he crept into that; this spruce, red-and-white,
+and well-spoken bachelor being, as Mother Holofernes had suspected,
+neither more nor less than the Evil One himself, who, availing himself
+of the right given him by the anathema launched against Panfila by her
+mother, thought to amuse himself with the pleasures of a marriage, and
+encumber himself with a wife of his own, whilst so many husbands were
+supplicating him to take theirs off their hands.
+
+But this gentleman, despite his reputation for wisdom, had met with a
+mother-in-law who knew more than he did; and Mother Holofernes was not
+the only specimen of that genus. Therefore, scarcely had his lordship
+entered into the keyhole, congratulating himself upon having, as
+usual, discovered a method of escape, than he found himself in a
+phial, which his foreseeing mother-in-law had ready on the other side
+of the door; and no sooner had he got into it than the provident old
+dame sealed the vessel hermetically. In a most tender voice, and with
+most humble supplications, and most pathetic gestures, her son-in-law
+addressed her, and desired that she would grant him his liberty. But
+Mother Holofernes was not to be deceived by the demon, nor
+disconcerted by orations, nor imposed upon by honeyed words; she took
+charge of the bottle and its contents, and went off to a mountain. The
+old lady vigorously climbed to the summit of this mountain, and there,
+on its most elevated crest, in a rocky and secluded spot, deposited
+the phial, taking leave of her son-in-law with a shake of her closed
+fist as a farewell greeting.
+
+And there his lordship remained for ten years. What years those ten
+were! The world was as quiet as a pool of oil. Everybody attended to
+his own affairs, without meddling in those of other people. Nobody
+coveted the position, nor the wife, nor the property of other persons;
+theft became a word without signification; arms rusted; powder was
+only consumed in fireworks; prisons stood empty; finally, in this
+decade of the golden age, only one single deplorable event occurred
+... the lawyers died from hunger and quietude.
+
+Alas! that so happy a time should have an end! But everything has an
+end in this world, even the discourses of the most eloquent fathers of
+the country. At last the much-to-be-envied decade came to a
+termination in the following way.
+
+A soldier named Briones had obtained permission for a few days' leave
+to enable him to visit his native place, which was Villagananes. He
+took the road which led to the lofty mountain upon whose summit the
+son-in-law of Mother Holofernes was cursing all mothers-in-law, past,
+present, and future, promising as soon as ever he regained his power
+to put an end to that class of vipers, and by a very simple
+method--the abolition of matrimony. Much of his time was spent in
+composing and reciting satires against the invention of washing linen,
+the primal cause of his present trouble.
+
+Arrived at the foot of the mountain, Briones did not care to go round
+the mountain like the road, but wished to go straight ahead, assuring
+the carriers who were with him, that if the mountain would not go to
+the right-about for him he would pass over its summit, although it
+were so high that he should knock his head against the sky.
+
+When he reached the summit, Briones was struck with amazement on
+seeing the phial borne like a pimple on the nose of the mountain. He
+took it up, looked through it, and on perceiving the demon, who with
+years of confinement and fasting, the sun's rays, and sadness, had
+dwindled and become as dried as a prune, exclaimed in surprise:--
+
+"Whatever vermin is this? What a phenomenon!"
+
+"I am an honourable and meritorious demon," said the captive, humbly
+and courteously. "The perversity of a treacherous mother-in-law, into
+whose clutches I fell, has held me confined here during the last ten
+years; liberate me, valiant warrior, and I will grant any favour you
+choose to solicit."
+
+"I should like my demission from the army," said Briones.
+
+"You shall have it; but uncork, uncork quickly, for it is a most
+monstrous anomaly to have thrust into a corner, in these revolutionary
+times, the first revolutionist in the world."
+
+Briones drew the cork out slightly, and a noxious vapour issued from
+the bottle and ascended to his brain. He sneezed, and immediately
+replaced the stopper with such a violent blow from his hand that the
+cork was suddenly depressed, and the prisoner, squeezed down, gave a
+shout of rage and pain.
+
+"What are you doing, vile earthworm, more malicious and perfidious
+than my mother-in-law?" he exclaimed.
+
+"There is another condition," responded Briones, "that I must add to
+our treaty; it appears to me that the service I am going to do you is
+worth it."
+
+"And what is this condition, tardy liberator?" inquired the demon.
+
+"I should like for thy ransom four dollars daily during the rest of my
+life. Think of it, for upon that depends whether you stay in or come
+out."
+
+"Miserable avaricious one!" exclaimed the demon, "I have no money."
+
+"Oh!" replied Briones, "what an answer from a great lord like you!
+Why, friend, that is the Minister of War's answer! If you can't pay me
+I cannot help you."
+
+"Then you do not believe me," said the demon, "only let me out, and I
+will aid you to obtain what you want as I have done for many others.
+Let me out, I say, let me out."
+
+"Gently," responded the soldier, "there is nothing to hurry about.
+Understand me that I shall have to hold you by the tail until you have
+performed your promise to me; and if not, I have nothing more to say
+to you."
+
+"Insolent, do you not trust me then!" shouted the demon.
+
+"No," responded Briones.
+
+"What you desire is contrary to my dignity," said the captive, with
+all the arrogance that a being of his size could express.
+
+"Now I must go," said Briones.
+
+"Good-bye," said the demon, in order not to say _adieu_.
+
+But seeing that Briones went off, the captive made desperate jumps in
+the phial, shouting loudly to the soldier.
+
+"Return, return, dear friend," he said; and muttered to himself, "I
+should like a four-year-old bull to overtake you, you soulless fool!"
+and then he shouted, "Come, come, beneficent fellow, liberate me, and
+hold me by the tail, or by the nose, valiant warrior;" and then
+muttered to himself, "Some one will avenge me, obstinate soldier; and
+if the son-in-law of Mother Holofernes is not able to do it, there are
+those who will burn you both, face to face, in the same bonfire, or I
+have little influence."
+
+On hearing the demon's supplications Briones returned and uncorked the
+bottle. Mother Holofernes's son-in-law came forth like a chick from
+its shell, drawing out his head first and then his body, and lastly
+his tail, which Briones seized; and the more the demon tried to
+contract it the firmer he held it.
+
+After the ex-captive, who was somewhat cramped, had occasionally
+stopped to stretch his arms and legs, they took the road to court, the
+demon grumbling and following the soldier, who carried the tail well
+secured in his hands.
+
+On their arrival they went to court, and the demon said to his
+liberator:--
+
+"I am going to put myself into the body of the princess, who is
+extremely beloved by her father, and I shall give her pains that no
+doctor will be able to cure; then you present yourself and offer to
+cure her, demanding for your recompense four dollars daily, and your
+discharge. I will then leave her to you, and our accounts will be
+settled."
+
+Everything happened as arranged and foreseen by the demon, but Briones
+did not wish to let go his hold of the tail, and he said:--
+
+"Well devised, sir, but four dollars are a ransom unworthy of you, of
+me, and of the service that we have undertaken. Find some method of
+showing yourself more generous. To do this will give you honour in the
+world, where, pardon my frankness, you do not enjoy the best of
+characters."
+
+"Would that I could get rid of you!" said the demon to himself, "but I
+am so weak and so numbed that I am not able to go alone. I must have
+patience! that which men call a virtue. Oh, now I understand why so
+many fall into my power for not having practised it. Forward then for
+Naples, for it is necessary to submit in order to liberate my tail. I
+must go and submit to the arbitration of fate for the satisfaction of
+this new demand."
+
+Everything succeeded according to his wish. The princess of Naples
+fell a victim to convulsive pains and took to her bed. The king was
+greatly afflicted. Briones presented himself with all the arrogance
+his knowledge that he would receive the demon's aid could give him.
+The king was willing to make use of his services, but stipulated that
+if within three days he had not cured the princess, as he confidently
+promised to, he should be hanged. Briones, certain of a favourable
+result, did not raise the slightest objection.
+
+Unfortunately, the demon heard this arrangement made, and gave a leap
+of delight at seeing within his hands the means of avenging himself.
+
+The demon's leap caused the princess such pain that she begged them to
+take the doctor away.
+
+The following day this scene was repeated. Briones then knew that the
+demon was at the bottom of it, and intended to let him be hanged. But
+Briones was not a man to lose his head.
+
+On the third day, when the pretended doctor arrived, they were
+erecting the gallows in front of the very palace door. As he entered
+the princess's apartment, the invalid's pains were redoubled and she
+began to cry out that they should put an end to that impostor.
+
+"I have not exhausted all my resources yet," said Briones gravely,
+"deign, your Royal Highness, to wait a little while." He then went out
+of the room and gave orders in the princess's name that all the bells
+of the city should be rung.
+
+When he returned to the royal apartment, the demon, who has a mortal
+hatred of the sound of bells, and is, moreover, inquisitive, asked
+Briones what the bells were ringing for.
+
+"They are ringing," responded the soldier, "because of the arrival of
+your mother-in-law, whom I have ordered to be summoned."
+
+Scarcely had the demon heard that his mother-in-law had arrived, than
+he flew away with such rapidity that not even a sun's ray could have
+caught him. Proud as a peacock, Briones was left in victorious
+possession of the field.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER[17]
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+    [17] From _The English Review_, November 1918. By permission
+    of the Editor and Mr. Arthur Symons.
+
+Yesterday, across the crowd of the boulevard, I found myself touched
+by a mysterious Being I had always desired to know, and who I
+recognized immediately, in spite of the fact that I had never seen
+him. He had, I imagined, in himself, relatively as to me, a similar
+desire, for he gave me, in passing, so significant a sign in his eyes
+that I hastened to obey him. I followed him attentively, and soon I
+descended behind him into a subterranean dwelling, astonishing to me
+as a vision, where shone a luxury of which none of the actual houses
+in Paris could give me an approximate example. It seemed to me
+singular that I had passed so often that prodigious retreat without
+having discovered the entrance. There reigned an exquisite, an almost
+stifling atmosphere, which made one forget almost instantaneously all
+the fastidious horrors of life; there I breathed a sombre sensuality,
+like that of opium-smokers when, set on the shore of an enchanted
+island, over which shone an eternal afternoon, they felt born in them,
+to the soothing sounds of melodious cascades, the desire of never
+again seeing their households, their women, their children, and of
+never again being tossed on the decks of ships by storms.
+
+There were there strange faces of men and women, gifted with so fatal
+a beauty that I seemed to have seen them years ago and in countries
+which I failed to remember, and which inspired in me that curious
+sympathy and that equally curious sense of fear that I usually
+discover in unknown aspects. If I wanted to define in some fashion or
+other the singular expression of their eyes, I would say that never
+had I seen such magic radiance more energetically expressing the
+horror of _ennui_ and of desire--of the immortal desire of feeling
+themselves alive.
+
+As for mine host and myself, we were already, as we sat down, as
+perfect friends as if we had always known each other. We drank
+immeasurably of all sorts of extraordinary wines, and--a thing not
+less bizarre--it seemed to me, after several hours, that I was no more
+intoxicated than he was.
+
+However, gambling, this superhuman pleasure, had cut, at various
+intervals, our copious libations, and I ought to say that I had gained
+and lost my soul, as we were playing, with an heroical carelessness
+and light-heartedness. The soul is so invisible a thing, often useless
+and sometimes so troublesome, that I did not experience, as to this
+loss, more than that kind of emotion I might have, had I lost my
+visiting card in the street.
+
+We spent hours in smoking cigars, whose incomparable savour and
+perfume give to the soul the nostalgia of unknown delights and sights,
+and, intoxicated by all these spiced sauces, I dared, in an access of
+familiarity which did not seem to displease him, to cry, as I lifted
+a glass filled to the brim with wine: "To your immortal health, Old
+He-Goat!"
+
+We talked of the universe, of its creation and of its future
+destruction; of the leading ideas of the century--that is to say, of
+Progress and Perfectibility--and, in general, of all kinds of human
+infatuations. On this subject his Highness was inexhaustible in his
+irrefutable jests, and he expressed himself with a splendour of
+diction and with a magnificence in drollery such as I have never found
+in any of the most famous conversationalists of our age. He explained
+to me the absurdity of different philosophies that had so far taken
+possession of men's brains, and deigned even to take me in confidence
+in regard to certain fundamental principles, which I am not inclined
+to share with any one.
+
+He complained in no way of the evil reputation under which he lived,
+indeed, all over the world, and he assured me that he himself was of
+all living beings the most interested in the destruction of
+_Superstition_, and he avowed to me that he had been afraid,
+relatively as to his proper power, once only, and that was on the day
+when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than the rest of the human
+herd, cry in his pulpit: "My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when
+you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of
+the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!"
+
+The memory of this famous orator brought us naturally on the subject
+of Academies, and my strange host declared to me that he didn't
+disdain, in many cases, to inspire the pens, the words, and the
+consciences of pedagogues, and that he almost always assisted in
+person, in spite of being invisible, at all the scientific meetings.
+
+Encouraged by so much kindness I asked him if he had any news of
+God--who has not his hours of impiety?--especially as the old friend
+of the Devil. He said to me, with a shade of unconcern united with a
+deeper shade of sadness: "We salute each other when we meet." But, for
+the rest, he spoke in Hebrew.
+
+It is uncertain if his Highness has ever given so long an audience to
+a simple mortal, and I feared to abuse it.
+
+Finally, as the dark approached shivering, this famous personage, sung
+by so many poets, and served by so many philosophers who work for his
+glory's sake without being aware of it, said to me: "I want you to
+remember me always, and to prove to you that I--of whom one says so
+much evil--am often enough _bon diable_, to make use of one of your
+vulgar locutions. So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you
+have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to
+have gained, if your fate had been fortunate--that is to say, the
+possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life,
+this bizarre affection of _ennui_, which is the source of all your
+maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by
+you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your
+vulgar equals; money and gold and diamonds, fairy palaces, shall come
+to seek you and shall ask you to accept them without your having made
+the least effort to obtain them; you can change your abode as often as
+you like; you shall have in your power all sensualities without
+lassitude, in lands where the climate is always hot, and where the
+women are as scented as the flowers." With this he rose up and said
+good-bye to me with a charming smile.
+
+If it had not been for the shame of humiliating myself before so
+immense an assembly, I might have voluntarily fallen at the feet of
+this generous Gambler, to thank him for his unheard-of munificence.
+But, little by little, after I had left him, an incurable defiance
+entered into me; I dared no longer believe in so prodigious a
+happiness; and as I went to bed, making over again my nightly prayer
+by means of all that remained in me in the matter of faith, I repeated
+in my slumber: "My God, my Lord, my God! Do let the Devil keep his
+word with me!"
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES[18]
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+    [18] From _The Fig and the Idler, an Algerian Legend, and
+    Other Stories_, by Alphonse Daudet. London, T. Fisher Unwin,
+    1892. (By permission of the Publisher.)
+
+I
+
+"Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?"
+
+"Yes, your reverence, two magnificent turkeys, stuffed with truffles.
+I should know something about it, for I myself helped to fill them.
+One would have said their skin would crack as they were roasting, it
+is that stretched...."
+
+"Jesu-Maria! I who like truffles so much!... Quick, give me my
+surplice, Garrigou.... And have you seen anything else in the kitchen
+besides the turkeys?"
+
+"Yes, all kinds of good things.... Since noon, we have done nothing
+but pluck pheasants, hoopoes, barn-fowls, and woodcocks. Feathers were
+flying about all over.... Then they have brought eels, gold carp, and
+trout out of the pond, besides...."
+
+"What size were the trout, Garrigou?"
+
+"As big as that, your reverence.... Enormous!"
+
+"Oh heavens! I think I see them.... Have you put the wine in the
+vessels?"
+
+"Yes, your reverence, I have put the wine in the vessels.... But la!
+it is not to be compared to what you will drink presently, when the
+midnight mass is over. If you only saw that in the dining hall of the
+chateau! The decanters are all full of wines glowing with every
+colour!... And the silver plate, the chased _epergnes_, the flowers,
+the lustres!... Never will such another midnight repast be seen. The
+noble marquis has invited all the lords of the neighbourhood. At least
+forty of you will sit down to table, without reckoning the farm
+bailiff and the notary.... Oh, how lucky is your reverence to be one
+of them!... After a mere sniff of those fine turkeys, the scent of
+truffles follows me everywhere.... Yum!"
+
+"Come now, come now, my child. Let us keep from the sin of gluttony,
+on the night of the Nativity especially.... Be quick and light the
+wax-tapers and ring the first bell for the mass; for it's nearly
+midnight and we must not be behind time."
+
+This conversation took place on a Christmas night in the year of grace
+one thousand six hundred and something, between the Reverend Dom
+Balaguere (formerly Prior of the Barnabites, now paid chaplain of the
+Lords of Trinquelague), and his little clerk Garrigou, or at least him
+whom he took for his little clerk Garrigou, for you must know that the
+devil had on that night assumed the round face and soft features of
+the young sacristan, in order the more effectually to lead the
+reverend father into temptation, and make him commit the dreadful sin
+of gluttony. Well then, while the supposed Garrigou (hum!) was with
+all his might making the bells of the baronial chapel chime out, his
+reverence was putting on his chasuble in the little sacristy of the
+chateau; and with his mind already agitated by all these gastronomic
+descriptions, he kept saying to himself as he was robing:
+
+"Roasted turkeys, ... golden carp, ... trout as big as that!..."
+
+Out of doors, the soughing night wind was carrying abroad the music of
+the bells, and with this, lights began to make their appearance on the
+dark sides of Mount Ventoux, on the summit of which rose the ancient
+towers of Trinquelague. The lights were borne by the families of the
+tenant farmers, who were coming to hear the midnight mass at the
+chateau. They were scaling the hill in groups of five or six together,
+and singing; the father in front carrying a lantern, and the women
+wrapped up in large brown cloaks, beneath which their little children
+snuggled and sheltered. In spite of the cold and the lateness of the
+hour these good folks were marching blithely along, cheered by the
+thought that after the mass was over there would be, as always in
+former years, tables set for them down in the kitchens. Occasionally
+the glass windows in some lord's carriage, preceded by torch-bearers,
+would glisten in the moon-light on the rough ascent; or perhaps a mule
+would jog by with tinkling bells, and by the light of the misty
+lanterns the tenants would recognize their bailiff and would salute
+him as he passed with:
+
+"Good evening, Master Arnoton."
+
+"Good evening. Good evening, my friend."
+
+The night was clear, and the stars were twinkling with frost; the
+north wind was nipping, and at times a fine small hail, that slipped
+off one's garments without wetting them, faithfully maintained the
+tradition of Christmas being white with snow. On the summit of the
+hill, as the goal towards which all were wending, gleamed the chateau,
+with its enormous mass of towers and gables, and its chapel steeple
+rising into the blue-black sky. A multitude of little lights were
+twinkling, coming, going, and moving about at all the windows; they
+looked like the sparks one sees running about in the ashes of burnt
+paper.
+
+After you had passed the drawbridge and the postern gate, it was
+necessary, in order to reach the chapel, to cross the first court,
+which was full of carriages, footmen and sedan chairs, and was quite
+illuminated by the blaze of torches and the glare of the kitchen
+fires. Here were heard the click of turnspits, the rattle of
+sauce-pans, the clash of glasses and silver plate in the commotion
+attending the preparation of the feast; while over all rose a warm
+vapour smelling pleasantly of roast meat, piquant herbs, and complex
+sauces, and which seemed to say to the farmers, as well as to the
+chaplain and to the bailiff, and to everybody:
+
+"What a good midnight repast we are going to have after the mass!"
+
+
+II
+
+Ting-a-ring!--a--ring!
+
+The midnight mass is beginning in the chapel of the chateau, which is
+a cathedral in miniature, with groined and vaulted roofs, oak
+wood-work as high as the walls, expanded draperies, and tapers all
+aglow. And what a lot of people! What grand dresses! First of all,
+seated in the carved stalls that line the choir, is the Lord of
+Trinquelague in a coat of salmon-coloured silk, and about him are
+ranged all the noble lords who have been invited.
+
+On the opposite side, on velvet-covered praying-stools, the old
+dowager marchioness in flame-coloured brocade, and the youthful Lady
+of Trinquelague wearing a lofty head-dress of plaited lace in the
+newest fashion of the French court, have taken their places. Lower
+down, dressed in black, with punctilious wigs, and shaven faces, like
+two grave notes among the gay silks and the figured damasks, are seen
+the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton, and the notary Master Ambroy. Then come
+the stout major-domos, the pages, the horsemen, the stewards, Dame
+Barbara, with all her keys hanging at her side on a real silver ring.
+At the end, on the forms, are the lower class, the female servants,
+the cotter farmers and their families; and lastly, down there, near
+the door, which they open and shut very carefully, are messieurs the
+scullions, who enter in the interval between two sauces, to take a
+little whiff of mass; and these bring the smell of the repast with
+them into the church, which now is in high festival and warm from the
+number of lighted tapers.
+
+Is it the sight of their little white caps that so distracts the
+celebrant? Is it not rather Garrigou's bell? that mad little bell
+which is shaken at the altar foot with an infernal impetuosity that
+seems all the time to be saying: "Come, let us make haste, make
+haste.... The sooner we shall have finished, the sooner shall we be at
+table." The fact is that every time this devil's bell tinkles the
+chaplain forgets his mass, and thinks of nothing but the midnight
+repast. He fancies he sees the cooks bustling about, the stoves
+glowing with forge-like fires, the two magnificent turkeys, filled,
+crammed, marbled with truffles....
+
+Then again he sees, passing along, files of little pages carrying
+dishes enveloped in tempting vapours, and with them he enters the
+great hall now prepared for the feast. Oh delight! there is the
+immense table all laden and luminous, peacocks adorned with their
+feathers, pheasants spreading out their reddish-brown wings,
+ruby-coloured decanters, pyramids of fruit glowing amid green boughs,
+and those wonderful fish Garrigou (ah well, yes, Garrigou!) had
+mentioned, laid on a couch of fennel, with their pearly scales
+gleaming as if they had just come out of the water, and bunches of
+sweet-smelling herbs in their monstrous snouts. So clear is the vision
+of these marvels that it seems to Dom Balaguere that all these
+wondrous dishes are served before him on the embroidered altar-cloth,
+and two or three times instead of the _Dominus vobiscum_, he finds
+himself saying the _Benedicite_. Except these slight mistakes, the
+worthy man pronounces the service very conscientiously, without
+skipping a line, without omitting a genuflexion; and all goes
+tolerably well until the end of the first mass; for you know that on
+Christmas Day the same officiating priest must celebrate three
+consecutive masses.
+
+"That's one done!" says the chaplain to himself with a sigh of
+relief; then, without losing a moment, he motioned to his clerk, or to
+him whom he supposed to be his clerk, and...
+
+"Ting-a-ring ... Ting-a-ring, a-ring!"
+
+Now the second mass is beginning, and with it begins also Dom
+Balaguere's sin. "Quick, quick, let us make haste," Garrigou's bell
+cries out to him in its shrill little voice, and this time the unhappy
+celebrant, completely given over to the demon of gluttony, fastens
+upon the missal and devours its pages with the eagerness of his
+over-excited appetite. Frantically he bows down, rises up, merely
+indicates the sign of the cross and the genuflexions, and curtails all
+his gestures in order to get sooner finished. Scarcely has he
+stretched out his arms at the gospel, before he is striking his breast
+at the _Confiteor_. It is a contest between himself and the clerk as
+to who shall mumble the faster. Versicles and responses are hurried
+over and run one into another. The words, half pronounced, without
+opening the mouth, which would take up too much time, terminate in
+unmeaning murmurs.
+
+"_Oremus ps ... ps ... ps...._"
+
+"_Mea culpa ... pa ... pa...._"
+
+Like vintagers in a hurry pressing grapes in the vat, these two paddle
+in the mass Latin, sending splashes in every direction.
+
+"_Dom ... scum!..._" says Balaguere.
+
+"_... Stutuo!..._" replies Garrigou; and all the time the cursed
+little bell is tinkling there in their ears, like the jingles they put
+on post-horses to make them gallop fast. You may imagine at that speed
+a low mass is quickly disposed of.
+
+"That makes two," says the chaplain quite panting; then without taking
+time to breathe, red and perspiring, he descends the altar steps
+and...
+
+"Ting-a-ring!... Ting-a-ring!..."
+
+Now the third mass is beginning. There are but a few more steps to be
+taken to reach the dining-hall; but, alas! the nearer the midnight
+repast approaches the more does the unfortunate Balaguere feel himself
+possessed by mad impatience and gluttony. The vision becomes more
+distinct; the golden carps, the roasted turkeys are there, there!...
+He touches them, ... he ... oh heavens! The dishes are smoking, the
+wines perfume the air; and with furiously agitated clapper, the little
+bell is crying out to him:
+
+"Quick, quick, quicker yet!"
+
+But how could he go quicker? His lips scarcely move. He no longer
+pronounces the words; ... unless he were to impose upon Heaven
+outright and trick it out of its mass.... And that is precisely what
+he does, the unfortunate man!... From temptation to temptation; he
+begins by skipping a verse, then two. Then the epistle is too long--he
+does not finish it, skims over the gospel, passes before the _Credo_
+without going into it, skips the _Pater_, salutes the _Preface_ from a
+distance, and by leaps and bounds thus hurls himself into eternal
+damnation, constantly followed by the vile Garrigou (_vade retro,
+Satanas!_), who seconds him with wonderful skill, sustains his
+chasuble, turns over the leaves two at a time, elbows the
+reading-desks, upsets the vessels, and is continually sounding the
+little bell louder and louder, quicker and quicker.
+
+You should have seen the scared faces of all who were present, as they
+were obliged to follow this mass by mere mimicry of the priest,
+without hearing a word; some rise when others kneel, and sit down when
+the others are standing up, and all the phases of this singular
+service are mixed up together in the multitude of different attitudes
+presented by the worshippers on the benches....
