The Project Gutenberg eBook of Faustus

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Title: Faustus

his life, death, and doom

Author: Friedrich Maximilian Klinger

Translator: George Borrow

Release date: May 14, 2008 [eBook #25468]

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1864 W. Kent and Co. edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAUSTUS *** 




Transcribed from the 1864 W. Kent and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org


FAUSTUS:

his

LIFE, DEATH, AND DOOM.


A ROMANCE IN PROSE.


Translated from the German.


      “Speed
thee, speed thee,

      Liberty lead thee,

Many this night shall hearken and heed thee.

      Far abroad,

      Demi-god,

Who shall appal thee!

Javal, or devil, or what else we call thee.”




london:

W. KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1864.


p. iilondon:

robson and levey, printers, great new
street,

fetter lane.


p. iiiTHE TRANSLATOR TO THE PUBLIC.


The publication of the present volume may at first sight
appear to require some brief explanation from the Translator,
inasmuch as the character of the incidents may justify such an
expectation on the part of the reader.  It is therefore
necessary to state, that although strange scenes of vice and
crime are here exhibited, it is in the hope that they may serve
as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary from the shoals on
which they might otherwise be wrecked.


The work, when considered as a whole, is strictly moral. 
The Catholic priest is not praised for burning his
fellow-creature at an auto-da-fé, and for wallowing
in licentiousness; nor is the Calvinist commended for his
unrelenting malignity to all those whose tenets are different
from his own, and for crying down the most innocent pleasures and
relaxations which a bountiful and just God has been pleased to
place within the reach of his earthly children.


The tyrant and the oppressor of mankind will here find himself
depicted in his proper colours.


Neither will the champions of freedom pass the fiery
ordeal with feet unseared; since a glorious p. ivspecimen of
what they all are will be found among the following pages. 
Ye who with ever-open mouths are constantly clamouring at
whatever is established, whether it be beneficial to the human
race or injurious, will here find the motives for your conduct
pointed out and held up to contempt and execration.


But, above all, this work contains the following highly useful
advice:


Let every one bear his lot with patience, and not seek, at the
expense of his repose, to penetrate into those secrets which the
spirit of man, while dressed in the garb of mortality, cannot and
must not unveil.  Let every one bridle those emotions which
the strange and frequently revolting phenomena of the moral world
may cause to arise in his bosom, and beware of deciding upon
them; for He alone who has power to check or permit them, can
know how and why they happen, whither they tend, and what will be
their ultimate consequence.  To the mind of man all is dark;
he is an enigma to himself: let him live, therefore, in the hope
of once seeing clearly; and happy indeed is he who in this manner
passes his days.


The present translation, it should be added, has been executed
with as much fidelity to the original as the difference of the
two languages, and other considerations, would allow.


p.
vCONTENTS.






CHAPTER I.


Ambitious Character of Faustus—His Discovery of
Printing—Journey to Frankfort—The Devil, the White
Nun, and Father Gebhardt of Mayence—Faustus offers his
Bible to the Council of Frankfort—His first Interview with
a Spirit—The Infernal Banquet—Speech of
Satan—Allegorical Entertainments of
Leviathan—Faustus’s Dialogue with the Devil



1







CHAPTER II.


Leviathan meets Faustus at an Inn at
Frankfort—Assembling of the Council, and Discussion on
Faustus’s Bible—Corporation Squabbles—Leviathan
and Faustus invited to a grand Civic Entertainment—Faustus
presents his Bible to the City—His Introduction to the
Mayoress—Knighthood of the Mayor—The Devil’s
Revenge on the Corrupt Corporation—The Hermit of
Homburg—A Lesson to Misanthropists—The Hermit and the
lovely Pilgrim—His Hut burnt by Leviathan, and he perishes
in the Flames—Faustus returns to his Wife and Family at
Mayence—Espouses the Cause of a despairing Client, and
corrupts the Judge—Dispute about the Nun
Clara—Leviathan’s Revenge on the avaricious
Judge—Faustus’s Adventure with Clara—Takes
leave of his Family—Rescues a Youth from Drowning



60







p. viCHAPTER
III.


The Devil and Faustus continue their Journey on the Banks of
the Fulda—The oppressive
Prince-Bishop—Faustus’s Interview with the
Bishop—Clerical Luxury—Case of Dr. Robertus, the
Protector of the People—Faustus espouses his Cause, and
liberates the “Patriot”—The Devil and Faustus
visit the Court of the Prince of ---.—The betrayed Minister
and his Daughter—The Devil and Faustus imprisoned—The
Fiend suffocates the Prince, and, with Faustus, resumes his
Journey—The Wildgrave and burning Village—The
infatuated Monk—School of Physiognomy—Faustus and the
Virgin Student—The Devil’s Peep-show, and its
Talismanic Influence—Portrait of the Fiend



116







CHAPTER IV.


France in the Reign of Louis XI.—Interview of the Devil
and Faustus with Father Vesois—Loves of Madame de
Monserau—Faustus and the French Widow—The Fatal
Supper—Arrival of Faustus and the Devil at
Paris—Execution of the Duke of Nemours—Faustus and
the avaricious Father—Infanticide
recommended—Horrible Death of the Miser, and Ruin of his
Daughter—Trial of a humane Surgeon, and ungrateful
Murderer—Anatomical Cruelties—Prisons of
Paris—Bishop of Verdun’s Cages—Perillus, the
Tyrant Phalaris, and the Brazen Bull—Atrocious Character of
Louis XI.—The Hermit of Calabria—Faustus and the
Devil visit England—Cruelties of Richard, Duke of
Gloucester—The Devil’s Portraiture of the English
Character—Arrival of Faustus and the Fiend at
Milan—Murder of the Duke p. viiGaleas
Sforza—Florence—Spanish Auto-da-Fé—Pope
Alexander VI.—Combat of a Papal General with one of his
Officers for a White Goat—Machinations of the
Pope—Ancient and Modern Rome, and her
Abominations—Cardinal Cæsar Borgia—Licentious
Entertainments at the Vatican—The Pope and his
Illegitimates—Cæsar Borgia and
Michelotto—Stratagem to depose his Brother
Francisco—Murder of the latter—Faustus and the lovely
Lucretia—Vanity of Human Philosophy, and Sophistry of its
Professors—Atrocious Plots and Excesses of Pope
Alexander—His Sale of Indulgences—Amended Catalogue,
with increased Prices—Murder of Alphonso of
Arragon—Cæsar Borgia’s Letter to the
Pope—Cardinal Orsini—Borgia’s Triumphal Entry
into Rome—Marriage of Lucretia—Gross
Festivities—The Devil’s Apostrophe
thereon—Descent of the Pope into Hell, and Death of
Cæsar Borgia



181







CHAPTER V.


Faustus’s Consolation for his Crimes—Philosophy of
Voltaire—Faustus’s portentous Dream—Apparition
of his Father—Baseness and Ingratitude of Man—Flight
of the Devil and Faustus to Mayence—Death of his Son, and
Destruction of his Family—Retrospect of his criminal
Career—Accursed Destiny of Faustus, and Triumph of the
Devil—Descent of Faustus into Hell



261







p.
1 CHAPTER I.


Faustus, having long struggled with the shadows of Theology,
the bubbles of Metaphysics, and the ignes-fatui of
Morality, without being able to bring his mind to a firm
conviction, at length cast himself into the dark fields of Magic,
in the hope of forcing from Nature what she had so obstinately
withheld from him.  His first attainment was the remarkable
invention of Printing; but his second was horrible.  He
discovered, almost fortuitously, the dreadful formula by which
devils are called out of hell, and made subservient to the will
of man.  But as yet he had not exerted his power, out of
love to his immortal soul, for whose welfare p. 2every Christian
is so anxious.  At this period he was in the full bloom of
manhood.  Nature had favoured him in his person, and had
given him a noble and expressive countenance.  Here was
enough to bespeak his happiness in the world; but she superadded
pride and untamable impetuosity of mind, which displayed itself
in deep determination of purpose, and in the constant workings of
a heated imagination, which was never satisfied with the present,
but affected to discover the emptiness and insufficiency of the
acquired object, even in the zest of its enjoyment.


Faustus soon lost the path by which moderation leads frail
mortals to the abode of true happiness.  He soon felt the
narrow limits of humanity, and endeavoured to burst their
bonds.  By what he had learnt and believed in his youth, he
entertained a high opinion of the capacity and moral worth of
man; and, in comparing himself with others, he naturally laid the
greatest part of the sum-total to his own account.  Here
were fine materials for greatness and glory: but true greatness
and true glory generally fly from him who is p. 3on the point of
attaining them, just before he can separate their fine pure forms
from the mist and vapour which delusion has shed round
them.  It appeared to Faustus that, in his situation, the
nearest and most convenient way to honour and reputation would be
the sciences; yet scarcely had he tasted their enchantment when
his soul became inflamed with an ardent passion after
truth.  Every one who is acquainted with these sirens, and
has heard their deceitful song, must know that, provided he does
not make a mere trade of them, he must infallibly miss his aim,
from the necessity of assuaging the burning thirst with which
they inspire him.  Faustus, after he had for a long time
groped about in the labyrinth, found that his earnings were
doubt; displeasure at the short-sightedness of man; and
discontent and murmuring against the Being who had formed
him.  He might still have been comparatively happy had he
had only these feelings to combat: but when the perusal of the
sages and the poets awakened a thousand new wants in his soul,
and his now winged and artificial imagination conjured p. 4up
before his eyes the many intoxicating enjoyments which gold and
reputation could only procure him, his blood ran like fire
through his veins, and all his faculties were soon swallowed up
by this sensation.


By the discovery of Printing, Faustus thought he had at length
opened the door to riches, honour, and enjoyment.  He
exerted himself to the utmost, in order to bring the art to
perfection, and he now laid his discovery before mankind; but
their lukewarmness quickly convinced him that, although the
greatest inventor of his age, he and his family would soon perish
with hunger unless his genius continually displayed itself in
some new forms.  Hurled from the pinnacle of hope, oppressed
by heavy debts,—which he had incurred by generosity and
extravagant living, and by his becoming security for false
friends,—he now surveyed the world through a gloomy
medium.  His domestic ties, when he no longer knew how to
support his family, became an intolerable burden.  He began
to think that there was a malign influence in the distribution of
men’s fortunes: or p. 5how did it happen that the noble and
intellectual man was every where oppressed, neglected, and in
misery; whilst the knave and the fool were rich, prosperous, and
honoured in life?


In this melancholy state of mind Faustus wandered from Mayence
to Frankfort, intending to sell one of his printed Latin Bibles
to the magistracy, and then to return and buy with the produce
food for his hungry children.  He had been able to
accomplish nothing in his native city, because at that time the
Archbishop was at war with the whole Chapter, and all Mayence
found itself in the greatest confusion.  The cause was as
follows: a Dominican monk had dreamt that he passed the night
with his penitent, the lovely Clara, who was a white nun, and a
niece of the Archbishop.  In the morning it was his turn to
read mass; he did so, and, unabsolved from the night of sin,
received the host in his profane hands.  At eve-tide, after
a cup or two of Rhenish, he related his dream to a young
novice.  The dream tickled the imagination of the novice: he
told it with some additions to a monk; and in p. 6this manner the
story, embellished with horrors and licentiousness, ran through
the convent, until it came to the ears of the Prior
himself.  This holy man, who hated Father Gebhardt on
account of his intimacy with the most respectable houses, was
shocked at the scandalousness of the affair, which he considered
as a profanation of the holy sacrament; and, refusing to decide
on such a weighty matter, he referred it to the Archbishop. 
The Archbishop, wisely concluding that whatever sinful man wishes
or thinks by day he dreams of by night, denounced the ban of the
Church against the monk.  The Chapter, whose hatred to an
Archbishop always increases the longer he lives, and gladly
seizes every opportunity to annoy him, took Father Gerhardt under
its protection, and opposed the ban on these grounds: “It
is well known that the Devil tempted St. Anthony with the most
licentious representations and voluptuous enticements; and if the
Devil dared to act so with a saint, whose equal was not to be
found in the calendar, what should prevent him from playing off
his pranks with a Dominican?  We must therefore p. 7advise
the monk to follow the example of the holy Anthony, and, like
him, to oppose the temptations of the fiend with the weapons of
prayer and fasting.  It is, however, much to be lamented,
that Satan should have so little respect for the Archbishop as to
make the instrument of his wiles assume the figure of one of his
reverence’s family.”  The Chapter conducted
itself in this case exactly in the same manner as hereditary
princes do whose fathers live too long.  But what served
more completely to confuse the case was a report from the
nunnery.  The nuns had assembled in the refectory, and were
busied in dressing up a Madonna for the next festival, hoping to
surpass by its magnificence their rivals the black nuns, when
suddenly the old porteress entered, told the licentious story,
and added, that the Dominican, whose name she had forgot, would
certainly be burnt alive, for that the Chapter had even then
assembled for the purpose of trying him.  Whilst the
porteress was relating the tale with its various circumstances,
the faces of the young nuns were violently flushed, and Sin, who
never loses an opportunity p. 8of corrupting
innocent hearts, shot into their blood, and hastily pictured the
dangerous scene to their imaginations.  Fury and
consternation, in the mean time, deformed the features of the old
ones.  The abbess trembled and leaned on her staff, while
the spectacles fell from her face.  But when the porteress
added, that it was the sister Clara whom the fiend had brought to
the Dominican in his dream, a dreadful shriek filled the whole
hall.  Clara alone remained tranquil, and when the uproar
had ceased, she said, smiling: “Dear sisters, why do you
shriek so fearfully?  I myself dreamt that I passed the
night with Father Gebhardt, my confessor; and if it was the work
of the fiend” (here she and all the rest made the sign of
the cross), “why, we must give him the
discipline.”  “The Father Gebhardt!” cried
the porteress; “now, all ye saints and angels, that is the
very person who dreamt of you; that is he whom they are about to
burn.”  The porteress having thus expressed herself,
this second version of the dream was immediately circulated
through the city.  The Madonna was allowed to remain p.
9naked, for the sisters cared now very little if the black
nuns bore away the palm.  The abbess did all in her power to
spread the news abroad, the housekeeper followed her example, the
porteress harangued an audience beneath the gateway, and Clara
candidly replied to the yet more candid questions of her
companions.  The last trumpet could not have diffused in
Mayence more terror and confusion than did this extraordinary
tale.


No sooner did the Dominican prior hear of this accident than
he ran to the assembled Chapter, and gave, by his information, a
new turn to the affair.  The Archbishop would willingly have
suppressed the whole business; but it was now time for the
Chapter to take it up, and all the canons were unanimously of
opinion, that so strange a circumstance ought to be communicated
to the Holy Father at Rome.  They now became infuriated, and
nothing but the midday bell had power to separate them. 
From that moment, all Mayence, clergy and laity, divided into two
parties; and for many years nothing was heard, spoken, or dreamt
of, but the Devil, the white nun, and Father p.
10Gebhardt.  The matter was argued from the pulpit of
every sect: mountebanks, Capuchins, and dog-doctors, made it
their theme; while the lawyers, after having taken the
depositions of the nun and the father, and confronted them with
each other, wrote folio volumes concerning the sinful and
unsinful chances of the dream.  Was this a time for Faustus
and his discoveries to succeed?


In Frankfort, which is at the present day the asylum of
science, Faustus, however, hoped for better fortune.  He
offered his Bible to the reverend Town Council for two hundred
gold guilders; but, as a large sum had just been expended in
purchasing five hogsheads of prime Rhenish for the council
cellar, his demand came rather unseasonably.  He paid his
court to the town-clerk, to the speaker, and to the
senators,—from the proud patrician to the yet prouder head
of the shoemaker guild.  He was promised by all favour,
protection, and assistance.


At length he attached himself to the then presiding mayor,
from whom he for a long time gained nothing; but, as if in
recompense, the lady-mayoress p. 11kindled a
violent passion in his susceptible heart.  One evening the
mayor assured him that the council, on their next day of meeting,
would come to a determination, by virtue of which the assembled
members would most probably pay down the sum for the Bible. 
Faustus replied, that his children might very possibly die of
hunger before so enlightened an assembly had decided; and,
maddened with despair, he now returned to his solitary
apartment.  In this moment he suddenly recollected his magic
formula.  The thought of running some bold risk, and of
purchasing independence of man by an alliance with the Devil,
rushed more vividly than ever through his brain.  Yet the
idea terrified him.  With hasty steps, furious gestures, and
fearful cries, he strode up and down the chamber, struggling with
his rebellious spirit, which urged him to penetrate the
surrounding darkness; still his soul shuddered and was
unresolved.  The clock struck eleven from the neighbouring
tower.  Black night hung about the earth.  The
north-wind howled, and clouds obscured the face of the full p.
12moon.  Nature now appeared in a second chaos. 
A night more suited to bewilder an excited imagination could not
be conceived.  Yet was the beam of his mind balanced. 
In one scale hung religion and its firm supporter—the hope
of immortality; while thirst for independence and knowledge,
pride, pleasure, malevolence, and bitterness filled the
other.


At length Faustus, according to the custom of magic, drew the
horrible circle which was for ever to remove him from the
providential care of the Omnipotent, and from the sweet ties of
humanity.  His eyes sparkled, his heart beat louder, and his
yellow tresses stood erect on his head.  At this moment he
thought he saw his aged father and his blooming wife and children
wring their hands in despair, and fall down upon their knees to
pray for him to that Being whom he was about to renounce. 
“It is their misery, it is their situation, that maddens
me,” he wildly shrieked, and stamped on the ground with his
foot.  He now became enraged at the weakness of his heart,
and advanced towards the circle; the storm rattled p.
13against the windows, the foundation of the house
trembled: a noble angelic figure appeared before him, exclaiming,
“Stay, Faustus!” and the following colloquy
ensued:


Faustus.  Who art thou, that disturbest my daring
work?


Figure.  I am the Genius of Man, and will save
thee, if thou art to be saved.


Faustus.  What canst thou give me to assuage my
thirst for knowledge, and my desire for freedom and
enjoyment?


Figure.  Humility, resignation in suffering,
content, and a proper estimation of thyself; above all, an easy
death, and light in the world to come.


Faustus.  Begone, vision of my heated fancy! 
I know thee by the cunning with which thou wouldst deceive the
wretches whom thou hast made subservient to power.  Begone,
and hover around the brows of the beggar, of the monk, of the
debased slave, and of all those who have their hearts fettered by
unnatural bonds; and who keep their senses locked up, in order to
escape from the claws of despair.  The powers of my soul
require p. 14room, and let Him who has given me it
answer for its workings.


“Farewell, unhappy man,” sighed the Genius, and
disappeared.


Faustus cried, “Am I to be frightened on the very brink
of hell by nursery-tales?  But they shall not prevent me
from piercing the darkness; I will know what the gloomy curtain
conceals, which a tyrannical hand has drawn before our
eyes.  And who is to blame, I repeat?  Was it I that
formed myself so that trifling exertion exhausts my
strength?  Did I plant in my bosom the seeds of
passion?  Did I place there that impulse for aggrandisement
which never lets me rest?  Did I fashion my soul, so that it
will not submit, and will not bear contempt?  Perhaps I am
like the earthen pot, which, formed by a strange hand, is broken
into pieces, because it does not hit the fancy of the maker, and
because it does not answer the use for which it appears to have
been designed.  Alas! I am a mere vessel; yet wherefore then
this struggle with my destiny, which would fetter my noblest
resolves?  And was mind p. 15given for no
purpose?  Surely not!  The bull trusts in his horns,
and the stag in his swiftness to escape from the hunter; and is
that which so eminently distinguishes man less his own? 
Mind I possess; I employed it for the benefit of my fellow-men,
and neglect was my reward; perhaps the devils will respect it
more.”


Here he sprung furiously into the circle; while the
lamentations of his wife, father, and children seemed to echo, in
the deep tones of despair, “Lost! for ever lost!”


Satan, ruler of hell, had, by the hoarse sound of his
trumpets, which echoed even to the glowing sides of the sun,
announced to all the fallen spirits dispersed through the upper
and lower world, that he intended on this day to give a great
festival.  The spirits assembled at the mighty call. 
Even his envoys at the papal stool, and at the different courts
of Europe, forsook their posts; for the invitation led them to
expect something great and important.