+
+"The _abbe_ goes too fast.... One can't follow him," murmured the old
+dowager, shaking her head-dress in confusion. Master Arnoton with
+great steel spectacles on his nose is searching in his prayer-book to
+find where the dickens they are. But at heart all these good folks,
+who themselves are thinking about feasting, are not sorry that the
+mass is going on at this post haste; and when Dom Balaguere with
+radiant face turns towards those present and cries with all his might:
+"_Ite, missa est_," they all respond to him a "_Deo gratias_" in but
+one voice, and that as joyous and enthusiastic, as if they thought
+themselves already seated at the midnight repast and drinking the
+first toast.
+
+
+III
+
+Five minutes afterwards the crowd of nobles were sitting down in the
+great hall, with the chaplain in the midst of them. The chateau,
+illuminated from top to bottom, was resounding with songs, with
+shouts, with laughter, with uproar; and the venerable Dom Balaguere
+was thrusting his fork into the wing of a fowl, and drowning all
+remorse for his sin in streams of regal wine and the luscious juices
+of the viands. He ate and drank so much, the dear, holy man, that he
+died during the night of a terrible attack, without even having had
+time to repent; and then in the morning when he got to heaven, I leave
+you to imagine how he was received.
+
+He was told to withdraw on account of his wickedness. His fault was so
+grievous that it effaced a whole lifetime of virtue.... He had robbed
+them of a midnight mass.... He should have to pay for it with three
+hundred, and he should not enter into Paradise until he had celebrated
+in his own chapel these three hundred Christmas masses in the presence
+of all those who had sinned with him and by his fault....
+
+... And now this is the true legend of Dom Balaguere as it is related
+in the olive country. At the present time the chateau of Trinquelague
+no longer exists, but the chapel still stands on the top of Mount
+Ventoux, amid a cluster of green oaks. Its decayed door rattles in the
+wind, and its threshold is choked up with vegetation; there are birds'
+nests at the corners of the altar, and in the recesses of the lofty
+windows, from which the stained glass has long ago disappeared. It
+seems, however, that every year at Christmas, a supernatural light
+wanders amid these ruins, and the peasants, in going to the masses and
+to the midnight repasts, see this phantom of a chapel illuminated by
+invisible tapers that burn in the open air, even in snow and wind. You
+may laugh at it if you like, but a vine-dresser of the place, named
+Garrigue, doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, declared to me that one
+Christmas night, when he was a little tipsy, he lost his way on the
+hill of Trinquelague; and this is what he saw.... Till eleven
+o'clock, nothing. All was silent, motionless, inanimate. Suddenly,
+about midnight, a chime sounded from the top of the steeple, an old,
+old chime, which seemed as if it were ten leagues off. Very soon
+Garrigue saw lights flitting about, and uncertain shadows moving in
+the road that climbs the hill. They passed on beneath the chapel
+porch, and murmured:
+
+"Good evening, Master Arnoton!"
+
+"Good evening, good evening, my friends!" ...
+
+When all had entered, my vine-dresser, who was very courageous,
+silently approached, and when he looked through the broken door, a
+singular spectacle met his gaze. All those he had seen pass were
+seated round the choir, and in the ruined nave, just as if the old
+seats still existed. Fine ladies in brocade, with lace head-dresses;
+lords adorned from head to foot; peasants in flowered jackets such as
+our grandfathers had; all with an old, faded, dusty, tired look. From
+time to time the night birds, the usual inhabitants of the chapel, who
+were aroused by all these lights, would come and flit round the
+tapers, the flames of which rose straight and ill-defined, as if they
+were burning behind a veil; and what amused Garrigue very much was a
+certain personage with large steel spectacles, who was ever shaking
+his tall black wig, in which one of these birds was quite entangled,
+and kept itself upright by noiselessly flapping its wings....
+
+At the farther end, a little old man of childish figure was on his
+knees in the middle of the choir, desperately shaking a clapperless
+and soundless bell, whilst a priest, clad in ancient gold, was coming
+and going before the altar, reciting prayers of which not a word was
+heard.... Most certainly this was Dom Balaguere in the act of saying
+his third low mass.
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS[19]
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+    [19] By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers. New
+    York and London.
+
+It will not do at all to disbelieve in the existence of a personal
+devil. It is not so many years ago that one of our profoundest divines
+remarked with indignation upon such disbelief. "No such person?" cried
+the doctor with energy. "Don't tell me! I can hear his tail snap and
+crack about amongst the churches any day!"
+
+And if the enemy is, in truth, still as vigorously active among the
+sons of God as he was in the days of Job (that is to say, in the time
+of Solomon, when, as the critics have found out, the Book of Job was
+written), then surely still more is he vigilant and sly in his tricks
+for foreclosing his mortgages upon the souls of the wicked.
+
+And once more: still more than ever is his personal appearance
+probable in these latter days. The everlasting tooting of the wordy
+Cumming has proclaimed the end of all things for a quarter of a
+century; and he will surely see his prophecy fulfilled if he can only
+keep it up long enough. But, though we discredit the sapient
+Second-Adventist as to the precise occasion of the diabolic avatar,
+has there not been a strange coincidence between his noisy
+declarations, and other evidences of an approximation of the spiritual
+to the bodily sphere of life? Is not this same quarter of a century
+that of the Spiritists? Has it not witnessed the development of Od?
+And of clairvoyance? And have not the doctrines of ghosts, and
+re-appearances of the dead, and of messages from them, risen into a
+prominence entirely new, and into a coherence and semblance at least
+of fact and fixed law such as was never known before? Yea, verily. Of
+all times in the world's history, to reject out of one's beliefs
+either good spirits or bad, angelology or diabology, chief good being,
+or chief bad being, this is the most improper.
+
+Dr. Hicok was trebly liable to the awful temptation, under which he
+had assuredly fallen, over and above the fact that he was a prig,
+which makes one feel the more glad that he was so handsomely come up
+with in the end; such a prig that everybody who knew him, invariably
+called him (when he wasn't by) Hicok-alorum. This charming surname had
+been conferred on him by a crazy old fellow with whom he once got into
+a dispute. Lunatics have the most awfully tricky ways of dodging out
+of pinches in reasoning; but Hicok knew too much to know _that_; and
+so he acquired his fine title to teach him one thing more.
+
+Trebly liable, we said. The three reasons are,--
+
+  1. He was foreign-born.
+  2. He was a Scotchman.
+  3. He was a physician and surgeon.
+
+The way in which these causes operated was as follows (I wish it were
+allowable to use Artemas Ward's curiously satisfactory vocable
+"thusly:" like Mrs. Wiggle's soothing syrup, it "supplies a real
+want"):--
+
+Being foreign-born, Dr. Hicok had not the unfailing moral stamina of a
+native American, and therefore was comparatively easily beset by sin.
+Being, secondly, a Scotchman, he was not only thoroughly conceited,
+with a conceit as immovable as the Bass Rock, just as other folks
+sometimes are, but, in particular, he was perfectly sure of his utter
+mastery of metaphysics, logic and dialectics, or, as he used to call
+it, with a snobbish Teutonicalization, _dialektik_. Now, in the latter
+two, the Scotch can do something, but in metaphysics they are simply
+imbecile; which quality, in the inscrutable providence of God, has
+been joined with an equally complete conviction of the exact opposite.
+Let not man, therefore, put those traits asunder--not so much by
+reason of any divine ordinance, as because no man in his senses would
+try to convince a Scotchman--or anybody else, for that matter.
+
+Thirdly, he was a physician and surgeon; and gentlemen of this
+profession are prone to become either thoroughgoing materialists, or
+else implicit and extreme Calvinistic Presbyterians, "of the large
+blue kind." And they are, moreover, positive, hard-headed, bold, and
+self-confident. So they have good need to be. Did not Majendie say to
+his students, "Gentlemen, disease is a subject which physicians know
+nothing about"?
+
+So the doctor both believed in the existence of a personal devil, and
+believed in his own ability to get the upper hand of that individual
+in a tournament of the wits. Ah, he learned better by terrible
+experience! The doctor was a dry-looking little chap, with sandy hair,
+a freckled face, small grey eyes, and absurd white eyebrows and
+eyelashes, which made him look as if he had finished off his toilet
+with just a light flourish from the dredging-box. He was erect of
+carriage, and of a prompt, ridiculous alertness of step and motion,
+very much like that of Major Wellington De Boots. And his face
+commonly wore a kind of complacent serenity such as the Hindoos
+ascribe to Buddha. I know a little snappish dentist's-goods dealer up
+town, who might be mistaken for Hicok-alorum any day.
+
+Well, well--what had the doctor done? Why--it will sound absurd,
+probably, to some unbelieving people--but really Dr. Hicok confessed
+the whole story to me himself: he had made a bargain with the Evil
+One! And indeed he was such an uncommonly disagreeable-looking fellow,
+that, unless on some such hypothesis, it is impossible to imagine how
+he could have prospered as he did. He gained patients, and cured them
+too; made money; invested successfully; bought a brown-stone front--a
+house, not a wiglet--then bought other real estate; began to put his
+name on charity subscription lists, and to be made vice-president of
+various things.
+
+Chiefest of all,--it must have been by some superhuman aid that Dr.
+Hicok married his wife, the then and present Mrs. Hicok. Dear me! I
+have described the doctor easily enough. But how infinitely more
+difficult it is to delineate Beauty than the Beast: did you ever think
+of it? All I can say is, that she is a very lovely woman now; and she
+must have been, when the doctor married her, one of the loveliest
+creatures that ever lived--a lively, graceful, bright-eyed brunette,
+with thick fine long black hair, pencilled delicate eyebrows, little
+pink ears, thin high nose, great astonished brown eyes, perfect
+teeth, a little rosebud of a mouth, and a figure so extremely
+beautiful that nobody believed she did not pad--hardly even the
+artists who--those of them at least who work faithfully in the
+life-school--are the very best judges extant of truth in costume and
+personal beauty. But, furthermore, she was good, with the innocent
+unconscious goodness of a sweet little child; and of all feminine
+charms--even beyond her supreme grace of motion--she possessed the
+sweetest, the most resistless--a lovely voice; whose tones, whether in
+speech or song, were perfect in sweetness, and with a strange
+penetrating sympathetic quality and at the same time with the most
+wonderful half-delaying completeness of articulation and modulation,
+as if she enjoyed the sound of her own music. No doubt she did; but it
+was unconsciously, like a bird. The voice was so sweet, the great
+loveliness and kindness of soul it expressed were so deep, that, like
+every exquisite beauty, it rayed forth a certain sadness within the
+pleasure it gave. It awakened infinite, indistinct emotions of beauty
+and perfection--infinite longings.
+
+It's of no use to tell me that such a spirit--she really ought not to
+be noted so low down as amongst human beings--that such a spirit could
+have been made glad by becoming the yoke-fellow of Hicok-alorum, by
+influences exclusively human. No!--I don't believe it--I won't believe
+it--it can't be believed. I can't convince you, of course, for you
+don't know her; but if you did, along with the rest of the evidence,
+and if your knowledge was like mine, that from the testimony of my
+own eyes and ears and judgment--you would know, just as I do, that
+the doctor's possession of his wife was the key-stone of the arch of
+completed proof on which I found my absolute assertion that he had
+made that bargain.
+
+He certainly had! A most characteristic transaction too; for while,
+after the usual fashion, it was agreed by the "party of the first
+part,"--viz., Old Scratch--that Dr. Hicok should succeed in whatever
+he undertook during twenty years, and by the party of the second part,
+that at the end of that time the D---- should fetch him in manner and
+form as is ordinarily provided, yet there was added a peculiar clause.
+This was, that, when the time came for the doctor to depart, he should
+be left entirely whole and unharmed, in mind, body, and estate,
+provided he could put to the Devil three consecutive questions, of
+which either one should be such that that cunning spirit could not
+solve it on the spot.
+
+So for twenty years Dr. Hicok lived and prospered, and waxed very
+great. He did not gain one single pound avoirdupois however, which may
+perchance seem strange, but is the most natural thing in the world.
+Who ever saw a little, dry, wiry, sandy, freckled man, with white
+eyebrows, that did grow fat? And besides, the doctor spent all his
+leisure time in hunting up his saving trinity of questions; and hard
+study, above all for such a purpose, is as sure an anti-fattener as
+Banting.
+
+He knew the Scotch metaphysicians by heart already, _ex-officio_ as it
+were; but he very early gave up the idea of trying to fool the Devil
+with such mud-pie as that. Yet be it understood, that he found cause
+to except Sir William Hamilton from the muddle-headed crew. He chewed
+a good while, and pretty hopefully, upon the Quantification of the
+Predicate; but he had to give that up too, when he found out how small
+and how dry a meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
+Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload more of old
+casuists, Romanist and Protestant.
+
+He exhausted the learning of the Development Theory. He studied and
+experimented up to the existing limits of knowledge on the question of
+the Origin of Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
+could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at the end of
+our noses on that, as well as most other questions. He hammered his
+way through the whole controversy on the Freedom of the Will. He
+mastered the whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and of
+two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American college
+professors on the other, on the question of Protection or Free Trade.
+He made, with vast pains, an extensive collection of the questions
+proposed at debating societies and college-students' societies with
+long Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr. Hicok had got the
+idea, that, from the spontaneous activity of so many free young
+geniuses, many wondrous and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having,
+however, tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all these
+innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were only seventeen questions
+debated! The doctor read me a curious little memorandum of his
+conclusions on this unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed
+some day.
+
+He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted little
+Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat the Devil out of his
+soul, can accomplish an amazing deal in twenty years. He even went so
+far as to take into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
+the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in that case, would be
+the mortification of having stooped to an inadequate adversary--a
+foeman unworthy of his steel. So he weighed such queries as the old
+scholastic _brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
+intentiones?_ and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More
+silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, _An averia carrucae
+capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?_
+
+He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and among the chips
+from his workshop is a really clever theory of conundrums. He has a
+classification and discussion of them, all his own, and quite
+ingenious and satisfactory, which divides them into answerable and
+unanswerable, and, under each of these, into resemblant and
+differential.
+
+For instance: let the four classes be distinguished with the initials
+of those four terms, A. R., A. D., U. R., and U. D.; you will find
+that the Infinite Possible Conundrum (so to speak) can always be
+reduced under one of those four heads. Using symbols, as they do in
+discussing syllogism--indeed, by the way, a conundrum is only a
+jocular variation in the syllogism, an intentional fallacy for fun
+(read Whately's _Logic_, Book III., and see if it isn't so)--using
+symbols, I say, you have these four "figures:"--
+
+I. (A. R.) Why is A like B? (answerable): as, Why is a gentleman who
+gives a young lady a young dog, like a person who rides rapidly up
+hill? A. Because he gives a gallop up (gal-a-pup).
+
+_Sub-variety_; depending upon a violation of something like the
+"principle of excluded middle," a very fallacy of a fallacy; such as
+the ancient "nigger-minstrel!" case, Why is an elephant like a brick?
+A. Because neither of them can climb a tree.
+
+II. (A. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (answerable) usually put thus: What
+is the difference between A and B? (Figure I., if worded in the same
+style, would become: What is the similarity between A and B?): as,
+What is the difference between the old United-States Bank and the
+Fulton Ferry-boat signals in thick weather? A. One is a fog whistle,
+and the other is a Whig fossil.
+
+III. (U. R.) Why is A like B? (unanswerable): as Charles Lamb's
+well-known question, Is that your own hare, or a wig?
+
+IV. (U. D.) Why is A _unlike_ B? (unanswerable): i. e., What is the
+difference, &c, as, What is the difference between a fac simile and a
+sick family; or between hydraulics and raw-hide licks?
+
+But let me not diverge too far into frivolity. All the hopefully
+difficult questions Dr. Hicok set down and classified. He compiled a
+set of rules on the subject, and indeed developed a whole philosophy
+of it, by which he struck off, as soluble, questions or classes of
+them. Some he thought out himself; others were now and then answered
+in some learned book, that led the way through the very heart of one
+or another of his biggest mill-stones.
+
+So it was really none too much time that he had; and, in truth, he did
+not actually decide upon his three questions, until just a week before
+the fearful day when he was to put them.
+
+It came at last, as every day of reckoning surely comes; and Dr.
+Hicok, memorandum in hand, sat in his comfortable library about three
+o'clock on one beautiful warm summer afternoon, as pale as a sheet,
+his heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp's biggest steam-hammer at
+Essen, his mouth and tongue parched and feverish, a pitcher of cold
+water at hand from which he sipped and sipped, though it seemed as if
+his throat repelled it into "the globular state," or dispersed it into
+steam, as red-hot iron does. Around him were the records of the vast
+army of doubters and quibblers in whose works he had been hunting, as
+a traveller labours through a jungle, for the deepest doubts, the most
+remote inquiries.
+
+Sometimes, with that sort of hardihood, rather than reason, which
+makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know
+to be true, Dr. Hicok would say to himself, "I know I've got him!" And
+then his heart would seem to fall out of him, it sank so suddenly, and
+with so deadly a faintness, as the other side of his awful case loomed
+before him, and he thought, "But if--?" He would not finish _that_
+question; he could not. The furthest point to which he could bring
+himself was that of a sort of icy outer stiffening of acquiescence in
+the inevitable.
+
+There was a ring at the street-door. The servant brought in a card, on
+a silver salver.
+
+  +-----------------+
+  | MR. APOLLO LYON |
+  +-----------------+
+
+"Show the gentleman in," said the doctor. He spoke with difficulty;
+for the effort to control his own nervous excitement was so immense an
+exertion, that he hardly had the self-command and muscular energy even
+to articulate.
+
+The servant returned, and ushered into the library a handsome,
+youngish, middle-aged and middle-sized gentleman, pale, with large
+melancholy black eyes, and dressed in the most perfect and quiet
+style.
+
+The doctor arose, and greeted his visitor with a degree of steadiness
+and politeness that did him the greatest credit.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" he said: "I am happy"--but it struck him that he
+wasn't, and he stopped short.
+
+"Very right, my dear sir," replied the guest, in a voice that was
+musical but perceptibly sad, or rather patient in tone. "Very right;
+how hollow those formulas are! I hate all forms and ceremonies! But I
+am glad to see _you_, doctor. Now, that is really the fact."
+
+No doubt! "Divil doubt him!" as an Irishman would say. So is a cat
+glad to see a mouse in its paw. Something like these thoughts arose in
+the doctor's mind; he smiled as affably as he could, and requested the
+visitor to be seated.
+
+"Thanks!" replied he, and took the chair which the doctor moved up to
+the table for him. He placed his hat and gloves on the table. There
+was a brief pause, as might happen if any two friends sat down at
+their ease for a chat on matters and things in general. The visitor
+turned over a volume or two that lay on the table.
+
+"The Devil," he read from one of them; "His Origin, Greatness, and
+Decadence. By the Rev. A. Reville, D.D."
+
+"Ah!" he commented quietly. "A Frenchman, I observe. If it had been an
+Englishman, I should fancy he wrote the book for the sake of the rhyme
+in the title. Do you know, doctor, I fancy that incredulity of his
+will substitute one dash for the two periods in the reverend
+gentleman's degree! I know no one greater condition of success in some
+lines of operation, than to have one's existence thoroughly
+disbelieved in."
+
+The doctor forced himself to reply: "I hardly know how I came to have
+the book here. Yet he does make out a pretty strong case. I confess I
+would like to be certified that he is right. Suppose you allow
+yourself to be convinced?" And the poor fellow grinned: it couldn't be
+called a smile.
+
+"Why, really, I'll look into it. I've considered the point though, not
+that I'm sure I could choose. And you know, as the late J. Milton very
+neatly observed, one would hardly like to lose one's intellectual
+being, 'though full of pain;'" and he smiled, not unkindly but sadly,
+and then resumed: "A Bible too. Very good edition. I remember seeing
+it stated that a professional person made it his business to find
+errors of the press in one of the Bible Society's editions--this very
+one, I think; and the only one he could discover was a single 'wrong
+font.' Very accurate work--very!"
+
+He had been turning over the leaves indifferently as he spoke, and
+laid the volume easily back. "Curious old superstition that," he
+remarked, "that certain personages were made uncomfortable by this
+work!" And he gave the doctor a glance, as much as to ask, in the most
+delicate manner in the world, "Did you put that there to scare me
+with?"
+
+I think the doctor blushed a little. He had not really expected, you
+know,--still, in case there should be any prophylactic influence--? No
+harm done, in any event; and that was precisely the observation made
+by the guest.
+
+"No harm done, my dear fellow!" he said, in his calm, quiet, musical
+voice. No good, either, I imagine they both of them added to
+themselves.
+
+There is an often repeated observation, that people under the pressure
+of an immeasurable misery or agony seem to take on a preternaturally
+sharp vision for minute details, such as spots in the carpet, and
+sprigs in the wall-paper, threads on a sleeve, and the like. Probably
+the doctor felt this influence. He had dallied a little, too, with the
+crisis; and so did his visitor--from different motives, no doubt; and,
+as he sat there, his eye fell on the card that had just been brought
+to him.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said; "but might I ask a question about your
+card?"
+
+"Most certainly, doctor: what is it?"
+
+"Why--it's always a liberty to ask questions about a gentleman's name,
+and we Scotchmen are particularly sensitive on the point; but I have
+always been interested in the general subject of patronomatology."
+
+The other, by a friendly smile and a deprecating wave of the hand,
+renewed his welcome to the doctor's question.
+
+"Well, it's this: How did you come to decide upon that form of
+name--Mr. Apollo Lyon?"
+
+"Oh! just a little fancy of mine. It's a newly-invented variable card,
+I believe they call it. There's a temporary ink arrangement. It struck
+me it was liable to abuse in case of an assumption of _aliases_; but
+perhaps that's none of my business. You can easily take off the upper
+name, and another one comes out underneath. I'm always interested in
+inventions. See."
+
+And as the text, "But they have sought out many inventions," passed
+through Dr. Hicok's mind, the other drew forth a white handkerchief,
+and, rubbing the card in a careless sort of way, laid it down before
+the doctor. Perhaps the strain on the poor doctor's nerves was
+unsteadying him by this time: he may not have seen right; but he
+seemed to see only one name, as if compounded from the former two.
+
+  +------------+
+  |  APOLLYON  |
+  +------------+
+
+And it seemed to be in red ink instead of black; and the lines seemed
+to creep and throb and glow, as if the red were the red of fire,
+instead of vermilion. But red is an extremely trying colour to the
+eyes. However, the doctor, startled as he was, thought best not to
+raise any further queries, and only said, perhaps with some
+difficulty, "Very curious, I'm sure!"
+
+"Well, doctor," said Mr. Lyon, or whatever his name was, "I don't want
+to hurry you, but I suppose we might as well have our little business
+over?"
+
+"Why, yes. I suppose you wouldn't care to consider any question of
+compromises or substitutes?"
+
+"I fear it's out of the question, really," was the reply, most kindly
+in tone, but with perfect distinctness.
+
+There was a moment's silence. It seemed to Dr. Hicok as if the beating
+of his heart must fill the room, it struck so heavily, and the blood
+seemed to surge with so loud a rush through the carotids up past his
+ears. "Shall I be found to have gone off with a rush of blood to the
+head?" he thought to himself. But--it can very often be done by a
+resolute effort--he gathered himself together as it were, and with one
+powerful exertion mastered his disordered nerves. Then he lifted his
+memorandum, gave one glance at the sad, calm face opposite him, and
+spoke.
+
+"You know they're every once in a while explaining a vote, as they
+call it, in Congress. It don't make any difference, I know; but it
+seems to me as if I should put you more fully in possession of my
+meaning, if I should just say a word or two, about the reasons for my
+selection."
+
+The visitor bowed with his usual air of pleasant acquiescence.
+
+"I am aware," said Dr. Hicok, "that my selection would seem thoroughly
+commonplace to most people. Yet nobody knows better than you do, my
+dear sir, that the oldest questions are the newest. The same vitality
+which is so strong in them, as to raise them as soon as thought
+begins, is infinite, and maintains them as long as thought endures.
+Indeed, I may say to you frankly, that it is by no means on novelty,
+but rather on antiquity, that I rely."
+
+The doctor's hearer bowed with an air of approving interest. "Very
+justly reasoned," he observed. The doctor went on--
+
+"I have, I may say--and under the circumstances I shall not be
+suspected of conceit--made pretty much the complete circuit of
+unsolved problems. They class exactly as those questions do which we
+habitually reckon as solved: under the three subjects to which they
+relate--God, the intelligent creation, the unintelligent creation.
+Now, I have selected my questions accordingly--one for each of those
+divisions. Whether I have succeeded in satisfying the conditions
+necessary will appear quickly. But you see that I have not stooped to
+any quibbling, or begging either. I have sought to protect myself by
+the honourable use of a masculine reason."
+
+"Your observations interest me greatly," remarked the audience. "Not
+the less so, that they are so accurately coincident with my own
+habitual lines of thought--at least, so far as I can judge from what
+you have said. Indeed, suppose you had called upon me to help you
+prepare insoluble problems. I was bound, I suppose, to comply to the
+best of my ability; and, if I had done so, those statements of yours
+are thus far the very preface I supplied--I beg your pardon--should
+have supplied--you with. I fancy I could almost state the questions.
+Well?"--
+
+All this was most kind and complimentary; but somehow it did not
+encourage the doctor in the least. He even fancied that he detected a
+sneer, as if his interlocutor had been saying, "Flutter away, old
+bird! That was _my bait_ that you have been feeding on: you're safe
+enough; it is my net that holds you."
+
+"_First Question_," said Dr. Hicok, with steadiness: "Reconcile the
+foreknowledge and the fore-ordination of God with the free will of
+man?"
+
+"I thought so, of course," remarked the other. Then he looked straight
+into the doctor's keen little grey eyes with his deep melancholy black
+ones, and raised his slender fore-finger. "Most readily. The
+reconciliation is _your own conscience_, doctor! Do what you know to
+be right, and you will find that there is nothing to reconcile--that
+you and your Maker have no debates to settle!"
+
+The words were spoken with a weighty solemnity and conviction that
+were even awful. The doctor had a conscience, though he had found
+himself practically forced, for the sake of success, to use a good
+deal of constraint with it--in fact, to lock it up, as it were, in a
+private mad-house, on an unfounded charge of lunacy. But the obstinate
+thing would not die, and would not lose its wits; and now all of a
+sudden, and from the very last quarter where it was to be expected,
+came a summons before whose intensity of just requirement no bolts
+could stand. The doctor's conscience walked out of her prison, and
+came straight up to the field of battle, and said--
+
+"Give up the first question."
+
+And he obeyed.
+
+"I confess it," he said. "But how could I have expected a great basic
+truth both religiously and psychologically so, from--from _you_?"
+
+"Ah! my dear sir," was the reply, "you have erred in _that_ line of
+thought, exactly as many others have. The truth is one and the same,
+to God, man, and devil."
+
+"_Second Question_," said Dr. Hicok. "Reconcile the development
+theory, connection of natural selection and sexual relation, with the
+responsible immortality of the soul."
+
+"Unquestionably," assented the other, as if to say, "Just as I
+expected."
+
+"No theory of creation has any logical connection with any doctrine of
+immortality. What was the motive of creation?--_that_ would be a
+question! If you had asked me _that_! But the question, 'Where did men
+come from?' has no bearing on the question, 'Have they any duties now
+that they are here?' The two are reconciled, because they do not
+differ. You can't state any inconsistency between a yard measure and a
+fifty-six pound weight."
+
+The doctor nodded; he sat down; he took a glass of water, and pressed
+his hand to his heart. "Now, then," he said to himself, "once more! If
+I have to stand this fifteen minutes I shall be in _some_ other
+world!"
+
+The door from the inner room opened; and Mrs. Hicok came singing in,
+carrying balanced upon her pretty pink fore-finger something or other
+of an airy bouquet-like fabric. Upon this she was looking with much
+delight.
+
+"See, dear!" she said: "how perfectly lovely!"
+
+Both gentlemen started, and the lady started too. She had not known of
+the visit; and she had not, until this instant, seen that her husband
+was not alone.
+
+Dr. Hicok, of course, had never given her the key to his
+skeleton-closet; for he was a shrewd man. He loved her too; and he
+thought he had provided for her absence during the ordeal. She had
+executed her shopping with unprecedented speed.
+
+Why the visitor started, would be difficult to say. Perhaps her voice
+startled him. The happy music in it was enough like a beautified
+duplicate of his own thrilling sweet tones, to have made him
+acknowledge her for a sister--from heaven. He started, at any rate.
+
+"Mr. Lyon, my wife," said the doctor, somewhat at a loss. Mr. Lyon
+bowed, and so did the lady.
+
+"I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I am sure," she said. "I did not know
+you were busy, dear. There is a thunder-shower coming up. I drove home
+just in season."
+
+"Oh!--only a little wager, about some conundrums," said the doctor.
+Perhaps he may be excused for his fib. He did not want to annoy her
+unnecessarily.
+
+"Oh, do let me know!" she said, with much eagerness. "You know how I
+enjoy them!"
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "not exactly the ordinary kind. I was to
+puzzle my friend here with one out of three questions; and he has
+beaten me in two of them already. I've but one more chance."
+
+"Only one?" she asked, with a smile. "What a bright man your friend
+must be! I thought nobody could puzzle you, dear. Stay; let _me_ ask
+the other question."
+
+Both the gentlemen started again: it was quite a surprise.
+
+"But are you a married man, Mr. Lyon?" she asked, with a blush.
+
+"No, madam," was the reply, with a very graceful bow--"I have a
+mother, but no wife. Permit me to say, that, if I could believe there
+was a duplicate of yourself in existence, I would be as soon as
+possible."
+
+"Oh, what a gallant speech!" said the lady. "Thank you, sir, very
+much;" and she made him a pretty little curtsy. "Then I am quite sure
+of my question, sir. Shall I, dear?"
+
+The doctor quickly decided. "I am done for, anyhow," he reflected. "I
+begin to see that the old villain put those questions into my head
+himself. He hinted as much. I don't know but I'd rather she would ask
+it. It's better to have her kill me, I guess, than to hold out the
+carving-knife to him myself."
+
+"With all my heart, my dear," said the doctor, "if Mr. Lyon consents."
+
+Mr. Lyon looked a little disturbed; but his manner was perfect, as he
+replied that he regretted to seem to disoblige, but that he feared the
+conditions of their little bet would not allow it.
+
+"Beg your pardon, I'm sure, for being so uncivil," said the lively
+little beauty, as she whispered a few words in her husband's ear.
+
+This is what she said--
+
+"What's mine's yours, dear. Take it. Ask him--buz, buzz, buzz."
+
+The doctor nodded. Mrs. Hicok stood by him and smiled, still holding
+in her pretty pink fore-finger the frail shimmering thing just
+mentioned; and she gave it a twirl, so that it swung quite round.
+"Isn't it a love of a bonnet?" she said.
+
+"Yes," the doctor said aloud. "I adopt the question."
+
+"_Third Question. Which is the front side of this?_"
+
+And he pointed to the bonnet. It must have been a bonnet, because Mrs.
+Hicok called it so. I shouldn't have known it from the collection of
+things in a kaleidoscope, bunched up together.
+
+The lady stood before him, and twirled the wondrous fabric round and
+round, with the prettiest possible unconscious roguish look of
+defiance. The doctor's very heart stood still.
+
+"Put it on, please," said Mr. Lyon, in the most innocent way in the
+world.
+
+"Oh, no!" laughed she. "I know I'm only a woman, but I'm not _quite_
+so silly! But I'll tell you what: you men put it on, if you think that
+will help you!" And she held out the mystery to him.
+
+Confident in his powers of discrimination, Mr. Lyon took hold of the
+fairy-like combination of sparkles and threads and feathers and
+flowers, touching it with that sort of timid apprehension that
+bachelors use with a baby. He stood before the glass over the
+mantelpiece. First he put it across his head with one side in front,
+and then with the other. Then he put it lengthways of his head, and
+tried the effect of tying one of the two couples of strings under each
+of his ears. Then he put it on, the other side up; so that it swam on
+his head like a boat, with a high mounted bow and stern. More than
+once he did all this, with obvious care and thoughtfulness.
+
+Then he came slowly back, and resumed his seat. It was growing very
+dark, though they had not noticed it; for the thunder-shower had been
+hurrying on, and already its advanced guard of wind, heavy laden with
+the smell of the rain, could be heard, and a few large drops splashed
+on the window.
+
+The beautiful wife of the doctor laughed merrily to watch the growing
+discomposure of the visitor, who returned the bonnet, with
+undiminished courtesy, but with obvious constraint of manner.
+
+He looked down; he drummed on the table; he looked up; and both the
+doctor and the doctor's wife were startled at the intense sudden anger
+in the dark, handsome face. Then he sprang up, and went to the window.
+He looked out a moment, and then said--
+
+"Upon my word, that is going to be a very sharp squall! The clouds are
+_very_ heavy. If I'm any judge, something will be struck. I can feel
+the electricity in the air."
+
+While he still spoke, the first thunder-bolt crashed overhead. It was
+one of those close, sudden, overpoweringly awful explosions from
+clouds very heavy and very near, where the lightning and the thunder
+leap together out of the very air close about you, even as if you were
+in them. It was an unendurable burst of sound, and of the intense
+white sheety light of very near lightning. Dreadfully frightened, the
+poor little lady clung close to her husband. He, poor man, if possible
+yet more frightened, exhausted as he was by what he had been enduring,
+fainted dead away. Don't blame him: a cast-iron bull-dog might have
+fainted.
+
+Mrs. Hicok, thinking that her husband was struck dead by the
+lightning, screamed terribly. Then she touched him; and, seeing what
+was really the matter, administered cold water from the pitcher on the
+table. Shortly he revived.
+
+"Where is he?" he said.
+
+"I don't know, love. I thought you were dead. He must have gone away.
+Did it strike the house?"
+
+"Gone away? Thank God! Thank _you_, dear!" cried out the doctor.
+
+Not knowing any adequate cause for so much emotion, she answered him--
+
+"Now, love, don't you ever say women are not practical again. That was
+a practical question, you see. But didn't it strike the house? What a
+queer smell. Ozone: isn't that what you were telling me about? How
+funny, that lightning should have a smell!"
+
+"I believe there's no doubt of it," observed Dr. Hicok.
+
+Mr. Apollo Lyon had really gone, though just how or when, nobody could
+say.
+
+"My dear," said Dr. Hicok, "I do so like that bonnet of yours! I don't
+wonder it puzzled him. It would puzzle the Devil himself. I firmly
+believe I shall call it your Devil-puzzler."
+
+But he never told her what the puzzle had been.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND[20]
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+    [20] From _Longman's Magazine_, vol. xiv. [Copyright 1889 by
+    Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. By permission of
+    the Publishers.]
+
+     [The following story, translated by Miss Isabel Bruce from
+     _Le Grand Choleur_ of M. Charles Deulin (_Contes du Roi
+     Gambrinus_), gives a great deal of information about French
+     and Flemish golf. As any reader will see, this ancient game
+     represents a stage of evolution between golf and hockey. The
+     object is to strike a ball, in as few strokes as possible,
+     to a given point; but, after every three strokes, the
+     opponent is allowed to _decholer_, or make one stroke back,
+     or into a hazard. Here the element of hockey comes in. Get
+     rid of this element, let each man hit his own ball, and, in
+     place of striking to a point--say, the cemetery gate--let
+     men "putt" into holes, and the Flemish game becomes golf. It
+     is of great antiquity. Ducange, in his Lexicon of Low Latin,
+     gives _Choulla_, French _choule_ = "Globulus ligneus qui
+     clava propellitur"--a wooden ball struck with a club. The
+     head of the club was of iron (cf. _crossare_). This is borne
+     out by a miniature in a missal of 1504, which represents
+     peasants playing _choule_ with clubs very like niblicks.
+     Ducange quotes various MS. references of 1353, 1357, and
+     other dates older by a century than our earliest Scotch
+     references to golf. At present the game is played in Belgium
+     with a strangely-shaped lofting-iron and a ball of
+     beechwood. M. Zola (_Germinal_, p. 310) represents his
+     miners playing _chole_, or _choulle_, and says that they hit
+     drives of more than 500 yards. Experiments made at Wimbledon
+     with a Belgian club sent over by M. Charles Michel suggest
+     that M. Zola has over-estimated the distance. But M. Zola
+     and M. Deulin agree in making the players _run_ after the
+     ball. M. Henri Gaidoz adds that a similar game, called
+     _soule_, is played in various departments of France. He
+     refers to Laisnel de la Salle. The name _chole_ may be
+     connected with German _Kolbe_, and _golf_ may be the form
+     which this word would assume in a Celtic language. All this
+     makes golf very old; but the question arises, Are the
+     "holes" to which golfers play of Scotch or of Dutch origin?
+     There are several old Flemish pictures of golf; do any of
+     them show players in the act of "holing out"? There is said
+     to be such a picture at Neuchatel.
+
+                                                     A. LANG.]
+
+
+I
+
+Once upon a time there lived at the hamlet of Coq, near
+Conde-sur-l'Escaut, a wheelwright called Roger. He was a good fellow,
+untiring both at his sport and at his toil, and as skilful in lofting
+a ball with a stroke of his club as in putting together a cartwheel.
+Every one knows that the game of golf consists in driving towards a
+given point a ball of cherrywood with a club which has for head a sort
+of little iron shoe without a heel.
+
+For my part, I do not know a more amusing game; and when the country
+is almost cleared of the harvest, men, women, children, everybody,
+drives his ball as you please, and there is nothing cheerier than to
+see them filing on a Sunday like a flight of starlings across potato
+fields and ploughed lands.
+
+
+II
+
+Well, one Tuesday, it was a Shrove Tuesday, the wheelwright of Coq
+laid aside his plane, and was slipping on his blouse to go and drink
+his can of beer at Conde, when two strangers came in, club in hand.
+
+"Would you put a new shaft to my club, master?" said one of them.
+
+"What are you asking me, friends? A day like this! I wouldn't give the
+smallest stroke of the chisel for a brick of gold. Besides, does any
+one play golf on Shrove Tuesday? You had much better go and see the
+mummers tumbling in the high street of Conde."
+
+"We take no interest in the tumbling of mummers," replied the
+stranger. "We have challenged each other at golf and we want to play
+it out. Come, you won't refuse to help us, you who are said to be one
+of the finest players of the country?"
+
+"If it is a match, that is different," said Roger.
+
+He turned up his sleeves, hooked on his apron, and in the twinkling of
+an eye had adjusted the shaft.
+
+"How much do I owe you?" asked the unknown, drawing out his purse.
+
+"Nothing at all, faith; it is not worth while."
+
+The stranger insisted, but in vain.
+
+
+III
+
+"You are too honest, i'faith," said he to the wheelwright, "for me to
+be in your debt. I will grant you the fulfilment of three wishes."
+
+"Don't forget to wish what is _best_," added his companion.
+
+At these words the wheelwright smiled incredulously.
+
+"Are you not a couple of the loafers of Capelette?" he asked, with a
+wink.
+
+The idlers of the crossways of Capelette were considered the wildest
+wags in Conde.
+
+"Whom do you take us for?" replied the unknown in a tone of severity,
+and with his club he touched an axle, made of iron, which instantly
+changed into one of pure silver.
+
+"Who are you, then," cried Roger, "that your word is as good as ready
+money?"
+
+"I am St. Peter, and my companion is St. Antony, the patron of
+golfers."
+
+"Take the trouble to walk in, gentlemen," said the wheelwright of Coq;
+and he ushered the two saints into the back parlour. He offered them
+chairs, and went to draw a jug of beer in the cellar. They clinked
+their glasses together, and after each had lit his pipe:
+
+"Since you are so good, sir saints," said Roger, "as to grant me the
+accomplishment of three wishes, know that for a long while I have
+desired three things. I wish, first of all, that whoever seats himself
+upon the elm-trunk at my door may not be able to rise without my
+permission. I like company and it bores me to be always alone."
+
+St. Peter shook his head and St. Antony nudged his client.
+
+
+IV
+
+"When I play a game of cards, on Sunday evening, at the 'Fighting
+Cock,'" continued the wheelwright, "it is no sooner nine o'clock than
+the garde-champetre comes to chuck us out. I desire that whoever shall
+have his feet on my leathern apron cannot be driven from the place
+where I shall have spread it."
+
+St. Peter shook his head, and St. Antony, with a solemn air, repeated:
+
+"Don't forget what is _best_."
+
+"What is best," replied the wheelwright of Coq, nobly, "is to be the
+first golfer in the world. Every time I find my master at golf it
+turns my blood as black as the inside of the chimney. So I want a club
+that will carry the ball as high as the belfry of Conde, and will
+infallibly win me my match."
+
+"So be it," said St. Peter.
+
+"You would have done better," said St. Antony, "to have asked for your
+eternal salvation."
+
+"Bah!" replied the other. "I have plenty of time to think of that; I
+am not yet greasing my boots for the long journey."
+
+The two saints went out and Roger followed them, curious to be present
+at such a rare game; but suddenly, near the Chapel of St. Antony, they
+disappeared.
+
+The wheelwright then went to see the mummers tumbling in the high
+street of Conde.
+
+When he returned, towards midnight, he found at the corner of his door
+the desired club. To his great surprise it was only a bad little iron
+head attached to a wretched worn-out shaft. Nevertheless he took the
+gift of St. Peter and put it carefully away.
+
+
+V
+
+Next morning the Condeens scattered in crowds over the country, to
+play golf, eat red herrings, and drink beer, so as to scatter the
+fumes of wine from their heads and to revive after the fatigues of the
+Carnival. The wheelwright of Coq came too, with his miserable club,
+and made such fine strokes that all the players left their games to
+see him play. The following Sunday he proved still more expert; little
+by little his fame spread through the land. From ten leagues round the
+most skilful players hastened to come and be beaten, and it was then
+that he was named the Great Golfer.
+
+He passed the whole Sunday in golfing, and in the evening he rested
+himself by playing a game of matrimony at the "Fighting Cock." He
+spread his apron under the feet of the players, and the devil himself
+could not have put them out of the tavern, much less the rural
+policeman. On Monday morning he stopped the pilgrims who were going to
+worship at Notre Dame de Bon Secours; he induced them to rest
+themselves upon his _causeuse_, and did not let them go before he had
+confessed them well.
+
+In short, he led the most agreeable life that a good Fleming can
+imagine, and only regretted one thing--namely, that he had not wished
+it might last for ever.
+
+
+VI
+
+Well, it happened one day that the strongest player of Mons, who was
+called Paternostre, was found dead on the edge of a bunker. His head
+was broken, and near him was his niblick, red with blood.
+
+They could not tell who had done this business, and as Paternostre
+often said that at golf he feared neither man nor devil, it occurred
+to them that he had challenged Mynheer van Belzebuth, and that as a
+punishment for this he had knocked him on the head. Mynheer van
+Belzebuth is, as every one knows, the greatest gamester that there is
+upon or under the earth, but the game he particularly affects is golf.
+When he goes his round in Flanders one always meets him, club in hand,
+like a true Fleming.
+
+The wheelwright of Coq was very fond of Paternostre, who, next to
+himself, was the best golfer in the country. He went to his funeral
+with some golfers from the hamlets of Coq, La Cigogne, and La Queue de
+l'Ayache.
+
+On returning from the cemetery they went to the tavern to drink, as
+they say, to the memory of the dead,[21] and there they lost
+themselves in talk about the noble game of golf. When they separated,
+in the dusk of evening:
+
+    [21] _Boire la cervelle du mort._
+
+"A good journey to you," said the Belgian players, "and may St.
+Antony, the patron of golfers, preserve you from meeting the devil on
+the way!"
+
+"What do I care for the devil?" replied Roger. "If he challenged me I
+should soon beat him!"
+
+The companions trotted from tavern to tavern without misadventure; but
+the wolf-bell had long tolled for retiring in the belfry of Conde when
+they returned each one to his own den.
+
+
+VII
+
+As he was putting the key into the lock the wheelwright thought he
+heard a shout of mocking laughter. He turned, and saw in the darkness
+a man six feet high, who again burst out laughing.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" said he, crossly.
+
+"At what? Why, at the _aplomb_ with which you boasted a little while
+ago that you would dare measure yourself against the devil."
+
+"Why not, if he challenged me?"
+
+"Very well, my master, bring your clubs. I challenge you!" said
+Mynheer van Belzebuth, for it was himself. Roger recognized him by a
+certain odour of sulphur that always hangs about his majesty.
+
+"What shall the stake be?" he asked resolutely.
+
+"Your soul?"
+
+"Against what?"
+
+"Whatever you please."
+
+The wheelwright reflected.
+
+"What have you there in your sack?"
+
+"My spoils of the week."
+
+"Is the soul of Paternostre among them?"
+
+"To be sure! and those of five other golfers; dead, like him, without
+confession."
+
+"I play you my soul against that of Paternostre."
+
+"Done!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+The two adversaries repaired to the adjoining field and chose for
+their goal the door of the cemetery of Conde.[22] Belzebuth teed a
+ball on a frozen heap, after which he said, according to custom:
+
+    [22] They play to points, not holes.
+
+"From here, as you lie, in how many turns of three strokes will you
+run in?"
+
+"In two," replied the great golfer.
+
+And his adversary was not a little surprised, for from there to the
+cemetery was nearly a quarter of a league.
+
+"But how shall we see the ball?" continued the wheelwright.
+
+"True!" said Belzebuth.
+
+He touched the ball with his club, and it shone suddenly in the dark
+like an immense glowworm.
+
+"Fore!" cried Roger.
+
+He hit the ball with the head of his club, and it rose to the sky like
+a star going to rejoin its sisters. In three strokes it crossed
+three-quarters of the distance.
+
+"That is good!" said Belzebuth, whose astonishment redoubled. "My turn
+to play now!"[23]
+
+    [23] After each three strokes the opponent has one hit back,
+    or into a hazard.
+
+With one stroke of the club he drove the ball over the roofs of Coq
+nearly to Maison Blanche, half a league away. The blow was so violent
+that the iron struck fire against a pebble.
+
+"Good St. Antony! I am lost, unless you come to my aid," murmured the
+wheelwright of Coq.
+
+He struck tremblingly; but, though his arm was uncertain, the club
+seemed to have acquired a new vigour. At the second stroke the ball
+went as if of itself and hit the door of the cemetery.
+
+"By the horns of my grandfather!" cried Belzebuth, "it shall not be
+said that I have been beaten by a son of that fool Adam. Give me my
+revenge."
+
+"What shall we play for?"
+
+"Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers."
+
+
+IX
+
+The devil played up, "pressing" furiously; his club blazed at each
+stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Conde to
+Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six
+leagues from there.
+
+It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers
+followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to
+understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.
+
+In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six
+defunct golfers. Belzebuth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.
+
+"Shall we go on?" said the wheelwright of Coq.
+
+"No," replied the other; "they expect me at the Witches' Sabbath on
+the hill of Copiemont.
+
+"That brigand," said he aside, "is capable of filching all my game."
+
+And he vanished.
+
+Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went
+to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belzebuth.
+
+
+X
+
+Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he
+little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the
+workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.
+
+"Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?"
+
+"No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted."
+
+"Then how can I serve you?"
+
+"By following me: your hour is come."
+
+"The devil," said the great golfer, "could you not wait a little till
+I have finished this wheel?"
+
+"Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a
+smoke."
+
+"In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at
+your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound."
+
+"That's good, faith; make haste."
+
+And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm
+trunk.
+
+Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work.
+At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:
+
+"Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?"
+
+The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:
+
+    "Attendez-moi sur l'orme;
+     Vous m'attendrez longtemps."
+
+"I don't think he hears me," said Death. "Ho! friend, are you ready?"
+
+    "Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent, Jean,
+     Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent,"
+
+replied the singer.
+
+"Would the brute laugh at me?" said Death to himself.
+
+And he tried to rise.
+
+To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the _causeuse_.
+He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.
+
+"Let us see," he said to Roger. "What will you take to let me go? Do
+you wish me to prolong your life ten years?"
+
+    "J'ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatiere,"
+
+sang the great golfer.
+
+"Will you take twenty years?"
+
+    "Il pleut, il pleut, bergere;
+     Rentre tes blancs moutons."
+
+"Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?--may the devil admire you!"
+
+The wheelwright of Coq intoned:
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."
+
+In the meanwhile the clock of Conde had just struck four, and the
+boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a
+creature who struggled on the _causeuse_, like a devil in a holy-water
+pot, surprised and soon delighted them.
+
+Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death
+watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at
+him, singing in chorus:
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."
+
+"Will you take a hundred years?" yelled Death.
+
+"Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred
+years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am
+not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age."
+
+"Then what do you want?"
+
+"From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. 'Si
+jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!' says the proverb. I wish to
+preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to
+acquire the knowledge of an old one."
+
+"So be it," said Death; "I shall return this day a hundred years."
+
+    "Bon voyage, cher Dumollet,
+     A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."
+
+
+XI
+
+The great golfer began a new life. At first he enjoyed perfect
+happiness, which was increased by the certainty of its not ending for
+a hundred years. Thanks to his experience, he so well understood the
+management of his affairs that he could leave his mallet and shut up
+shop.[24]
+
+    [24] _Vivre a porte close._
+
+He experienced, nevertheless, an annoyance he had not foreseen. His
+wonderful skill at golf ended by frightening the players whom he had
+at first delighted, and was the cause of his never finding any one who
+would play against him.
+
+He therefore quitted the canton and set out on his travels over French
+Flanders, Belgium, and all the greens where the noble game of golf is
+held in honour. At the end of twenty years he returned to Coq to be
+admired by a new generation of golfers, after which he departed to
+return twenty years later.
+
+Alas! in spite of its apparent charm, this existence before long
+became a burden to him. Besides that, it bored him to win on every
+occasion; he was tired of passing like the Wandering Jew through
+generations, and of seeing the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of
+his friends grow old, and die out. He was constantly reduced to making
+new friendships which were undone by the age or death of his fellows;
+all changed around him, he only did not change.
+
+He grew impatient of this eternal youthfulness which condemned him to
+taste the same pleasures for ever, and he sometimes longed to know the
+calmer joys of old age. One day he caught himself at his
+looking-glass, examining whether his hair had not begun to grow
+white; nothing seemed so beautiful to him now as the snow on the
+forehead of the old.
+
+
+XII
+
+In addition to this, experience soon made him so wise that he was no
+longer amused at anything. If sometimes in the tavern he had a fancy
+for making use of his apron to pass the night at cards: "What is the
+good of this excess?" whispered experience; "it is not sufficient to
+be unable to shorten one's days, one must also avoid making oneself
+ill."
+
+He reached the point of refusing himself the pleasure of drinking his
+pint and smoking his pipe. Why, indeed, plunge into dissipations which
+enervate the body and dull the brain?
+
+_The wretch went further and gave up golf!_ Experience convinced him
+that the game is a dangerous one, which overheats one, and is
+eminently adapted to produce colds, catarrhs, rheumatism, and
+inflammation of the lungs.
+
+Besides, what is the use, and what great glory is it to be reputed the
+first golfer in the world?
+
+Of what use is glory itself? A vain hope, vain as the smoke of a pipe.
+
+When experience had thus bereft him one by one of his delusions, the
+unhappy golfer became mortally weary. He saw that he had deceived
+himself, that delusion has its price, and that the greatest charm of
+youth is perhaps its inexperience.
+
+He thus arrived at the term agreed on in the contract, and as he had
+not had a paradise here below, he sought through his hardly-acquired
+wisdom a clever way of conquering one above.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Death found him at Coq at work in his shop. Experience had at least
+taught him that work is the most lasting of pleasures.