Already the monstrous vaults of hell resounded with the wild
cries of the fiendish populace, while p. 16myriads
seated themselves upon the scorched ground.  The princes
then stepped forth, and commanded silence to the multitude,
whilst Satan heard the intelligence brought by his envoys from
the upper world.  The devils obeyed, and a death-like
stillness prevailed amid the thick, misty darkness, interrupted
only by the groans of the damned.  In the mean time the
slaves of the fiends—shades who are neither worthy of
happiness nor damnation—prepared the immeasurable tables
for the banquet; and they deserved to be under the thraldom of
such a task.  When they were yet in flesh and blood, and ate
the fruits of the earth, they were of that equivocal kind, who
seem the friends of all men and yet are the friends of none;
whose tongues continually prattle of the noble precepts of
virtue, which they feel not in their hearts; who only abstain
from evil because it is accompanied by danger, and from doing
good because it requires courage and self-denial; who traffic
with religion, and, like avaricious Jews, lay out their capital
at interest, for the purpose of securing a comfortable berth for
their miserable souls; and p. 17who worship
God from fear, and tremble before Him like slaves.


The devils, who, to say the truth, are no better masters than
the Polish, Livonian, and Hungarian nobility, drove them about in
hell at a furious rate.  Others were sweating in the
infernal kitchen, and cooking the meal for their haughty
lords—an unpleasant service for a soul which had once
supported its own human body by eating and drinking.  For
although the devils originally neither ate nor drank, yet they
had learnt from men the custom of celebrating every solemnity by
means of the glass and platter; and on such occasions they feast
on souls.  The general of each legion (for hell is arranged
on a military footing, and in this respect resembles every
despotic government, or rather every despotic government in this
respect resembles hell) chooses a certain number of damned souls,
as food for his subalterns.  These are delivered over to the
slaves, who stew, broil, and baste them with infernal
sauce.  It frequently happens that these wretches have to
stick their own wives, daughters, fathers, sons, p. 18or
brothers upon the spits, and to keep up the purgatorial fire
beneath them; a truly horrible and tragic employment, rendered
yet more so, since their overseer, a capricious devil, like all
understrappers of great lords, stands behind them with a whip in
order to expedite the work.  On the present occasion two
popes, a conqueror, a celebrated philosopher, and a recently
canonised saint, were intended to feast the palates of Satan, his
viziers, and his favourites.  Abundance of fresh victuals
had just arrived for the common people.  The pope had a
little time before set by the ears two armies of French,
Italians, Spaniards, and Germans, in order to fish up in the
tumult certain districts, to add to the patrimony of St.
Peter.  They fought like heroes, and fell by thousands into
the infernal regions.  What happiness would it be for the
souls intended for these devilish repasts, if they were thereby
to find an end to their torments!  But no sooner are they
swallowed, digested, and returned piecemeal into the pools of
hell than they are regenerated, and arise to become the patients
of new suffering.


p.
19While these victims were writhing on the spits, the
cellarers and butlers, slaves of the above-mentioned order,
decked out the sideboards.  The flasks were filled with
tears of hypocrites, of would-be saints, of pretenders to
sensibility, and of persons who repent from weakness of soul;
with tears which envy squeezes out on hearing of another’s
prosperity; with tears of egotists who weep for joy because they
themselves have escaped the misfortunes by which others are
overwhelmed; and of sons who weep over the palls of their harsh
and avaricious fathers.  The flasks on the supper-table were
filled with the tears of priests, who, like actors, play a part
in the pulpit, in order to move their auditors; and to give the
liquor a sharper flavour, it was mingled with tears of
courtesans, who walk the streets weeping for hunger, until some
inexperienced youth barters his dollar with them for sin. 
Reserved for Satan and his princes stood, on various sideboards,
flasks of the noblest drink.  This was heady and foaming,
being a mixture of the tears of monarchs, who weep for the misery
of their subjects, whilst they issue p. 20commands only
calculated to perpetuate it; of the tears of maidens who weep for
the loss of their chastity with streaming eyes; and of the tears
of favourites who have fallen into disgrace, and now weep because
they can no longer rob and oppress under the protection of their
masters.


No sooner had the slaves decked the table, and stationed
themselves behind the chairs of their masters, than the grandees
poured forth from the chambers of Satan.  The furies went
foremost; the body-guards followed them, and were succeeded by
the chamberlains.  Then came pages bearing lighted torches,
woven out of the souls of monks who entrap wives, and press round
the deathbed of husbands to force them to leave their property to
the Church, without reflecting that their own illegitimate spawn
must beg for bread through the land.  Then came Satan
himself, closely followed by the remaining nobility of his court,
according to their rank and favour.  The devils bowed their
heads in reverence, the pages placed the torches upon the table
of their sovereign; while Satan, with a triumphant air, p.
21mounted his high throne, and delivered the following
speech:


“Princes, potentates, immortal spirits, welcome! thrice
welcome!  Rapturous emotions glow through me when I cast my
eyes along your squadrons of countless heroes.  We are yet
what we were when, for the first time, we awoke in this pool from
the stunning consequences of our fall, and for the first time
assembled here.  Only one feeling still
rules,—unanimity alone maintains her sway, and in this
place only do all devote themselves to the same end.  He who
has the happiness of commanding you may easily forget all other
glory.  I own we have suffered, and still suffer, much,
especially since the full exercise of our powers is
restrained.  But in the feeling of the vengeance which we
take on the sons of dust,—in the contemplation of their
madness and crimes, by which they continually thwart the purposes
of their being,—lies a recompense for our suffering. 
Welcome, thrice welcome, all ye whom this sentiment inflames.


“Hear now the occasion of the festival which p. 22I
intend this day to celebrate with you.  Faustus, a daring
mortal, who, like us, is at war with the Eternal, and who,
through the strength of his spirit, may at some future period be
deemed worthy to dwell along with us here, has discovered the art
of multiplying, on an easy principle, a thousand and a
thousandfold, those things denominated books,—those
dangerous toys of men,—those vehicles of delusion, of
error, of lies, and of horror,—those sources of pride and
of painful doubt.  Until now they have been too costly, and
only in the hands of the rich, whom they filled with fancies, and
from whom they chased that humility which God had for their
happiness infused into their hearts.  Triumph!  Soon
will the poison of knowledge and inquiry be communicated to all
classes.  New cravings, new wants, will arise; and I doubt
whether my enormous kingdom will be able to contain all those who
will destroy themselves by this delicious poison.  But this
were only a slight victory: my eye pierces deeper into that
distant period, which is to us no more than an hour is to
man.  Soon will cavillers p. 23and haters of
the established Church spread about like the plague: pretended
reformers of heaven and earth will arise, and their doctrines,
from the facility of communication, will penetrate even into the
hut of the beggar.  They will think to do good, and to
purify the object of their hope from falsehood.  But, if men
begin well, how long do they continue to act so!  Sin is not
more inseparable from them than are ill consequences from their
noblest pursuits.  The well-beloved people of God, whom he
endeavoured to snatch from evil by the sacrifice of his only Son,
will quarrel about tenets which no one understands, and will tear
each other to pieces like wild-beasts.  Horrible atrocities,
surpassing all the abominations perpetrated by men since they
first sprung into existence, will desolate unhappy Europe. 
My hopes appear to you too bold,—I read it in your doubting
countenances; but listen to me whilst I explain.  Religious
disagreements will give rise to these frenzies.  Then first
will Fanaticism, the wild son of Hatred and Superstition, untie
all the bonds of nature and humanity.  The father will
murder the son, and p. 24the son the father; kings will
joyfully dip their fingers in the blood of their subjects, and
place the sword in the hands of bigots, in order that they may
slaughter their brothers by thousands, because their opinions are
different.  Then will the water of the rivers turn into
streams of blood, and the shrieks of the murdered will shake hell
to its very centre.  We shall see wretches come down to us
stained with crimes for which we have had hitherto neither names
nor punishments.  Already do I see them attack the papal
chair, which keeps together the fragile fabric through treachery
and deceit, whilst it undermines itself through crime and
luxury.  The great props of the religion which we dread give
way; and, if the sinking structure be not sustained by means of
new miracles, it will disappear from the face of the earth, and
we shall once more shine in the temples as worshiped
divinities.  Where will the spirit of man stop, when he has
once undertaken to illumine that which he formerly honoured as a
mystery?  He will dance on the grave of the tyrant, at whose
frown he the day before trembled.  He p. 25will break to
pieces the altar on which he lately sacrificed, if he once
endeavour to find the way to heaven by his own wisdom.  Will
the Creator take home to himself a human being, who is not a
million times more allied to us than to him?  Man abuses
every thing, even the strength of his soul as well as of his
body.  He abuses all that he sees, hears, feels, or thinks;
and all with which he trifles, or with which he is seriously
engaged.  Not content with deforming whatever he can seize
with his hands, he soars upon the wings of imagination into
worlds to him unknown, and arrays them in ideal deformity. 
Even freedom, the noblest of his treasures, to obtain which he
has shed rivers of blood, he readily sells for gold and pleasure,
before he has tasted its sweets.  Incapable of good, he yet
trembles at evil, he heaps horror upon horror to escape it, and
then destroys his own handiwork.


“After the bloodshed of war, mankind, wearied with
slaughter, will take a few moments’ repose, and then their
venomous hatred will be displayed in petty and private
bickerings.  Some, p. 26indeed, will every now and then raise
piles of wood and fagot, and burn those alive who disagree with
them in religion; others will attempt the solution of
inexplicable riddles; and those born for darkness will dare to
struggle for light; their imaginations will become inflamed, and
their desires insatiable.  Truth, simplicity, and religion
will be trodden under foot, for the sake of writing a book. 
Yes, yes, book-writing will become a universal employment, by
which fools and men of genius will alike seek fame and emolument;
caring very little whether they confuse the heads of their
fellow-creatures, and hurl firebrands into the hearts of the
innocent.  The heaven, the earth, the secret strength of
nature, the dark causes of her phenomena, the power which rules
the stars and bowls the comets through space,—every thing
visible and invisible,—they will wish to handle, measure,
and dive into.  They will invent, for all that is
incomprehensible, words and numbers; and heap system upon system,
till they have brought deeper darkness upon the earth, through
which doubt, like the fen-fire, will only shine to p.
27allure the wanderer into the morass.  Only then
will they think to see clearly, and then I expect them. 
After they have shovelled away religion, and are forced, out of
the remains, to patch together a new and monstrous mixture of
human wisdom and superstition, then I expect them.  And then
open wide the gates of hell, that the race of man may
enter.  The first step is already taken; the second is
near.  But this must be preceded by a horrible revolution
upon the face of the earth.  Soon will the inhabitants of
the old world emigrate, for the purpose of discovering new, and
to them unknown, regions of the globe.  They will there
attack and slaughter millions, to possess themselves of that gold
which the innocents value not.  They will fill this new
world with all their crimes, and then return with materials for
corrupting even the old one.  Thus will nations become our
prey, whom till now innocence and ignorance have protected from
us.  And thus shall we, by the assistance of the favourites
of heaven, triumph.


“This, then, O potentates! is what I wished p. 28to
communicate to you; and now rejoice with me over this mighty day,
and enjoy in anticipation the victory which I, who know men,
promise you.  Long live Faustus!”


With horrible uproar, which made the axis of the earth
tremble, and the bones of the dead rattle in their coffins, the
devils shouted, “Long live Faustus!” 
“Long live the corrupter of the sons of dust!” 
Hereupon the chief nobility of the kingdom were permitted to kiss
the hand of his Satanic majesty.


The triumphant devils now sat down to table, and fell upon the
prepared meal.  The goblets clattered, the souls were
craunched between their iron teeth; and they drank the health of
Satan, of Faustus, of the clergy, of the tyrants of the earth,
and of future and living authors, amidst the clang of hellish
artillery.  In order to render the banquet more magnificent,
the masters of the revels went to the pools, drew out the burning
souls, and chased them over the tables, to illumine the gloomy
scene; while they ran behind the wretches with poisoned whips,
forcing them to p. 29caper; and sparks ascended to the
blackened roofs, crackling like wheat-sheaves ignited by
lightning in an autumn storm.  That the devils might have
music to their meat, others hastened to the pools, and poured
molten metal amid the flames, so that the damned howled and
cursed in grisly despair.  If priests now could, instead of
their cold and fruitless sermons about penitence, give a specimen
upon earth of these horrid cries, sinners would quickly turn a
deaf ear to the voluptuous warblings of castrati, and join in
some pious psalm: but, alas, hell is distant, and pleasure close
at hand.  After the banquet a great stage was erected, and
various plays were performed, founded on the heroic deeds of
Satan; for example, the Fall of Man, the Betrayal of Judas
Iscariot, &c.


The performance was then suddenly changed to an allegorical
ballet.  The scene was a wild and dreary spot.  In a
dark cavern sat Metaphysics, in the shape of an Egyptian mummy,
whose eyes were fixed upon five glittering words, which flitted
continually backwards and forwards, and at each change had a
different import.  The p. 30mummy ceased
not to follow them with its stony eyes; while in a corner stood a
little roguish devil, who incessantly blew bubbles of air into
its face.  Pride, the amanuensis of Metaphysics, gathered
the bubbles up as they fell, pressed the air out, and kneaded
them into hypotheses.  The mummy was clothed in an Egyptian
waistcoat, embroidered with mystic characters.  Over this it
wore a Grecian mantle, which ought to have concealed the
characters, but was much too short and too narrow for that
purpose.  Its legs, thighs, and body, were cased in long
loose drawers, which did not, however, entirely conceal its
nakedness.  A huge doctorial hat covered its bald head,
which was marked with the scratches worn by its long nails in
provoking deep reflection.  Its shoes were made after the
European fashion, and sprinkled with the finest dust of the
schools and universities.  After it had gazed a considerable
time on the moving words, without being able to understand them,
its attendant, Pride, gave the wink to Delusion, who was walking
near.  He seized a wooden trumpet, and sounded a
dance.  No p. 31sooner did the mummy hear the noise
than it took Pride by the hand, and danced about with antic
gambols; but its thin withered legs could not bear this long, and
it soon sunk breathless into its former posture.


Then came forward Morality, a fine female form, hooded in a
veil, which, chameleon-like, sported all colours.  She held
Virtue and Vice by the hands, and danced a trio with them. 
For music, a naked savage played upon an oaten pipe, a European
philosopher scraped the fiddle, while an Asiatic beat the drum;
and although these contradictory tones would have distracted an
harmonious ear, yet the dancers did not once lose the
step,—so well had they learnt their parts.  When the
maiden gave Vice her hand, she coquetted and languished
significantly before him; but when she gave it to Virtue, she
moved along with the modest gait of a matron.  After the
dance, she reposed upon a thin, transparent, and
beautifully-painted cloud, which her admirers had woven out of
various shreds and remnants.


Next appeared nude Poetry: she danced with p. 32Sensuality a
characteristic dance, to which Imagination played the flute
d’amour.


History then advanced upon the stage.  Before her went
Fame, with a long brazen trumpet.  She herself was hung
round with stories of murders, poisonings, perjuries,
conspiracies, and other horrors.  Behind her panted, beneath
a prodigious load of chronicles, diplomas, and documents, a
strong nervous man, clothed in the German fashion.  She
danced with Slavery, to the rustling of the stories with which
she was hung.  Falsehood at length took the trumpet from the
mouth of Fame, and tuned it to the dance; and Flattery led the
figures.


Then appeared Medicine and Quackery, and were received with
loud laughter: they danced a minuet, to which Death clinked the
music with a purse of gold.


After them were seen Astrology, Cabala, Theosophy, and
Mysticism.  They grasped each other by the hands, and
whirled around in intricate figures; while Superstition,
Delusion, and Fraud stood near, and blew the bagpipes.


p.
33These were followed by Jurisprudence, a sleek,
rosy-faced dame, fed with fees, and hung about with
commentaries—she coughed through a tedious solo; and
Chicanery played the bass-viol.


Last of all entered Policy, in a triumphant car drawn by two
mares, Weakness and Deceit.  On her right sat Theology,
holding in one hand a sharp-pointed dagger, and in the other a
blazing torch.  Policy herself wore a golden crown upon her
head, and supported a sceptre over her right shoulder.  She
descended from the car, and danced with Theology a pas-de-deux,
to which Cunning, Ambition, and Tyranny played on soft tinkling
instruments.  After she had finished the pas-de-deux, she
made all the other figures a sign to begin a general dance. 
They immediately obeyed, and sprang about in wild
confusion.  All the before-mentioned musicians played on
their instruments, and raised a din, only surpassed in loudness
by the table-music of Satan.  Yet Contention soon insinuated
herself among the unsuspicious dancers; and, animated by Zeal and
Fury, they hastily snatched up weapons.  When Theology p.
34perceived that all embraced delightful Poetry, and that
Morality wished to tear off her own veil, in order to cover her
with it, she gave the latter a thrust with a poniard from behind,
and singed the nude and tender Poetry with her flaming
torch.  Both raised a dreadful shriek: Policy commanded
silence, and Quackery hastened to bind up the wound of Morality,
whilst Medicine cut a shred from her robe in payment.  Death
stretched out his claw from under the mantle of thievish Medicine
to seize Morality, but Policy gave him such a blow that he yelled
aloud, and grinned most hideously.  Poetry was allowed to
hop about, because she was naked, and had nothing to be despoiled
of.  At length History took pity on her, and laid upon the
burn a wet leaf from a sentimental romance.  Policy then
tied them all behind her chariot, and drove away in triumph.


All hell expressed approbation of this last spectacle by
reiterated clappings; and Satan embraced the devil Leviathan for
having got up the entertainment, which flattered him exceedingly,
it being one of his chief whims to be p. 35reckoned by
the fiends as the inventor of the sciences.  He often said,
in his pride, that he had begotten them in his intercourse with
the daughters of earth, in order to divert men from the
straightforward and noble feelings of their hearts; to remove
from their eyes the mystic veil which constitutes their
happiness; to make them acquainted with their state of
restriction and weakness; and to fill them with painful doubt
concerning their after destination.  “I taught
them,” he would continue, “by their means, to reason,
so that they might forget to practise virtue, and to
worship.  We ourselves have defied Heaven with bold and open
weapons, and I have at least shown them the way of skirmishing
incessantly with the Eternal.”


The sensible reader will here pause, and admire the strict
resemblance of all courts to each other: that is, how the great,
through the service, toil, and sweat of the little, win the
favour of their sovereigns, and bear away the rewards. 
Leviathan gave himself out as the inventor of this allegorical
ballet, and was on that account thanked p. 36and caressed,
although the real author of it was the Bavarian Poet Laureate,
who a short time before had died of hunger, and found his way to
hell.  He prepared the ballet after the latest
court-fashion, by the command of Prince Leviathan, who had at
least talent enough to discover merit: the reason of his bitter
allusions to the sciences was, probably, because they had so ill
supported him; and perhaps Leviathan, who knew perfectly well
what would please Satan, had given him a hint to that
effect.  Be this as it may, the devil had the reward, and
the thin shade of the Bavarian Laureate sat cowering behind a
rock of the theatre, and observed with bitterest agony the marks
of unmerited favour which Satan had lavished on Leviathan.


The half-intoxicated devils now became so clamorous as nearly
to drown the howls of the damned; when suddenly the powerful
voice of Faustus echoed from the upper world through hell. 
He had at length surmounted every obstacle, and now summoned
before him one of the first princes of the kingdom of
darkness.


p.
37Satan started up in ecstasy: “It is Faustus who
calls there.  No one else has the power; and no one else, if
he had such power, would dare to knock so loudly against the iron
portals.  Up! up! a man like him is worth a thousand of the
scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote.” 
Then, turning to the devil Leviathan, his favourite, he added,
“I choose thee, the subtlest seducer, the deadliest hater
of the human race, to ascend and purchase for me, by thy
dangerous services, the soul of this desperado.  Only thou
canst chain, satiate, and then, drive to despair, his craving
heart and his proud and restless spirit.  Quick, quick!
ascend! dispel the vapours of school-wisdom from his brain. 
Consume with the fire of voluptuousness the noble feelings of his
heart.  Disclose to him the treasures of nature, and hurry
him into life, that he may the sooner grow tired of it.  Let
him see evil arise from good, vice rewarded, justice and
innocence trodden under foot, as is the custom of men. 
Conduct him through the wild and terrible scenes of human life;
let him mistake its aim, and lose among its p. 38horrors the
guiding thread of virtue.  And when he stands separated from
all natural and heavenly ties, in doubt concerning the noble
destination of his race,—when even pleasure and enjoyment
have left him, and the inward worm awakes,—then depict to
him, with infernal bitterness, the consequences of his deeds and
delusions, and unfold to him all their links, extending to
remotest generations.  If despair should then seize him,
hurl him down, and return in triumph to hell.”