+
+"Are you ready?" said Death.
+
+"I am."
+
+He took his club, put a score of balls in his pocket, threw his sack
+over his shoulder, and buckled his gaiters without taking off his
+apron.
+
+"What do you want your club for?"
+
+"Why, to golf in paradise with my patron St. Antony."
+
+"Do you fancy, then, that I am going to conduct you to paradise?"
+
+"You must, as I have half-a-dozen souls to carry there, that I once
+saved from the clutches of Belzebuth."
+
+"Better have saved your own. _En route, cher Dumollet!_"
+
+The great golfer saw that the old reaper bore him a grudge, and that
+he was going to conduct him to the paradise of the lost.[25]
+
+    [25] _Noires glaives._
+
+Indeed a quarter of an hour later the two travellers knocked at the
+gate of hell.
+
+"Toc, toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"Don't open the door," cried Belzebuth; "that rascal wins at every
+turn; he is capable of depopulating my empire."
+
+Roger laughed in his sleeve.
+
+"Oh! you are not saved," said Death. "I am going to take you where you
+won't be cold either."
+
+Quicker than a beggar would have emptied a poor's box they were in
+purgatory.
+
+"Toc--toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"But he is in a state of mortal sin," cried the angel on duty. "Take
+him away from here--he can't come in."
+
+"I cannot, all the same, let him linger between heaven and earth,"
+said Death; "I shall shunt him back to Coq."
+
+"Where they will take me for a ghost. Thank you! is there not still
+paradise?"
+
+
+XIV
+
+They were there at the end of a short hour.
+
+"Toc, toc!"
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"The wheelwright of Coq," said the great golfer.
+
+"Ah! my lad," said St. Peter, half opening the door, "I am really
+grieved. St. Antony told you long ago you had better ask for the
+salvation of your soul."
+
+"That is true, St. Peter," replied Roger with a sheepish air. "And
+how is he, that blessed St. Antony? Could I not come in for one moment
+to return the visit he once paid me?"
+
+"Why, here he comes," said St. Peter, throwing the door wide open.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye the sly golfer had flung himself into
+paradise, unhooked his apron, let it fall to the ground, and seated
+himself down on it.
+
+"Good morning, St. Antony," said he with a fine salute. "You see I had
+plenty of time to think of paradise, for here we are!"
+
+"What! _You_ here!" cried St. Antony.
+
+"Yes, I and my company," replied Roger, opening his sack and
+scattering on the carpet the souls of the six golfers.
+
+"Will you have the goodness to pack right off, all of you?"
+
+"Impossible," said the great golfer, showing his apron.
+
+"The rogue has made game of us," said St. Antony. "Come, St. Peter, in
+memory of our game of golf, let him in with his souls. Besides, he has
+had his purgatory on earth."
+
+"It is not a very good precedent," murmured St. Peter.
+
+"Bah!" replied Roger, "if we have a few good golfers in paradise,
+where is the harm?"
+
+
+XV
+
+Thus, after having lived long, golfed much and drunk many cans of
+beer, the wheelwright of Coq called the Great Golfer was admitted to
+paradise; but I advise no one to copy him, for it is not quite the
+right way to go, and St. Peter might not always be so compliant,
+though great allowances must be made for golfers.
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got
+an indistinct impression of it as of a grey shadow outlined against
+the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense
+stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay
+was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a
+weird, seignorial residence, like a dream palace, strange and
+beautiful--this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying
+day.
+
+The following morning at dawn I went toward it across the sands, my
+eyes fastened on this gigantic jewel, as big as a mountain, cut like a
+cameo, and as dainty as lace. The nearer I approached the greater my
+admiration grew, for nothing in the world could be more wonderful or
+more perfect.
+
+As surprised as if I had discovered the habitation of a god, I
+wandered through those halls supported by frail or massive columns,
+raising my eyes in wonder to those spires which looked like rockets
+starting for the sky, and to that marvellous assemblage of towers, of
+gargoyles, of slender and charming ornaments, a regular fireworks of
+stone, granite lace, a masterpiece of colossal and delicate
+architecture.
+
+As I was looking up in ecstasy a Lower Normandy peasant came up to me
+and told me the story of the great quarrel between Saint Michael and
+the devil.
+
+A sceptical genius has said: "God made man in his image and man has
+returned the compliment."
+
+This saying is an eternal truth, and it would be very curious to write
+the history of the local divinity of every continent, as well as the
+history of the patron saints in each one of our provinces. The negro
+has his ferocious man-eating idols; the polygamous Mahometan fills his
+paradise with women; the Greeks, like a practical people, deified all
+the passions.
+
+Every village in France is under the influence of some protecting
+saint, modelled according to the characteristics of the inhabitants.
+
+Saint Michael watches over Lower Normandy, Saint Michael, the radiant
+and victorious angel, the sword-carrier, the hero of Heaven, the
+victorious, the conqueror of Satan.
+
+But this is how the Lower Normandy peasant, cunning, deceitful and
+tricky, understands and tells of the struggle between the great saint
+and the devil.
+
+To escape from the malice of his neighbour, the devil, Saint Michael
+built himself, in the open ocean, this habitation worthy of an
+archangel; and only such a saint could build a residence of such
+magnificence.
+
+But, as he still feared the approaches of the wicked one, he
+surrounded his domains by quicksands, more treacherous even than the
+sea.
+
+The devil lived in a humble cottage on the hill, but he owned all the
+salt marshes, the rich lands where grow the finest crops, the wooded
+valleys and all the fertile hills of the country, while the saint
+ruled only over the sands. Therefore Satan was rich, whereas Saint
+Michael was as poor as a church mouse.
+
+After a few years of fasting the saint grew tired of this state of
+affairs and began to think of some compromise with the devil, but the
+matter was by no means easy, as Satan kept a good hold on his crops.
+
+He thought the thing over for about six months; then one morning he
+walked across to the shore. The demon was eating his soup in front of
+his door when he saw the saint. He immediately rushed toward him,
+kissed the hem of his sleeve, invited him in and offered him
+refreshments.
+
+Saint Michael drank a bowl of milk and then began: "I have come here
+to propose to you a good bargain."
+
+The devil, candid and trustful, answered: "That will suit me."
+
+"Here it is. Give me all your lands."
+
+Satan, growing alarmed, wished to speak: "But--"
+
+The saint continued: "Listen first. Give me all your lands. I will
+take care of all the work, the ploughing, the sowing, the fertilizing,
+everything, and we will share the crops equally. How does that suit
+you?"
+
+The devil, who was naturally lazy, accepted. He only demanded in
+addition a few of those delicious grey mullet which are caught around
+the solitary mount. Saint Michael promised the fish.
+
+They grasped hands and spat on the ground to show that it was a
+bargain, and the saint continued: "See here, so that you will have
+nothing to complain of, choose that part of the crops which you
+prefer: the part that grows above ground or the part that stays in
+the ground." Satan cried out: "I will take all that will be above
+ground."
+
+"It's a bargain!" said the saint. And he went away.
+
+Six months later, all over the immense domain of the devil, one could
+see nothing but carrots, turnips, onions, salsify, all the plants
+whose juicy roots are good and savoury and whose useless leaves are
+good for nothing but for feeding animals.
+
+Satan wished to break the contract, calling Saint Michael a swindler.
+
+But the saint, who had developed quite a taste for agriculture, went
+back to see the devil and said: "Really, I hadn't thought of that at
+all; it was just an accident, no fault of mine. And to make things
+fair with you, this year I'll let you take everything that is under
+the ground."
+
+"Very well," answered Satan.
+
+The following spring all the evil spirit's lands were covered with
+golden wheat, oats as big as beans, flax, magnificent colza, red
+clover, peas, cabbage, artichokes, everything that develops into
+grains or fruit in the sunlight.
+
+Once more Satan received nothing, and this time he completely lost his
+temper. He took back his fields and remained deaf to all the fresh
+propositions of his neighbour.
+
+A whole year rolled by. From the top of his lonely manor Saint Michael
+looked at the distant and fertile lands and watched the devil direct
+the work, take in his crops and thresh the wheat. And he grew angry,
+exasperated at his powerlessness. As he was no longer able to deceive
+Satan, he decided to wreak vengeance on him, and he went out to invite
+him to dinner for the following Monday.
+
+"You have been very unfortunate in your dealings with me," he said; "I
+know it, but I don't want any ill feeling between us, and I expect you
+to dine with me. I'll give you some good things to eat."
+
+Satan, who was as greedy as he was lazy, accepted eagerly. On the day
+appointed he donned his finest clothes and set out for the castle.
+
+Saint Michael sat him down to a magnificent meal. First there was a
+_vol-au-vent_, full of cocks' crests and kidneys, with meat-balls,
+then two big grey mullet with cream sauce, a turkey stuffed with
+chestnuts soaked in wine, some salt-marsh lamb as tender as cake,
+vegetables which melted in the mouth and nice hot pancake which was
+brought on smoking and spreading a delicious odour of butter.
+
+They drank new, sweet, sparkling cider and heady red wine, and after
+each course they whetted their appetites with some old apple brandy.
+
+The devil drank and ate to his heart's content; in fact he took so
+much that he was very uncomfortable, and began to retch.
+
+Then Saint Michael arose in anger and cried in a voice like thunder:
+"What! before me, rascal! You dare--before me--"
+
+Satan, terrified, ran away, and the saint, seizing a stick, pursued
+him. They ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up
+the staircases, galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle
+to gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was running about
+madly and trying hard to escape. At last he found himself at the top
+of the last terrace, right at the top, from which could be seen the
+immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no
+longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and gave him a furious
+kick, which shot him through space like a cannon-ball.
+
+He shot through the air like a javelin and fell heavily before the
+town of Mortain. His horns and claws stuck deep into the rock, which
+keeps through eternity the traces of this fall of Satan.
+
+He stood up again, limping, crippled until the end of time, and as he
+looked at this fatal castle in the distance, standing out against the
+setting sun, he understood well that he would always be vanquished in
+this unequal struggle, and he went away limping, heading for distant
+countries, leaving to his enemy his fields, his hills, his valleys and
+his marshes.
+
+And this is how Saint Michael, the patron saint of Normandy,
+vanquished the devil.
+
+Another people would have dreamed of this battle in an entirely
+different manner.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE[26]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [26] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+"So you won't sell me your soul?" said the devil.
+
+"Thank you," replied the student, "I had rather keep it myself, if
+it's all the same to you."
+
+"But it's not all the same to me. I want it very particularly. Come,
+I'll be liberal. I said twenty years. You can have thirty."
+
+The student shook his head.
+
+"Forty!"
+
+Another shake.
+
+"Fifty!"
+
+As before.
+
+"Now," said the devil. "I know I'm going to do a foolish thing, but I
+cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away.
+I'll make you another kind of offer. We don't have any bargain at
+present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years.
+This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your
+soul, mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant. If you
+give it, we are quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to
+this?"
+
+The student reflected for some minutes. "Agreed," he said at last.
+
+Scarcely had the devil disappeared, which he did instantaneously, ere
+a messenger reined in his smoking steed at the gate of the University
+of Cordova (the judicious reader will already have remarked that
+Lucifer could never have been allowed inside a Christian seat of
+learning), and, inquiring for the student Gerbert, presented him with
+the Emperor Otho's nomination to the Abbacy of Bobbio, in
+consideration, said the document, of his virtue and learning, wellnigh
+miraculous in one so young. Such messengers were frequent visitors
+during Gerbert's prosperous career. Abbot, bishop, archbishop,
+cardinal, he was ultimately enthroned Pope on April 2, 999, and
+assumed the appellation of Silvester the Second. It was then a general
+belief that the world would come to an end in the following year, a
+catastrophe which to many seemed the more imminent from the election
+of a chief pastor whose celebrity as a theologian, though not
+inconsiderable, by no means equalled his reputation as a necromancer.
+
+The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless through the dreaded
+twelvemonth, and early in the first year of the eleventh century
+Gerbert was sitting peacefully in his study, perusing a book of magic.
+Volumes of algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy, and
+other such light reading filled his bookcase; and on a table stood an
+improved clock of his invention, next to his introduction of the
+Arabic numerals his chief legacy to posterity. Suddenly a sound of
+wings was heard, and Lucifer stood by his side.
+
+"It is a long time," said the fiend, "since I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you. I have now called to remind you of our little contract,
+concluded this day forty years."
+
+"You remember," said Silvester, "that you are not to ask anything
+exceeding my power to perform."
+
+"I have no such intention," said Lucifer. "On the contrary, I am about
+to solicit a favour which can be bestowed by you alone. You are Pope,
+I desire that you would make me a Cardinal."
+
+"In the expectation, I presume," returned Gerbert, "of becoming Pope
+on the next vacancy."
+
+"An expectation," replied Lucifer, "which I may most reasonably
+entertain, considering my enormous wealth, my proficiency in intrigue,
+and the present condition of the Sacred College."
+
+"You would doubtless," said Gerbert, "endeavour to subvert the
+foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and
+licentiousness, render the Holy See odious and contemptible."
+
+"On the contrary," said the fiend, "I would extirpate heresy, and all
+learning and knowledge as inevitably tending thereunto. I would suffer
+no man to read but the priest, and confine his reading to his
+breviary. I would burn your books together with your bones on the
+first convenient opportunity. I would observe an austere propriety of
+conduct, and be especially careful not to loosen one rivet in the
+tremendous yoke I was forging for the minds and consciences of
+mankind."
+
+"If it be so," said Gerbert, "let's be off!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lucifer, "you are willing to accompany me to the
+infernal regions!"
+
+"Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning of Plato and
+Aristotle, and give place to the darkness against which I have been
+contending all my life."
+
+"Gerbert," replied the demon, "this is arrant trifling. Know you not
+that no good man can enter my dominions? that, were such a thing
+possible, my empire would become intolerable to me, and I should be
+compelled to abdicate?"
+
+"I do know it," said Gerbert, "and hence I have been able to receive
+your visit with composure."
+
+"Gerbert," said the devil, with tears in his eyes, "I put it to
+you--is this fair, is this honest? I undertake to promote your
+interests in the world; I fulfil my promise abundantly. You obtain
+through my instrumentality a position to which you could never
+otherwise have aspired. Often have I had a hand in the election of a
+Pope, but never before have I contributed to confer the tiara on one
+eminent for virtue and learning. You profit by my assistance to the
+full, and now take advantage of an adventitious circumstance to
+deprive me of my reasonable guerdon. It is my constant experience that
+the good people are much more slippery than the sinners, and drive
+much harder bargains."
+
+"Lucifer," answered Gerbert, "I have always sought to treat you as a
+gentleman, hoping that you would approve yourself such in return. I
+will not inquire whether it was entirely in harmony with this
+character to seek to intimidate me into compliance with your demand by
+threatening me with a penalty which you well knew could not be
+enforced. I will overlook this little irregularity, and concede even
+more than you have requested. You have asked to be a Cardinal. I will
+make you Pope--"
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused his sooty hide,
+as the light of a fading ember is revived by breathing upon it.
+
+"For twelve hours," continued Gerbert. "At the expiration of that time
+we will consider the matter further; and if, as I anticipate, you are
+more anxious to divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to
+assume it, I promise to bestow upon you any boon you may ask within my
+power to grant, and not plainly inconsistent with religion or morals."
+
+"Done!" cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic words, and in
+a moment the apartment held two Pope Silvesters, entirely
+indistinguishable save by their attire, and the fact that one limped
+slightly with the left foot.
+
+"You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard," said Gerbert,
+and, taking his book of magic with him, he retreated through a masked
+door to a secret chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled,
+and muttered to himself, "Poor old Lucifer! Sold again!"
+
+If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large
+slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his
+personal appearance with some dissatisfaction.
+
+"I certainly don't look half so well without my horns," he
+soliloquized, "and I am sure I shall miss my tail most grievously."
+
+A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for the deficient
+appendages, and Lucifer now looked every inch a Pope. He was about to
+call the master of the ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the
+door was burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards, rushed
+into the room.
+
+"Down with the sorcerer!" they cried, as they seized and gagged him.
+
+"Death to the Saracen!"
+
+"Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!"
+
+"Knows Greek!"
+
+"Talks Arabic!"
+
+"Reads Hebrew!"
+
+"Burn him!"
+
+"Smother him!"
+
+"Let him be deposed by a general council," said a young and
+inexperienced Cardinal.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said an old and wary one, _sotto voce_.
+
+Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame he was doomed to
+inhabit for the next eleven hours was speedily exhausted. Bound and
+helpless, he swooned away.
+
+"Brethren," said one of the senior cardinals, "it hath been delivered
+by the exorcists that a sorcerer or other individual in league with
+the demon doth usually bear upon his person some visible token of his
+infernal compact. I propose that we forthwith institute a search for
+this stigma, the discovery of which may contribute to justify our
+proceedings in the eyes of the world."
+
+"I heartily approve of our brother Anno's proposition," said another,
+"the rather as we cannot possibly fail to discover such a mark, if,
+indeed, we desire to find it."
+
+The search was accordingly instituted, and had not proceeded far ere a
+simultaneous yell from all the seven cardinals indicated that their
+investigation had brought more light than they had ventured to expect.
+
+The Holy Father had a cloven foot!
+
+For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly stunned,
+silent, and stupefied with amazement. As they gradually recovered
+their faculties it would have become manifest to a nice observer that
+the Pope had risen very considerably in their good opinion.
+
+"This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation," said one.
+
+"I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately," said
+another.
+
+"It is written, 'the devils believe,'" said a third: "the Holy Father,
+therefore, is not a heretic at any rate."
+
+"Brethren," said Anno, "this affair, as our brother Benno well
+remarks, doth indeed call for mature deliberation. I therefore propose
+that, instead of smothering his Holiness with cushions, as originally
+contemplated, we immure him for the present in the dungeon adjoining
+hereunto, and, after spending the night in meditation and prayer,
+resume the consideration of the business tomorrow morning."
+
+"Informing the officials of the palace," said Benno, "that his
+Holiness has retired for his devotions, and desires on no account to
+be disturbed."
+
+"A pious fraud," said Anno, "which not one of the Fathers would for a
+moment have scrupled to commit."
+
+The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible Lucifer, and
+bore him carefully, almost tenderly, to the apartment appointed for
+his detention. Each would fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery,
+but each felt that the eyes of his six brethren were upon him: and
+all, therefore, retired simultaneously, each taking a key of the cell.
+
+Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately afterwards. He had
+the most confused idea of the circumstances which had involved him in
+his present scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were
+the usual concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were by no means to
+his taste, and he wished he had been made acquainted with them sooner.
+The dungeon was not only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the
+poor devil in his present form had no latent store of infernal heat to
+draw upon. His teeth chattered, he shivered in every limb, and felt
+devoured with hunger and thirst. There is much probability in the
+assertion of some of his biographers that it was on this occasion that
+he invented ardent spirits; but, even if he did, the mere conception
+of a glass of brandy could only increase his sufferings. So the long
+January night wore wearily on, and Lucifer seemed likely to expire
+from inanition, when a key turned in the lock, and Cardinal Anno
+cautiously glided in, bearing a lamp, a loaf, half a cold roast kid,
+and a bottle of wine.
+
+"I trust," he said, bowing courteously, "that I may be excused any
+slight breach of etiquette of which I may render myself culpable from
+the difficulty under which I labour of determining whether, under
+present circumstances, 'Your Holiness,' or 'Your infernal Majesty' be
+the form of address most befitting me to employ."
+
+"Bub-ub-bub-boo," went Lucifer, who still had the gag in his mouth.
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "I crave your Infernal Holiness's
+forgiveness. What a lamentable oversight!"
+
+And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he set out the
+refection, upon which the demon fell voraciously.
+
+"Why the devil, if I may so express myself," pursued Anno, "did not
+your Holiness inform us that you _were_ the devil? Not a hand would
+then have been raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my
+life for the audience now happily vouchsafed me. Whence this mistrust
+of your faithful Anno, who has served you so loyally and zealously
+these many years?"
+
+Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.
+
+"I shall never forgive myself," protested the Cardinal, "for the part
+I have borne in this unfortunate transaction. Next to ministering to
+your Majesty's bodily necessities, there is nothing I have so much at
+heart as to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty to
+remember that I believed myself to be acting in your Majesty's
+interest by overthrowing a magician who was accustomed to send your
+Majesty upon errands, and who might at any time enclose you in a box,
+and cast you into the sea. It is deplorable that your Majesty's most
+devoted servants should have been thus misled."
+
+"Reasons of State," suggested Lucifer.
+
+"I trust that they no longer operate," said the Cardinal. "However,
+the Sacred College is now fully possessed of the whole matter: it is
+therefore unnecessary to pursue this department of the subject
+further. I would now humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty,
+or rather, perhaps, your Holiness, since I am about to speak of
+spiritual things, on the important and delicate point of your
+Holiness's successor. I am ignorant how long your Holiness proposes to
+occupy the Apostolic chair; but of course you are aware that public
+opinion will not suffer you to hold it for a term exceeding that of
+the pontificate of Peter. A vacancy, therefore, must one day occur;
+and I am humbly to represent that the office could not be filled by
+one more congenial than myself to the present incumbent, or on whom he
+could more fully rely to carry out in every respect his views and
+intentions."
+
+And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances of his past
+life, which certainly seemed to corroborate his assertion. He had not,
+however, proceeded far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another
+key in the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively, "Beware of
+Benno," ere he dived under a table.
+
+Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold viands. Warned by
+the other lamp and the remains of Lucifer's repast that some colleague
+had been beforehand with him, and not knowing how many more might be
+in the field, he came briefly to the point as regarded the Papacy, and
+preferred his claim in much the same manner as Anno. While he was
+earnestly cautioning Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could
+and would cheat the very Devil himself, another key turned in the
+lock, and Benno escaped under the table, where Anno immediately
+inserted his fingers into his right eye. The little squeal consequent
+upon this occurrence Lucifer successfully smothered by a fit of
+coughing.
+
+Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham, and exhibited the
+same disgust as Benno on seeing himself forestalled. So far as his
+requests transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he
+would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal
+No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse,
+power to call up the Devil _ad libitum_, and a ring of invisibility to
+allow him free access to his mistress, who was unfortunately a married
+woman.
+
+Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way of poisoning
+Cardinal No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred the same petition as
+respected Cardinal No. 4.
+
+Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion of the
+Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, with the faculty of holding
+them together, and of unlimited non-residence. In the course of his
+harangue he made use of the phrase _non obstantibus_, of which Lucifer
+immediately took a note.
+
+What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he
+had hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and
+Lucifer, regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the
+Church spinning to the other end of the room, and split the marble
+table with a single stroke of his tail. The six crouched and huddling
+Cardinals cowered revealed to one another, and at the same time
+enjoyed the spectacle of his Holiness darting through the stone
+ceiling, which yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up
+afterwards as if nothing had happened. After the first shock of dismay
+they unanimously rushed to the door, but found it bolted on the
+outside. There was no other exit, and no means of giving an alarm. In
+this emergency the demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a bright
+example to their ultramontane colleagues. "_Bisogna pazienzia_," they
+said, as they shrugged their shoulders. Nothing could exceed the
+mutual politeness of Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two
+who had sought to poison each other. The Frenchman was held to have
+gravely derogated from good manners by alluding to this circumstance,
+which had reached his ears while he was under the table: and the
+Englishman swore so outrageously at the plight in which he found
+himself that the Italians then and there silently registered a vow
+that none of his nation should ever be Pope, a maxim which, with one
+exception, has been observed to this day.
+
+Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed
+in all the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he
+thought his visitor had probably had enough.
+
+"I should think so indeed," replied Lucifer. "But at the same time I
+feel myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of
+the loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is
+needless for me to devote any considerable amount of personal
+attention to ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the promised boon,
+which it will be in no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant,
+seeing that it is a work of mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be
+released, and that their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone
+suffered, be buried in oblivion."
+
+"I hoped you would carry them all off," said Gerbert, with an
+expression of disappointment.
+
+"Thank you," said the Devil. "It is more to my interest to leave them
+where they are."
+
+So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth,
+sheepish and crestfallen. If, after all, they did less mischief than
+Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire
+bewilderment by what had passed, and their utter inability to
+penetrate the policy of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even
+with ostentation to good works. They could never quite satisfy
+themselves whether they were speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and
+when under the latter impression habitually emitted propositions which
+Gerbert justly stigmatized as rash, temerarious, and scandalous. They
+plagued him with allusions to certain matters mentioned in their
+interviews with Lucifer, with which they naturally but erroneously
+supposed him to be conversant, and worried him by continual nods and
+titterings as they glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish this
+nuisance, and at the same time silence sundry unpleasant rumours which
+had somehow got abroad, Gerbert devised the ceremony of kissing the
+Pope's feet, which, in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this
+day. The stupefaction of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy
+Father had lost his hoof surpasses all description, and they went to
+their graves without having obtained the least insight into the
+mystery.
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER[27]
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+    [27] Taken by permission from _The Twilight of the Gods_, by
+    Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+Lucifer sat playing chess with Man for his soul.
+
+The game was evidently going ill for Man. He had but pawns left, few
+and struggling. Lucifer had rooks, knights, and, of course, bishops.
+
+It was but natural under such circumstances that Man should be in no
+great hurry to move. Lucifer grew impatient.
+
+"It is a pity," said he at last, "that we did not fix some period
+within which the player must move, or resign."
+
+"Oh, Lucifer," returned the young man, in heart-rending accents, "it
+is not the impending loss of my soul that thus unmans me, but the loss
+of my betrothed. When I think of the grief of the Lady Adeliza, the
+paragon of terrestrial loveliness!" Tears choked his utterance;
+Lucifer was touched.
+
+"Is the Lady Adeliza's loveliness in sooth so transcendent?" he
+inquired.
+
+"She is a rose, a lily, a diamond, a morning star!"
+
+"If that is the case," rejoined Lucifer, "thou mayest reassure
+thyself. The Lady Adeliza shall not want for consolation. I will
+assume thy shape and woo her in thy stead."
+
+The young man hardly seemed to receive all the comfort from this
+promise which Lucifer no doubt designed. He made a desperate move. In
+an instant the Devil checkmated him, and he disappeared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Upon my word, if I had known what a business this was going to be, I
+don't think I should have gone in for it," soliloquized the Devil as,
+wearing his captive's semblance and installed in his apartments, he
+surveyed the effects to which he now had to administer. They included
+coats, shirts, collars, neckties, foils, cigars, and the like _ad
+libitum_; and very little else except three challenges, ten writs, and
+seventy-four unpaid bills, elegantly disposed around the
+looking-glass. To the poor youth's praise be it said, there were no
+_billets-doux_, except from the Lady Adeliza herself.
+
+Noting the address of these carefully, the Devil sallied forth, and
+nothing but his ignorance of the topography of the hotel, which made
+him take the back stairs, saved him from the clutches of two bailiffs
+lurking on the principal staircase. Leaping into a cab, he thus
+escaped a perfumer and a bootmaker, and shortly found himself at the
+Lady Adeliza's feet.
+
+The truth had not been half told him. Such beauty, such wit, such
+correctness of principle! Lucifer went forth from her presence a
+love-sick fiend. Not Merlin's mother had produced half the impression
+upon him; and Adeliza on her part had never found her lover
+one-hundredth part so interesting as he seemed that morning.
+
+Lucifer proceeded at once to the City, where, assuming his proper
+shape for the occasion, he negotiated a loan without the smallest
+difficulty. All debts were promptly discharged, and Adeliza was
+astonished at the splendour and variety of the presents she was
+constantly receiving.
+
+Lucifer had all but brought her to name the day, when he was informed
+that a gentleman of clerical appearance desired to wait upon him.
+
+"Wants money for a new church or mission, I suppose," said he. "Show
+him up."
+
+But when the visitor was ushered in, Lucifer found with discomposure
+that he was no earthly clergyman, but a celestial saint; a saint, too,
+with whom Lucifer had never been able to get on. He had served in the
+army while on earth, and his address was curt, precise, and
+peremptory.
+
+"I have called," he said, "to notify to you my appointment as
+Inspector of Devils."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Lucifer, in consternation. "To the post of my old
+friend Michael!"
+
+"Too old," said the Saint laconically. "Millions of years older than
+the world. About your age, I think."
+
+Lucifer winced, remembering the particular business he was then about.
+The Saint continued:
+
+"I am a new broom, and am expected to sweep clean. I warn you that I
+mean to be strict, and there is one little matter which I must set
+right immediately. You are going to marry that poor young fellow's
+betrothed, are you? Now you know you can not take his wife, unless you
+give him yours."
+
+"Oh, my dear friend," exclaimed Lucifer, "what an inexpressibly
+blissful prospect you do open unto me!"
+
+"I don't know that," said the Saint. "I must remind you that the
+dominion of the infernal regions is unalterably attached to the person
+of the present Queen thereof. If you part with her you immediately
+lose all your authority and possessions. I don't care a brass button
+which you do, but you must understand that you cannot eat your cake
+and have it too. Good morning!"
+
+Who shall describe the conflict in Lucifer's bosom? If any stronger
+passion existed therein at that moment than attachment to Adeliza, it
+was aversion to his consort, and the two combined were wellnigh
+irresistible. But to disenthrone himself, to descend to the condition
+of a poor devil!
+
+Feeling himself incapable of coming to a decision, he sent for Belial,
+unfolded the matter, and requested his advice.
+
+"What a shame that our new inspector will not let you marry Adeliza!"
+lamented his counsellor. "If you did, my private opinion is that
+forty-eight hours afterwards you would care just as much for her as
+you do now for Madam Lucifer, neither more nor less. Are your
+intentions really honourable?"
+
+"Yes," replied Lucifer, "it is to be a Lucifer match."
+
+"The more fool you," rejoined Belial. "If you tempted her to commit a
+sin, she would be yours without any conditions at all."
+
+"Oh, Belial," said Lucifer, "I cannot bring myself to be a tempter of
+so much innocence and loveliness."
+
+And he meant what he said.
+
+"Well then, let me try," proposed Belial.
+
+"You?" replied Lucifer contemptuously; "do you imagine that Adeliza
+would look at you?"
+
+"Why not?" asked Belial, surveying himself complacently in the glass.
+
+He was humpbacked, squinting, and lame, and his horns stood up under
+his wig.
+
+The discussion ended in a wager: after which there was no retreat for
+Lucifer.
+
+The infernal Iachimo was introduced to Adeliza as a distinguished
+foreigner, and was soon prosecuting his suit with all the success
+which Lucifer had predicted. One thing protected while it baffled
+him--the entire inability of Adeliza to understand what he meant. At
+length he was constrained to make the matter clear by producing an
+enormous treasure, which he offered Adeliza in exchange for the
+abandonment of her lover.
+
+The tempest of indignation which ensued would have swept away any
+ordinary demon, but Belial listened unmoved. When Adeliza had
+exhausted herself he smilingly rallied her upon her affection for an
+unworthy lover, of whose infidelity he undertook to give her proof.
+Frantic with jealousy, Adeliza consented, and in a trice found herself
+in the infernal regions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Adeliza's arrival in Pandemonium, as Belial had planned, occurred
+immediately after the receipt of a message from Lucifer, in whose
+bosom love had finally gained the victory, and who had telegraphed his
+abdication and resignation of Madam Lucifer to Adeliza's betrothed.
+The poor young man had just been hauled up from the lower depths, and
+was beset by legions of demons obsequiously pressing all manner of
+treasures upon his acceptance. He stared, helpless and bewildered,
+unable to realize his position in the smallest degree. In the
+background grave and serious demons, the princes of the infernal
+realm, discussed the new departure, and consulted especially how to
+break it to Madam Lucifer--a commission of which no one seemed
+ambitious.
+
+"Stay where you are," whispered Belial to Adeliza; "stir not: you
+shall put his constancy to the proof within five minutes."
+
+Not all the hustling, mowing, and gibbering of the fiends would under
+ordinary circumstances have kept Adeliza from her lover's side: but
+what is all hell to jealousy?
+
+In even less time than he had promised, Belial returned, accompanied
+by Madam Lucifer. This lady's black robe, dripping with blood,
+contrasted agreeably with her complexion of sulphurous yellow; the
+absence of hair was compensated by the exceptional length of her
+nails; she was a thousand million years old, and, but for her
+remarkable muscular vigour, looked every one of them. The rage into
+which Belial's communication had thrown her was something
+indescribable; but, as her eye fell on the handsome youth, a different
+order of thoughts seemed to take possession of her mind.
+
+"Let the monster go!" she exclaimed; "who cares? Come, my love, ascend
+the throne with me, and share the empire and the treasures of thy fond
+Luciferetta."
+
+"If you don't, back you go," interjected Belial.
+
+What might have been the young man's decision if Madam Lucifer had
+borne more resemblance to Madam Vulcan, it would be wholly impertinent
+to inquire, for the question never arose.
+
+"Take me away!" he screamed, "take me away, anywhere! anywhere out of
+her reach! Oh, Adeliza!"
+
+With a bound Adeliza stood by his side. She was darting a triumphant
+glance at the discomfited Queen of Hell, when suddenly her expression
+changed, and she screamed loudly. Two adorers stood before her, alike
+in every lineament and every detail of costume, utterly
+indistinguishable, even by the eye of Love.
+
+Lucifer, in fact, hastening to throw himself at Adeliza's feet and
+pray her to defer his bliss no longer, had been thunderstruck by the
+tidings of her elopement with Belial. Fearing to lose his wife and his
+dominions along with his sweetheart, he had sped to the nether regions
+with such expedition that he had had no time to change his costume.
+Hence the equivocation which confounded Adeliza, but at the same time
+preserved her from being torn to pieces by the no less mystified Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+Perceiving the state of the case, Lucifer with true gentlemanly
+feeling resumed his proper semblance, and Madam Lucifer's talons were
+immediately inserted into his whiskers.
+
+"My dear! my love!" he gasped, as audibly as she would let him, "is
+this the way it welcomes its own Lucy-pucy?"
+
+"Who is that person?" demanded Madam Lucifer.
+
+"I don't know her," screamed the wretched Lucifer. "I never saw her
+before. Take her away; shut her up in the deepest dungeon!"
+
+"Not if I know it," sharply replied Madam Lucifer. "You can't bear to
+part with her, can't you? You would intrigue with her under my nose,
+would you? Take that! and that! Turn them both out, I say! turn them
+both out!"
+
+"Certainly, my dearest love, most certainly," responded Lucifer.
+
+"Oh, Sire," cried Moloch and Beelzebub together, "for Heaven's sake
+let your Majesty consider what he is doing. The Inspector--"
+
+"Bother the Inspector!" screeched Lucifer. "D'ye think I'm not a
+thousand times more afraid of your mistress than of all the saints in
+the calendar? There," addressing Adeliza and her betrothed, "be off!
+You'll find all debts paid, and a nice balance at the bank. Out! Run!"
+
+They did not wait to be told twice. Earth yawned. The gates of
+Tartarus stood wide. They found themselves on the side of a steep
+mountain, down which they scoured madly, hand linked in hand. But fast
+as they ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of Madam
+Lucifer.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER[28]
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+    [28] Taken by permission from _The Well of St. Claire_, by
+    Anatole France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published,
+    1909, by John Lane Co., New York.
+
+     _E si compiacque tanto Spinello di farlo orribile e
+     contrafatto, che si dice (tanto puo alcuna fiata
+     l'immaginazione) che la detta figura da lui dipinta gli
+     apparve in sogno, domandandolo dove egli l' avesse veduta si
+     brutta._[29]
+                            (_Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, da Messer
+                            Giorgio Vasari.--"Vita di Spinello."_)
+
+    [29] "And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and
+    portentous Production that it was commonly reported--so great
+    is always the force of fancy--that the said figure (of
+    Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-Piece
+    of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had
+    appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what
+    place he had beheld him under so brutish a form."
+
+                      _Lives of the most Excellent Painters_, by Giorgio
+                      Vasari.--"Life of Spinello."
+
+Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence, had a wholesome
+terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly in the watches of the
+night, when it is given to the powers of Darkness to prevail. And the
+worthy man's fears were not unreasonable, for in those days the Demons
+had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed them of more souls
+with a single picture than a good little Preaching Friar could do in
+thirty sermons. No doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in
+the hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost of his
+powers "that day of wrath, that day of mourning," which is to reduce
+the universe to ashes, _teste David et Sibylla_, borrowing his deepest
+voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the Archangel's last
+trump. But there! it was "all sound and fury, signifying nothing,"
+whereas a painting displayed on a Chapel wall or in the Cloister,
+showing Jesus Christ sitting on the Great White Throne to judge the
+living and the dead, spoke unceasingly to the eyes of sinners, and
+through the eyes chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or
+otherwise.
+
+It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa-Croce
+in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine
+Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse
+which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon
+Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell, and Purgatory and
+Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was
+able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was
+instructive and true, and we may say surely less profit is to be had
+of reading the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating
+such representative works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters
+took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the
+flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying
+in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love
+to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert
+carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of
+women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the
+Devils pouring molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbess, who
+had commissioned some work from him and then scamped his pay.
+
+This is why the Demons in those days were bitter enemies of the
+painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all
+the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with
+representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and
+fish, serpents' bodies and bats' wings. This sore resentment which
+they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello of Arezzo.
+
+Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of Florentine exiles,
+and his graciousness of mind matched his gentle birth; for he was the
+most skilful painter of his time. He wrought many and great works at
+Florence; and the Pisans begged him to complete Giotto's
+wall-paintings in their Campo Santo, where the dead rest beneath roses
+in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem. At last, after working long
+years in divers cities and getting much gold, he longed to see once
+more the good city of Arezzo, his mother. The men of Arezzo had not
+forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being enrolled in the
+Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia, had visited the sick
+and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him
+besides for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all
+Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honours on
+his return.
+
+Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important tasks in
+his native town. His wife would tell him:
+
+"You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leave younger men to paint
+instead of you. It is meet a man should end his days in a gentle,
+religious quiet. It is tempting God to be for ever raising new and
+worldly monuments, mere heathen towers of Babel. Quit your colours and
+your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy your peace of mind."
+
+So the good dame would preach, but he refused to listen, for his one
+thought was to increase his fortune and renown. Far from resting on
+his laurels, he arranged a price with the Wardens of Sant' Agnolo for
+a history of St. Michael, that was to cover all the Choir of the
+Church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise he
+threw himself with extraordinary ardour. Re-reading the parts of
+Scripture that were to be his inspiration, he set himself to study
+deeply every line and every word of these passages. Not content with
+drawing all day long in his workshop, he persisted in working both at
+bed and board; while at dusk, walking below the hill on whose brow
+Arezzo proudly lifts her walls and towers, he was still lost in
+thought. And we may say the story of the Archangel was already limned
+in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents in red chalk
+on the plaster of the wall. He was soon done tracing these outlines;
+then he fell to painting above the high altar the scene that was to
+outshine all the others in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein
+to glorify the leader of the hosts of Heaven for the victory he won
+before the beginning of time. Accordingly Spinello represented St.
+Michael fighting in the air against the serpent with seven heads and
+ten horns, and he figured with delight, in the bottom part of the
+picture, the Prince of the Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an
+appalling monster. The figures seemed to grow to life of themselves
+under his hand. His success was beyond his fondest hopes; so hideous
+was the countenance of Lucifer, none could escape the nightmare of its
+foulness. The face haunted the painter in the streets and even went
+home with him to his lodging.
+
+Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in his bed beside his
+wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers he saw an Angel as comely as St.
+Michael, but black; and the Angel said to him:
+
+"Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you seen me, that you
+should paint me as you have, under so ignominious a likeness?"
+
+The old painter answered, trembling, that he had never seen him with
+his eyes, never having gone down alive into Hell, like Messer Dante
+Alighieri; but that, in depicting him as he had done, he was for
+expressing in visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin.
+
+Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of San Gemignano seemed
+of a sudden to heave and stagger.
+
+"Spinello," he went on, "will you do me the pleasure to reason awhile
+with me? I am no mean Logician; He you pray to knows that."
+
+Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms:
+
+"Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me. You know of my
+enterprise, and how I forsook Heaven to become the Prince of this
+World. A tremendous adventure,--and a unique one, had not the Giants
+in like fashion assailed the god Jupiter, as yourself have seen,
+Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this Titanic war is carved
+in marble."
+
+"It is true," said Spinello, "I have seen the tomb, shaped like a
+great tun, in the Church of Santa Reparata at Florence. 'Tis a fine
+work of the Romans."
+
+"Still," returned Lucifer, smiling, "the Giants are not pictured on it
+in the shape of frogs or chameleons or the like hideous and horrid
+creatures."
+
+"True," replied the painter, "but then they had not attacked the true
+God, but only a false idol of the Pagans. 'Tis a mighty difference.
+The fact is clear, Lucifer, you raised the standard of revolt against
+the true and veritable King of Earth and Heaven."
+
+"I will not deny it," said Lucifer. "And how many sorts of sins do you
+charge me with for that?"
+
+"Seven, it is like enough," the painter answered, "and deadly sins one
+and all."
+
+"Seven!" exclaimed the Angel of Darkness; "well! the number is
+canonical. Everything goes by sevens in my history, which is close
+bound up with God's. Spinello, you deem me proud, angry and envious. I
+enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my only aim. Do
+you deem me covetous? Granted again; Covetousness is a virtue for
+Princes. For Gluttony and Lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not
+complain. Remains _Indolence_."
+
+As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms across his breast,
+and shaking his gloomy head, tossed his flaming locks:
+
+"Tell me, Spinello, do you really think I am indolent? Do you take me
+for a coward? Do you hold that in my revolt I showed a lack of
+courage? Nay! you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the
+guise of a hero, with a proud countenance. You should wrong no one,
+not even the Devil. Cannot you see that you insult Him you make prayer
+to, when you give Him for adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinello,
+you are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great mind to
+pull your ears, as they do to an ill-conditioned schoolboy."
+
+At this threat, and seeing the arm of Lucifer already stretched out
+towards him, Spinello clapped his hand to his head and began to howl
+with terror.
+
+His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what ailed him. He
+told her with chattering teeth, how he had just seen Lucifer and had
+been in terror for his ears.
+
+"I told you so," retorted the worthy dame; "I knew all those figures
+you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad."
+
+"I am not mad," protested the painter. "I saw him with my own eyes;
+and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing
+tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its
+place the shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong even the
+Devil himself."
+
+"You had best go to sleep again," scolded his wife. "You are talking
+stark nonsense, and unchristian to boot."
+
+Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back
+unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever,
+and then died.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL[30]
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+    [30] From the _National Magazine_, vol. XV. By permission of
+    the Editor and Translator.
+
+Life is a burden in the Fall,--the sad season of decay and death!
+
+The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the
+growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows--all that
+drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it
+with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in
+an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what
+purpose?...
+
+Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous
+thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who
+want to assuage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is
+the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and
+doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.
+
+But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny brambles that
+lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in
+ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe
+has made us acquainted....
+
+My story is about that devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The devil suffered from ennui.
+
+He is too wise to ridicule everything.
+
+He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is
+not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp
+scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell
+the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we
+were to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like
+ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But we had better
+leave that alone; we are not children that break their best toys in
+order to discover what is in them.
+
+The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the darkness of an autumn
+night: he felt lonely and whistled softly as he looked around himself
+in search of a distraction. He whistled an old song--my father's
+favourite song,--
+
+    "When, in autumnal days,
+    A leaf from its branch is torn
+    And on high by the wind is borne."
+
+And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves and among the
+black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds slowly crawled over the
+heaven and with their cold tears watered the narrow dwellings of the
+dead. The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the
+strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the
+speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the
+crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound passed over the
+churchyard....
+
+The devil was whistling, and he thought:
+
+"I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No doubt, the dampness
+goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism
+ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel
+comfortable. How, if I called one of them up and had a talk with him?
+It would be a little distraction for me, and, very likely, for him
+also. I will call him! Somewhere around here they have buried an old
+friend of mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was alive
+... why not renew our acquaintance? People of his kind are dreadfully
+exacting. I shall find out whether the grave satisfies him completely.
+But where is his grave?"
+
+And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything, wandered for a
+long time about the cemetery, before he found the author's grave....
+
+"Oh there!" he called out as he knocked with his claws at the heavy
+stone under which his acquaintance was put away.
+
+"Get up!"
+
+"What for?" came the dull answer from below.
+
+"I need you."
+
+"I won't get up."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Who are you, anyway?"
+
+"You know me."
+
+"The censor?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! No!"
+
+"Maybe a secret policeman?"
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Not a critic, either?"
+
+"I am the devil."
+
+"Well, I'll be out in a minute."
+
+The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a
+skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind
+that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire
+connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric
+light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones
+in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry,
+rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its
+cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. "I hope you are
+well!" said the devil.
+
+"How can I be?" curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low
+voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.
+
+"Oh, excuse my greeting!" the devil said pleasantly.
+
+"Never mind!... But why have you raised me?"
+
+"I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very
+bad.
+
+"I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?" asked the devil.
+
+"Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime."
+
+"Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold."
+
+"I should say I did! They had poured enough cold water over me all my
+life."
+
+They walked beside each other over the narrow path, between graves and
+crosses. Two blue beams fell from the author's eyes upon the ground
+and lit the way for the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them,
+and the wind freely passed between the author's bare ribs and through
+his breast where there was no longer a heart.
+
+"We are going to town?" he asked the devil.
+
+"What interests you there?"
+
+"Life, my dear sir," the author said impassionately.
+
+"What! It still has a meaning for you?"
+
+"Indeed it has!"
+
+"But why?"
+
+"How am I to say it? A man measures all by the quantity of his effort,
+and if he carries a common stone down from the summit of Ararat, that
+stone becomes a gem to him."
+
+"Poor fellow!" smiled the devil.
+
+"But also happy man!" the author retorted coldly.
+
+The devil shrugged his shoulders.
+
+They left the churchyard, and before them lay a street,--two rows of
+houses, and between them was darkness in which the miserable lamps
+clearly proved the want of light upon earth.
+
+"Tell me," the devil spoke after a pause, "how do you like your
+grave?"
+
+"Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very quiet there."
+
+"Is it not damp down there in the Fall?" asked the devil.
+
+"A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance comes from
+those various idiots who ramble over the cemetery and accidentally
+stumble on my grave. I don't know how long I have been lying in my
+grave, for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the concept
+of time does not exist for me."
+
+"You have been in the ground four years,--it will soon be five," said
+the devil.
+
+"Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at my grave during
+that time. Those accursed people make me nervous. One, you see,
+straight away denied the fact of my existence: he read my name on the
+tombstone and said confidently: 'There never was such a man! I have
+never read him, though I remember such a name: when I was a boy, there
+lived a man of that name who had a broker's shop in our street.' How
+do you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen years in the
+most popular periodicals, and three times during my lifetime my books
+came out in separate editions."
+
+"There were two more editions since your death," the devil informed
+him.
+
+"Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them said: 'Oh, that's that
+fellow!' 'Yes, that is he!' answered the other. 'Yes, they used to
+read him in the auld lang syne.' 'They read a lot of them.' 'What was
+it he preached?' 'Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness, and so
+forth.' 'Oh, yes, I remember.' 'He had a heavy tongue.' 'There is a
+lot of them in the ground:--yes, Russia is rich in talents' ... And
+those asses went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the
+temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that, yet it hurts me.
+And oh, how I wanted to give them a piece of my mind!"
+
+"You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!" smiled the
+devil.
+
+"No, that would not have done. On the verge of the twentieth century
+it would be absurd for dead people to scold, and, besides, it would be
+hard on the materialists."
+
+The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.
+
+This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a bridegroom at
+all weddings and a corpse at all burials, and now that all is dead in
+him, his egotism is still alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of
+importance is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves
+applause and recognition.... How annoying people are! The devil was on
+the point of proposing to the author to return to his grave, when an
+idea flashed through his evil head. They had just reached a square,
+and heavy masses of buildings surrounded them on all sides. The dark,
+wet sky hung low over the square; it seemed as though it rested on the
+roofs and murkily looked at the dirty earth.
+
+"Say," said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards the author,
+"don't you want to know how your wife is getting on?"
+
+"I don't know whether I want to," the author spoke slowly.
+
+"I see, you are a thorough corpse!" called out the devil to annoy him.
+
+"Oh, I don't know?" said the author and jauntily shook his bones. "I
+don't mind seeing her; besides, she will not see me, or if she will,
+she cannot recognize me!"
+
+"Of course!" the devil assured him.
+
+"You know, I only said so because she did not like for me to go away
+long from home," explained the author.
+
+And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became as transparent
+as glass. The author saw the inside of large apartments, and it was so
+light and cosy in them.
+
+"Elegant appointments!" he grated his bones approvingly: "Very fine
+appointments! If I had lived in such rooms, I would be alive now."
+
+"I like it, too," said the devil and smiled. "And it is not
+expensive--it only costs some three thousands."
+
+"Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest work brought me 815
+roubles, and I worked over it a whole year. But who lives here?"
+
+"Your wife," said the devil.
+
+"I declare! That is good ... for her."
+
+"Yes, and here comes her husband."
+
+"She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed! Her husband, you
+say? What a fine looking fellow! Rather a bourgeois phiz,--kind, but
+somewhat stupid! He looks as if he might be cunning,--well, just the
+face to please a woman."
+
+"Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?" the devil proposed and
+looked maliciously at the author. But he was taken up with the scene
+before him.
+
+"What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently satisfied with
+life. Tell me, does she love him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, very much!"
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"A clerk in a millinery shop."
+
+"A clerk in a millinery shop," the author repeated slowly and did not
+utter a word for some time. The devil looked at him and smiled a merry
+smile.
+
+"Do you like that?" he asked.
+
+The author spoke with an effort:
+
+"I had some children.... I know they are alive.... I had some children
+... a son and a daughter.... I used to think then that my son would
+turn out in time a good man...."
+
+"There are plenty of good men, but what the world needs is perfect
+men," said the devil coolly and whistled a jolly march.
+
+"I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ... and my son...."
+
+The author's empty skull shook sadly.
+
+"Just look how he is embracing her! They are living an easy life!"
+exclaimed the devil.
+
+"Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?"
+
+"No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich."
+
+"My wife? Where did she get the money from?"
+
+"From the sale of your books!"
+
+"Oh!" said the author and shook his bare and empty skull. "Oh! Then it
+simply means that I have worked for a certain clerk?"
+
+"I confess it looks that way," the devil chimed in merrily.
+
+The author looked at the ground and said to the devil: "Take me back
+to my grave!"
+
+... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung in the sky, and the
+author rattled his bones as he marched rapidly to his grave.... The
+devil walked behind him and whistled merrily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is surfeited with
+literature, and even the people that write only to please him, are
+rarely to his taste. In the present case my reader is also
+dissatisfied because I have said nothing about hell. As my reader is
+justly convinced that after death he will find his way there, he would
+like to know something about hell during his lifetime. Really, I can't
+tell anything pleasant to my reader on that score, because there is no
+hell, no fiery hell which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is
+something else and infinitely more terrible.
+
+The moment the doctor will have said about you to your friends: "He is
+dead!" you will enter an immeasurable, illuminated space, and that is
+the space of the consciousness of your mistakes.
+
+You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable life
+rotates about you like a wheel.
+
+It moves painfully slow, and passes before you from your first
+conscious step to the last moment of your life.