Leviathan.  Wherefore, O Satan, dost thou impose
this work upon me?  Thou knowest that I have long ago had
enough of men, and of their playground,—the world. 
What is to be made out of wretches who, as thou hast observed,
have strength neither for good nor evil?  Gold, ambition, or
pleasure, can quickly make rascals of them, who have for a short
period pursued the phantom virtue; and if any one should move
boldly at first along the path of vice, he will be driven back
when half-way by the spectres of his crazy imagination.  If,
indeed, it were a proud hot-headed Spaniard, a revengeful
assassinating p. 39Italian, or even a wild lascivious
Frenchman, whom you wanted me to catch—but a German, one of
those thick-pated swine, who slavishly bend before rank, riches,
and all the artificial distinctions of men, who believe that
their lords and princes are made of superior materials to
themselves, and have a right to dispose of them just as they
please, either in fighting their own battles, or those of other
sovereigns!  Hast thou heard from them for centuries a
single word of rebellion against tyranny, or of shedding blood
for the rights of man?  Not one of them has, as yet, come
down to hell in glory; a proof that these people have no
distinguished heads among them.  Those are to my mind who
wish to clear up every thing, who fight with the adamantine
shield of individuality, against which all prejudices, earthly or
heavenly, are shivered.  Show me such a man who is willing
to become great on earth at the expense of his soul, and I will
immediately ascend.


Satan.  Shall devils, O Leviathan, be blinded by
prejudice, like the sons of dust?  I tell thee, p. 40the
man after our own heart is born under that district of
heaven.  He is one of those who, endued by nature with hot
and furious passions, rebel against all the old-established
customs of society.  When such a spirit tears its way
through these cobwebs, it resembles a flame, which, by its own
fury, speedily consumes the materials which feed its
lustre.  He is one of those visionary philosophers who
strive to seize, through imagination, what is denied to cold
understanding; and who, if they are unsuccessful, laugh at all
knowledge, and make pleasure and enjoyment their gods. 
Away, away, Leviathan! soon shall a fire break out in Germany
which will spread through all Europe.  Already is the germ
of that delusion springing up which shall endure for
centuries.  What the German has once caught, he will not
easily let go.


The commanding voice of Faustus now resounded for the second
time.  Satan continued:


“Thou mayst know by this call that he is no
trembler.  Hasten to him, for, if thou delayest, perhaps he
may doubt the strength of his charms, and hell will lose the
fruits of his temerity.  p. 41Truly, the
fellow is such a genius, that I can almost overlook his
origin.”


The devil Leviathan angrily replied: “I swear, by the
hot and foul pool of the damned, that the rebel shall one day
blaspheme, and curse this and the hour of his birth.”


He went away wrapt in a veil of smoke, and the fiends pursued
him with loud huzzas.


Faustus stood within the magic circle, while his breast
swelled with rage.  For the third time he repeated the
dreadful formula, in a voice that resembled thunder.  The
door suddenly flew open; a thick vapour hovered around the margin
of the circle; he struck into it with his magic rod, and cried in
triumph, “Unveil thyself, thou thing of
darkness!”  The vapour dispersed, and Faustus saw a
tall figure concealed beneath a red mantle.


Faustus.  Why this tedious disguise to one who
wishes to see thee?  Discover thyself to him, who fears thee
not in whatever shape thou mayst appear.


The Devil flung back his mantle, and stood in a daring and
majestic attitude before the circle.  p. 42His fiery
eyes sparkled from beneath their black brows, between which
malice, hatred, fury, agony, and scorn had formed themselves in
thick folds.  These furrows were sunk in a smooth, clear,
high-arched forehead, which contrasted strangely with the
fiendish marks between the eyes.  A finely-formed aquiline
nose inclined towards a mouth which seemed to have been framed
only for the enjoyment of immortal things.  He had the mien
of a fallen angel, whose countenance was once illuminated by the
Godhead, but which was now obscured by a gloomy veil.


Faustus (in surprise).  Is man, then, every
where at home?  Who art thou?


Devil.  I am a prince of hell, and come because
thy mighty call compels me.


Faustus.  A prince of hell under this mask; under
the figure of a man!  I wished for a fiend, and not one of
my own race.


Devil.  Perhaps, Faustus, we are most so when we
resemble ye; at least, no mask suits us better.  Besides, is
it not your custom to conceal what ye are, and to appear what ye
are not?


p.
43Faustus.  Bitter enough, and yet true as
bitter; for, if our outsides looked like our insides, we should
not be very different from that which we imagine you to be;
still, I expected to see thee more terrible, and even hoped that
thy appearance would try the strength of my courage.


Devil.  Thus do ye always imagine things contrary
to what they are.  Probably you expected a devil with horns
and a cloven foot, as the cowardly age has depicted him. 
But since you have ceased to worship the powers of nature, they
have forsaken you, and you can no longer conceive any thing
great.  If I were to stand before thee such as I really
am,—my eyes threatening comets, my body a dark, hovering
cloud, which shoots lightning from its gloom, in my hand the
sword which I once brandished against the Avenger, and on my arm
the ponderous shield which his thunder pierced,—thou
wouldst become a heap of ashes in thy circle.


Faustus.  But then I should at least see something
great.


Devil.  I might admire your courage; but p. 44you
are never more ridiculous than in these would-be grand bursts of
feeling, when you contrast the little you can embrace with the
monstrous and great which are so high above you.  Thus may
the worm measure the trampling elephant, and reckon his weight in
the moment when it dies beneath his powerful foot.


Faustus.  Mocker! and what, then, is the spirit
within me, which, if it once get fairly on the ladder, will mount
from step to step into infinity?  What are its limits?


Devil.  The length of your own nose.  But, if
you called me out of hell merely for this chit-chat, permit me to
return for ever.  I have long known your inclination to
prate about that which you do not understand.


Faustus.  Thy bitterness pleases me; it chimes in
with my humour, and I should like to be better acquainted with
thee.  What is thy name?


Devil.  Leviathan; which signifies all, for
I can do all.


Faustus.  Hear the braggart!  Are devils,
then, so boastful?


p.
45Devil.  ’Twas said merely to do honour
to the shape in which thou seest me: but words are vain. 
Set me to the proof.  What dost thou require?


Faustus.  Require?  What an indefinite word
for a devil!  If thou art what thou seemest, anticipate
desires, and gratify them ere they become wishes.


Devil.  The noble steed champs the bit in fury
when curbed by a timid rider: how he then resembles the man who
feels wings that could bear him into light, yet who is kept down
in the dark abyss!  Faustus, thou art one of those fiery
spirits who are not contented with the scanty meal of knowledge
which Omniscience has set before them.  Great is thy
strength, mighty is thy soul, and bold thy will; but the curse of
finite reason lies upon thee, as it does upon all.  Faustus,
thou art as great as man can be.


Faustus.  Masquerading fiend, return into hell;
must thou, too, deceive us by flattery?


Devil.  Faustus, I am a spirit formed of flaming
light; I saw the monstrous worlds arise out of nothing: thou art
of dust, and of yesterday.  Do I flatter thee?


p.
46Faustus.  And yet must thou serve me if I
command.


Devil.  For that I expect the approbation of hell,
besides a reward; neither man nor devil will work for
nothing.


Faustus.  What reward dost thou expect?


Devil.  To have that which animates thee; that
which would make thee my equal if it had power.


Faustus.  I were well off then, truly; yet, adept
as thou art, thou knowest little of men, if thou doubtest the
strength of one who has set himself free from the bonds which
nature has drawn so tightly round our hearts.  How gentle
did they appear to me once, when the eye of my youth clothed men
and the world in the pure colours of morning!  ’Tis
gone; dark is my horizon; I stand on the gloomy verge of
eternity, and have broken through the laws which keep the human
race in harmony.


Devil.  What madness is this, Faustus? 
Harmony! does she rule the confused dance of life?


p.
47Faustus.  Silence!  I feel it perhaps
for the last time; and perhaps look back for the last time upon
the pleasant, joyous days of youth.  How lamentable that man
must awake from this dream of bliss; that the plant must shoot
up, in order to wither away as a tree, or be felled!  Ha,
demon, smile; I was once happy.  But let that be forgotten
which can never be recalled.  Yes, we have only strength
when we pursue wickedness.  But wherein am I great?  If
I were so, should I want thee?  Go, cunning flatterer; thou
wilt only make me feel my own littleness.


Devil.  He who is capable of feeling where the
shoe pinches him, and has courage enough to tear away the cause
of it, is at least great so far.  More I will not say, and
woe to thee if I were to stimulate thee with words.


Faustus.  Observe me now, and tell me what my
spirit requires, but what I dare not utter.


At these words Faustus pointed to himself, then towards the
heavens, and moved his magic staff towards the east and the
west.  He then continued, “Thou wast, when nothing
was.”  He p. 48laid his hand upon his breast and
forehead: “Here is darkness; let it be
dispelled.”


Devil.  Desperate man! full well I know thy wish,
and tremble, devil as I am, at thy boldness.


Faustus.  Wretched spirit! thou shalt not escape
by this subterfuge.  In my burning thirst I would undertake
to drink dry the deep sea, if I hoped to find at its bottom what
I sought.  I am thine, or another’s: I yet stand where
no devil can penetrate.  Faustus is yet his own master.


Devil.  Thou wast so a few minutes since. 
But thy lot was cast when thou enteredst this circle. 
Whoever has looked me in the face turns back in vain; and thus I
leave thee.


Faustus.  Thou shalt speak, and remove the dark
covering which conceals from me the world of spirits.  I
will know the destination of man, and the cause of moral evil in
the world; I will know wherefore virtue suffers, and vice is
rewarded; I will know why we must purchase a moment’s
enjoyment by years of agony and sorrow.  Thou shalt disclose
to me the source of things, and the mysterious causes of the
phenomena p. 49of the physical and moral
world.  Thou shalt make Him, who has arranged all,
comprehensible to me—yes! even if the vivid lightnings,
which at this moment shoot from thy demon eyes, were to stretch
me lifeless in this circle of damnation.  Dost thou think
that I have summoned thee merely for pleasure and gold?  Any
dastard may fill his belly, and satiate the desires of the
flesh.  Thou tremblest!  Have I more courage than
thyself?  What quaking devil has hell vomited out?  And
thou callest thyself Leviathan, who canst do all!  Away,
away! thou art no fiend, but a miserable thing like myself.


Devil.  Madman! thou hast not yet felt, as I have,
the vindictiveness of the Avenger, the anticipation of which
alone would make thee return to dust, even if thou didst bear in
thy bosom the united strength of men from the first to the last
sinner.  Urge me no farther.


Faustus.  I will, and am resolved.


Devil.  Thou inspirest me with reverence and
pity.


Faustus.  Obedience is all I require.


p.
50Devil.  Go to war with him who has lighted
up a torch within thee which will consume thee, if fear do not
extinguish it.


Faustus.  I have done so, and in vain. 
Obey!


Devil.  Insatiable man!  But know that a
devil has his bounds too.  Since our fall, we have lost the
idea of these sublime secrets, and forget even the language to
express them.  The pure spirits of yonder world can alone
sing and imagine them.


Faustus.  Dost thou think by this crafty excuse to
cheat me of that which I desire?


Devil.  Fool!  I would wish for no better
revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the
glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then
see thee writhe in despair.  Knew I more than I know, can
the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh
what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and the disembodied spirit
only comprehends?


Faustus.  Then be a spirit, and speak!  Shake
off this figure.


Devil.  Wilt thou then understand me?


p.
51Faustus.  Shake off this figure, and let me
see thee as a spirit.


Devil.  Thy words are folly.  Now, then, see
me: I shall exist, but not for thee; I shall speak, but thou wilt
not catch my meaning.


Leviathan then melted into a thin clear flame, and
disappeared.


Faustus.  Speak, and unfold the enigma.


As the soft west wind moves along the perfumed meadows and
gently kisses the tender flowers, so did it murmur around the
ears of Faustus.  Then the murmur changed to a loud
continued tumult, which resembled the rolling of thunder, or the
dash of a breaker against the coral reef, or its howl and bellow
in the caves of the ocean.  Faustus crept close within his
circle, and with difficulty supported himself.


Faustus.  Ah, if this be the language of spirits,
my dream has vanished; I am deceived, and must gnash my teeth in
darkness.  I have, then, exchanged my soul for the
gratification of earthly lust! for that is all in which this
intriguing devil can assist me.  That is all against which I
p.
52risked eternity!  I thought to move among men
enlightened as no one had ever yet been, and to dazzle them with
my glory like the rising sun.  The sublime thought of living
for ever as the greatest in their hearts is gone; and I am more
wretched than I was.  Where art thou, trickster, that I may
vent my fury upon thee?


Devil (in his former figure).  Here I
am.  I spoke, and thou didst not understand the sense of my
words.  Dost thou not feel that thou art born for
darkness?  Thou canst not become that which thou must
not.  Withdraw thy mind from impossibilities, and direct it
to what is attainable.  Thou wishedst to hear the language
of spirits; thou heardst it, and wert stunned and deafened by the
sound.


Faustus.  Provoke but my wrath, and I will bruise
thee to tears with my magic rod.  I will chain thee to the
rim of my circle, and then stamp on thy neck.


Devil.  Do it, and hell will laugh at thy
anger.  For every tear thou makest me shed, Despair shall
one day wring a drop of blood from thy p. 53brow, and
Revenge shall hold the scales to catch and weigh it.


Faustus.  How revolting to a noble creature like
myself to hold converse with an outcast, who has only sense for
wickedness, and will only assist in wickedness!


Devil.  How disgusting to be forced to listen to a
man who reproaches the Devil because he is a devil, and does not
boast of that shadow, Virtue, like one of you!


Faustus.  Vain boast.  If thou couldst but
taste the moral value of man, by which he approaches the
immortal, and which makes him worthy of immortality!


Devil.  I can prove that it does not exist.


Faustus.  Yes; I believe thou canst.  And so
can any one of us who makes the measure of his own wickedness
that of all mankind, and who makes that virtue contemptible which
he has never felt in his breast.  We have had philosophers
who in this matter have long had the start of the Devil.


Devil.  Better if thou hadst never read them; p.
54thy head would then have been more clear, and thy heart
more sound.


Faustus.  Damnation!  Is the Devil always
right?


Devil.  I will show you that which those
philosophers only talk of.  I will blow away from your eyes
the clouds which pride, vanity, and self-love have collected, and
so charmingly coloured.


Faustus.  How wilt thou accomplish that?


Devil.  By conducting thee through the theatre of
the world, and showing thee men in their nakedness.  Let us
travel by water, by land, on foot, on horseback, on the rapid
winds, and see the race of man.  Perhaps we may discover
that for which so many thousand adventurers have broken their
necks.


Faustus.  Agreed.  Let us go through the
world; I must intoxicate myself by variety and enjoyment; and I
have long wished for a broader sphere of observation than my own
wild heart.  Let us go forth, and I will force the Devil to
believe in human virtue.  He shall avow to me that man is
the eye-apple of Him whom I now no more must name.


p.
55Devil.  Then will I return to hell a
convicted liar, and give thee back the bond which thou wilt
presently sign with thy blood.


Faustus.  But if I were to trust a devil, who
might palm upon me his own fiendish performances for the works of
men, how would the scoffer laugh?


Devil.  Such a monkish notion I should not have
expected from one who has so long toyed with philosophy; but in
this ye are all alike, fools and wise men.  If any thing
goes wrong, pride and self-love will never permit you to lay the
blame on yourselves.  Observe now those two words, Good and
Evil, which you would fain stamp into ideas; for when you have
words, you always think you have coined the empty sound into a
thought.  You labour with your eyes closed, and when you
open them it is but natural that the good should be your own
work, and the evil that of the Devil.  Thus, then, must we
poor devils ride about day and night, in order to turn to this or
that piece of roguery the heart or the imagination of this or
that scoundrel, who, if it had p. 56not been for
us, would have remained an honest fellow.  Faustus! Faustus!
man seeks abroad and in the clouds a thousand things which lie in
his own bosom, or before his face.  No; during our tour I
will add to nothing, except thou command me.  All that thou
seest shall be the work of men; and thou wilt soon perceive that
they do not require the Devil to incite them.


Faustus.  And is this all that thou canst afford
me?


Devil.  I will lead you from step to step; when we
have run through this course, another scene will immediately
open.  Get first acquainted with that which surrounds thee,
and then mount upwards.  The treasures of the earth are
thine; thou mayst command my power: do but dream—do but
wish.


Faustus.  That is something.


Devil.  Only something!  Discontented being,
thou shalt be able to force Leviathan to further the projects
which thou callest good and noble, and the consequences of them
shall be thy earnings, and the reward of thy heart.


p.
57Faustus.  That were more, if the Devil did
not say it.


Devil.  Who can boast that he has forced the fiend
to do good?  However, let this thought inflate thy
bosom.  Faustus, step out of the circle!


Faustus.  It is not yet time.


Devil.  Dost thou fear me?  I repeat, thou
shalt spend the moments allotted to thee according to thy own
pleasure: yes, Faustus, I will fill for thee the intoxicating cup
of enjoyment, as it has never been filled for any other
mortal.  Thy nerves shall wear away before thou hast emptied
it.  Count the sands of the shore, and thence thou mayst
guess the number of joys that I will strew before thee.


Thereupon he placed a casket of gold near the circle. 
The figures of the mayoress and a train of lovely maidens then
passed by.


Faustus.  Ha, devil, who has showed thee the way
to my heart?


Devil.  Is not my name Leviathan?  I have
weighed thee, and thy strength.  Dost thou respect
these?


p.
58(He shook upon the ground, from a sack, a quantity of
orders of knighthood, bishops’ hats, crosses of honour, and
diplomas of nobility.)


“No, no; I know Faustus better: knowledge and pleasure
are his gods.  Remain what you are; these things are vain
and futile.  Thus, by different bribes may ye all be won;
and for the sake of lust or advancement, ye would work bare your
hands and your intellects.  But, whilst fools toil for them
in the sweat of their brow, and in the exhaustion of their mind,
do thou enjoy, without care or labour, what I shall serve
up.  To-morrow, with thy consent, I will conduct thee to the
mayoress.”


Faustus.  But how?


Devil.  Accept the conditions, and I will tell
thee.  Come out of the circle; thou lookest still like a
drunken man.


Faustus.  I would annihilate myself if it were not
for one thought!


Devil.  Which is—


Faustus.  That I shall only thereby sooner fall
into thy power.


p.
59Devil.  How rash and hasty are men! 
Learn but to know me, and, if I cannot gratify thy wildest
earthly desires, return to poverty, to contempt, and thy starving
philosophy.  Step forth, I say.


Faustus.  The fury of a lion inflames me, and, if
hell were to yawn beneath my foot, I would spring beyond the
limits of humanity.


He sprang out of the circle, and cried,


“I am thy lord.”


Devil.  Yes; as long as thy time runs.  I
lead a mighty man by the hand, and am proud to be his slave.


p.
60CHAPTER II.


On the following morning the devil Leviathan came with all the
pomp and retinue of a nobleman to the inn where Faustus
sojourned.  He alighted from his richly caparisoned steed,
and asked the host whether the famous Faustus sojourned
there?