+
+You will see all that you have hidden from yourself during your
+lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your existence: you will think
+over anew all your past thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of
+yours,--all your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!
+
+And to increase your torments, you will know that on that narrow and
+stupid road which you have traversed, others are marching, and pushing
+each other, and hurrying, and lying.... And you understand that they
+are doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is to live
+such a wretched, soulless life.
+
+And though you see them hastening on towards their destruction, you
+are in no way able to warn them: you will not move nor cry, and your
+helpless desire to aid them will tear your soul to pieces.
+
+Your life passes before you, and you see it from the start, and there
+is no end to the work of your conscience, and there will be no end ...
+and to the horror of your torments there will never be an end ...
+never!
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN[31]
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+
+    [31] From _A Mainsail Haul_, by John Masefield [Copyright
+    1913 by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission of the
+    Author and the Publishers.]
+
+Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was a man who never
+throve. Nothing he put his hand to ever prospered, and as his state
+worsened, his friends fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night
+when he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in two or
+three days and the money he couldn't scrape together, he cried out, "I
+wish I could sell my soul to the devil like that man the old books
+tell about."
+
+Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and, while it chimed, a
+sparkle began to burn about the room, and the air, all at once, began
+to smell of brimstone, and a voice said:
+
+"Will these terms suit you?"
+
+He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment there. He picked
+it up and read it through; and being in despair, and not knowing what
+he was doing, he answered, "Yes," and looked round for a pen.
+
+"Take and sign," said the voice again, "but first consider what it is
+you do; do nothing rashly. Consider."
+
+So he thought awhile; then "Yes," he said, "I'll sign," and with that
+he groped for the pen.
+
+"Blood from your left thumb and sign," said the voice.
+
+So he pricked his left thumb and signed.
+
+"Here is your earnest money," said the voice, "nine and twenty silver
+pennies. This day twenty years hence I shall see you again."
+
+Now early next morning our friend came to himself and felt like one of
+the drowned. "What a dream I've had," he said. Then he woke up and saw
+the nine and twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of
+brimstone.
+
+So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he had sold his soul
+to the devil for twenty years of heart's-desire; and whatever fears he
+may have had as to what might come at the end of those twenty years,
+he found comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a
+good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could eat, drink,
+merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be care-free, heart at
+ease and jib-sheet to windward.
+
+So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in great state, having
+his heart's desire in all things; but, when his twenty years were
+nearly run through, there was no wretcheder man in all the world than
+that poor fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches,
+everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool, where he signed
+on as A. B., aboard a Black Ball packet, a tea clipper, bound to the
+China seas.
+
+They made a fine passage out, and when our friend had only three days
+more, they were in the Indian Ocean lying lazy, becalmed.
+
+Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being dead calm, all he
+had to do was just to think of things; the ship of course having no
+way on her.
+
+So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning and weeping
+till, just twenty minutes or so before eight bells were made, up came
+the Captain for a turn on deck.
+
+He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our friend crying
+at the wheel. "Hello, my man," he says, "why, what's all this? Ain't
+you well? You'd best lay aft for a dose o'salts at four bells
+tonight."
+
+"No, Cap'n," said the man, "there's no salts'll ever cure my
+sickness."
+
+"Why, what's all this?" says the old man. "You must be sick if it's as
+bad as all that. But come now; your cheek is all sunk, and you look as
+if you ain't slept well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you
+anything on your mind?"
+
+"Captain," he answers very solemn, "I have sold my soul to the devil."
+
+"Oh," said the old man, "why, that's bad. That's powerful bad. I never
+thought them sort of things ever happened outside a book."
+
+"But," said our friend, "that's not the worst of it, Captain. At this
+time three days hence the devil will fetch me home."
+
+"Good Lord!" groaned the old man. "Here's a nice hurrah's nest to
+happen aboard my ship. But come now," he went on, "did the devil give
+you no chance--no saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a
+moment."
+
+"Yes, Captain," said our friend, "just when I made the deal, there
+came a whisper in my ear. And," he said, speaking very quietly, so as
+not to let the mate hear, "if I can give the devil three jobs to do
+which he cannot do, why, then, Captain," he says, "I'm saved, and that
+deed of mine is cancelled."
+
+Well, at this the old man grinned and said, "You just leave things to
+me, my son. _I'll_ fix the devil for you. Aft there, one o' you, and
+relieve the wheel. Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below,
+and be quite easy in your mind, for I'll deal with the devil for you.
+You rest and be easy."
+
+And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one after that, and the
+one after that was the day the Devil was due.
+
+Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called
+all hands aft.
+
+"Men," he said, "I've got an all-hands job for you this forenoon."
+
+"Mr. Mate," he cried, "get all hands on to the main-tops'l halliards
+and bowse the sail stiff up and down."
+
+So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old
+John Chantyman piped up--
+
+    There's a Black Ball clipper
+    Comin' down the river.
+
+And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands jammed
+in the sheave.
+
+"Very well that," said the old man. "Now get my dinghy off o' the
+half-deck and let her drag alongside."
+
+So they did that, too.
+
+"Very well that," said the old man. "Now forrard with you, to the
+chain-locker, and rouse out every inch of chain you find there."
+
+So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up and flaked along
+the deck all clear for running.
+
+"Now, Chips," says the old man to the carpenter, "just bend the spare
+anchor to the end of that chain, and clear away the fo'c's'le rails
+ready for when we let go."
+
+So they did this, too.
+
+"Now," said the old man, "get them tubs of slush from the galley. Pass
+that slush along there, doctor. Very well that. Now turn to, all
+hands, and slush away every link in that chain a good inch thick in
+grease."
+
+So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man meant.
+
+"Very well that," cries the old man. "Now get below all hands! Chips,
+on to the fo'c's'le head with you and stand by! I'll keep the deck,
+Mr. Mate! Very well that."
+
+So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill o' baccy to leeward
+of the capstan, and the old man walked the weather-poop looking for a
+sign of hell-fire.
+
+It was still dead calm--but presently, towards six bells, he raised a
+black cloud away to leeward, and saw the glimmer of the lightning in
+it; only the flashes were too red, and came too quick.
+
+"Now," says he to himself, "stand by."
+
+Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward, right alongside, and
+there came a red flash, and a strong sulphurous smell, and then a loud
+peal of thunder as the devil steps aboard.
+
+"Mornin', Cap'n," says he.
+
+"Mornin', Mr. Devil," says the old man, "and what in blazes do you
+want aboard _my_ ship?"
+
+"Why, Captain," said the devil, "I've come for the soul of one of your
+hands as per signed agreement: and, as my time's pretty full up in
+these wicked days, I hope you won't keep me waiting for him longer
+than need be."
+
+"Well, Mr. Devil," says the old man, "the man you come for is down
+below, sleeping, just at this moment. It's a fair pity to call him up
+till it's right time. So supposin' I set you them three tasks. How
+would that be? Have you any objections?"
+
+"Why, no," said the devil, "fire away as soon as you like."
+
+"Mr. Devil," said the old man, "you see that main-tops'l yard? Suppose
+you lay out on that main-tops'l yard and take in three reefs
+singlehanded."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines, into the
+top, up the topmast rigging and along the yard.
+
+Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he hailed the deck:
+
+"Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!"
+
+"I will not," said the old man, "nary a lower."
+
+"Come up your sheets, then," cries the devil. "This main-topsail's
+stiff up-and-down. How'm I to take in three reefs when the sail's
+stiff up-and-down?"
+
+"Why," said the old man, "_you can't do it_. Come out o' that! Down
+from aloft, you hoof-footed son. That's one to me."
+
+"Yes," says the devil, when he got on deck again, "I don't deny it,
+Cap'n. That's one to you."
+
+"Now, Mr. Devil," said the old man, going towards the rail, "suppose
+you was to step into that little boat alongside there. Will you
+please?"
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," he said, and he slid down the forrard fall, got into
+the stern sheets, and sat down.
+
+"Now, Mr. Devil," said the skipper, taking a little salt spoon from
+his vest pocket, "supposin' you bail all the water on that side the
+boat on to this side the boat, using this spoon as your dipper."
+
+Well!--the devil just looked at him.
+
+"Say!" he said at length, "which of the New England States d'ye hail
+from anyway?"
+
+"Not Jersey, anyway," said the old man. "That's two up, alright; ain't
+it, sonny?"
+
+"Yes," growls the devil, as he climbs aboard. "That's two up. Two to
+you and one to play. Now, what's your next contraption?"
+
+"Mr. Devil," said the old man, looking very innocent, "you see, I've
+ranged my chain ready for letting go anchor. Now Chips is forrard
+there, and when I sing out, he'll let the anchor go. Supposin' you
+stopper the chain with them big hands o' yourn and keep it from
+running out clear. Will you, please?"
+
+So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together, and gets
+away forrard by the bitts, and stands by.
+
+"All ready, Cap'n," he says.
+
+"All ready, Chips?" asked the old man.
+
+"All ready, sir," replies Chips.
+
+"Then, stand by--Let _go_ the anchor," and clink, clink, old Chips
+knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain
+into a five mile deep of God's sea. As I said, they were in the Indian
+Ocean.
+
+Well--there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and
+the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a
+bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.
+
+So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the
+last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he
+put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.
+
+But the chain gave such a _Yank_ when it came-to, that the big link
+carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole,
+in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no
+devil now. The devil's dead.
+
+As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles
+burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo'c's'le scuttle
+and banged thereon with a hand-spike.
+
+"Rouse out, there, the port watch!" he called, "an' get my dinghy
+inboard."
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL IN A NUNNERY
+
+BY FRANCIS OSCAR MANN
+
+
+According to a German legend, the devil is master of all arts, and
+certainly he has given sufficient proof of his musical talent. Certain
+Church Fathers ascribed, not without good reason, the origin of music
+to Satan. "The Devil," says Mr. Huneker in his diabolical story "The
+Supreme Sin" (1920), "is the greatest of all musicians," and Rowland
+Hill long ago admitted the fact that the devil has all the good tunes.
+Perhaps his greatest composition is the _Sonata del Diavolo_, which
+Tartini wrote down in 1713. This diabolical master-piece is the
+subject of Gerard de Nerval's story _La Sonate du Diable_ (1830).
+While the devil plays all instruments equally well, he seems to prefer
+the violin. Satan appears as fiddler in the poem "Der Teufel mit der
+Geige," which has been ascribed to the Swiss anti-Papist Pamphilus
+Gengenbach of the sixteenth century. In Leanu's _Faust_ (1836)
+Mephistopheles takes the violin out of the hands of one of the
+musicians at a peasant-wedding and plays a diabolical _czardas_, which
+fills the hearts of all who hear it with voluptuousness. An opera _Un
+Violon du Diable_ was played in Paris in 1849. _The Devil's Violin_,
+an extravaganza in verse by Benjamin Webster, was performed the same
+year in London. In his story "Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire" Baudelaire presents the Demon of Love as holding in his left
+hand a violin "which without doubt served to sing his pleasures and
+pains." The devil also appears as limping fiddler in a California
+legend, which appeared under the title "The Devil's Fiddle" in a
+Californian magazine in 1855. Death, the devil's first cousin, if not
+his _alter ego_, has the souls, in the Dance of Death, march off to
+hell to a merry tune on his violin. Death appears as a musician also
+in the Piper of Hamlin. In this legend, well known to the English
+world through Browning's poem "Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1843) and Miss
+Peabody's play _The Piper_ (1909), the rats are the human souls, which
+Death charms with his music into following him. In the Middle Ages the
+soul was often represented as leaving the body in the form of a mouse.
+The soul of a good man comes out of his mouth as a white mouse, while
+at the death of a sinner the soul escapes as a black mouse, which the
+devil catches and brings to hell. Mephistopheles, it will be recalled,
+calls himself "the lord of rats and mice" (_Faust_, 1, 1516).
+Devil-Death has inherited this wind instrument from the goat-footed
+Pan.
+
+"The Devil is more busy in the convents," we are told by J. K.
+Huysmans in his novel _En route_ (1895), "than in the cities, as he
+has a harder job on hand."
+
+
+
+
+BELPHAGOR
+
+BY NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
+
+
+This story of the devil Belphagor, who was sent by his infernal chief
+Pluto up to earth, where he married an earthly wife, but finally left
+her in disgust to go back to hell, is also of mediaeval origin. It was
+first printed by Giovanni Brevio in 1545, and appeared for the second
+time with the name of Machiavelli in 1549, twenty-two years after the
+death of the diabolical statesman. The two authors did not borrow from
+each other, but had a common source in a mediaeval Latin manuscript,
+which seems to have first fallen into the hands of Italians, but was
+later brought to France where it has been lost. The tale of the
+marriage of the devil appeared in several other Italian versions
+during the sixteenth century. Among the Italian novelists, who retold
+it for the benefit of their married friends, may be mentioned
+Giovan-Francesco Straparola, Francesco Sansovino, and Gabriel
+Chappuys. In England this story was no less popular. Barnabe Riche
+inserted it in his collection of narratives in 1581, and we meet it
+again later in the following plays: _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_,
+ascribed to Ulpian Fulwell (1599); _The Devil and his Dame_ by P. M.
+Houghton (1600); _Machiavel and the Devil_ by Daborne and Henslowe
+(1613); _The Devil is an Ass_ by Ben Jonson (1616); and _Belphagor, or
+the Marriage of the Devil_ (1690). In France the story was treated in
+verse by La Fontaine (1694), and in Germany it served the Nuremberg
+poet Hans Sachs as the subject for a farce (1557).
+
+The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is authority for the statement that
+Machiavelli's own married life had nothing to do with the plot of his
+story.
+
+"The notion of this story is ingenious, and might have been made
+productive of entertaining incident, had Belphagor been led by his
+connubial connections from one crime to another. But Belphagor is only
+unfortunate, and in no respect guilty; nor did anything occur during
+his abode on earth that testified to the power of woman in leading us
+to final condemnation. The story of the peasant and the possession of
+the princesses bears no reference to the original idea with which the
+tale commences, and has no connection with the object of the infernal
+deputy's terrestrial sojourn" (J. C. Dunlop, _History of Fiction_). To
+this criticism Mr. Thomas Roscoe replies that "part of the humour of
+the story seems to consist in Belphagor's earthly career being cut
+short before he had served the full term of his apprenticeship. But
+from the follies and extravagances into which he had already plunged,
+we are now authorized to believe that, even if he had been able longer
+to support the asperities of the lady's temper, he must, from the
+course he was pursuing, have been led from crime to crime, or at least
+from folly to folly, to such a degree that he would infallibly have
+been condemned" (T. Roscoe, _Italian Novelists_).
+
+The demon of Machiavelli offers no features of a deep psychology, but
+he distinguishes himself from the other demons of his period by his
+elegant manners. Like creator, like creature.
+
+Belphagor, the god of the Moabites, like all other pagan gods, joined
+the infernal forces of Satan when driven off the earth by the Church
+Triumphant.
+
+The parliament of devils, which we find in this story, was taken from
+the mystery-plays where the ruler of hell is represented as holding
+occasional receptions when he listens to the reports of their recent
+achievements on his behalf, and consults their opinion on matters of
+state. Satan, who has always wished to rival God, has instituted the
+infernal council in imitation of the celestial council described in
+the Book of Job. The source for the parliament of devils is the
+apocryphal book _Evangelium Nicodemi_. An early metrical tract under
+the title of the _Parlement of Devils_ was printed two or three times
+in London about 1520. A "Pandemonium" is also found in Tasso, Milton,
+and Chateaubriand. The _Parlement of Foules_ (14th century) is but a
+modification of the _Parlement of Devils_, for the devil and the fool
+were originally identical in person and may be traced back to the
+demonic clown of the ancient heathen cult (cf. the present writer's
+book, _The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_, p. 37). A far echo
+is Thomas Chatterton's poem _The Parliament of Sprites_.
+
+This story recalls to us the saying that the heart of a beautiful
+woman is the most beloved hiding-place of at least seven devils.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
+
+BY WASHINGTON IRVING
+
+
+By his interest in popular legends the first of the great American
+writers shows his sympathy with the Romantic movement, which prevailed
+in his time in all the countries of Europe. His devil, however, has
+not been imported from the lands across the Atlantic, but is a part of
+the superstitions of the New World. The author himself did not believe
+in "Old Scratch." The real devils for him were the slave-traders and
+the witch-hunters of Salem fame. It is interesting now to read a
+contemporary critic of Washington Irving's devil-story: "If Mr. Irving
+believes in the existence of Tom Walker's master, we can scarcely
+conceive how he can so earnestly jest about him; at all events, we
+would counsel him to beware lest his own spells should prove fatal to
+him" (_Eclectic Review_, 1825). Few people in those days had the
+courage to take Old Nick good-naturedly. "Even the clever Madame de
+Stael," said Goethe, "was greatly scandalized that I kept the devil in
+such good-humour."
+
+The devil appears in many colours, principally, however, in black and
+red. It is a common belief in Scotland that the devil is a black man,
+as may also be seen in Robert Louis Stevenson's story "Thrawn Janet."
+There is no warrant in the biblical tradition for a black devil.
+Satan, however, appeared as an Ethiopian as far back as the days of
+the Church Fathers. The black colour presumably is intended to suggest
+his place of abode, whereas red denotes the scorching fires of hell.
+The devil was considered as a sort of eternal Salamander. In the New
+Testament he is described as a fiery fiend. Red was considered by
+Oriental nations as a diabolical colour. In Egypt red hair and red
+animals of all kinds were considered infernal. The Apis was also
+red-coloured. Satan's red beard recalls the Scandinavian god Donar or
+Thor, who is of Phoenician origin. Judas was always represented in
+mediaeval mystery-plays with a red beard; and down to the present day
+red hair is the mark of a suspicious character. The devil also appears
+as yellow, and even blue, but never as white or green. The yellow
+devil is but a shade less bright than his fiery brother. The blue
+devil is a sulphur-constitutioned individual. He is the demon of
+melancholy, and fills us with "the blues." As the spirit of darkness
+and death, the devil cannot assume the colours of white or green,
+which are the symbols of light and life. The devil's dragon-tail is,
+according to Sir Walter Scott, of biblical tradition, coming from a
+literal interpretation of a figurative expression.
+
+A few interesting remarks on the expression "The Devil and Tom Walker"
+current in certain parts of this country as a caution to usurers will
+be found in Dr. Blondheim's article "The Devil and Doctor Foster" in
+_Modern Language Notes_ for 1918.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN
+
+BY WILHELM HAUFF
+
+
+Wilhelm Hauff, the author of this book, ranks honourably among the
+members of the Romantic School in Germany. As the work of a man of
+only twenty-two years, just out of the university, the book is a
+credit to its author. It must be admitted, however, that it was not
+altogether original with him. The idea was taken from E. Th. A.
+Hoffmann,--Devil-Hoffmann, as he was called by his contemporaries,--who
+in his short-story "Der Teufel in Berlin" also has the devil travel
+incognito in Germany; and the title was borrowed from Jean Paul
+Richter, who also claimed to edit _Selections from the Devil's Papers_
+(_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, 1789_). There were others, too,
+who claimed to have been honoured by his Satanic Majesty to edit his
+"journal." J. R. Beard, a Unitarian minister, published in 1872 an
+_Autobiography of Satan_. Another autobiography of Satan is said to
+have been found among the posthumous works of Leonid Andreev, author
+of that original diabolical work _Anathema, a tragedy_ (Engl. tr.
+1910). This book has just appeared in English under the title _Satan's
+Diary_. Frederic Soulie's _Les Memoires du Diable_ (1837/8) consist of
+memoirs not of the devil himself, but of other people, which the Count
+de Luizzi, the human partner to the diabolical pact, is very anxious
+to know. Hauff's book consists of a series of papers, which are but
+loosely connected. In certain passages we hear nothing of the
+autobiographer. The Suavian writer apparently could digest the
+Diabolical only in homeopathic doses. His Satan, moreover, is a very
+youthful and quite harmless devil. He is nothing but a personified
+echo of the author's student-days. The book by Hauff is perhaps the
+most popular personification of the devil in German literature.
+
+The passage presented here shows the phantastic element of the book at
+its best. The short introductory synopsis will give an idea of its
+satirical aspect. The humorous aspect has pretty nearly been lost in
+translation. Professor Brander Matthews has aptly said: "The German
+humour is like the simple Italian wines--it will not stand export."
+
+Of all the peoples, the Germans seem to have had the most kindly
+feelings towards the devil. This is because they knew him better. To
+judge from the many bridges and cathedrals, which the demon, according
+to legends, has built in Germany, he must have been a frequent visitor
+to that country. In Frankfort, where with his own hands our author
+received the memoirs from the autobiographer, there is a gilded cock
+above the bridge in memory of the bargain the bridge-builder once made
+with Satan to give him the first living thing that should cross the
+river. The day the bridge was finished, a cock fluttered from a
+woman's market-basket and ran over the bridge. A claw-like hand
+reached down and claimed the prize.
+
+The distinguished personage, whose adventures form the subject of this
+book, does not figure in it under his own name, nor does he appear
+here in the gala attire of tail, horns and cloven foot with which he
+graces the revels on the Blocksberg. He borrows for the nonce a tall,
+gentlemanly figure, surmounted by delicate features, dresses well, is
+fastidious about his ring and linen, travels post and stops at the
+best hotels. He begins his earthly career by studying at the renowned
+university of ----. As he can boast of abundant means, a handsome
+wardrobe and the name of Herr von Barbe, it is no wonder that on the
+first evening he should be politely received, the next morning have a
+confidential friend, and the second evening embrace "brothers till
+death." He becomes much puzzled at the extraordinary manners of the
+students, and at their language, so different from that of every
+rational German. He remarks: "Over a glass of beer they often fell
+into singularly transcendental investigations, of which I understood
+little or nothing. However, I observed the principal words, and when
+drawn into a conversation, replied with a grave air--'Freedom,
+Fatherland, Nationality.'" He attends the lectures of a celebrated
+professor, whose profundity of thought and terseness of style are so
+astounding, that the German world set him down as possessed; the
+critical student, however, differs somewhat from that conclusion,
+observing--
+
+"I have borne a great deal in the world. I have even entered into
+swine," ("The devil," said Luther, "knows Scripture well and he uses
+it in argument") "but into such a philosopher? No, indeed! I had
+rather be excused."
+
+The episode here reprinted occurred in a hotel in Frankfort, where our
+incognito is known as Herr von Natas (which, it will be noticed, is
+his more familiar name read backwards). His brilliant powers of
+conversation, his adroit flattery, courteous gallantry, and elegant,
+though wayward flights of imagination, soon rendered him the delight
+of the whole _table d'hote_. All guests, including our author, were
+fascinated by the mysterious stranger. But we will let the author
+himself tell his story.
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE
+
+BY NIKOLAI VASILEVICH GOGOL
+
+
+This story, taken from _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_, a series of
+sketches of the life of the Ukrainian peasants, offers a good
+illustration of the author's art, which was a combination of the
+romantic and realistic elements. In these pages Gogol wished to record
+the myths and legends still current among the plain folk of his
+beloved Ukrainia. The devil naturally enough peeps out here and there
+through the pages of this book. Gogol's devil is a product of the
+Russian soil, "the spirit of mischief and cunning, whom Russian
+literature is always trying to outplay and overcome" (Mme. Jarintzow,
+_Russian Poets and Poems_).
+
+According to European superstition St. John's Eve is the only evening
+in the year when his Satanic Majesty reveals himself in his proper
+shape to the eyes of men. If you wish to behold his Highness face to
+face, stand on St. John's Eve at midnight near a mustard-plant. It is
+suggested by Sir James Frazer in his _Golden Bough_ that, in the
+chilly air of the upper world, this prince from a warmer clime may be
+attracted by the warmth of the mustard.
+
+It is believed in many parts of Europe that treasures can be found on
+St. John's Eve by means of the fern-seed. Even without the use of this
+plant treasures are sometimes said to bloom or burn in the earth, or
+to reveal their presence by a bluish flame on Midsummer Eve. As
+guardian of treasures the devil is the successor of the gnome.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+_The Devil's Wager_ is Thackeray's earliest attempt at story-writing,
+was contributed to a weekly literary paper with the imposing title
+_The National Standard, and Journal of Literature, Science, Music,
+Theatricals, and the Fine Arts_, of which he was proprietor and
+editor, and was reprinted in the _Paris Sketch Book_ (1840). The story
+first ended with the very Thackerayesque touch: "The moral of this
+story will be given in several successive numbers." In the _Paris
+Sketch Book_ the last three words are changed into "the second
+edition." This comical tale was illustrated by an excellent wood-cut,
+representing the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after him
+the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is wound round
+Sir Roger's neck.
+
+In the "Advertisement to the First Edition" of his _Paris Sketch
+Book_, Thackeray admits the French origin of this as well as of his
+other devil-story, _The Painter's Bargain_, to be found in the same
+volume. It was Thackeray's good fortune to live in Paris during the
+wildest and most brilliant years of Romanticism; and while his
+attitude towards this movement and its leaders, as presented in the
+_Paris Sketch Book_, is not wholly sympathetic, he is indebted to it
+for his interest in supernatural subjects. The Romanticism of
+Thackeray has been denied with great obstinacy and almost passion, for
+like Heinrich Heine, the chief of German Romantic ironists, he poked
+fun at this movement. But "to laugh at what you love," as Mr. George
+Saintsbury has pointed out in his _History of the French Novel_, "is
+not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself."
+
+Mercurius makes a pun on the familiar quotation "rara avis" from
+Horace (_Sat._ 2, 2. 26), where it means a rare bird. This expression
+is commonly applied to a singular person. It is also found in the
+_Satires_ of Juvenal (VI, 165).