The host replied by a reverential bow, and ushered him into
the house.  The Devil then advanced to Faustus, and said to
him, in the presence of the host:


“Your renown, your great talents, and, above all, your
mighty invention, have induced me to make a wide circuit in my
journey in order to become acquainted with so remarkable a man,
whom the world, in spite of its lukewarmness, knows how to
value.  I came, likewise, to request your company in the
tour of Europe, and shall be happy to accede to whatever
stipulations you may p. 61choose to make, for I am perfectly
aware that such a pleasure is above all price.”


Faustus played his part agreeably to that of the Devil; and
the host hurried out in order to relate the adventure to his
household.  The rumour was immediately spread, by a thousand
channels, through all Frankfort; and the arrival of the
distinguished stranger was soon known, from the sentinel at the
city-gate to his most worshipful the mayor himself.  Away
ran the magistrates, as if the Devil drove them, to the
senate-house, leaving all the weighty affairs of state to remain
unsettled whilst they consulted about this unexpected
apparition.  The senior alderman, a patrician, who was
particularly expert in deciphering the meaning of the signs which
occasionally appeared in the political horizon, and had thereby
obtained a powerful ascendency in the council, pressed his fat
chin into furrows, and his narrow brow into wrinkles, and, with
reflection in his little eyes, assured his sapient brethren that
“This distinguished stranger was nothing else than a secret
envoy of his imperial majesty, who p. 62was come into
Germany to observe attentively the situation, the comparative
strength, the disagreements, and the alliances, of the various
states and princes; so that the high and mighty court, at the
opening of the approaching Diet, might know how to comport
itself.  And since the imperial court had always kept a
watchful eye upon their republic, they must now endeavour to
convince this distinguished visitor of the fiery zeal which they
had always entertained for the high imperial house, and not let
him depart without winning him over to the interest of the
state.  That they must, in so doing, take as their pattern
the prudent senate of Venice, who never failed to show the
greatest friendship and honour towards him whom they intended to
deceive.”


The subordinate members of the assembly affirmed that the
alderman had spoken like the Doge of Venice himself; but the
mayor, who bore the alderman a secret grudge, because the latter,
like a true patrician, hated the democratic form of government,
and was accustomed to say, whenever he was outvoted, “Ha,
thus it goes when p. 63tradesmen and shopkeepers are made
statesmen,” quickly took up the cudgels against him in
these words:


“Truly laudable and excellent, most sapient masters,
seems to me that which our most prudent and politic brother has
now advanced, were it not for one single circumstance which
unhappily spoils all.  I, indeed, do not make a boast of
possessing the deep visual penetration of the alderman,—a
penetration, my brethren, which can spy out a storm before it
arises; nevertheless, whether it be from chance or reflection, I
have long foreseen, and have long foretold, that which is now
gathering around us.  You must all remember, that at each of
our sittings I advised you not to treat this Faustus so
contemptuously, but to purchase his Latin Bible for the small sum
he demanded.  Even my wife, who is a mere woman, like all
other women, has frequently said that, although we ourselves
neither understood nor could use the book, we ought nevertheless
to have it; and, on account of the beautiful letters in the
title-page, and of the curious invention, to make a show of it,
p.
64as we do of our golden bull, and attract strangers from
all parts.  It was likewise fitting that a free and rich
state like ours should protect the arts, and give them a helping
hand.  But I know very well what was in your minds;
’twas envy—sheer envy.  You could not brook that
my name should be rendered immortal.  You could not digest
that posterity should read in the chronicle, ‘Sub
consulatu . . . a Latin Bible was bought from Faustus of
Mayence for two hundred gold guilders.’  Yes, yes;
’twas that stuck in your gizzards; but, as you have brewed,
so may you drink: Faustus is a devilish wild fellow, and a very
strange hand to deal with; I saw that proved yesterday.  And
now that the imperial envoy has travelled hither merely on his
account, merely on account of him whom we have treated worse than
a poor cobbler, think ye not he will blow us up with the envoy
out of revenge, and all our scrapings and grimaces will serve for
nothing but to make us appear ridiculous before the
citizens?  But he who has driven his cart into the mire may
draw it out again.  I wash my hands of the whole p.
65business, and, like Pilate, am innocent of
Israel’s blindness and destruction.”


Here followed a deep silence.  The bloody battle of
Cannæ, which threatened Rome with ruin, did not terrify her
senate more than did this eloquent philippic the enlightened
magistracy of Frankfort.  Already the mayor triumphed in
proud anticipation: he thought even that he had hurled the
alderman entirely out of his saddle; when the latter, collecting
his political wisdom and heroic strength, hastened to the
assistance of the sinking state, and bellowing aloud, ad
majora, undauntedly proposed “immediately to send an
embassy from the council to the hotel, in order to welcome the
distinguished guest, and to offer Faustus four hundred gold
guilders for his Latin Bible, and thereby to appease him, and to
make him favourable to the state.”


The mayor scoffed at the idea of giving four hundred gold
guilders for a thing which the day before they might, in all
probability, have had for one hundred; but his jeers and his
scoffs availed nothing.  “Salus populi suprema
lex,” cried the p. 66alderman;
and, with the approbation of the council, he commanded the mayor
to entertain Faustus and the envoy in the most sumptuous manner,
at the expense of the state.


This circumstance consoled his worship, who willingly
displayed his wealth, partly on account of his defeat by the
alderman, while the concluding words, “at the expense of
the state,” put him in good humour.  The junior
alderman immediately set out with one of the four syndics, and
the mayor sent to his house to order every thing proper for the
festival.  The devil Leviathan was engaged with Faustus in a
deep discourse when these ambassadors were announced.  They
were instantly admitted.  They welcomed, with all humility,
in the name of the senate, the distinguished guest, and gave him
to understand that his noble person, as well as his important
errand, were well known to them; assuring him at the same time,
in set terms, of their zeal and devotion for the high imperial
house.  The Devil, upon this, screwed up his features,
turned to Faustus, took him by the hand, and assured the p.
67speakers that nothing had brought him to their town but
the desire of removing from it this great man, whom he had no
doubt they knew how to prize.  The ambassadors were now
somewhat disturbed; however, they soon recollected themselves,
and continued thus:


“It rejoiced them highly that they could give him on the
spot a convincing proof of the respect which the magistracy
entertained for so great a man, as they were authorised to tender
to Faustus four hundred gold guilders for his Latin Bible, which
they had long been anxious to possess, and preserve as a precious
treasure.  The illustrious magistracy would also be most
happy to enrol him, if it were agreeable, among the number of
citizens, and thereby open to him the way to glory and
emolument.”


This last stroke was added by their own political wisdom; a
proof that they, as skilful negotiators, knew how to supply and
fill up every vacuum which had been at first overlooked.


Faustus started up in a fury, stamped on the ground, and
cried:


p.
68“Base, lying, deceitful pack!  How long did I
not fawn upon you, from the proud patrician down to the shoemaker
and the pepper-seller, around whose necks you hang the
magisterial insignia, like halters around asses?  And did ye
not permit me to wait at your dirty thresholds without deigning
me a single look?  And now that you hear this noble
personage sees that in me which you did not, you come and would
pay me back in my own coin.  But see, here is gold; for
which you would barter the Holy Roman Empire, provided you could
find fools gross enough to buy the huge, monstrous carcass,
without head, sense, or proportion.”


The Devil highly enjoyed the rage of Faustus and the downcast
looks of the young senators; but they, who had never read Roman
history, were not so high-spirited as to fling Faustus a
declaration of war from beneath their closely-folded robes of
office; on the contrary, they communicated the invitation to the
mayor’s festival in as unconcerned a tone as if nothing had
happened,—a new proof of their expertness in
negotiation.  p. 69Had they, for example, replied to the
insult, they would thereby have acknowledged that they felt the
force of it; but when they let it fall flat upon the ground, as
if it were nothing to any of them, it lost all its power, and
assumed the colour of an unfair reproach.  Genius alone is
capable in such critical moments of like discrimination.


At the word “mayor,” Faustus pricked up his ears,
and the Devil gave him a significant side-glance.  Faustus
thereupon took the Bible from the casket, handed it over to the
senators, and said, with some degree of complaisance,


“That, upon due consideration, he was determined to make
the city a present of his Bible, on condition that they showed
the sentence which he marked under, and of which he wrote a
German translation on the margin, to the assembled magistrates;
and, in remembrance of him, caused it to be written in letters of
gold on the wall of the council-chamber.”


The senators hastened back to their brethren, as delighted as
envoys who, after a ruinous war, p. 70return with
an advantageous peace.  They were received with great joy,
and, the Bible being opened at the appointed place, they
read—


“And lo! the fools sat in council, and
idiots clamoured in the judgment-chamber.”


They swallowed this bitter pill, because the presumptive
shadow of imperial majesty, in the form of the demon, prevented
them from spitting it out.  They comforted themselves with
having been spared the four hundred gold guilders, and wished
each other joy for having escaped so well out of this unpleasant
affair.  The envoys received a vote of thanks, and it is to
be regretted that their names are not handed down to
posterity.  When at last they spoke of Faustus’s
well-filled money-chest, the glitter of gold darted like
lightning through the souls of all, and each secretly determined
to make the man his friend, in order to get possession of
it.  The alderman shouted, “We must make him a
citizen, and give him a seat and voice in the council. 
Policy demands that we should overstep law and custom, if the
advantage of the State depends upon it.”


p.
71Faustus, in the mean time, strolled out with the Devil;
but they found the people of the place modelled after so
unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and fiat features,
that the Devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by
the inhabitants of an English town called N---, when dressed in
their Sunday’s best.  “Envy, malice, curiosity,
and avarice,” said he, “are here and there the sole
springs of action; and both places are governed by a pitiful
mercantile spirit, which prevents them from being grandly wicked
or nobly virtuous.  In short, Faustus, there is little to be
done in either place by a man of spirit, and we will hurry away
from hence as soon as you have brought the mayoress to the point
you wish her.”


The clock sounded the hour of dinner; the Devil and Faustus,
mounted upon noble horses, and attended by a numerous retinue,
proceeded to the house of the mayor.  They entered the hall
of assembly, where all the magistrates awaited them, and, on
their appearance, bowed before them even to the dust.  The
fat, bloated mayor, p. 72after a long speech, introduced them
to the wives of the dignitaries of the corporation, whose
figures, loaded with tawdry ornaments, seemed now to display a
double portion of awkwardness and vulgarity.  They stared
like a flock of geese, and could not satiate themselves with
looking at the dress and physiognomy of Leviathan; but the
mayoress, a native of Saxony, towered above them all, like an
Oriad.  The expressive look of Faustus had attracted her
attention, as well as his prepossessing figure, and his fine
handsome face.  She blushed when he saluted her, and could
find no other answer to his eloquent address than a few broken
words, which the ears of Faustus caught like enchanting
music.  The senators exerted their wits to the utmost in
complimenting their guests, and all now sat down to the
well-spread table.  After dinner the Devil led the mayor by
the hand to a private apartment,—a circumstance which
flattered him extraordinarily, but which was a dagger-blow to all
the other guests, especially to the alderman.


The mayor, heated with wine, and intoxicated p. 73with the
honour which the supposed imperial envoy showed him, in a bending
attitude and with staring eyes awaited the communication. 
The Devil assured him, in soft, silvery tones, how much he was
flattered by the mayor’s hospitable reception, and how very
desirous he was to prove himself thankful; adding, that he
carried with him a number of letters of nobility, signed by the
emperor’s own hand, and he would gladly bestow the first
upon him, provided—


Joy, transport, and astonishment darted through the
mayor’s soul; he stood before the Devil with wide-gaping
mouth, and at length stammered out, “Provided
how—what—oh!”  The Devil then murmured
softly into his ear: “His friend Faustus was desperately in
love with the beautiful mayoress, and that for his sake only he
would do it; and if the mayoress would retire with Faustus for a
few moments,—which would be entirely unobserved amid the
noise and confusion of a festival,—he should deliver into
her hand the patent of nobility.”


Thereupon the Devil hastened to Faustus, informed p. 74him
of what had happened, and gave him the letter of nobility, with
certainty of success.  Faustus doubted, and the Devil
laughed at his doubts.


The mayor remained in his cabinet almost petrified.  The
sudden glitter of such unexpected happiness was at once so
clouded by an odious and detestable condition, that he determined
upon rejecting it.  But all at once Ambition blew into his
ear: “Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; to be dubbed a nobleman at once,
and in such an off-hand manner, as the saying is, and thereby to
be placed on a footing with the proudest of thy foes, and to
raise thy voice in the council like a trumpet, and appear among
those there like a man whom, on account of his services, his
imperial majesty will exalt above the heads of all!”


Another feeling softly whispered—


“Uh! uh! with my own knowledge and consent to be thus
disgraced!  But then, again, who will know it? and what is
there in the whole affair?  I receive a certain good in lieu
of what has long ceased to have any charms for me.  p.
75The evil consists in the idea alone, and it will be a
secret between me and my wife.  But, stating the case
fairly, can I arrive at so high a distinction at a cheaper
rate?  Will it not be a nail in the alderman’s coffin;
and what will the citizens not say when they see that his
imperial majesty knows how to value me?  Shall I not get
every thing into my power, and revenge myself on those who have
thwarted and contradicted me?  Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; be no
fool; seize fortune by the forelock.  Man is only what he
appears in the eyes of the world, and no one asks the nobleman
how he became so.  But there is my wife; she will set
herself against my advancement, for I well know her Saxon
prudery.”


At that very moment she entered the room, eager to learn from
her husband what the magnificent stranger had confided to him in
private.  He looked at her with a roguish leer, but still
with some degree of bashfulness.


Mayor.  Well, my chick, suppose I were to make
thee a noblewoman to-day?


Mayoress.  Then, duck, the wives of all the p.
76citizens and magistrates would swoon with envy, and the
alderman’s lady would instantly die of that husky cough
which has so long assailed her.


Mayor.  That she would, for certain; and I could
crush her proud husband beneath my foot.  But hark, my
chick: it only rests with you to bring all this about.


Mayoress.  Who ever heard of wives making their
husbands noblemen, duck?


Mayor.  Who knows, my child, how many have been
made so?  But be not terrified; you have driven that cursed
Faustus out of his wits.  (The Mayoress blushed;
he continued)  Only on his account will the envoy
create me a nobleman, and Faustus is to deliver to thee the
patent of nobility in private.  You understand me, I
perceive.  Hem! What do you think of the plan?


Mayoress.  I was thinking, my treasure, that if
these two gentlemen were to change their minds, we should
certainly lose the patent.


Mayor.  Curse it! so we might.  Let us be
quick, my mouse; such bargains are not met with every day.


p.
77The company had in the mean while dispersed themselves
in the garden; and his worship, getting behind Faustus, whispered
softly in his ear that “his wife would esteem it an honour
to receive the patent of nobility from his hand; and he had only
to step up a back staircase, which he would show him, to an
apartment where he would find her.  That as for himself, he
feared nothing from a man who had shown so much honour and
conscience.”  He led him thereupon to the back
staircase.  Faustus glided up immediately, and entered a
chamber, where he found the mayoress: he flew to her, and created
the mayor a knight of the Holy Roman Empire.  She then went
and delivered to her spouse the letter of nobility; and they
determined between them that it should be laid upon the
supper-table in a covered golden dish, in order, by its
unexpected appearance, to make the blow more painful to the
guests.  The Devil, to whom the mayor confided the plan,
highly approved of it; but Faustus murmured in the ear of
Leviathan, “I command thee to play this rascal, who has
prostituted his wife for ambition’s p. 78sake, a
thorough knavish trick; and to revenge me, at the same time, on
all these sheep-headed magistrates, who so long forced me to pay
my court to them.”


They sat down to supper, and the glasses went quickly round;
when all at once the Devil commanded the dish, which had so long
excited the Curiosity of the surrounders, to be uncovered; then,
holding up the letter of nobility, he delivered it to the mayor
with these words: “Worthy sir, his majesty the emperor, my
master, is pleased by this patent letter of nobility to create
you, on account of your fidelity and services, a knight of the
Holy Roman Empire.  I hope and trust that you will never
grow lukewarm in your zeal for the high imperial house; and now,
Sir Knight, I have the honour of first drinking your
health.”


These words rolled like thunder in the ears of the
guests.  The drunken became sober, and the sober drunk; the
lips of the women turned blue with rage, and could scarcely
stammer out a congratulation.  The alderman was seized with
an apoplectic fit, and his wife was near dying of her p. 79husky
cough.  Fear, in the mean time, obliged the rest to assume a
joyous countenance; and they drank, with a loud huzza, the health
of the new-made knight.  While the tumult was at the highest
pitch, a thin vapour suddenly filled the hall; the glasses began
to dance about upon the tables; and the roasted geese, turkeys,
and fowls cackled, gobbled, and crowed.  The calves, sheep,
and boars’ heads cried, bleated, and grunted, bounced
across the table, and snapped at the fingers of the guests. 
The wine issued in blue flames from out the flasks; and the
patent of nobility caught fire, and was burnt to ashes in the
hands of the trembling mayor.  The whole assembly now sat
like so many ridiculous characters in a mad masquerade.  The
mayor bore a stag’s head upon his shoulders; and the rest,
men and women, adorned with grotesque masks, spoke, cackled,
crowed, neighed, or bellowed, according to the kind of mask which
had been allotted to each individual.  The alderman alone,
in the dress of a harlequin, sat motionless; and Faustus avowed
to the Devil that the ruse did p. 80great honour
to his ingenuity.  After Faustus had satiated himself by
gazing at the spectacle, he gave the Devil the wink, and they
both flew out of the window; the latter personage, according to
custom, leaving behind him the sulphurous stench.


By and by the whole illusion disappeared; and when the sapient
magistrates re-assembled next morning in the council-chamber,
they scarcely mentioned to each other what had taken place the
night before.  They kept the whole matter a state secret,
and only revealed it now and then to a chosen few.  All that
the mayor got by this business was, that his adversary, the
alderman, lost the use of his limbs, and never again took his
seat in the council.


Faustus and Leviathan, in the mean time, passed over the
city-walls; and when they were in the open field, the Devil
despatched an attendant spirit to the hotel, in order to pay the
reckoning, and to fetch away Faustus’s baggage.  Then
turning to the young German, he asked him if he were contented
with this first feat.


p.
81Faustus.  Hem! if the Devil wants praise, I
am content to give it him.  But I should never have imagined
that yon pompous scoundrel would have sold his wife for
ambition’s sake.


Devil.  Let us proceed a little further, my
Faustus, and I will soon convince thee that Ambition is the
godhead which ye all worship; although you disguise it under all
kind of glittering forms, in order to conceal its
nakedness.  Till now you have studied man merely in books
and philosophical treatises; or, in other words, you have been
thrashing empty straw.  But the film will soon fall from
your eyes.  We will shortly quit this dirty country of
yours, where priestcraft, pedantry, and oppression reign
unmolested and undisturbed.  I will usher you upon a stage
where the passions have a freer scope, and where great energies
are employed to great ends.


Faustus.  But I will force thee to believe in the
moral worth of man before we quit my native land.  Not far
from hence lives a prince, whom all Germany praises as a paragon
of every virtue.  Let us seek him, and put him to the
test.


p.
82Devil.  Agreed; such a man would please me
for his rarity.


The spirit now returned with the baggage, and was sent forward
to Mayence to bespeak a lodging in an hotel.  Faustus, for
secret reasons which the Devil guessed, proposed spending the
night with a hermit who dwelt in the hill of Homburg, and who was
renowned through the whole neighbourhood for his piety. 
They reached the hermitage about midnight, and knocked at the
door.  The solitary opened it; and Faustus, who had dressed
himself in the richest clothes which the Devil had provided for
him, begged pardon for disturbing the repose of the holy man, and
said that the night had surprised him and his companion while
hunting, and had separated them from their attendants, and that
they should be obliged by his giving them house-room for a few
hours.  The hermit looked on the ground, and replied, with a
deep sigh:


“He who lives for heaven seldom abandons himself to
dangerous repose.  You have not disturbed me; and, if you
wish to stay here till p. 83sunrise, you must take things as you
find them.  Bread and water, with straw to lie on, is all I
can afford you.”


Faustus.  Brother hermit, we have brought all that
the stomach requires along with us.  We will only trouble
you for a draught of water.


(The hermit took his pitcher and went to a
fountain.)


Faustus.  Peace dwells in his heart as well as on
his brow, and I may think myself happy that he is not acquainted
with that which binds me to thee.  Faith and hope serve him
instead of those things which I have damned myself for; at least
it seems so.


Devil.  And only seems.  What if I were to
prove that your heart is pure as gold in comparison with his?


Faustus.  Devil!


Devil.  Faustus, thou wert poor, ill-treated, and
despised; thou didst see thyself in the dust; but, like an
energetic being, thou hast sprung out of contempt at thy own
risk.  Thou wert incapable of gratifying thy lusts by the
murder of p. 84thy fellow-creatures, as this saint
would if I led him into temptation.


Faustus.  I see all thy infernal craftiness. 
If I were to command thee to put him to a fair trial, thou
wouldst confuse the senses of the just man, so that he would
commit acts which his heart abhorred.


Devil.  Ridiculous!  Why, then, do ye boast
of your free-will, and thereby ascribe your deeds to your own
hearts?  But ye are all saints while there is nothing to
tempt ye.  No, Faustus; I will remain neuter, and merely
offer delights to his senses; for the Devil has no need to creep
into ye when you are already disposed for wickedness.


Faustus.  And if things do not turn out as you
assert, think not that your assurance shall remain
unpunished.


Devil.  Thou mayst then torment me a whole day by
preaching of the virtues of men.  Let us see whether this
will allure him.


A table, provided with dainty meats and delicious wines, now
appeared in the middle of the hermitage.  The solitary
entered, and silently p. 85placed the pitcher before Faustus,
and then retired into a corner, without heeding the luxurious
banquet.


Faustus.  Now, brother hermit, since the things
are on the table, fall to without waiting to be asked
twice.  You may eat of our fare without the least injury to
your reputation.  I see your mouth begins to water. 
Come, a glass to the honour of your patron saint.  What is
his name?


Hermit.  St. George.


Faustus.  Here’s his health.


Devil.  Ho, ho, brother hermit! the renowned St.
George of Cappadocia was a fellow after my own heart; and if you
take him for a model, you cannot go wrong.  I am perfectly
well acquainted with his history, and will relate it in a few
words for your instruction.  He was the son of wretchedly
poor people, and was born in a miserable hut in Cilicia.  As
he grew up, he early perceived his own talents, and, by force of
flattery, servility, and corruption, found his way into the
houses of the great and opulent, who at length, out of gratitude
for his services, procured him a p. 86commission in
the army of the Greek emperor.  But when there he pilfered
and plundered to so enormous an extent, that he was soon obliged
to fly, to avoid being hanged.  Thereupon he joined himself
to the sect of the Arians, and, by his quick parts, soon learnt
to gabble the unintelligible jargon of theology and
metaphysics.  About this time the Arian emperor,
Constantine, kicked from the episcopal chair at Alexandria the
good and most Catholic Athanasius; and your redoubtable
Cappadocian was, by an Arian synod, appointed to the vacant
see.  George was now completely in his element: he puffed,
strutted, and filled his paunch.  But when he, by his
injustice and cruelty, had driven his subjects to the verge of
madness, they put him to death, and carried his body in triumph
through the streets of Alexandria.  Thus did he become a
martyr, and consequently a saint.


Hermit.  There is not a word of this in the
legend.


Devil.  I believe ye, brother; and, for the sake
of truth, the Devil only ought to have written it.


p.
87The hermit then crossed himself.


Faustus.  Do you call eating and drinking
crimes?


Hermit.  They may tempt us to commit crimes.


Devil.  Your virtue must be very weak if it cannot
resist temptation; for temptation and resistance should be the
glory of a saint.


Hermit.  You are right so far; but every one is
not a saint.


Faustus.  Are you happy, brother?


Hermit.  Solitude makes me happy; a good
conscience makes me blessed.


Devil.  How do you obtain your food?


Hermit.  The peasants bring me wherewithal to
support my existence.


Faustus.  And what do you give them in return?


Hermit.  I pray for them.


Faustus.  Are they bettered by your prayers?


Hermit.  They think so, and I hope so.


Devil.  Brother, you are a rogue.


Hermit.  The reproaches of the sinful world are
what the just man ought to expect.


p.
88Devil.  Why do you not look upwards, and why
do you blush?  But know, that I have the art of reading in a
man’s face what is passing in his heart.


Hermit.  So much the worse for yourself.  You
will have little enjoyment in company.


Devil.  Ho, ho! you know that?  (Looking
at Faustus.)


Hermit.  It is a vile world in which we live, and
woe for you if thousands did not hasten into solitude to avert by
their prayers the anger of incensed Heaven from the heads of
sinners.


Faustus.  Reverend brother, you own yourself that
you are paid for your prayers; and, believe me, it is much easier
to pray than work.


Devil.  Listen once more.  You have a twist
of the mouth which tells me you are a hypocrite; and your eyes,
which revolve in so narrow a circle, and which are generally cast
downward, tell me that you are convinced they would betray the
feelings of your heart, were you to raise them.


The hermit lifted his eyes towards the heavens, p.
89prayed with clasped hands, and said, “Thus does
the righteous man reply to the scoffer.”


Faustus.  Enough.  Come, brother, and bear us
company in our repast.


But the hermit remained inflexible.  Faustus looked
scornfully on the Devil, who merely smiled and shook his
head.  Suddenly the door opened, and a young female pilgrim
rushed in almost breathless.  When she had recovered from
her fear, she related how she had been pursued by a knight, from
whom she had the good fortune to escape by reaching the cell of
the pious hermit.  She was received in a friendly manner;
and, unclasping her long mantle, she exhibited such beauty as
would have made the victory over the flesh no easy matter for the
holy Anthony himself.  She placed herself by the side of
Leviathan, ate sparingly of the meal, and the Devil began
to—


* * * * *


The hermit was at first shocked, and at last confused; and he
had scarcely power to struggle with the temptation.  The
pilgrim tore herself, ashamed p. 90and angry,
from the arms of Leviathan, to seek protection by the side of the
hermit, which he could not refuse her.


The Devil and Faustus now pretended to be intoxicated and
overwhelmed with sleep; but before they took repose the Devil
placed, in the presence of the hermit, a weighty purse of money
under the straw, and deposited his own rich rings and those of
Faustus in a casket, which the latter laid close beside
him.  On the table they placed their swords and daggers, and
then flung themselves down and soon snored.


The pilgrim softly approached the table, and poured out with
her delicate and snow-white hands a goblet of foaming wine. 
She just touched the rim with her rosy lips, and then offered it
to the hermit.  He stood like one amazed; and in his
confusion emptied it, and another besides, and greedily swallowed
the luxurious morsels which the tempter, one after another, held
up to his mouth.  She then led him out, and bursting into
tears, entreated his pardon for having been forced to outrage his
holy eyes.  She then looked mournful p. 91and
inconsolable, pressed his hand warmly, and at last fell down on
her knees before him.  At this instant the silvery moon
beamed upon her bosom, over which the gentle night-wind moved her
dark, dishevelled locks.  The hermit sank upon this dazzling
bosom, without knowing whether he was dead or alive.  At
length the pilgrim said, “That she would yield herself
entirely to his wishes, if he would revenge her first on those
daring reprobates, and take possession of their treasure, which
would enable him and her to live happily to the end of their
days.”


The hermit, at these words, recovered in some degree from his
intoxication, and asked her, in a trembling voice, what she
meant, and what she would have him do.


Amongst broken exclamations of rapture she murmured,
“Their daggers lie on the table: do you murder the one; I
will manage the other.  Then dress yourself in their
clothes, and seize their treasure.  We will then set the
hermitage on fire, and fly to France together.”


The horrible idea of murder made the hermit p.
92shudder.  He hesitated, was undecided, looked on
the charms of the siren; he saw that he could make himself master
of her and of the treasure without danger; and, all his virtue
yielding, he forgot heaven and his oft-repeated vows.  The
pilgrim dragged the reeling miscreant into the hut; each seized a
dagger; and just as he was about to aim a blow at Faustus, the
Devil burst into the fiendish scorn-laugh; and Faustus saw the
hermit, with a lifted dagger, standing by his side.


Faustus.  Cursed monster, who, under the mask of
religion, wouldst murder thy guest!


The hermit sunk trembling to the earth.  The pilgrim, a
phantom of hell, appeared to him in a frightful form, and then
vanished.


Faustus commanded Leviathan to set fire to the hut, and burn
it to ashes, along with the hypocrite.  The Devil obeyed
with joy.  The following morning the peasants shed many
tears for the fate of the righteous man; and, having collected
his bones, they preserved them as precious relics.


p.
93Faustus and the Devil arrived early the next day at
Mayence, and alighted at the dwelling of the former.  His
young wife fell with a cry of joy upon his neck, embraced him,
and then burst into tears of sorrow.  The children clung
sobbing to his knees, and greedily examined his pockets, to see
whether he had brought them any thing.  His old gray-headed
father next staggered towards him, and shook him mournfully by
the hand.  The heart of Faustus was moved, and his eyes
began to moisten, while he trembled, and looked angrily upon the
Devil.  When he asked his wife why she wept, she wrung her
hands, and replied, “Ah, Faustus, do you not perceive how
the hungry ones examine your pockets for bread?  How can I
see that without tears?  They have eaten nothing for a long
time; we have been unfortunate, and all thy friends have forsaken
us; but now I see thee again, it is to me as though I saw the
countenance of an angel.  I and thy father have suffered
more on thy account than on our own.  We have had such
frightful dreams and visions; and when my eyes, weary with p.
94weeping, have closed for a few hours, I saw thee torn
from us by force, and all was dark and horrible.”


Faustus.  Thy dream, love, is about to be partly
fulfilled.  This gentleman here will reward thy husband for
those talents which his ungrateful country overlooked or
despised.  I have agreed to travel with him far and
wide.


Old Faustus.  “My son, stay at home and
support thyself honourably,” says Scripture.


Faustus.  And die of hunger, says Experience.


The wife began to weep yet more bitterly, and the children
screamed for bread.  Faustus gave the Devil a sign, and he
called to his servant, who presently afterwards brought into the
room a heavy coffer.  Faustus unlocked it, and flung a large
bag of gold upon the table; which being opened, and the yellow
coin appearing, a lively flush of joy was instantly diffused over
the melancholy countenances of the family.  He then took out
magnificent clothes and jewels, which he delivered to his
wife.  Her tears vanished, and vanity at once dried them up,
as the sun-rays dry p. 95up the morning dew.  The Devil
smiled, and Faustus muttered to himself, “O magic of gold
and of vanity!  I may now go to the antipodes, and no other
tears than those of hypocrisy will be shed.”  Then,
aloud, “Well, wife, these are the fruits of my journey,
reaped in advance.  Is not this better than staying at home
with you and starving?”


But the wife heard him not; for she stood with her rich robes
and jewels before the looking-glass to see how they became
her.  The little girls frolicked around her, took up the
clothes and ornaments she had laid aside, and aped the
mother.  In the mean time a servant brought in a substantial
breakfast, the children fell upon it, cried and shouted with joy;
but the mother had, in the mean time, forgotten her hunger.


The old father took Faustus aside, and said, “If thou
hast obtained all these things by honourable means, let us thank
God, my son, and enjoy his bounty; but for some nights past I
have had horrible dreams, although I hope they were merely caused
by our necessities.”


p.
96This remark of the old man sank deep into the heart of
Faustus; but the pleasure of seeing his children eat so heartily,
and of observing with what love and thankfulness his eldest son
and favourite looked at him; the thought of having relieved them
from their misery; and, above all, an inward longing for
pleasure,—considerably damped the impression.  The
Devil added a large sum to the money in the bag, presented the
young wife with a costly necklace, gave each of the children a
trifle, and assured the family that he would bring back Faustus
to them safe, sound, and wealthy at no very distant period.


Faustus, attended by the Devil, now went to see a friend, whom
he found much dejected.  He asked him the cause of his
unhappiness, and the other replied:


“This afternoon the law-suit which you have often heard
me speak of is to be determined; and I am certain of losing it,
although justice is on my side.  In short, Master Faustus,
nothing remains for me to do but to beg, or drown myself in the
deepest part of the Rhine.”


p.
97Faustus.  How can you be certain that you
will lose your cause, if justice is for you, as you say it
is?


Friend.  But the five hundred gold guilders which
my opponent has given the Judge are against me; and if I cannot
outbid him, I must fall to the ground.


Faustus.  Pooh! does it merely depend on
that?  Come, lead me to the Judge.  I have a friend
here who willingly assists people out of such difficulties.


They found the Judge to be a proud, inflated man, who would
scarcely deign to honour a poor client with a look.  Faustus
had long known him for what he was.  When they entered the
room, the Judge, in an imperious tone, thus addressed
Faustus’s friend, “Why do you come to trouble
me?  Do you not know that tears never interrupt the course
of justice?”


The unhappy friend looked humbly to the ground.


Faustus.  Mighty sir, you have spoken well: tears
are like water; they merely spoil the eyes of p. 98those that
shed them.  But do you know that my friend has right on his
side?


Judge.  Master Faustus, I know you for a man who
plays away his money at ducks-and-drakes, and who has a loose
tongue.  Right and law are very different things: if he has
the first for him, it is no reason that he should have the
second.


Faustus.  You say that right and law are two
different things: something like judge and justice, perhaps.


Judge.  Master Faustus, I have already said that I
know you.


Faustus.  Perhaps we are mistaken in each other,
most enlightened sir.  But it is mere waste of soap to
attempt to wash a blackamoor white.  (He opened the
door, and in stalked the Devil.)  Here is a
gentleman who will lay before you a document, which I hope will
give the cause of my friend a new aspect.


When the Judge saw the richly-dressed Leviathan, he assumed a
more friendly countenance, and asked them all to be seated.


Faustus.  We can settle the whole business p.
99standing.  (To the Devil)  Produce the
document which we have found.


The Devil counted out of his purse five hundred gold guilders;
he then stopped and looked at the Judge.


Judge.  The document is by no means a bad one,
gentlemen; but the adverse party has long ago given me one of
equal weight.


The Devil continued counting till he had told out a thousand;
he then stopped.


Judge.  In truth, I had overlooked this
circumstance.  Such vouchers, however, are not to be
withstood.


He then gathered up the gold and secured it in his coffer.


Faustus.  I hope now that right and law will go
together.


Judge.  Master Faustus, you understand the art of
appeasing the bitterest enemies.


Faustus, whom the servility of the Judge as much offended as
his former rudeness, whispered to the Devil, in going away,
“Do thou avenge justice on this wretch.”


p.
100Thereupon he left his friend, without waiting for his
thanks, and went about with the Devil to discharge his
debts.  He then paid visits to his other friends, showered
gold upon them by handfuls, even on those who had forsaken him in
his adversity; and he felt happy in being able to give unbridled
scope to his generosity and greatness of soul.  The Devil,
however, who saw deeper into things than Faustus, laughed within
himself at the consequences.


They now went to the hotel, Faustus, recollecting the conduct
of his wife, once again fell into an exceedingly ill
humour.  He could not pardon her for having ceased to lament
his departure the moment she had seen the gold and jewels. 
Till now he had imagined that she loved him more than all the
treasures of the earth; but what he had just observed forced him
to believe the contrary, and his affection for her was turned to
bitterness.  The Devil, who perceived where the shoe
pinched, willingly allowed Faustus to torment himself with these
gloomy thoughts, so that he might tear himself from that sweet
tie by which p. 101nature still gently fettered
him.  He foresaw, with secret rapture, the dreadful anguish
which would one day arise in the bosom of the headstrong Faustus,
when the future should disclose to him all the horrors which he
was now about to perpetrate.


They dined in the public room, in company with some professors
of law and divinity, who, to the great delight of the Devil, soon
fell into a violent dispute concerning the nun Clara.  The
flame of that controversy was still at its full height;
party-spirit raged in all houses, and the present disputants
talked so loudly, and said so many ridiculous things, that
Faustus soon forgot his ill humour.  But when a doctor of
theology asserted that it was possible for Satan to have carried
his wickedness so far as to have brought the nun into certain
circumstances by means of the dream, the Devil burst into a
bellowing laugh; and Faustus immediately thought of a scheme by
which he might revenge himself, in a signal manner, upon the
Archbishop, who had paid so little attention to his
discovery.  He hoped then to p. 102involve the
thread of the theological and political war at Mayence in such
confusion that no human power would be able to unravel it. 
After dinner he asked the demon whether it would be possible for
him, under the figure of the Dominican, to pass that night with
the lovely Clara.  The Devil assured him that nothing was
more easy; and, if he chose, the abbess herself should usher him
into the nun’s cell.  Faustus, who had always
considered the abbess to be a strict, pious, and conscientious
woman, laughed in scorn at these last words of the Devil.


Devil.  Thy wife, O Faustus, set up a shriek of
despair when thou didst tell her of thy intended departure; but
when the glitter of gold and dress burst upon her view, the
sorrows of her heart vanished at once.  I repeat, that the
abbess herself shall introduce thee to the cell of the nun, and I
will employ no supernatural means.  Thou thyself shalt see
how the old gudgeon will swallow the hook.  Come, we will
pay her a visit under the pious figures of two nuns.  I know
the manners and ways of the nuns, ay, and of the monks p.
103too, of Germany, well enough to ape them.  I will
represent the Abbess of the Black Nuns, and thou shalt be her
friend, Sister Agatha.


At this moment Faustus’s friend came, full of joy, to
inform him of the happy issue of the law-suit.  He was about
to thank Faustus and the Devil upon his knees; but Faustus said,
“Spare your thanks, and take care of my wife and family
during my absence.”  He then whispered into the ear of
the Devil, “It is time to think of the Judge.”


The Judge wished after dinner to gratify his beloved wife by
counting the gold pieces in her presence.  He unlocked the
coffer, and started back in a tremor at the sight of its
contents: the gold pieces were changed into large rats, which
sprang out, and fell furiously upon his face and hands.  The
Judge, who had a great aversion to these animals, rushed out of
the room; but they pursued him, fastening on his heels.  He
hurried from the house, and ran through the streets; but still
they were close behind him.  He fled into the fields; but
they allowed him no rest, and p. 104at last
forced the terrified wretch to seek shelter in the stone tower
where the tolls are gathered, and which stands in the middle of
the Rhine.  Here he thought himself safe from farther
pursuit; but rats and mice hot from hell are not to be terrified
by water: they swam through, fell upon him, and ate him up
alive.  His wife, in her terror and astonishment, told the
history of the transformation of the gold pieces by which her
unfortunate husband had allowed himself to be dazzled; and from
that time there has not been in the whole diocese of Mayence a
single instance of a judge or a man in office taking a
bribe.  The Devil could not have foreseen this, or he
certainly would have let the scoundrel go unpunished.


Faustus and the Devil stood in their disguises before the gate
of the convent of White Nuns.  The portress ran as fast as
she could in order to inform the abbess of the unexpected
visitors.  The abbess received them with conventual
greetings, to which the Devil answered in a similar tone. 
Sweetmeats and wines were then brought in, and p. 105while
partaking of them the two abbesses talked together, of cloister
affairs, and of the wicked world; and the Devil, with a deep
sigh, turned the discourse to Clara’s accident. 
Clara, who, on account of her rank, was the pet-lamb of the
cloister, stood near the abbess, and laughed beneath her
veil.  Faustus observed this, and, looking at her, really
thought he had never seen a more charming rogue wear the sacred
veil.  The Devil at length gave the conversation a serious
turn, and led the abbess to conclude that he had something
weighty to confide to her.


Abbess (to Clara).  You may go, my lamb, to
the nuns in the garden, and divert yourself with them; I will
send you out some sweetmeats, so that you may celebrate the
coming of our venerable sister.


Clara bounded away.  After a few words, which the Devil
uttered in a disturbed and thoughtful kind of tone, so that he
might thereby arouse the curiosity of the abbess, he came to the
point.