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN
+
+BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity. Satan,
+contending with God for the possession of the human race, was supposed
+to have developed a passion for catching souls. At the death of every
+man a real fight takes place over his soul between an angel, who
+wishes to lead it to heaven, and a devil, who attempts to drag it to
+hell (Jude 9). In order to assure the soul for himself in advance,
+Satan attempts to purchase it from the owner while he is still
+living--_vivente corpore_, as he tells the _restaurateur_ in Poe's
+story. As prince of this world he can easily grant even the most
+extravagant wishes of man in exchange for his soul. Office, wealth and
+pleasure are mainly the objects for which a man enters into a pact
+with the Evil One. Count de Luizzi in Frederic Soulie's _Les Memoires
+du Diable_ sells his soul to the devil for an uncommon consideration.
+It is not wealth or pleasure that tempts him. What he wants in
+exchange for his soul is to know the past lives of his fellowmen and
+women, "a thing," as Mr. Saintsbury well remarks, "which a person of
+sense and taste would do anything, short of selling himself to the
+devil, _not_ to know." The devil fulfils every wish of his contractor
+for a stipulated period of time, at the expiration of which the soul
+becomes his. Pope Innocent VIII, in his fatal bull "Summis
+desiderantes" of the year 1484, officially recognized the possibility
+of a compact with the devil. Increase Mather, the New England
+preacher, also affirms that many men have made "cursed covenants with
+the prince of darkness."
+
+St. Theophilus, of Cilicia, in the sixth century, was the first to
+make the notable discovery that a man could enter into a pact of this
+nature. The price he set for his soul was a bishopric. This story has
+been superseded during the Renaissance period by a similar legend
+concerning the German Dr. Faustus. Other famous personages reputed to
+have sold their souls to the devil for one consideration or another
+are Don Juan in Spain, Twardowski in Poland, Merlin in England, and
+Robert le Diable in France. Socrates, Apuleius, Scaliger and
+Cagliostro are also said to have entered into compacts with him.
+
+In devil-contracts the Evil One insists that his human negotiator sign
+the deed with his own blood, while the man never requires the devil to
+sign it even in ink. The human party to the transaction has always had
+full confidence in the word of the fiend. There is a universal belief
+that the devil invariably fulfils his engagement. In no single
+instance of folk-lore has Satan tried to evade the fulfilment of his
+share in the agreement. But the man, in violation of the written pact,
+has often cheated the devil out of his legal due by technical
+quibbles. "It is peculiar to the German tradition," says Gustav
+Freytag, "that the devil endeavours to fulfil zealously and honestly
+his part of the contract; the deceiver is man." In regard to fidelity
+to his word, the father of lies has always set an example to his
+victims. "You men," said Satan, "are cheats; you make all sorts of
+promises so long as you need me, and leave me in the lurch as soon as
+you have got what you wanted." Mediaeval man had no scruples about his
+breach of contract with the devil. He always considered the legal
+document signed with his own blood as "a scrap of paper." "But still
+the pact is with the enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter,
+and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war. We are
+very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow
+observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which God
+decrees conditionally and the devil delights in" (H. D. Taylor,
+_Mediaeval Mind_). We now can understand why in Eugene Field's story
+"Daniel and the Devil" it seems to Satan so strange that he should be
+asked for a written guarantee that he too would fulfil his part of the
+contract. Apparently this was the first time that the devil had any
+transactions with an American business man, who has not even faith in
+Old Nick.
+
+Reference is made in this story by the devil himself to the popular
+saying that the devil is not so black as he is painted. Even the
+devout George Herbert wrote--
+
+    "We paint the devil black, yet he
+    Hath some good in him all agree."
+
+This story recalls to us the proverb: "Talk of the devil, and he will
+either come or send."
+
+Washington Irving, as we have seen, thinks that he is not always very
+obliging.
+
+Satan, the father of lies, is said to be the patron of lawyers. The
+men of the London bar formed a "Temple" corps, which was dubbed "The
+Devil's Own." The tavern of the lawyers on Fleet Street in London was
+called "The Devil."
+
+
+
+
+BON-BON
+
+BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
+
+
+This writer, to whom the inner world was more of a reality than the
+external world, had many visions, especially of the devil. The two
+seem to have been on a familiar footing. The devil, we must admit,
+filled Poe's imagination even if we will not go so far as to agree
+with his critics that he had Satan substituted for soul. His
+contemporaries, as is well known, would say of him: "He hath a demon,
+yea, seven devils are entered into him." His detractors actually
+regarded this unhappy poet as an incarnation of the ruler of Hades
+(cf. _North American Review_, 1856; _Edinburgh Review_, 1858; _Dublin
+University Magazine_, 1875). It was but recently that a writer in the
+_New York Times_ declared Poe to have been "grub-staked by demons."
+
+The story "Bon-Bon" offers a specimen of Poe's grimly grotesque
+humour. It first appeared in the _Broadway Journal_ of August, 1835.
+
+The devil of this most un-American of all American authors is not the
+child of New World fancy, but part of European imagination. The
+scenery of the story is aptly laid in the land of Robert le Diable.
+
+Poe's description of the devil is, on the whole, fully in accord with
+the universally accredited conception of his ordinary appearance. His
+brutal hoofs and savage horns and beastly tail are all there, only
+discreetly hid under a dress which any gentleman might wear. The devil
+is very proud of this epithet given him by William Shakespeare; and
+from that time on, it has been his greatest ambition to be a
+gentleman, in outer appearance at least; and to his credit it must be
+said that he has so well succeeded in his efforts to resemble a
+gentleman that it is now very hard to tell the two apart. The devil is
+accredited in popular imagination with long ears, a long (sometimes
+upturned) nose, a wide mouth, and teeth of a lion. It is on account of
+his fangs that Satan has been called a lion by the biblical writers.
+But although the prince of darkness can assume any form in the heavens
+above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, he has
+never appeared as a lion. This, I believe, is out of deference to
+Judah, whom his father also called a lion. Hairiness is a pretty
+general characteristic of the devil. His hairy skin he probably
+inherited from the ancient fauns and satyrs. Esau is believed to have
+been a hairy demon. "Old Harry" is a corruption of "Old Hairy." As a
+rule, Old Nick is not pictured as bald, but has a head covered with
+locks like serpents. These snaky tresses, which already "Monk" Lewis
+wound around the devil's head, are borrowed, according to Sir Walter
+Scott, from the shield of Minerva. His face, however, is usually
+hairless. A beard has rarely been accorded to Satan. His red beard on
+the mediaeval stage probably came from Donar, whom, as Jacob Grimm
+says, the modern notions of the devil so often have in the background.
+Long bearded devils are nowhere normal except in the representations
+of the Eastern Church of the monarch of hell as counterpart of the
+monarch of heaven. The eyeless devil is original with our writer. His
+disciple Baudelaire in his story _Les Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la
+Gloire_ presents the second of these three Tempters as an eyeless
+monster. The mediaeval devil had saucer eyes. According to a Russian
+legend, the all-seeing spirit of evil is all covered with eyes. The
+cadaverous aspect of the devil is traditional. With but one remarkable
+exception (the Egyptian Typhon), demons are always represented lean.
+"A devil," said Caesarius of Heisterbach of the thirteenth century,
+"is usually so thin as to cast no shadow" (_Dialogus Miraculorum_,
+iii). This characteristic is a heritage of the ancient hunger-demon,
+who, himself a shadow, casts no shadow. In the course of the
+centuries, however, the devil has gained flesh. His faded suit of
+black cloth recalls the mediaeval devil who appeared "in his fethers
+all ragged and rent."
+
+It is not altogether improbable that the ecclesiastical appearance of
+the devil in this story was not wholly unintentional, as the author
+believes. While Satan cannot be said to be "one of those who take to
+the ministry mostly," he often likes to slip into priestly robes. In
+the "Temptation of Jesus" by Lucas van Leyden the devil is habited as
+a monk with a pointed cowl.
+
+In the comparison of a soul with a shadow there is a reminiscence of
+Adalbert von Chamisso, whose _Peter Schlemihl_ (1814) sells his shadow
+to the devil. In his story _The Fisherman and His Soul_ Oscar Wilde
+considers the shadow of the body as the body of the soul.
+
+That the devils in hell eat the damned consigned there for punishment
+is also in accord with mediaeval tradition. This idea probably is of
+Oriental origin. The seven Assyrian evil spirits have a predilection
+for human flesh and blood. Ghouls and vampires belong to this class of
+demons.
+
+The devil's pitchfork is not the forked sceptre of Pluto supplemented
+by another tine, as is commonly assumed. It is the ancient sign of
+fertility, which is still used as a fertility charm by the Hindus in
+India and the Zuni and Aztec Indians of North America and Mexico. A
+related symbol is the trident of Poseidon or Neptune. This symbol was
+recently carried in a children's May Day parade through Central Park
+in New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINTER'S DEVIL
+
+
+The term "Printer's Devil" is usually accounted for by the fact that
+Aldus Manutius, the great Venetian printer, employed in his printing
+shop (about 1485) a black slave, who was popularly thought to be an
+imp of Satan. This expression may have a deeper significance. It may
+owe its origin to the fact that Fust, the inventor of the printing
+press, was believed to have connections with the Evil One. It will be
+remembered that during the Middle Ages and, in Catholic countries,
+even for a long time afterwards every discovery of science, every
+invention of material benefit to man, was believed to have been
+secured by a compact with the devil. Our ancestors deemed the human
+mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything
+beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the
+close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place
+and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of
+the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_.) Sacred days, as is well known,
+are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil
+has also employed them in books of magic. This is but another instance
+of the mimicry by "God's Ape" of the sanctities of the Church.
+
+In the infernal economy, where a strict division of labour prevails,
+the printer's devil is the librarian of hell. The books over which he
+has charge must be as numerous as the sands on the sea-shore. For
+nearly every book written without priestly command was associated in
+the good old days with the devil. The assertion that Satan hates
+nothing so much as writing or printer's ink apparently is a very great
+calumny. He has often even been accused of stealing manuscripts in
+order to prevent their publication. The prince of darkness naturally
+rather shuns than courts inquiry. On one occasion Joseph Goerres, the
+defender of Catholicism, complained that the devil, provoked by his
+interference in Satanic affairs (he is the author of _Die christliche
+Mystik_, which is a rich source for diabolism, diabolical possession
+and exorcism), had stolen one of his manuscripts; it was, however,
+found some time afterwards in his bookcase, and the devil was
+completely exonerated.
+
+The concluding paragraph of this story is especially interesting in
+the light of the present agitation for unbound books and a eulogy of
+the old Franklin Square Library.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S MOTHER-IN-LAW
+
+BY FERNAN CABALLERO
+
+
+Fernan Caballero is the pseudonym of Mrs. Cecilia Boehl von Faber,
+Marchioness de Arco-Hermoso, who was a Swiss by birth, daughter of the
+literary historian Johann Boehl von Faber, the Johannes of Campe's
+_Robinson_ (1779). Her father initiated her early into Spanish
+literature, which he interpreted for her in the spirit of the Romantic
+movement of those early days. The interest in mediaeval traditions,
+which she owes to this early training, increased when, later, she went
+to Catholic Spain. The charm of her popular Andalusian tales consists
+in the fact that she fully shares with the Catholic peasants of that
+province an implicit faith in the truth of these mediaeval legends. In
+her stories we find perhaps the purest expression of mediaevalism in
+modern times. Fernan Caballero gradually drifted to the extreme Right
+in all questions of religion, art and life. She hated every liberal
+expression in matters of faith or art with the fanaticism of a
+Torquemada. This author not only shared the somewhat general Catholic
+view that all Protestants were eternally damned, but she naively
+believed that every son of Israel had a tail (Julian Schmidt).
+
+The story of woman's triumph over the Devil is well characteristic of
+the Land of the Blessed Lady, as Andalusia is commonly called.
+
+The legend of a devil imprisoned in a phial is also found in the work
+of the Spaniard Luis Velez de Guevara called _El Diablo cojuelo_
+(1641), from whom Alain Le Sage borrowed both title and plot for his
+novel _Le Diable boiteux_ (1707). Asmodeus, liberated from a bottle,
+into which he had been confined by a magician, entertains his
+deliverer with the secret sights of a big city at midnight, by
+unroofing the houses of the Spanish capital and showing him the life
+that was going on in them. The legend was introduced into Spain from
+the East by the Moors and finally acclimated to find a place in local
+traditions. From that country it spread over the whole of Europe. The
+Asiatics believed that by abstinence and special prayers evil spirits
+could be reduced into obedience and confined in black bottles. The
+tradition forms a part of the Solomonic lore, and is frequently told
+in esoteric works. In the cabalistic book _Vinculum Spirituum_, which
+is of Eastern origin, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of
+a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle
+of black glass three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of
+their kings, of whom Beleh was the chief, Beliar (_alias_ Belial) the
+second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle
+into a deep well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the
+Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in the well, descended into it,
+broke the bottle, and freed the demons (cf. also _The Little Key of
+Rabbi Solomon, containing the Names, Seals and Characters of the 72
+Spirits with whom he held converse, also the Art Almadel of Rabbi
+Solomon, carefully copied by "Raphael,"_ London, 1879). This legend is
+also found in the tale of the Fisherman and the Djinn in the _Arabian
+Nights_, which was also treated by the German poet Klopstock in his
+poem "Wintermaerchen" (1776).
+
+The devil, as it is said in this story, has a mortal hatred of the
+sound of bells. The origin of ringing the church bells was, according
+to Sir James Frazer, to drive away devils and witches. The devil in
+Poe's story "The Devil in the Belfry" (1839) was, indeed, very
+courageous in invading the belfry.
+
+The concluding part of the story is identical with the Machiavellian
+tale of Belphagor.
+
+This tale of the Devil's mother-in-law first appeared in the volume
+_Cuentos y poesias populares Andaluces_ (Seville, 1859), which was
+translated the same year into French by Germond de Lavigne under the
+title _Nouvelles andalouses_. An English translation under the title
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ appeared in 1881. This particular story was
+rendered again into English two years later and included in _Tales
+from Twelve Tongues_, translated by a British Museum Librarian
+[Richard Garnett?], London, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE GENEROUS GAMBLER
+
+BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE
+
+
+This worshipper and singer of Satan shared his American _confrere's_
+predilection for the devil. He found his models in the diabolical
+scenes of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he interpreted to the Latin world.
+"Baudelaire," said Theophile Gautier, his master and friend, "had a
+singular prepossession for the devil as a tempter, in whom he saw a
+dragon who hurried him into sin, infamy, crime, and perversity." To
+Baudelaire, the trier of men's souls, the Tempter, was as real a
+person as he was to Job. He believed that the devil had a great deal
+to do with the direction of human destinies. "C'est le Diable qui
+tient les fils qui nous remuent!" Men are mere puppets in the hands of
+the devil. "Baudelaire's motto," as Mr. James Huneker has well
+remarked, "might be the reverse of Browning's lines: The Devil is in
+his heaven. All's wrong with the world."
+
+Baudelaire's devil is a dandy and a boulevardier with wings. Each
+author, it has been said, creates the devil in his own image.
+
+The greatest boon which Satan could offer Baudelaire was to free him
+from that great modern monster, _Ennui_, which selects as its prey the
+most highly gifted natures. The boredom of life--this was, indeed, as
+this unhappy poet admits, the source of all his maladies and of all
+his miseries. He called it the "foulest of vices" and hoped to escape
+from it "by dreaming of the superlative emotional adventure, by
+indulging in infinite, indeterminate desire" (Irving Babbit). His
+preface to the _Flowers of Evil_, in which he addresses the reader,
+ends with the following statement in regard to the nature of this
+modern beast of prey: "Among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
+the apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents--the yelling,
+howling, growling, grovelling monsters which form the foul menagerie
+of our vices--there is one which is the most foul, the most wicked,
+the most unclean of all. This vice, although it uses neither
+extravagant gestures nor makes a great outcry, would willingly make a
+ruin of the earth, and swallow up all the world in a yawn. This is
+_Ennui!_ who, with his eye moistened by an involuntary tear, dreams of
+scaffolds while smoking his hookah. Thou knowest him, this delicate
+monster, hypocritical reader, my like, my brother!"
+
+In Gorky's story "The Devil" the devil himself suffers from _ennui_.
+
+But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan's word, and,
+therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to
+him. He had little faith in the father of lies. In his book called
+_Artificial Paradises_ (1860) Baudelaire expressed the thought that
+the devil would say to the eaters of hashish, the smokers of opium, as
+he did in the olden days to our first parents, "If you taste of the
+fruit, you will be as the gods," and that the devil no more kept his
+word with them than he did with Adam and Eve, for the next day, the
+god, tempted, weakened, enervated, descended even lower than the
+beast.
+
+The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat goes back to
+far antiquity. Goat-formed deities and spirits of the woods existed in
+the religions of India, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. The Assyrian god
+was often associated with the goat, which was supposed to possess the
+qualities for which he was worshipped. The he-goat was also the sacred
+beast of Donar or Thor, who was brought to Scandinavia by the
+Phoenicians. (On the relation of satyrs to goats see also James G.
+Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, vol. VIII, pp. 1 _sqq._) At the revels on
+the Blocksberg Satan always appeared as a black buck.
+
+_Le bon diable_, which is a favourite phrase in France, points to his
+simplicity of mind rather than generosity of spirit. It generally
+expresses the half-contemptuous pity with which the giants, these huge
+beings with weak minds, were regarded.
+
+The idea that Satan would gamble for a human soul is of mediaeval
+origin and may have been taken by Baudelaire from Gerard de Nerval,
+who in his mystery play _Le Prince des Sots_ (1830) has the devil play
+at dice with an angel, with human souls as stakes. As a dice-player
+Satan resembles Wuotan. Mr. H. G. Wells in _The Undying Fire_ (1919)
+has Diabolus play chess with the Deity in Heaven.
+
+The devil in this story falls back into speaking Hebrew when the days
+of his ancient celestial glory are brought back to his mind. In Louis
+Menard's _Le Diable au cafe_ the devil calls Hebrew a dead language,
+and as a modern prefers to be called by the French equivalent of his
+original Hebrew name. In the Middle Ages the devil's favourite
+language was Latin. Marlowe's Mephistopheles also speaks this
+language. Satan is known to be a linguist. "It is the Devil by his
+several languages," said Ben Jonson.
+
+According to popular belief the devil is a learned scholar and a
+profound thinker. He has all science, philosophy, and theology at his
+tongue's end.
+
+The Shavian devil in contradistinction to the Baudelairian fiend does
+bitterly complain that he is so little appreciated on earth. Walter
+Scott's devil (in "Wandering Willie's Tale," 1824) also complains that
+he has been "sair miscaa'd in the world."
+
+The preacher to whom our author refers is the Jesuit Ravignan, who
+declared that the disbelief in the devil was one of the most cunning
+devices of the great enemy himself. (La plus grande force du diable,
+c'est d'etre parvenu a se faire nier.) Baudelaire's disciple J. K.
+Huysmans similarly expresses in his novel _La-Bas_ (1891) the view
+that "the greatest power of Satan lies in the fact that he gets men to
+deny him." (Cf. the present writer's essay "The Satanism of Huysmans"
+in _The Open Court_ for April, 1920.) The devil mocks at this
+theological dictum in Pierre Veber's story "L'Homme qui vendit son ame
+au Diable" (1918). In Perkins's story "The Devil-Puzzlers" the devil
+expresses his satisfaction over his success in this regard.
+
+The story "The Generous Gambler" first appeared in the _Figaro_ of
+February, 1864, was reprinted under the title of "Le Diable" in the
+_Revue du Dix-Neuvieme Siecle_ of June, 1866, and was finally included
+in _Poemes en Prose_. This story has also been translated into English
+by Joseph T. Shipley.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE LOW MASSES
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+BY ALPHONSE DAUDET
+
+
+Daudet and Maupassant furnish the best proof of the assertion made in
+the Introduction to this book that even the Naturalists who, as a
+rule, disdained the phantastic plots of the Romanticists, whose
+imagination was rigorously earth-bound, felt themselves nevertheless
+attracted by devil-lore. Although most of Daudet's subjects are chosen
+from contemporary French life, this short-story treats a devil-legend
+of the seventeenth century. This story as "The Pope's Mule" and "The
+Elixir of the Reverend Pere Gaucher" obviously has no other object but
+to poke fun at the Catholic Church. It belongs to the literary type
+known as the Satirical Supernatural.
+
+This story is characteristic of Daudet's art, containing as it does
+all of his delicacy and daintiness of pathos, of raillery, of humour.
+It originally appeared in that delightful group of stories _Lettres de
+Mon Moulin_ (1869).
+
+The horns and tail of his Satanic majesty peep out as vividly in this
+book as the disguised devils in Ingoldsby's _Legend of the North
+Countrie_.
+
+Although hating all men, the devil has a special hatred for the
+priests, and he delights in bringing them to fall. Satan loathes the
+priests, because, as Anatole France says, they teach that "God takes
+delight in seeing His creatures languish in penitence and abstain from
+His most precious gifts" (_Les Dieux ont soif_, p. 278).
+
+It is evident from this story that the popular belief that the devil
+avoids holy edifices is not based on facts. Here the devil not only
+enters the church, but even performs the duties of a sacristan at the
+foot of the altar. According to mediaeval tradition the devil has his
+agents even in the churches. In the administration of hell where the
+tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the
+church has been assigned to the fiend with the poetic name of
+Tutevillus. It is his duty to attend all services in order to listen
+to the gossips and to write down every word they say. After death
+these women are entertained in hell with their own speeches, which
+this diabolical church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has
+it that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a beam,
+on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail, right over two
+village gossips, who chattered so much during the Blessed Mass that he
+soon filled every corner of the parchment on both sides. Poor
+Tutevillus worked so hard that the sweat ran in great drops down his
+brow, and he was ready to sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased
+not to sin with their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left
+whereon to record their foul words. So having considered for a little
+while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized the
+other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch the
+parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength, jerking back
+his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving such a fierce jerk
+that he suddenly lost his balance and fell head over heels from the
+beam to the floor of the church. (From "The Vision of Saint Simon of
+Blewberry" in F. O. Mann's collection of mediaeval tales.)
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL-PUZZLERS
+
+BY FREDERICK BEECHER PERKINS
+
+
+Through Asmodeus the devil became associated with humour and
+gallantry. Asmodeus sharpened his wits in his conversations with the
+wisest of kings. It will be recalled that this demon was the familiar
+spirit of Solomon, whose throne, according to Jewish legend, he
+occupied for three years. Perhaps it was not Solomon after all but
+this diabolical usurper who gathered around himself a thousand wives.
+It is said that Asmodeus is as dangerous to women as Lilith is to men.
+He loves to decoy young girls in the shape of a handsome young man.
+His love for the beautiful Sarah is too well known to need any
+comment. He is a fastidious devil, and will not have the object of his
+passion subject to the embrace of any other mortal or immortal.
+
+Reference is made by the author to Albert Reville's epitome of Georg
+Roskoff's _Geschichte des Teufels_ (Leipzig, 1869), a standard work on
+the history of the devil. The review by this French Protestant first
+appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for 1870, and was translated
+into English the following year. A second edition appeared six years
+later. Roskoff's book, on the other hand, has never appeared in
+translation.
+
+It is not easy to grasp the scholastic subtleties of mediaeval
+schoolmen. Dr. Ethel Brewster suggests the following interpretations:
+_An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas intentiones_. Whether
+a demon buzzing in the air devours our good intentions. This will
+correspond to our saying that hell is paved with good intentions. _An
+averia carrucae capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia._ Whether
+the carriers of a [bishop's] carriage caught in a forbidden district
+should be punished. We can well understand how even the devil might be
+puzzled by such questions.
+
+Professor Brander Matthews aptly calls this story "diabolically
+philosophical."
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S ROUND
+
+A TALE OF FLEMISH GOLF
+
+BY CHARLES DEULIN
+
+
+The modern devil is an accomplished gentleman. He is the most
+all-round being in creation. Mynheer van Belzebuth, as he is called in
+this story, is indeed the greatest gambler that there is upon or under
+the earth. On the golf-field as at the roulette-table he is hard to
+beat. It was the devil who invented cards, and they are, therefore,
+called the Devil's Bible, and it was also he who taught the Roman
+soldiers how to cast lots for the raiment of Christ (John xix, 24).
+Dice are also called the devil's bones.
+
+The devil carries the souls in a sack on his back also in the legend
+of St. Medard. It is told that this saint, while promenading one day
+on the shore of the Red Sea in Egypt, saw Satan carrying a bag full of
+damned souls on his back. The heart of this saint was filled with
+compassion for the poor souls and he quickly slit the devil's bag
+open, whereupon the souls scrambled for liberty:
+
+    "Away went the Quaker--away went the Baker,
+    Away went the Friar--that fine fat Ghost,
+      Whose marrow Old Nick Had intended to pick
+    Dressed like a Woodcock, and served on toast!
+
+    "Away went the nice little Cardinal's Niece
+    And the pretty Grisettes, and the Dons from Spain,
+      And the Corsair's crew, And the coin-cliping Jew,
+    And they scamper'd, like lamplighters, over the plain!"
+
+The Witches' Sabbath is the annual reunion of Satan and his
+worshippers on earth. The witches, mounted on goats and broomsticks,
+flock to desolate heaths and hills to hold high revel with their
+devil.
+
+Beelzebub swears in this story by the horns of his grandfather. While
+the devil is known to have a grandmother, there has never been found a
+trace of his grandfather. Satan has probably been adopted by the
+grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon. The horns have
+been inherited by Satan from Dionysos. This Greek god had bull-feet
+and bull's horns.
+
+The reader, who is interested in the origin of the European Carnival
+(Shrove Tuesday) customs, is referred to the editor's monograph _The
+Origin of the German Carnival Comedy_ (New York: G. E. Stechert & Co.,
+1920).