Devil.  Ah, dear sister, how much do I pity p.
106you!  It is true, and that ought in some degree to
comfort you, that the whole city and the entire district are
convinced of your holiness, your piety, and the strictness of
your discipline.  In a word, you possess all the virtues
requisite for a bride of heaven.  But, alas, the world will
be the world still; and the Fiend often infuses evil thoughts
into the minds of worldly men, so that through them he may
disturb those saints who are thorns in his side.  No, no;
the wicked Devil cannot bear that you should bring up your lambs
in untainted purity.  I pity you, as I said before, and
still more the little innocents who are at present confided to
your care.  What will become of them when they lose you?


Abbess.  Kind sister, be of good cheer; though I
am old, I am yet, thanks to Heaven, sound and hearty, and the
little inconveniences which attend a uniform course of devotion
and penitence prolong life rather than shorten it.  So, at
least, the physician of the convent tells me when I complain to
him.


The Devil looked at her attentively.


p.
107“Have you, then, had no anticipation of what is
hanging over your head? no warning vision?  Has nothing
occurred in the convent to make you look forward to the future
with anxiety?  It is customary for pious souls to be
informed by certain signs when any disaster menaces
them.”


Abbess.  You frighten me so, that I tremble in my
whole body.  But let me reflect;—yes, yes, I am very
restless, and dream of raw heads and bloody bones; and some days
ago—ah, yes!—that certainly was a sign and a
warning—some few days ago I went with my lap-dog, which you
see there, to walk in the garden.  I was alone; the nuns
were at some distance, telling stories beneath the
linden-trees.  All at once the gardener’s great
mastiff sprung upon Piety, for that is the name of my
pet.  I shuddered from head to foot, and crossed myself
again and again; but that would avail nothing.  At last I
struck at the hideous brute with my staff,—yes, I struck
with all my strength the filthy hound who would thus profane the
cloister; and I continued striking until the staff, which his
reverence the Archbishop p. 108delivered
to me upon my consecration as abbess, broke in two.  Was
that a sign or a warning, think ye?


The Devil and Faustus pretended to be shocked.


Devil.  Ah, the very worst in the world.  All
now is but too clear and manifest.  Did not I tell you how
it would turn out, Sister Agatha?


Faustus made a humble bow of assent.


Abbess.  For Heaven’s sake, speak, or I
shall run mad.


Devil.  Contain yourself, dear sister.  Help
is to be found, and who knows but I bring it with me? 
Remember that it was the staff which the Archbishop presented to
you upon your being consecrated an abbess which you broke; and
now listen to me attentively.  You know my cousin the
prebend; well, he confided to me a very terrible affair.  He
indeed made me solemnly promise not to tell you; but I know it is
best to commit a little sin, if by its means we can prevent a
great one and confound the projects of Satan.


Abbess.  You are perfectly right; and the p.
109Fathers of the Church hold that doctrine, as my
confessor has often told me.


Devil.  Know, then, that the Archbishop has so far
got the upper hand of the Chapter, that he has brought them to
consent to your being deposed after the lapse of a few months,
and his niece Clara being made abbess in your stead.


“Jesu Maria!” cried the abbess, wrung her hands,
and fell into a swoon.  The Devil made a sour face at her
exclamation, and Faustus, laughing, rubbed her wrinkled
brows.  After she had recovered herself, she shed a torrent
of tears, and shrieked a thousand curses against the wickedness
of the world.


Devil.  Do not despair, dear sister.  For a
distant evil there is always a remedy.


Abbess.  And what do you advise me to do? 
Wretch that I am!  O Heavens! what will become of
me,—what will become of the nuns?


Devil.  I have already said that it is best to
commit a slight sin if, by so doing, we prevent a great one, and
you yourself have proved it by the authority of holy Fathers;
but, dear sister, courage p. 110and
understanding will be necessary, if you wish to obtain your
purpose without danger to your own soul, by loading another
person with the capital sin.


Abbess.  Ah, dear sister, and how is that to be
contrived?


Devil.  I was once in our convent in almost a
similar perplexity.  The good Sister Agatha here is my
witness; and as she saw every thing, and assisted me, we may
speak out before her.


Faustus bowed with humility.


Devil.  A nun who, by sinful wit, and yet more
sinful beauty, had found favour among the great and powerful,
was, by their assistance, on the point of rising above me. 
Ah! I have felt how grievous are the thoughts of being forced to
obey, after one has for a long time exercised boundless
power.  Well, in the presence of Sister Agatha, I entered
into a consultation with my relation the prebend: he is very
knowing in affairs of conscience and crime, and understands to a
hair’s-breadth what is damnable and what is not.  This
wise man gave me a piece of advice which helped p. 111me
out of my trouble, and for which I shall always have reason to
bless him.  I admit that the expedient at first appeared to
me sinful; but he assured me, and proved to me out of the
casuists, that a little fasting and penance would do away with
all that was culpable in it.


Abbess.  But the advice—the advice!


Devil.  I am ashamed to tell it you aloud.


Abbess.  Then whisper it into my ear.  What
the Abbess of the Black Nuns could do without endangering her
salvation, the Abbess of the White Nuns may do also.


Devil (softly into her ear).  He advised me
to contrive so that this dangerous nun should commit the sin of *
* *


Abbess (crossing herself).  Blessed
Ursula!  Why, that is the work of the Devil, and leads
directly to hell.


Devil.  Ay, very true, but only the person who
commits it; and I was not advising you to do it.  Remember,
dear sister, you are not to be punished for all the sins which
your nuns may choose to commit.


p.
112Abbess.  But, in Heaven’s name, how
did you manage this dangerous affair without being
discovered?


Devil.  Oh, my situation was much more difficult
than yours, for you are assisted by the report of the dream,
which already fills the whole city.  Suppose, now, you were
to let a man, dressed like the Dominican, slip into Clara’s
cell, and the signs of the sinful deed were afterwards to appear,
would not the whole world say that it was a trick of the arch foe
of mankind?  Let Satan have the credit of it, and do you
remain sitting in your chair, adorned with that dignity which
Heaven has been pleased to grant you.  I have given you this
advice out of friendship, and for your good; you are now at
liberty to do as you please.  At all events, I will send you
some one to-night to personate the Dominican, and he will only
have to return if you are too scrupulous.


The abbess sat like one amazed, and in her confusion began to
tell her Rosary: “Ave Maria.  It is certainly
allying oneself to the Devil.  Blessed Ursula, illumine my
darkness.”  She cast her p. 113eyes upon
the image of the saint.  “It would certainly be a
great scandal to the convent.  Ave Maria.  But
then it would be placed to Satan’s account.  Perhaps,
though, I might be damned for it.  Pater
noster.  And am I now to become a servant in the
cloister, and in my old days to be tormented by a superior, after
I have so long tormented the nuns?  This little baggage has
already afforded sufficient scandal to the whole town without
this.  Alas, when I have no longer authority to box the nuns
about, how will this and that malignant creature revenge herself
upon me!  Ave Maria.  Well, I have made up my
mind, and, for the good of the cloister, I will continue abbess
the remainder of any days, cost what it will.”


The Devil applauded her, and the plan was soon arranged. 
Upon going away the Devil said to Faustus:


“Now, what have I done else than ask the pride of this
old beldame whether it is better to risk eternal damnation, or to
give up that tyrannical power over the poor nuns, which the hand
of Death will soon deprive her of?”


p.
114Whatever pleasure Faustus derived from the certainty
that his desires would be gratified, he was nevertheless much
displeased that the Devil should always be in the right. 
That same evening the abbess herself introduced him, under the
disguise of the Dominican, into Clara’s cell while the nuns
were at vespers.  Clara herself soon appeared, and after she
had commended herself to St. Ursula, she laid herself down. 
Her imagination, which had once been directed to a certain
object, often repeated to her in dreams her former vision; and
she lay in just such a transport, when Faustus approached her,
and embodied the apparition, upon which Clara awoke, and still
believed herself merely in a dream.  The abbess in the mean
time did penance in her cell, and made a vow to fast every week
for the good of her soul.  But the consequences of this
night were horrible to poor Clara.


* * * * *


The next morning Faustus took leave of his family.  Few
tears were shed; but his old father, in a mournful tone, gave him
wholesome advice.


p.
115As Faustus, with the Devil, rode over the bridge which
leads across the Rhine, thinking of last night’s adventure,
and making comments upon the abbess, he saw afar off a man in the
water, who seemed upon the point of drowning, and only feebly
struggled against approaching death.  He commanded Leviathan
to save the man.  The Devil answered, with a significant
look:


“Think well of what thou requirest; he is a youth, and
perhaps it will be better for him and for thee that he ends his
life here.”


Faustus.  Thou fiend, only ready for mischief,
wouldst thou have me withstand the sacred feeling of
nature?  Hasten and save him, I repeat.


Devil.  Canst thou not swim thyself? 
No.  Well, the consequences be thy reward; thou wilt repent
of this.


He rushed into the stream, and rescued the youth. 
Faustus consoled himself with the idea of having, by this good
act, atoned for the preceding night of sin; and Leviathan laughed
at the consolation.


p. 116CHAPTER III.


The Devil now led Faustus through a series of adventures which
were to serve as a prelude to the most afflicting
vicissitudes.  What Faustus had hitherto seen had embittered
his heart; but the scenes which now opened upon him by degrees so
wounded his spirit, that his mind was unable either to support or
remedy them; and only one of the worldly great, or, what is
nearly synonymous, a worker and designer of human misery, could
have witnessed them unmoved.


The Devil and Faustus were riding in close conversation along
the banks of the Fulda, when they saw beneath an oak-tree a
countrywoman sitting with her children, appearing to be the
lifeless image of agony and dumb despair.  Faustus, whom
sorrow attracted as much as joy, went hurriedly up to her, and
inquired the cause of her p.
117grief.  The woman gazed at him for some time, and
it was not until his sympathising look had in some degree melted
her frozen heart that she was able, amidst tears and sobbings, to
explain herself in the following words:


“In the whole world there are no beings so wretched as
myself and these poor children.  My husband was indebted to
the Prince-Bishop for three years’ rent.  The first
year he could not pay it, on account of the failure of his crops;
during the second the Bishop’s wild-boars grubbed up all
his seed from the ground; and during the third his whole
hunting-train galloped over our fields and destroyed our
harvest.  As my husband had often been threatened by the
steward with a distress, he intended to have gone this morning to
Frankfort, to sell a fat calf and his last pair of oxen, and with
the amount to have paid his rent.  But just as he was
setting out the Bishop’s clerk-of-the-kitchen came, and
demanded the calf for his lordship’s table.  My
husband pleaded his poverty, and told him how unjust it would be
to take away his calf, which p. 118would fetch
a high price at Frankfort.  The clerk-of-the-kitchen
answered, that no peasant had a right to carry any thing out of
his master’s domain.  The steward and his bailiffs
then came, and instead of taking my husband’s part, he
drove off the oxen; the clerk-of-the-kitchen took the calf; the
bailiffs turned me and my children out of house and home; and
while they were pillaging and carrying off our goods, my husband
went into the barn and out his throat in despair.  The poor
wretch lies under that sheet, and we sit here to watch the body,
so that it may not be devoured by the wild-beasts, for the priest
has refused to bury it.”


She tore away the white sheet which had concealed the body,
and fell to the ground.  Faustus started at the horrible
sight, while tears gushed from his eyes, and he cried,
“Man, man, is this thy lot?”  Then looking up to
heaven, “Oh! didst thou create this unfortunate man merely
that a servant of thy religion might drive him to despair and
suicide?”  He cast the cloth over the body, flung the
woman some gold, and said, “I p. 119will go to
the Bishop and tell him your melancholy story.  I am certain
that he will bury your husband, give you back your goods, and
punish the villains.”


This circumstance made so strong an impression upon Faustus,
that he and the Devil reached the Bishop’s castle before he
could collect himself.  They were received with great
civility, and shown into a spacious hall, where his reverence was
at table.  The Prince-Bishop was a man in his best years,
but so enormously corpulent that fat seemed to have overwhelmed
his nerves, his heart, and his very soul.  He was only
animated while eating; all his sense lay in his palate, and he
never knew vexation, except when he was disappointed of a dish
which he had ordered.  His table was so well furnished, that
Faustus, whom the Devil had often banqueted by means of his
spirits, thought to himself that the Bishop surpassed the master
of a thousand arts in his dinners.  In the middle of the
table stood, amongst other dishes, a large
calf’s-head,—a favourite morsel with the
Bishop.  He was engaged, both body and soul, in p.
120the feast, and had not yet spoken a single word, when
suddenly Faustus exclaimed:


“Gracious sir, do not take it ill of me if I spoil your
appetite, but it is impossible for me to look on that
calf’s-head without telling you of a shocking affair which
has this day occurred in the neighbourhood of your palace. 
I hope, from your humanity and Christian mildness, that you will
cause those aggrieved to be recompensed, and take care in future
that your officers do not again outrage humanity, as they have
done in this affair.”


The Bishop raised his eyes in wonder, looked at Faustus, and
emptied his glass.


Faustus related the story with warmth and feeling; none of
those present, however, paid any attention to him, and the Bishop
continued eating.  Faustus then said: “I think I am
speaking to a Bishop, a shepherd of his flock, and am standing
among teachers and preachers of religion and Christian
charity?  My lord, am I right or not?”


The Bishop eyed him scornfully; then calling for the
clerk-of-the-kitchen, he said: “What hubbub p. 121is
this about a peasant who has been fool enough to cut his
throat?”


The clerk-of-the-kitchen laughed, told the story as Faustus
had done, and added: “I took away his calf because it would
grace your lordship’s table, and was too good for the
Frankfort burghers, to whom he wished to sell it.  The
steward distrained his goods because he had always been a bad
tenant, and for three years had not paid his rent.  Thus, my
lord, does the case stand; and truly no peasant shall drive any
thing good out of your demesne with my consent.”


Bishop.  Go; you are quite right.  (To
Faustus)  What have you now to say? you see that he did
his duty in taking the calf; or do you think that the Frankfort
citizens ought to eat the fat calves of my land, and I the
lean?


Faustus was about to speak.


Bishop.  Listen! eat, drink, and be silent. 
You are the first person that has ever spoken of peasants and
such rabble at my table.  Verily, if your dress did not
declare you to be a gentleman, I should be inclined to think that
you were p. 122sprung from beggars, since you speak
so warmly in their favour.  Learn that the peasant who does
not pay his rent does just as well in cutting his throat, as
certain people would do in holding their tongues instead of
spoiling my appetite with useless speeches. 
Clerk-of-the-kitchen, that is a noble calf’s-head.


Clerk-of-the-kitchen.  It is the head of Hans
Ruprecht’s calf.


Bishop.  So, so!  Send it me here, and reach
me the pepper.  I will cut myself a slice.  And you,
Mr. What’s-your-name, may as well take a piece with me.


The clerk-of-the-kitchen placed the pepper-castor before the
Bishop.  Faustus whispered into the ear of the Devil; and at
the moment the Bishop ran his knife into the calf’s-head,
the Devil changed it to the head of Hans Ruprecht, which, wild,
horrible, and bloody, now stared the Bishop in the face. 
His reverence let fall his knife, and sank back in a feinting
fit; while the whole company sat in lifeless horror and
stupefaction.


Faustus.  My Lord Bishop, and ye most reverend
p.
123gentlemen, learn from this to practise Christian
charity as well as to preach it.


He hurried away with the Devil.


The sang-froid of the Bishop and his table-companions,
and the brutal manner in which he spoke of the fate of the
unfortunate suicide, sowed the first seeds of gloomy horror in
the breast of Faustus.  He revolved in his mind his former
experience, as well as what he had seen since he had roamed about
with the Devil, and perceived, whichever way he turned, nothing
but hard-heartedness, deceit, tyranny, and a willingness to
commit crime for the sake of gold, preferment, or luxury. 
He wished to seek for the cause of all this in man himself; but
his own unquiet and doubtful spirit, and his imagination, which
always avoided difficulties within its reach, began already in
dark dissatisfaction to make the Creator of mankind, if not the
author, yet, by his sufferance of all these horrors, at least the
accomplice.  These impious ideas only required the aid of a
few more horrible scenes to derange his understanding entirely;
and the Devil inwardly rejoiced in being p. 124able to
afford a future opportunity for that purpose.  Faustus hoped
soon to cure himself of this sadness at the court of the renowned
prince, and his companion willingly left him in this
delusion.  About evening they arrived at a city, at the
entrance of which they perceived a crowd of people assembled
round a tower, in which culprits condemned to death were
accustomed to pass the last night of their lives.  Faustus,
observing that the people were looking up to the ironed windows
with the deepest sorrow, asked the cause of this
assemblage.  Whereupon a hundred voices gave him an
answer.


“Dr. Robertus, our father, the friend of freedom, the
protector of the people, the avenger of the oppressed, sits
imprisoned in yonder tower.  The cruel tyrannical Minister,
once his friend, has now condemned him to death; and to-morrow he
is to be executed, because he dared to uphold our
privileges.”


These words sunk deep into the soul of Faustus.  He
conceived a high opinion of a man who, at the risk of his own
life, had dared to stand forward p. 125as the
avenger of his fellow-creatures.  As he himself had just
been a witness of the consequences of oppression, he commanded
the Devil to carry him to this doctor.  The Devil took him
aside, and then flew up with him into the tower, and entered the
cell of the avenger of the people.  Faustus saw before him a
man whose daring and gloomy physiognomy was truly
disgusting.  But the romantic imagination of Faustus
pictured, at first sight, the form of a great man, from what he
had heard and from what he saw before him.  The doctor did
not seem much surprised at their sudden appearance.  Faustus
approached him, and said:


“Doctor Robertus, I come to hear your story from your
own mouth; not that I have any doubt, for your appearance
confirms all that has been told me of you; I am now convinced
that you fall a sacrifice to that tyranny which oppresses the
race of man, and which I abhor as much as you do.  I come
likewise to offer you my assistance, which, contrary to all
appearances, can extricate you from this dreadful
situation.”


p.
126The doctor looked coldly upon him, let his face sink
into his hands, and replied:


“Yes, I fall a victim to power and tyranny; and, what is
most grievous to me, through the means of a false friend, who
sacrifices me more to his fear and envy than to his despotic
principles.  I know not who ye are, and whether ye can save
me; but I wish that men of your appearance should know Dr.
Robertus, who is to bleed to-morrow in the cause of
freedom.  From my earliest youth the noble spirit of
independence, which man is bound to thank for every thing great
that he is capable of, fired my breast; from my early youth the
numerous examples of tyranny and oppression which I saw with my
eyes, or read of in history, roused my soul and inflamed me to
fury.  Often did I shed tears because I felt myself unable
to avenge the sufferings of mankind.  To increase my misery,
I read in the history of the Greeks and Romans what advancement
man made in virtue when tyrants were put down, and he was left to
follow the bent of his own nature.  Think not that I am one
of those fools p. 127whose idea of freedom is that every
one should do as he pleases.  Full well I know that the
capacities of men are different, and that their situations in
life must be different; but when I considered the laws which
should secure to each individual his life and property, I found
nothing but a wild chaos, which tyrannical power had artfully
mixed up in order to make herself the sole and arbitrary mistress
of the happiness and the existence of the subject.  After
this discovery, the whole human race appeared to me as a flock of
sheep, which a band of robbers had conspired to plunder and
devour by means of laws enacted by themselves, and to which they
themselves are not amenable: for where is the law that fetters
the rulers of the earth?  Is it not madness that those very
people who, by their situations, are most liable to the abuse of
their passions, are subservient to no law, and acknowledge no
tribunal which can call them to account?  Misery is near,
and promised vengeance is far off; and that chimes-in but poorly
with the feelings and nature of man.”  Faustus
earnestly listened to all this, looked p. 128furious,
and struck his forehead with his hand.  The Devil was quite
enraptured with the orator, who continued:


“The wild indignation which I expressed at every new act
of oppression does honour to my heart, and therefore I care very
little though my enemies can reproach me for want of prudence;
for what is termed prudence by the world is nothing else than
blind submission, servility, flattery, and being unscrupulous how
or in what manner a place is obtained; but an independent being
like myself seeks for happiness by purer means.  I had the
misfortune to be allied, by the bonds of friendship, to the
present Minister from the time we were at school together. 
He sought advancement, and he has the spirit which insures it;
for, from his very infancy, he has endeavoured to obtain power
and riches by principles entirely opposite to mine; and in
proportion as I have attacked tyrannical forms of government, he
has defended them.  We have disputed this delicate point
privately and in public, and my honesty has always enabled me to
defeat him; but as it was p. 129natural
that I should have the oppressed part of mankind on my side, so
was it yet more reasonable that he should succeed in winning over
all those who derive advantage from enslaving their
fellow-men.  As these are the very people who can open the
door of happiness and fortune to their confederates, so was he
soon distinguished and raised, step by step, to the rank of
prime-minister of the kingdom; whilst I, neglected, despised, and
unknown, remained stationary.  The proud despot exerted his
utmost to bring me over to his party by bribery and promise of
place; but I saw that he only wished to make me thereby more
deeply feel his power, and that he felt nothing more was wanting
to complete his triumph than to have a man of my principles
acknowledge him as patron, and sanctify his arbitrary measures by
coöperating with him.  True, therefore, to myself, I
the more eagerly exposed and censured the crimes which he was
daily committing.  You must be aware that if he had been
capable of feeling what was great, this hostility would have
inspired him with admiration for a man who took p.
130him to task with so much danger to himself; but it
operated in a different manner.  The more I exposed him, the
more his hatred against me increased; and when I, a month ago,
published a paper in which I depicted him in his true colours,
and the people thereupon assembled round his house, threatened
his life, and shouted my name with enthusiasm, the wretch had the
baseness to send the paper forthwith to the Prince, who had me
tried and condemned to death.  Thus the laws of tyrants
condemn me, but the rights of man acquit me.—I have now
told you my history, and you shall hear nothing more from
me.  I die without a murmur, and merely grieve that I cannot
burst the chain which fetters my fellow-men.  If you can
assist me, good; but know that death from the hand of my foe is
more welcome to me than mercy.  Leave me now to myself;
return to slavery, while I wing my course to everlasting
freedom.”


Faustus was confounded at the magnanimity of the Doctor, and
hurried away to reproach the minister with his injustice, and put
him to shame.  p. 131The Devil, who saw deeper into
matters, perceived that the Doctor was animated with quite a
different spirit than that of freedom.  The minister gave
them an immediate audience; when Faustus spoke to him with much
warmth and boldness concerning the situation and opinions of the
Doctor.  He represented to him how injurious it would be to
his reputation to sacrifice a man, whom he once called friend, at
the shrine of despotism.  He gave him to understand that
every man would believe that revenge and fear had actuated him to
get rid of so sharp-sighted an observer of his actions. 
“If your proceedings be just,” he continued,
“you have, then, nothing to fear from him; if, on the
contrary, you are such a man as he declares you to be, his
execution will only strengthen his assertion, and every honest
man will call you a false friend and an oppressor of your
fellow-citizens.”


Minister.  I do not know you, nor do I ask who you
are.  The manner in which I bear your reproaches and your
epithets will best prove my opinion of you.  Consider, now,
whether you have p. 132a right to bestow them from mere
hearsay, being yourself unacquainted with the affairs of this
country.  I will conclude, however, that you speak from
compassion, and therefore will give you an answer.  I was,
and am still, the friend of Dr. Robertus; and I deplore the
necessity which forces me to deliver up to justice a man whose
talents might have made him useful to his country, had he not
perverted them to her destruction.  I will not search for
the cause of this in his breast, but will leave it to his own
conscience.  For a long time I have tolerated his dangerous
infatuation; but since he has inflamed the minds of the people
for whose welfare I am answerable, and has placed himself at the
head of a rebellion, he must die, as my own son must, were he
guilty of the like offence.  The law has judged him, and not
I; he knew this law, and knew what penalties rebellion draws down
upon its sons.  I have nothing to say against the opinion of
the people: when they are no longer misled, I believe they will
consider me as their father.  If you please, you may stay
among us; and whenever you can p. 133see any
thing really calculated for the people’s good, be assured
that I shall always pay attention to it.


After these words, which he spoke in a firm and unaltered
tone, he retired, and left Faustus, who was unable at the moment
to make any reply.  Upon going away, the latter said to the
Devil, “Which of these two, now, shall I
believe?”  The Devil shrugged his shoulders; for he
generally appeared to be ignorant when concealing the truth would
be profitable to himself and injurious to mankind.


Faustus.  But why should I ask thee?  I will
obey the call of my own heart.  A man who is so nearly
allied to me by his way of thinking shall not die.


If Faustus had been acquainted with some of our modern bawlers
for freedom, he would not have been so mistaken in the Doctor;
but such a being was a novelty at that period.


The next morning, when the execution was to take place,
Faustus went into the grand square, attended by the Devil, and
told him in going p. 134along what he was to do.  At
the very moment the executioner was about to decapitate the
Doctor, who had kneeled down, looking very ghastly, the latter
disappeared.  The Devil carried him through the air beyond
the frontiers; and there, delivering him a large sum of money, he
abandoned him joyfully to his fate, for he saw pretty clearly how
he would employ his gold and liberty.  The people raised a
wild shout of joy at the disappearance of the Doctor, and
believed that Providence had rescued their favourite. 
Faustus also shouted, and rejoiced at the glorious action.


Faustus and the Devil now rode to the court of the Prince of
---. [134]  They soon reached the court of
this prince, who was cried up through all Germany as a wise and
virtuous ruler, whose only happiness consisted in the welfare of
his subjects.  p. 135It is true that the subjects
themselves did not always join in this cry; but the prince is not
yet born who can give satisfaction to all men.


Faustus and the Devil, by means of their dress and equipage,
soon found admittance at court.  Faustus regarded the Prince
with the eyes of a man whose heart was already prepossessed in
his favour; and to carry this prepossession even to conviction,
nothing more was necessary than the noble exterior of the Prince
himself.  He was, or appeared to be, frank and open;
endeavoured to please and to win all hearts without appearing to
do so; was familiar without laying aside his dignity, and
possessed that prudent coldness which inspires respect, though we
scarcely know why.  All this was blended with so much
elegance, urbanity, and decorum, that it would have been
difficult for the most acute eye to have distinguished the
acquired, the artificial, and the assumed, from the plain and
natural.  Faustus, who had as yet seen few of those men of
the world whose natural characters are swallowed up by political
prudence, formed an ideal one out of the p.
136above-mentioned materials; and after he had for some
time visited the court, and believed that he had obtained a
thorough knowledge of the head personage, the following
conversation took place one evening between him and the
Devil:


Faustus.  I have hitherto purposely said nothing
to you of this Prince; but now, having, as I flatter myself,
caught his character, I venture to affirm that report is no liar,
and I hope to wring from thee an avowal that he is the man we
have been seeking.


Devil.  I guessed, from your beginning, how you
would end.  I suppose you verily believe that you have
brought the Devil into a quandary; but of this anon.  Your
prince shall be for the present a thoroughly honest fellow. 
I will tell you nothing of the result of the observations I have
made upon him; for, from what I have learnt at the
minister’s, there is something going forward which will
soon give you ocular demonstration of his worth; till then keep
the idea you have formed of him in your bosom, and tell me what
is your opinion of Count C., his favourite.


p.
137Faustus.  Curse it: he is the only person
here whom I cannot comprehend.  He is the bosom friend of
the Prince, and yet is as slippery as an eel, which always
escapes through your fingers; and as smooth as a woman is towards
her husband when she has resolved to deceive him.  But
perhaps he is obliged to conceal the emotions of his soul, lest
some of those spies who are always hanging round the favourites
of princes should take advantage of him.


Devil.  His soul!  Dost think then, Faustus,
that a man who so studiously endeavours to disguise himself has a
breast that would bear the light?  Never trust him in whom
art and subtlety have so far overcome animal nature, that even
the signs of his instinct and his sensations are
extinguished.  When that which works and ferments within you
shows itself no more in your face, in your eyes, and in your
actions, you are no longer what nature formed you; but are become
the most dangerous brutes on the earth.


Faustus.  And is the Count such a being as you
have described?


p.
138Devil.  The Count is a man who has
travelled much and has made the tour of the courts of Europe, has
smoothed down the rugged man, and has sacrificed the noble
feelings of his heart at the cold shrine of reason; in short, one
of those calculating heads who laugh at your ideal virtue, and
act with men like the potters, who dash the work of their hands
to pieces if it does not please their fancy.  He is one of
those who think themselves justified, by their experience, to
consider the entire race of men as a pack of wolves who will
devour all who put confidence in them.  Nothing delights him
more than to carry on an intricate state-plot; and he treats a
maiden as he does a rose which he plucks from the
stalk,—inhales the sweetness, and then very coolly treads
it under foot.


Faustus.  Malicious devil! and can the man thou
hast depicted to me be the bosom friend of the Prince of ---?


Devil.  Time will show what he is to him.  I
tell thee there is something going forward.  Didst thou, by
the by, observe the minister this evening?


p.
139Faustus.  He appeared sad and
melancholy.


Devil.  He, now, is one of those whom you call
honest men.  He is just, noble-minded, and attentive to the
duties of his situation; but, like all of you, he has a foible to
counterbalance his virtues; this is an unbounded tenderness for
the other sex: and as he, out of principle, required the blessing
of the priest to his pleasures, so did he, after the death of his
first wife, make a fool of himself by marrying the woman whom you
have seen.  Through a few hours’ enjoyment he
destroyed the fabric of his fortune.  She took advantage of
his doting fondness, and wasted in luxury, dress, and play, her,
his, and his children’s property, and involved him in debts
to an immense amount.  It is true she found in Baron H.,
whom you know, and who is sole master in the house, a powerful
coadjutor.  When they were completely aground, and their
desires had become more craving in proportion as the difficulty
of gratifying them increased, the lady readily agreed to a plan
which her minion proposed to her in private, and which was
nothing else “than to sell the honour p. 140of her
stepdaughter, under an equivocal promise of marriage, at as high
a price as the favourite would buy it.”  The minister
had not the slightest suspicion of all this; he only felt his
lack of money, the weight of his debts, the full mass of his
folly, and trembled in momentary expectation of the arrival of
his son, whom the wife had driven from home in order that she
might dissipate his property.  The poor youth had in the
interval departed for the Turkish wars, and had been rewarded for
his interference with a wooden arm.  I do not say that the
favourite might not have had, at the commencement of this affair,
serious views of marrying the daughter, for he was well aware of
the father’s interest with the Prince; but during these
last few days the scene has quite changed.  The Prince has
proposed to him an alliance with one of the richest heiresses in
the land; and he has determined, by one secret stroke, so
entirely to overwhelm the minister and his whole house, that no
one shall dare to cry for revenge or to complain of him. 
They will all be silent, and the minister will be crushed beneath
p.
141his foot, like the worm, whose sufferings are
unheard.


Faustus.  But will not the Prince hear of this
deed, and punish it?


Devil.  Thine own eyes shall be witnesses of the
issue of the affair.


Faustus.  I command thee, under pain of my
displeasure, to play none of thy tricks here.


Devil.  Those who by their crimes put the Devil
himself to blush, have very little need of his assistance. 
We begin now, O Faustus, to remove the covering from the hearts
of men; and I own that I feel sincere joy in finding that the
Germans are capable of something grand.  You, indeed, are
merely the imitators of other nations, and lose thereby the glory
of originality; but in hell that is not esteemed essential, and
good-will in the cause of wickedness is all that is required.


Faustus passed his time gaily among the women of the court,
corrupting all those who were to be obtained by money or a fine
face; whilst the drama of the favourite was rapidly hastening to
a conclusion.  He now revealed his finely-spun p.
142design to Baron H.  The latter was to be the
instrument of it; and as the glitter of gold was no longer at
hand to sharpen his palled passion for the minister’s wife,
and as the tears of the unfortunate daughter, the misery of the
father, and the expected arrival of the crippled son, began to
bear heavily upon his tender conscience, he determined at once to
free himself of all these burdens.  His reward consisted in
the Count’s undertaking to persuade the Prince to send the
Baron on an important mission to the imperial court.  In
consideration of this, the Baron was to procure the wife of the
minister to purloin secretly, from the cabinet of her husband, a
certain parchment, considered to be one of the most important
title-deeds of the princely house; and which the favourite was
well aware would shortly be called for, on account of a certain
law-suit with another illustrious family.  The Count then
hoped to make it appear that the minister, for a sum of money,
would have delivered it into the hands of the adversaries, if the
favourite’s watchfulness had not detected his
treachery.  The spouse of the minister, p. 143who thought
that an old man who could no longer supply her with gold for her
follies deserved no mercy, readily delivered the paper into the
hands of the Baron, for whom she had the most doting
fondness.


The minister was walking, in a melancholy manner, up and down
his apartment.  The sense of approaching shame, and the
certainty of deceived love, had removed from him even his
daughter, who latterly had been his only consolation.  She
was weeping in her chamber, and breaking a heart worthy of a
better destiny.  The minister’s meditations were
interrupted by his wife, who now came to reproach him, and
thereby add to his misery.  Baron H. presently entered, and
coolly demanded the commission, by virtue of which he was to act
at the imperial court.  As he brought with him the
Prince’s order for the same, the minister instantly went
into his cabinet to fetch it.  In the mean time the lady,
who now first heard of the Baron’s intended departure,
began to rave at him in the agony of despair.  No sooner did
the minister return with the Baron’s commission p.
144than a messenger brought him a note from the Prince, in
which he was commanded instantly to bring the title-deed into
court in order that it might be laid before the envoy of the
adverse party.  The minister searched the cabinet, emptied
all his drawers of their contents, and the cold sweat of death
began to trickle down his face.  He questioned his
secretaries and clerks, his wife also, and his daughter; but to
no purpose.  At length he was obliged to resolve, fortified
as he was by his innocence, to expose himself to the dreadful
storm.  He hastened to the Prince, who was sitting alone
with the Count, informed him of his misfortune, assured him of
his innocence, and submitted to his destiny.  The Count
allowed the Prince to give way to his first indignation at this
unwelcome intelligence, when, advancing very coolly, he took the
title-deed out of his own pocket, and delivered it to the Prince
with a low bow.  He then suffered himself to be closely
questioned as to the means by which the deed came into his
possession; but not until the Prince had threatened him with his
displeasure did he p. 145confess, with the greatest apparent
reluctance, the process of the affair according to his concerted
plan.  The minister was dumb; this evidence of his guilt so
confused him, that not even the consciousness of his innocence
could dispel the darkness which had come over him.  The
Prince looked furiously upon him, and said: “I ought long
since to have expected that you would endeavour to pay the debts
of your waste and extravagance by betraying me.”  This
last reproach in some degree restored the wretched man to his
senses; he was about to speak, but the Prince commanded him to be
silent, to resign his situation immediately, go home, and not
leave his house till sentence should have been pronounced upon
him.


The minister accordingly went home, while big tears rolled
down his cheeks.  Despair forced from the daughter the
secret of her shame, and from the wife the avowal of her
crime.  The strength of his spirit gave way, his senses
became confused, and that most frightful of all visitations,
insanity, drew a gloomy veil over the remembrance of the past,
and, by the ruin of his mind, p. 146healed his
heart of the wounds which his nearest and dearest had inflicted
upon it.


It was at this moment that the Devil led Faustus into the
chamber of the minister, having previously informed him of every
particular of the affair.  All the fibres of feeling were
not yet entirely destroyed, and some few drops of paternal
sensibility were yet falling from the eyes of the good old man
upon the miserable daughter who was clasping his knees.  He
smiled once more, played with her dishevelled locks, and smiled
yet again.  Suddenly his son rushed in, and was about to
precipitate himself into his embrace.  The father gave him a
ghastly look; a wild shriek of madness, which thrilled through
the nerves of every one present, burst from his heaving breast;
and the poor sufferer became for ever an object of horror and
painful compassion.


Faustus raged, and uttered the most frightful curses.  He
instantly determined to inform the Prince of the whole
proceeding, and to unmask the traitors.  The Devil smiled,
and advised him to go softly to work if he wished thoroughly to
know p. 147this Prince whom he boasted of as an
impersonation of all human virtues.  Faustus hastened to
court; and certain, as he imagined, of being able to cause the
ruin of the favourite by this discovery, he coolly communicated
every thing to the Prince.  When he came to the motive which
urged the Count to this horrible action, namely, his wish to free
himself from his engagements with the daughter of the minister,
the countenance of the Prince brightened; he sent for the Count,
and embracing him on his entrance, said:


“Happy is the Prince who finds a friend who, out of
obedience and the fear of displeasing him, dares commit an action
which the common rules of morality condemn.  The minister
has always acted like a fool.  I am glad that we have thus
got rid of him.  Thou wilt fill his situation much
better.”


Faustus stood for a moment petrified with horror.  Noble
warmth soon, however, began to fire his breast.  He depicted
in frightful colours the present situation of the minister. 
He then burst into fury and reproaches, and, without the p.
148least reserve or fear, spoke like an avenger of
humanity when unmasking a cold-blooded, hypocritical
tyrant.  He was turned out of the palace as a madman. 
He returned home, and the Devil received him with a triumphant
air.  Faustus said nothing, but gnashed his teeth, and, in
his venomous wrath, rejoiced that he was entirely separated from
the race of man.


About midnight the Count caused the Devil and Faustus to be
arrested, and cast into a frightful dungeon.  Faustus
commanded the fiend to submit quietly, because he wished to see
how far these hypocrites would carry their wickedness.  When
in prison, the dreadful scene of the day flitted before his
mind’s eye in colours of tenfold horror; and wild thoughts
against Him who rules the destiny of man arose from the
contemplation of it.  His soul became inflamed; and at
length he exclaimed, with scornful laughter:


“Where is here the finger of the Godhead, and where is
that Providence which presides over the path of the
righteous?  I see the just man insane, and the wretch who
drove him to madness p. 149rewarded; I disclosed to the tyrant,
who affects virtue, the wickedness of his favourite, and he found
him only so much the more worthy of his friendship and
favour.  If this be the order and harmony of the moral
world, then there is harmony and order in the brain of the poor
lunatic, who is suffered to fall unprotected and
unrevenged.”


He continued, while the Devil listened and laughed: “But
allowing that man is obliged, by necessity, to do every thing he
does, then must his deeds and his actions be ascribed to the
Supreme Being, and they thereby cease to be punishable.  If
nothing but what is good and perfect can flow from a Perfect
Being, then are our deeds, horrible as they seem to us, good and
perfect.  If they are wicked, and in reality what they seem
to us, then ought that Being to be looked up to with horror and
aversion.  Come, fiend, resolve my doubts, and tell me what
causes the moral misery of man.”


Devil.  A truce to your doubts! no one clothed in
flesh is permitted to untie that knot, and therefore p.
150a thousand fools will hang, drown, and
destroy themselves.  Do not, O Faustus, forget the end
which we proposed to ourselves at our first interview.  I
promised to show thee men in their nakedness, in order to cure
thee of the prejudices thou hadst imbibed from thy books, so that
they might not disturb thee in the enjoyment of life.  But
when thou hast rid thyself of all these human frailties, and hast
discovered that the pretended guidance of the Eternal One whom
thou hast renounced on my account, and before whose sight thou
mayst commit, undeterred, the most horrible atrocities, is only a
delusion, perhaps thy soul will then have sufficient strength to
understand these horrible mysteries; and, if so, I will reveal
them to thee.


Faustus.  Then, by the mysteries of evil which
surround men from their birth to their grave, I shall yet be the
greatest of my race; for, in summoning thee, I shall have
threaded the labyrinth in which the rest must grope about to all
eternity.


Devil.  It is well that the rest of men do not
p.
151possess the magic art which has enabled thee to render
me thy subject, else would hell soon be emptied; and thou wouldst
see more devils walking upon the earth than there are saints in
the Calendar.  Heigh ho!  I know what a troublesome
life a devil has who is forced to put in execution all the
designs of an honest heart and a sound head: what, then, would
become of us, if every rascal and fool could call us out of
hell!