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF MONT ST.-MICHEL
+
+BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
+
+
+No greater proof of the permanence and persistence of the devil as a
+character in literature can be adduced than the fact that this writer,
+in whom we find the purest expression of Naturalism, for whom the
+visible world was absolutely all that there is, was attracted by a
+devil-legend. But on this point he had a good example in his
+god-father and master Gustave Flaubert, who, though a realist of
+realists, showed deep interest in the Tempter of St. Anthony.
+
+This legend of the fraudulent bargain between a sprite and a farmer as
+to alternate upper- and under-ground crops, with which "the great
+vision of the guarded mount" is here connected, is of Northern origin,
+but has travelled South as far as Arabia. It will be found in Grimm's
+_Fairy Tales_ (No. 189); Thiele's _Danish Legends_ (No. 122), and T.
+Sternberg's _The Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (p. 140).
+Rabelais used it as a French legend, and in its Oriental form it
+served as a subject for a poem by the German Friedrich Rueckert ("Der
+betrogene Teufel"). In all these versions the agreement is entered
+into between the devil (in the Northampshire form it is a bogie or
+some other field spirit) and a peasant. It was reserved for Maupassant
+to make St. Michael get the better of Satan on earth as in heaven.
+
+According to this legend the devil broke his leg when, in his flight
+from St. Michael, he jumped off the roof of the castle into which he
+had been lured by the saint. The traditional explanation for the
+devil's broken leg is his fall from heaven. "I beheld Satan as
+lightning fall from heaven" (Luke x, 18). All rebellious deities, who
+were universally supposed to have fallen from heaven, have crooked or
+crippled legs. Hephaestos, Vulcan, Loki and Wieland, each has a broken
+leg. This idea has probably been derived from the crooked lightning
+flashes. The devil's mother in the mediaeval German mystery-plays
+walks on crutches. Asmodeus, the Persian demon Aeshma daeva, also had
+a lame foot. In Le Sage's book _Le Diable boiteux_ Asmodeus appears as
+a limping gentleman, who uses two sticks as crutches. According to
+rabbinical tradition this demon broke his leg when he hurried to meet
+King Solomon. In addition to his broken leg the devil inherited the
+goat-foot from Pan, the bull-foot from Dionysius and the horse-foot
+from Loki. The Ethiopic devil's right foot is a claw, and his left a
+hoof.
+
+The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy.
+Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. "If we were
+all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil," observed an old
+Scotch woman to her minister, "it wad be muckle better for us."
+
+The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to St. Michael.
+The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast played a conspicuous part in
+the wars of the sons of William the Conqueror. Maupassant uses it as
+the background for several of the chapters of his novel _Notre Coeur_
+(1890). The mountain also figures in his story "Le Horla" (1886).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON POPE
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+The following two stories by Richard Garnett have been taken from his
+book _The Twilight of the Gods_, which was first published anonymously
+in 1888, and in a "new and augmented edition," with the author's name,
+in 1902. The title recalls Richard Wagner's opera _Goetterdaemmerung_,
+but may have been directly suggested by Elemir Bourges, whose novel
+_Le Crepuscule des dieux_ appeared four years earlier than Garnett's
+collection of stories. In his book Richard Garnett plays havoc with
+all religions. The demons, naturally enough, fare worse at his hands
+than the gods. _The Twilight of the Gods_ is a panorama of human folly
+and farce. Franz Cumont has said that human folly is a more
+interesting study than ancient wisdom. The author finds a great joy in
+pointing out all the mysterious cobwebs which have collected on the
+ceiling of man's brain in the course of the ages. Mr. Arthur Symons
+rightly calls this book "a Punch and Judy show of the comedy of
+civilization."
+
+The story of "The Demon Pope" is based upon a legend of a compact
+between a Pope and the devil. It is believed that Gerbert, who later
+became Pope Silvester II, sold his soul to Satan in order to acquire a
+knowledge of physics, arithmetic and music. The fullest account of
+this legend will be found in J. J. Dollinger's _Fables Respecting the
+Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Engl. Translation, 1871). _The History of
+the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ by Paul Carus (1900) contains the
+following passages on this legend:
+
+     "An English Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury, says of
+     Pope Sylvester II., who was born in France, his secular name
+     being Gerbert, that he entered the cloister when still a
+     boy. Full of ambition, he flew to Spain where he studied
+     astrology and magic among the Saracens. There he stole a
+     magic-book from a Saracen philosopher, and returned flying
+     through the air to France. Now he opened a school and
+     acquired great fame, so that the king himself became one of
+     his disciples. Then he became Bishop of Rheims, where he had
+     a magnificent clock and an organ constructed. Having raised
+     the treasure of Emperor Octavian which lay hidden in a
+     subterrenean vault at Rome, he became Pope. As Pope he
+     manufactured a magic head which replied to all his
+     questions. This head told him that he would not die until he
+     had read Mass in Jerusalem. So the Pope decided never to
+     visit the Holy Land. But once he fell sick, and, asking his
+     magic head, was informed that the church's name in which he
+     had read Mass the other day was 'The Holy Cross of
+     Jerusalem.' The Pope knew at once that he had to die. He
+     gathered all the cardinals around his bed, confessed his
+     crime, and, as a penance, ordered his body to be cut up
+     alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church as
+     unclean.
+
+     "Sigabert tells the story of the Pope's death in a different
+     way. There is no penance on the part of the Pope, and the
+     Devil takes his soul to hell. Others tell us that the Devil
+     constantly accompanied the Pope in the shape of a black dog,
+     and this dog gave him the equivocal prophecy.
+
+     "The historical truth of the story is that Gerbert was
+     unusually gifted and well educated. He was familiar with the
+     wisdom of the Saracens, for Borell, Duke of Hither Spain,
+     carried him as a youth to his country where he studied
+     mathematics and astronomy. He came early in contact with the
+     most influential men of his time, and became Pope in 999. He
+     was liberal enough to denounce some of his unworthy
+     predecessors as 'monsters of more than human iniquity,' and
+     as 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God and playing the
+     part of the Devil' (the text inadvertently reads: and
+     playing the part of God); but at the same time he pursued an
+     independent and vigorous papal policy, foreshadowing in his
+     aims both the pretensions of Gregory the Great and the
+     Crusades."
+
+
+
+
+MADAM LUCIFER
+
+BY RICHARD GARNETT
+
+
+Perhaps the most fascinating--and the most dangerous--character in the
+infernal world is this _Mater tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness. "A
+lady devil," says Daniel Defoe, "is about as dangerous a creature as
+one could meet." When Lucifer fails to bring a man to his fall, he
+hands the case over to his better half, and it is said that no man has
+ever escaped the siren seductions of this Diabo-Lady. A poem, _The
+Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, appeared in London in 1777.
+
+According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna is the mother
+or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or grandmother of Grendel, the
+Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became Satan's mother or grandmother by
+adoption. A mother was a necessary part of the devil's equipment.
+Having set his mind to equal Christ in every detail of his life, Satan
+had to get a mother somehow. In his story "The Vision Malefic" (1920)
+Mr. Huneker tells of the appearance of this counterfeit Madonna on a
+Christmas Eve to the organist of a Roman Catholic church in New York.
+Partly out of devotion to her and partly also because he could not
+obtain the sacramental blessing of the Church, Satan was forced to
+remain single. In the story "Devil-Puzzlers" by Fred B. Perkins the
+demon Apollyon appears as an old bachelor. "I have a mother, but no
+wife," he tells the charming Mrs. Hicok. The synagogue was more
+lenient towards the devil. The rabbis did not hesitate to perform the
+marriage ceremony for the diabolical pair. According to Jewish
+tradition the chief of the fallen angels married Lilith, Adam's first
+wife. She is said to have been in her younger days a woman of great
+beauty, but with a heart of ice. Now, of course, she is a regular
+hell-hag. If we can trust Rossetti, who painted her Majesty's
+portrait, she still is a type of beauty whose fascination is fatal.
+This woman was created by the Lord to be the help-meet of Adam, but
+mere man had no attraction for this superwoman. She is said to have
+started the fight for woman's emancipation from man, and contested
+Adam's right to be the head of the family. Their married life was very
+brief. Their incompatibility of character was too great. One fine
+morning Adam found that his erstwhile angelical wife had deserted him
+and run away with Lucifer, whom she had formerly known in heaven.
+
+The King-Devil apparently always succeeded somehow or other in
+breaking the chains with which, according to legend, he had repeatedly
+been bound and sealed in the lowest depths of hell. From antediluvian
+times the demons appear to have been attracted by the daughters of men
+and to have come frequently up to earth to pay court to them. The only
+devil who must always remain in hell is the stoker, Brendli by name.
+The fires of hell must not be allowed to go out.
+
+The anatomically melancholic Burton also tells of a devil who was in
+love with a mortal maiden. Jacques Cazotte tells the story of
+Beelzebub as a woman in love with an earth-born man.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIFER
+
+BY ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+
+This writer has a great sympathy for devil-lore, and many of his
+characters show the cloven hoof. An analyst of illusions, he has a
+profound interest in the greatest of illusions. An assailant of every
+form of superstition, he has a tender affection for the greatest of
+superstitions. An exponent of the radical and ironical spirit in
+French literature, he feels irresistibly drawn to the eternal Denier
+and Mocker.
+
+The story of the Florentine painter Spinello Spinelli, to whom Lucifer
+appeared in a dream to ask him in what place he had beheld him under
+so brutish a form as he had painted him, is told in Giorgio Vasari's
+_Vite de' piu eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (1550),
+which is the basis of the history of Italian art. It was treated by
+Barrili in his novel _The Devil's Portrait_ (1882; Engl. tr. 1885),
+from whom Anatole France may have got the idea for his story. But
+there is also a mediaeval French legend about a monk (_Du moine qui
+contrefyt l'ymage du Diable, qui s'en corouca_), who was forced by the
+indignant devil to paint him in a less ugly manner.
+
+The devil is very sensitive in regard to his appearance. On a number
+of occasions he expressed his bitter resentment at the efforts of a
+certain class of artists to represent him in a hideous form (cf. M. D.
+Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_). Daniel Defoe has well remarked
+that the devil does not think that the people would be terrified half
+so much if they were to converse face to face with him. "Really," this
+biographer of Satan goes on to say, "it were enough to fright the
+devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several
+figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men." It
+makes us, indeed, wonder why the devil was always represented in a
+hideous and horrid form. Rationally conceived, the devil should by
+right be the most fascinating object in creation. One of his essential
+functions, temptation, is destroyed by his hideousness. To do the work
+of temptation a demon might be expected to approach his intended
+victim in the most fascinating form he could command. This fact is an
+additional proof that the devil was for the early Christians but the
+discarded pagan god, whom they wished to represent as ugly and as
+repulsive as they could.
+
+The earliest known representation of the devil in human form is found
+on an ivory diptych of the time of Charles the Bald (9th century).
+Many artists have since then painted his Majesty's portrait.
+Schongauer, Duerer, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, Van
+Dyck, Breughel and other masters on canvas vied with each other to
+present us with a real likeness of Satan. None has, however, equalled
+the power of Gustave Dore in the portrayal of the Diabolical. This
+Frenchman was at his best as an artist of the infernal (Dante's "Great
+Dis" and Milton's "Satan at the gates of Hell").
+
+Modern artists frequently represent the devil as a woman. Felicien
+Rops, Max Klinger, and Franz Stuck may be cited as illustrations.
+Apparently the devil has in modern times changed sex as well as custom
+and costume. Victor Hugo has said:
+
+    "Dieu s'est fait homme; soit.
+        Le diable s'est fait femme."
+
+"Lucifer," as well as the other stories which form the volume _The
+Well of St. Claire_, is told by the abbe Jerome Coignard on the edge
+of Santa Clara's well at Siena. The book was first published serially
+in the _Echo de Paris_ (1895). It has just been rendered into Spanish
+(_El Pozo de Santa Clara_).
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL
+
+BY MAXIM GORKY
+
+
+This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage's _Le Diable boiteux_. It
+will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs of the houses of
+Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.
+
+The fate of a Russian author was, indeed, a very sad affair. "In all
+lands have the writers drunk of life's cup of bitterness, have they
+been bruised by life's sharp corners and torn by life's pointed
+thorns. Chill penury, public neglect, and ill health have been the lot
+of many an author in countries other than Russia. But in the land of
+the Czars men of letters had to face problems and perils which were
+peculiarly their own, and which have not been duplicated in any other
+country on the globe.... Every man of letters was under suspicion. The
+government of Russia treated every author as its natural enemy, and
+made him feel frequently the weight of its heavy hand. The wreath of
+laurels on the brow of almost every poet was turned by the tyrants of
+his country into a crown of thorns." (From the present writer's essay
+"The Gloom and Glory of Russian Literature" in _The Open Court_ for
+July, 1918.)
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN
+
+BY JOHN MASEFIELD
+
+_POSTCRIPT_
+
+
+For the benefit of the gentle reader, who is about to shed a tear or
+two over the demise of the devil, the following episode from Anatole
+France's _My Friend's Book_ is retold here:
+
+Pierre Noziere (Anatole France) takes his baby-girl to a Punch and
+Judy show, the culmination point of which always consists of the duel
+to the death between Punch and the Devil. The terrible battle ends, of
+course, with the death of the Devil. The spectators applaud the heroic
+act of Punch, but Pierre Noziere is not happy over the result of the
+fight. He thinks that it is rather a pity that the Devil has been
+slain. Paying no heed to Suzanne sitting by his side, he goes on
+musing:
+
+     "The Devil being dead, good-bye to sin! Perhaps Beauty, the
+     Devil's ally, would have to go, too. Perhaps we should never
+     more behold the flowers that enchant us, and the eyes for
+     love of which we would lay down our lives. What, if that is
+     so, what in the world would become of us? Should we still be
+     able to practise virtue? I doubt it. Punch did not
+     sufficiently bear in mind that Evil is the necessary
+     counterpart of Good, as darkness is of light, that virtue
+     wholly consists of effort, and that if there is no more any
+     Devil to fight against, the Saints will remain as much out
+     of work as the Sinners. Life will be mortally dull. I tell
+     you that when he killed the Devil, Punch committed an act of
+     grave imprudence.
+
+     "Well, Pulchinello came on and made his bow, the curtain
+     fell, and all the little boys and girls went home; but still
+     I sat on deep in meditation. Mam'zelle Suzanne, perceiving
+     my thoughtful mien, concluded that I was in trouble.... Very
+     gently and tenderly she takes hold of my hand and asks me
+     why I am unhappy. I confess that I am sorry that Punch has
+     slain the Devil. Then she puts her little arms round my
+     neck, and putting her lips to my ears, she whispers:
+
+     "'I tell you somefin: Punch, he killed the nigger, but he
+     has not killed him for good.'"
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+[List of authors and titles contained in the Notes. Names are
+alphabeted after omission of _de_ or _von_, and titles are entered
+without their initial article. Each title is followed by the author's
+name in parentheses.]
+
+_Ambrosio, or the Monk_ (Lewis), 296
+
+_Anathema_ (Andreev), 286
+
+_Anatomy of Melancholy_ (Burton), 318
+
+Andreev, Leonid, 286
+
+_Artificial Paradises_ (Baudelaire), 304
+
+_Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren_ (Richter), 286
+
+_Autobiography of Satan_ (Beard), 286
+
+
+Barham, Richard Harris (307)
+
+Barrili, Anton Giulio, 319
+
+Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 279, 296, 303-06
+
+Beard, J. R., 286
+
+_Belphagor, or the Marriage of the Devil_ (Machiavelli), 281-83, 301
+
+_Belphagor_ (an English play), 281
+
+_Betrogener Teufel_ (Rueckert), 313
+
+_Bon-Bon_ (Poe), 295-97
+
+Bourges, Elemir, 315
+
+Brevio, Giovanni, 282
+
+Browning, Robert, 280, 303
+
+Burton, Richard, 318
+
+
+Caballero, Fernan, 300-02
+
+Caesarius of Heisterbach, 296-97
+
+Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 300
+
+Carus, Paul, 315
+
+Cazotte, Jacques, 318
+
+Chamisso, Adalbert, 297
+
+Chappuys, Gabriel, 281
+
+Chateaubriand, Francois Auguste Rene, 283
+
+Chatterton, Thomas, 283
+
+_Christliche Mystik_ (Goerres), 299
+
+Conway, Moncure Daniel, 298, 318
+
+_Crepuscule des Dieux_ (Bourges), 315
+
+Cumont, Franz, 315
+
+
+Daborne, Robert, 281
+
+_Daniel and the Devil_ (Field), 294
+
+_Danish Legends_ (Thiele), 313
+
+Dante Alighieri, 320
+
+Daudet, Alphonse, 307-08
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 317, 319
+
+_Demon Pope_ (Garnett), 315-16
+
+_Demonology and Devil-Lore_ (Conway), 298, 319
+
+_Demonology and Witchcraft_ (W. Scott), 285, 296
+
+Deulin, Charles, 311-12
+
+_Devil_ (Gorky), 304, 321
+
+_Devil; his Origin, Greatness and Decadence_ (Reville), 309
+
+_Devil and his Dame_ (Houghton), 281
+
+_Devil and the Old Man_ (Masefield), 322-23
+
+_Devil and Tom Walker_ (Irving), 284-85
+
+_Devil in a Nunnery_ (Mann), 279-80
+
+_Devil in Germany_ (Freytag), 293
+
+_Devil in the Belfry_ (Poe), 301
+
+_Devil is an Ass_ (Jonson), 281
+
+_Devil-Puzzlers_ (Perkins), 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Devil's Fiddle_, 279
+
+_Devil's Mother-in-Law_ (Caballero), 300-02
+
+_Devil's Portrait_ (Barrili), 319
+
+_Devil's Round_ (Deulin), 311-12
+
+_Devil's Violin_ (Webster), 279
+
+_Devil's Wager_ (Thackeray), 290-91
+
+_Diable_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Diable au cafe_ (Menard), 305
+
+_Diable boiteux_ (Le Sage), 300, 314, 321
+
+_Diablo cojuelo_ (Guevara), 300
+
+_Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell_, 317
+
+_Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northampshire_ (Sternberg), 313
+
+_Dialogus Miraculorum_ (Caesarius), 297
+
+_Dieux ont soif_ (France), 307
+
+Dollinger, J. J., 315
+
+_Du moine qui countrefyt l'ymage du Diable_, 319
+
+Dunlop, J. C., 282
+
+
+_Elixir of the Reverend Pere Gaucher_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_En Route_ (Huysmans), 280
+
+_Evangelium Nicodemi_, 283
+
+_Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ (Gogol), 289
+
+
+_Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Dollinger), 315
+
+_Fairy Tales_ (Grimm), 313
+
+_Faust_ (Goethe), 280
+
+_Faust_ (Lenau), 279
+
+_Faustus_ (Marlowe), 305
+
+Field, Eugene, 294
+
+_Fisherman and his Soul_ (Wilde), 297
+
+Flaubert, Gustave, 313
+
+_Flowers of Evil_ (Baudelaire), 303
+
+France, Anatole, 307, 319-20, 322-23
+
+Frazer, James George, 289, 301, 304
+
+Freytag, Gustav, 293
+
+_From the Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+Fulwell, Ulpian, 281
+
+
+Goethe, Wolfgang, 280, 284
+
+Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich, 289
+
+_Golden Bough_ (Frazer), 289, 304
+
+Gorky, Maxim, 304, 321
+
+Goerres, Joseph, 299
+
+_Goetterdaemmerung_ (Wagner), 315
+
+_Grim, the Collier of Croydon_ (Fulwell), 281
+
+Grimm, Jacob, 296, 313
+
+Guevara, Luis Velez, 300
+
+
+Hauff, Wilhelm, 286-88
+
+Heine, Heinrich, 290
+
+Henslowe, Philip, 281
+
+Herbert, George, 294
+
+Hill, Rowland, 279
+
+_History of Fiction_ (Dunlop), 282
+
+_History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ (Carus), 315-16
+
+_History of the French Novel_ (Saintsbury), 290-91, 292
+
+Hoffmann, E. Th. A., 286
+
+_Homme qui vendit son ame au Diable_ (Veber), 306
+
+Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 291
+
+_Horla_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+Houghton, P. M., 281
+
+Hugo, Victor, 320
+
+Huneker, James, 279, 303, 317
+
+Huysmans, Joris Karl, 280, 306
+
+
+_Ingoldsby Legends or Mirth and Marvels_ (Barham), 307
+
+Irving, Washington, 284-85, 294
+
+_Italian Novelists_ (Roscoe), 282
+
+
+Jarintzow, Mme., 289
+
+Jonson, Ben, 281, 305
+
+
+Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 301
+
+
+_La-Bas_ (Huysmans), 306
+
+La Fontaine, Jean, 281
+
+Lavigne, Germond, 302
+
+_Legend of Mont St.-Michel_ (Maupassant), 313-14
+
+Lenau, Nikolaus, 279
+
+Le Sage, Alain, 300, 314, 321
+
+Lewis, ("Monk") Matthew, 296
+
+_Lettres de mon Moulin_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Little Key of Rabbi Solomon_, 301
+
+_Lucifer_ (France), 319-20
+
+
+_Machiavel and the Devil_ (Daborne and Henslowe), 281
+
+Machiavelli, Niccolo, 281-83, 301
+
+_Madam Lucifer_ (Garnett), 317-18
+
+_Man and Superman_ (Shaw), 305
+
+Mann, Francis Oscar, 279-80, 308
+
+Marlowe, Christopher, 305
+
+Masefield, John, 322-23
+
+Maupassant, Guy, 307, 313-14
+
+_Mediaeval Mind_ (Taylor), 293
+
+_Memoires du Diable_ (Soulie), 286, 292
+
+_Memoirs of Satan_ (Hauff), 286-88
+
+Menard, Louis, 305
+
+Milton, John, 283, 320
+
+_My Friend's Book_ (France), 322-23
+
+
+Nerval [Labrunie], Gerard, 279, 305
+
+_Notre Coeur_ (Maupassant), 314
+
+_Nouvelles andalouses_ (Caballero), 301
+
+
+_Origin of German Carnival Comedy_ (Rudwin), 283, 312
+
+
+_Painter's Bargain_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Paris Sketch Book_ (Thackeray), 290
+
+_Parlement of Devils_, 283
+
+_Parlement of Foules_, 283
+
+Parliament of Sprites (Chatterton), 283
+
+Peabody, Josephine Preston, 280
+
+Perkins, Frederick Beecher, 306, 309-10, 317
+
+_Peter Schlemihl_ (Chamisso), 297
+
+_Pied Piper of Hamelin_ (Browning), 280
+
+_Piper_ (Peabody), 280
+
+Poe, Edgar Allan, 292, 295-97, 301, 303
+
+_Poemes en Prose_ (Baudelaire), 306
+
+_Pope's Mule_ (Daudet), 307
+
+_Pozo de Santa Clara_ (France), 320
+
+_Prince des Sots_ (Nerval), 305
+
+_Printer's Devil_, 289-99
+
+
+Rabelais, Francois, 313
+
+Reville, Albert, 309
+
+Riche, Barnabe, 281
+
+Richter, Jean Paul, 286
+
+_Robinson der Juengers_ (Campe), 300
+
+Roscoe, Thomas, 282
+
+Roskoff, Georg, 309
+
+Rueckert, Friedrich, 313
+
+Rudwin, Maximilian J., 283, 306, 312, 321
+
+_Russian Poets and Poems_ (Jarintzow), 289
+
+
+Sachs, Hans, 281
+
+_St. John's Eve_ (Gogol), 289
+
+Saintsbury, George, 290, 292
+
+Sansovino, Francesco, 281
+
+_Satan's Diary_ (Andreev), 286
+
+_Satanism of Huysmans_ (Rudwin), 306
+
+_Satires_ (Horace), 291
+
+Schmidt, Julian, 300
+
+Scott, Walter, 285, 296, 305
+
+_Selections from the Devil's Papers_ (Richter), 286
+
+Shakespeare, William, 295
+
+Shaw, George Bernard, 305
+
+Shipley, Joseph T., 306
+
+_Sonata del Diavolo_ (Tartini), 279
+
+_Sonate du Diable_ (Nerval), 279
+
+Soulie, Frederic, 286, 292
+
+_Spanish Fairy Tales_ (Caballero), 302
+
+Stael, Madame, 284
+
+Sternberg, T., 313
+
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, 284
+
+Straparola, Giovan-Francesco, 281
+
+_Supreme Sin_ (Huneker), 279
+
+Symons, Arthur, 315
+
+
+_Tales from Twelve Tongues_ (Garnett?), 302
+
+Tartini, Giuseppe, 279
+
+Tasso, Torquato, 283
+
+Taylor, H. D., 293
+
+_Temptation of St. Anthony_ (Flaubert), 313
+
+_Tentations ou Eros, Plutus et la Gloire_ (Baudelaire), 279, 296
+
+_Teufel in Berlin_ (Hoffmann), 286
+
+_Teufel mit der Geige_ (Gengenbach), 279
+
+_Teutonic Mythology_ (Grimm), 296
+
+Thackeray, William Makepeace, 290-94
+
+Thiele, Just Mathias, 313
+
+_Thrawn Janet_ (Stevenson), 284
+
+_Three Low Masses_ (Daudet), 307-08
+
+_Twilight of the Gods_ (Garnett), 315
+
+
+_Undying Fire_ (Wells), 305
+
+
+Vasari, Giorgio, 310
+
+Veber, Pierre, 306
+
+_Vinculum Spirituum_, 301
+
+_Violon du Diable_, 279
+
+_Vision Malefic_ (Huneker), 317
+
+_Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry_ (Mann), 308
+
+_Vite de' piu eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (Vasari), 319
+
+
+Wagner, Richard, 315
+
+_Wandering Willie's Tale_ (Scott), 305
+
+Webster, Benjamin, 279
+
+_Well of St. Claire_ (France), 320
+
+Wells, H. G., 305
+
+Wilde, Oscar, 297
+
+_Wintermaerchen_ (Klopstock), 301
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Devil Stories, by Various
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