This observation of the Devil’s was on the point of
putting Faustus into a better humour; but his attention was
almost immediately directed to another subject.  Six armed
men, with dark lanterns, followed by two executioners with empty
sacks, now entered the dungeon.  Faustus asked them what
they wanted; and the leader answered, with great politeness:
“We are merely come, sir, to request you and your
honourable companion to creep into these sacks; for we are
ordered to tie you up in them, and then fling you into the
neighbouring stream.”  The Devil laughed aloud, and
exclaimed: “See, Faustus, the Prince of --- wishes to cool
in you that enthusiasm for virtue p. 152which you
displayed so warmly before him to-day.”  Faustus
looked furiously, and gave a sign: a fiendish roar instantly
filled the arched vaults; the soldiers and executioners sunk
trembling to the ground, and out flew the prisoners on the wings
of the mighty wind.


Revenge now inflamed the breast of Faustus, and arrayed itself
in the brilliant hues of a great and noble call.  The idea
of avenging mankind on its oppressors rushed through his brain,
and he determined to employ the power of the Devil in clearing
the earth of hypocrites and villains.  He therefore
exclaimed:


“Fly this moment to the palace, and strangle the wretch
who makes a game of virtue.  Annihilate him who rewards the
traitor, and knowingly treads upon the righteous man. 
Avenge mankind on him, in my name.”


Devil.  Faustus, thou art forestalling the
vengeance of the Avenger.


Faustus.  His vengeance sleeps, and the righteous
man suffers; I will have him destroyed who wears only the mask of
virtue.


p.
153Devil.  Bid me, then, breathe pestilence
and death over the whole earth, so that the whole race of man may
perish.  I tell thee, Faustus, thou art giving thyself
useless trouble, and sending wretches down to hell in vain; for
things will still go on as they did, or perhaps worse.


Faustus.  Crafty fiend, thou wouldst willingly
save him in order that he might commit more crimes.  Princes
like him do indeed deserve thy protection, for they render virtue
contemptible by rewarding villany.  Die he shall, and,
loaded with his last deed, sink trembling into damnation.


Devil.  Know, thou fool, that the Devil rejoices
over the death of a sinner; and what I said was merely to secure
myself from thy future reproaches, and that thou mightest have no
excuse remaining.  The consequences of this deed be
thine.


Faustus.  Yes, be they mine.  I will lay them
in the scale against my sins.  Hasten, and be firm.  Be
thou the arrow of my vengeance.  Seize the favourite and
hurl him among the sands of burning Libya, so that he may perish
by inches.


p.
154Devil.  Only private revenge, and spite in
finding thyself deceived, drive thee to this.


Faustus.  Babbling fiend!  It is a solitary
remnant of what you call my youthful prejudices which inspires me
with angry thoughts at the sight of any atrocious act.  If I
could have seen and tolerated the wickedness of men, should I
have wanted thee?  Hasten and obey.


The Devil suffocated the Prince on his magnificent couch, then
seized the trembling favourite and hurled him among the burning
sands of Libya.  He then returned to Faustus, and cried,
“The deed is done!”  They once more mounted the
rapid winds, and sailed out of the country.


Faustus sat, melancholy, upon his horse; for, after they had
passed the frontiers, the Devil had changed their method of
travelling.  The history of the minister still gnawed his
heart, and he was stung to the quick at being obliged to
acknowledge that the Devil had as yet been right in respect to
men; and the bitterness of his spirit increased in proportion as
they displayed themselves to him in their true colours.  Yet
the idea p. 155of having avenged the unfortunate
minister upon the hypocrites cheered him in the midst of his
gloomy sorrows.  Pride by degrees so inflated his heart,
that he almost began to consider his alliance with the Devil as
the act of a man who yields up his soul for the good of his race,
and thereby surpasses all the heroes of antiquity, who merely
sacrificed their temporal existence; nay more, for as they
sacrificed themselves for the sake of glory, or for a
recompense,—which he, on account of his engagement, could
entertain no hopes of,—so at last he imagined that they
were not worthy to stand for a moment in comparison with
him.  Thus, place men in whatever situation you will, they
soon begin to feel happy, provided their self-love has an
opportunity of working; for self-love can even gild the yawning
gulf of hell, as in the case of Faustus.  He forgot, in his
pride, the motives of his alliance with the Devil, and his thirst
for pleasure and enjoyment; and while he sat upon his horse, his
imagination dubbed him the knight-errant of virtue and the
champion of innocence.  The Devil rode by his side without
p.
156once disturbing his meditations; for he only saw in
each of these would-be noble feelings the sources of future
torment and despair.  His hatred of Faustus, however,
increased in proportion as the ideal prospects of the latter
brightened and expanded; he enjoyed, in anticipation, the hour
when all these airy visions would melt and disappear, and all
these painted images of fancy would deck themselves in the livery
of hell, and tear the rash one’s heart as the heart of
mortal had never yet been torn.  After a long silence,
Faustus suddenly exclaimed: “Tell me how it fares with the
false favourite.”


Devil.  He pants upon the scorched sands, and
stretches his parched tongue from out his burning jaws, that the
air and dew may refresh and moisten it; but no cooling wind blows
there, and for a millennium there will fall no refreshing drop
from heaven.  His blood boils like molten metal in his
veins, and the rays of the sun fall perpendicularly upon his bare
head.  Already is a curse against the Almighty conceived in
his inflamed brain, but his tongue is unable to stammer it p.
157forth.  He turns up the hot sand like a mole, in
order that he may suck the damp earth; but thus he only digs his
own grave.  Is thy revenge satisfied?


Faustus.  Revenge!  Why dost thou call the
exercise of justice revenge?  Here am I shedding cold drops
of sweat through my skin at what thou hast been telling me; but I
saw him laugh when I described to him and his patron the
sufferings of the noble father and the ruined daughter.


Devil.  Time, which slowly draws up the curtain,
will at length disclose every thing.  If the villanies of a
petty despot and his catamite horrify thee, what wilt thou think
when thou seest men who have a thousand times more power, and
consequently will, to commit evil?  We have, as yet, only
removed the first skin of the monster: what will become of thee
when we tear open his breast?  Soon would He, to whom
vengeance properly belongs, empty the magazine of his thunder,
were he to destroy all those who, according to thy opinion, do
not deserve to live.


Faustus was about to reply, when he saw afar p.
158off a village in a blaze.  As every thing uncommon
excited his curiosity, he spurred forward his horse, and the
Devil followed at his heels.  He was soon met by a confused
rout of knights and attendants, who had been vanquished by
another party, which, however, did not pursue them.  When
they came nearer to the village, they found the plain strewed
with the bodies of men and horses.  They saw among the dead
a miserable wretch, who, with both his hands, was endeavouring to
force back his entrails, which were hanging out of his mangled
belly.  He howled and cursed frightfully during this horrid
operation.  Faustus asked him the cause of all this
bloodshed.  The fellow screamed, “Get to the Devil,
Mr. Curiosity; if you saw your inside outmost, as I see mine, you
would have no wish to answer questions.  If you want to know
why they have served me thus, inquire of that noble gentleman, my
master, who lies there dead, and whom I have to thank for this
treatment.”


They left him, and approached a knight who was wounded in the
shoulder, and Faustus put p. 159the same
question to him.  The knight answered: “A boor
belonging to yon burning village killed, some time ago, a stag,
the property of the mighty Wildgrave.  Thereupon the
Wildgrave demanded the culprit of my master, in order that he
might be tied upon the back of a stag and run to death, according
to the German custom.  My master refused to give up the
boor; but in order to punish him, seized every thing he
possessed, and confiscated it to his own use.  The Wildgrave
then sent a letter of defiance to my lord, in the name of Heaven,
and with the permission of the emperor.  We were worsted in
the battle, and the Wildgrave has set fire to the village, which
he has surrounded with his horsemen, so that the inhabitants
cannot escape; for he intends to fulfil the oath which he swore,
viz. to roast all the peasants, like Michaelmas geese, for his
hounds and wild-boars.”


Faustus (furiously).  Where is his
castle?


Knight.  On yonder eminence; it is the strongest
and most magnificent castle in the whole country.


p.
160Faustus rode to the top of a hill, and looked down upon
the burning village, which lay beneath him in the valley. 
Mothers with children in their arms, old men, youths, and maidens
rushed out, cast themselves at the feet of the horsemen, and
begged for mercy.  The Wildgrave shouted till the valley
reëchoed, “Drive the rabble back; they shall perish in
the flames!”  The peasants screamed out, again and
again: “We are innocent! we are innocent!  He who
offended you has escaped.  What have we and our children
done?  Ah, spare but them!”  The horsemen whipped
them up from the ground, and drove them into the fire.  The
poor mothers flung down their babes, in the hope that they would
pity them; but the hoofs of the horses trampled them to
death.


Faustus cried deliriously: “Fly, Devil, and return not
till thou hast consumed the tyrant’s castle, and all that
is therein.  When he returns home, let him find
retribution.”


The Devil laughed, shook his head, and flew away; whilst
Faustus flung himself down beneath a tree, and gazed impatiently
upon the castle.  p. 161When he
beheld it in flames, the madman imagined that he had restored all
things to their right order, and received the Devil on his return
with the utmost joy.  The latter came back in triumph, and
boasted of the ruin he had caused; and, pointing to the Wildgrave
and his myrmidon, who were scampering towards the castle, he
exclaimed: “The vapours of the hellish pool will not, one
day, strike him with such horror, O Faustus, as this thy deed:
his young and beloved wife was a few days ago delivered of her
firstborn.”


Faustus.  Oh, save her and the new-born babe!


Devil.  It is too late.  The mother pressed
the boy in her arms, and he was burnt to ashes upon her
bosom.


This episode made Faustus shudder, and he exclaimed,
“How ready is the Devil to destroy!”


Devil.  Not so ready as daring men are to decide
and punish.  Had ye but our might, ye would long ago have
shattered the vast globe, and reduced it to a chaos.  Are
you not a proof of this yourself, since you so madly abuse the
power p. 162which you have over me?  Go to;
go to.  The man who does not bridle himself resembles the
wheel which rolls down the steep: who can stop its course? 
It springs from rock to rock till it is shivered.  Faustus,
I would willingly have permitted the babe to grow up and commit
sin; for I am now deprived both of him and his mother.  Yes,
Faustus; she endeavoured to preserve him from the scorching
flames with her arms, the flesh of which was already frightfully
burnt.


Faustus.  Thou drivest it home to my very
heart.  (Hiding his face in his mantle, already
wet with his tears.)


The desire of avenging the virtuous and the innocent upon the
wicked now began to cool in the heart of Faustus.  He
however comforted his spirit, tormented by the last spectacle,
with the thought of the mother and the suckling being preserved
from hell.  Besides this, his hot blood, his eagerness for
pleasure, his desire for change, and finally his doubts, did not
permit any sensation to make a lasting impression upon his
heart.  As he was attracted by every new object, his
feelings, p. 163therefore, burnt like sky-rockets,
which for a moment illumine the darkness of the night, and then
suddenly disappear.  The rich meal and the delicious wines
which he enjoyed in the next city where they arrived soon chased
away his melancholy fancies; and as the grand fair was being held
there at that time, Faustus and the Devil, after they had dined,
went into the market-place to see the crowd.


They now found themselves in a strange city.  There lived
in one of the convents a young monk, who had, by means of a
heated imagination, succeeded in so powerfully convincing himself
of the force of religious faith, that he believed he should be
able to remove mountains, and to prove himself a new apostle in
deeds and miracles, if once his soul received the true
inspiration, and the Holy Spirit worked its way through
him.  Besides this, he imbibed all the follies and
quackeries which others had rejected,—a circumstance in
which visionaries entirely differ from philosophers.  The
young monk, like every theorist who is inspired with the
importance of his subject, was a fiery p. 164orator; he
thereby soon won over the minds of the simple, especially of the
women, who were easily caught by any warm and impassioned
appeal.  His imagination, however, quickly formed for him
another magic wand; for as he, on account of his alliance with
the highest of all beings, had a lofty opinion of man, he formed
the design of physiognomically dissecting the masterpiece of
creation, this favourite of heaven, and of allotting to him his
interior qualities by means of his exterior appearance.  Men
of his character so frequently deceive themselves, that it is
impossible to say whether some remaining spark of understanding
had whispered to him that this new delusion would give a fresh
polish to the old one; and that more pious souls would come to
him than ever, in order to be told so many wondrous things about
their faces.  As he had only seen the four walls of his
cell, his penitents, and people of his own cast, and as he was as
ignorant in regard to mankind, the world, and true science, as
men of sanguine imaginations usually are,—it may be
concluded that fancy alone excited him to this p.
165scheme.  His words and his writings operated
prodigiously upon the minds of all those who would much rather be
confused than think clearly.  This is the case with the
greater part of mankind; and, as the hours of life glide away
very pleasantly when self-love is tickled, it was impossible that
he should be without disciples, for he flattered every
body.  Our monk did not confine his researches to man alone;
for he descended to the more ignoble beasts of the earth,
allotted to them their qualities by examining their faces and the
structure of their bodies, and imagined that he had made a
wonderful discovery when he proved—from the mighty claws,
the teeth, and the aspect of the lion, and from the tender, light
fabric of the hare—why the lion was not a hare, and the
hare a lion.  He was strangely surprised that he had
succeeded in pointing out so clearly the appropriate and
unalterable signs of brute nature, and to be able to apply them
to man,—although society has so much accustomed the latter
to mask his features, that they are rarely to be seen in their
primitive state.  Not satisfied with these triumphs, p.
166our monk descended even into the kingdoms of the
dead—tore skulls from the graves, and the bones of animals
from the muck-heaps; and showed his visitors why the dead were
dead, and, from their bones, how it was impossible that they
should be otherwise than dead.  In a word, he proved,
clearly and unanswerably, that death never yet came without a
cause.


The Devil was well aware of the general infatuation, and
perceived that, while he and Faustus sat at dinner in the public
room, some of the company, and even the innkeeper himself, were
surveying them with the utmost attention; and were communicating
to each other, in whispers, the result of their observations, and
showing the profiles which they had secretly taken.  The
fame of the wonderful monk had long since reached the ears of
Faustus; but he had hitherto paid so little attention to it, that
he now hardly knew what to make of these signs and
whisperings.  When they arrived in the market-place, they
were surprised by a new and extraordinary spectacle.  This
resort was the true school for physiognomists.  Every p.
167one there could single out his man, lay his visage upon
the balance, and weigh out the powers of his mind.  Some
stood gazing at horses, asses, goats, swine, dogs, and
sheep.  Others held between their fingers spiders,
butterflies, grasshoppers, and other insects, and endeavoured to
ascertain what their instinct might be from an attentive survey
of their exterior.  Some were employed in judging, from the
weight of jaw-bones or the sharpness of teeth, to what animals
they belonged.  But when Faustus and the Devil advanced
among them, each man desisted from his occupation, and began to
cry out, “What a nose! what eyes! what a searching glance!
what a soft and beautiful curve of the chin! what strength! what
intuition! what penetration! what a cleanly-made figure! what a
vigorous and majestic gait! what strength of limb! how uniform
and harmonious is his whole frame!”  “I would
give I know not what for the autographs of the gentlemen,”
said a weaver, “in order that I might judge, by their
handwriting, of the quickness of their thoughts.”  The
Devil happening to knit his brows from impatience of p.
168this folly, one of the physiognomists instantly said,
“The internal force of the lion, which the gentleman
possesses, has been aroused by some external provocation, or some
trifling thought.”


Faustus was laughing at all this, when suddenly a beautiful
female looked down upon him from a window, and cried, in sweet
amazement: “Holy Catherine! what a noble head! what soft
and angelic pensiveness in the eyes! what a sweet and lovely
physiognomy!”  These melodious words sunk into the
heart of Faustus.  He looked up to the window: her eyes met
his for a moment ere she drew herself back.  Faustus
whispered to the Devil: “I will not quit this town till I
have possessed that maiden: what voluptuousness beams in her
eyes!”  They had scarcely entered a side street, when
one of the physiognomists came up and asked them very civilly for
“the physiognomy of their writing,” assuring them
that no stranger had hitherto refused him this favour, and he
hoped and trusted that they would not.  He thereupon pulled
out his album, and offered it to Faustus, at the same time
producing pen and ink.


p.
169Faustus.  Not so fast, my friend; one good
turn deserves another.  Tell me, first, who the maiden is
that I this moment saw at the window of yonder house, and whose
countenance is so celestial.


Physiognomist.  Ah! she is an angel in every sense
of the word.  Our illustrious master has often assured us,
that her eyes are the very mirrors of chastity, her lovely mouth
only formed to express the inspiration of a heart filled with
heavenly ideas; that her brow is the polished shield of virtue,
against which all temptations, all earthly sin, will be shivered;
that her nose snuffs the odours of the fields of bliss; and that
she is the most perfect cast of ideal beauty ever yet permitted
to appear in the world.


Faustus.  Truly, you have depicted her to me with
more than earthly colours; and now tell me her situation in life,
and her name.


Physiognomist.  She is the daughter of a
physician; but her father and mother being lately dead, she lives
by herself on her own property.  Her name is Angelica.


p.
170They then wrote some nonsensical lines in his album,
and the physiognomist departed, delighted with his treasure.


Faustus.  Now tell me, Devil, how this child of
grace is to be come at.  I am just inclined to see this
monk’s ideal beauty.


Devil.  By the high road to the human heart you
will certainly meet her; for sooner or later all must fall in
with it, however far their fancies may have caused them to stray
from it.


Faustus.  What a delightful enjoyment it would be
to fill so exalted an imagination as hers with images of
pleasure!


Devil.  The monk has already had the start of you,
and has so sharpened her feelings, and filled her little soul
with so much vanity and self-conceit, and made her piety so
carnal, that you have nothing else to do than give one audible
tap at the gate of her heart, in order to be admitted.  Let
us now see to what lengths such delusions will lead a young
woman.


Faustus.  And let it be done quickly.


The Devil was perfectly willing to steal so p. 171pure a soul
from heaven, and thereby to consummate more speedily the measure
of Faustus’s sins.  He suddenly stood in the shape of
an old man with a peep-show, and, giving Faustus the wink, he
hurried away into the market-place.  He raised his voice,
and invited the people to come and see his peep-show.  The
populace flocked around him,—footmen and chambermaids,
wives and widows, boys and graybeards.  The Devil showed
them all kinds of scenes, which he accompanied with pious
explanations and moral sayings.  Each person stepped back
delighted from the peep-show, and charmed the bystanders with the
recital of the wonders he had witnessed.  The beautiful
Angelica now looked out of her window; and, hearing the Devil
descant in so pious a tone, she felt an irresistible desire to
see the wonders of his box, and to bestow alms upon the devout
old showman.  The Devil was sent for.  Even he was
struck by her wondrous beauty, her gentle manners, and her
ingenuousness; but he became only so much the more desirous to
confuse her senses and entrap her.  She placed her
enthusiastic p. 172eye to the window of the box. 
The Devil preluded with a few proverbs and wise saws, and
unfolded to her view scenes of love, in which he led her fancy so
adroitly from the spiritual to the carnal, that she was scarcely
aware of the gradation.  If she were about to turn away her
eyes with shame, the offensive object changed itself at once into
a sublime image, which again attracted her attention.  Her
cheeks glowed, and she believed herself gazing upon an unknown
and enchanted world.  The artful Devil caused the figure of
Faustus to appear in all these scenes.  She saw him pursuing
a shadow which resembled her own, and undertaking for its sake
the greatest actions, and exposing himself to dangers of every
description.  When the Devil had completely chained her
attention, and perceived that she was highly curious to know
wherefore the figure of Faustus was thus associated with her own,
he changed the scene, and represented the parties in situations
not to be misconstrued.  Lightning does not so quickly
glance through the darkness as did these scenes flit before the
eyes of the innocent p. 173maiden; a moment is an age in
comparison, and the poison was glowing in her breast before she
was able to retreat.  She started back, and, with her hands
before her eyes, rushed into her chamber, and sunk senseless into
the arms of Faustus.  When she became aware of her fall, she
hid her face and repulsed the miscreant.  He laid costly
jewels at her feet; but she spurned them, and cried,
“Tremble, thou wretch! the hand of the Avenger will one day
fall heavily upon thee for this crime.”


The insensate Faustus rejoiced at his victory; and went,
without the least feeling of repentance, to the Devil, who
laughed at the affair, and yet more fiendishly when he thought of
its terrific consequences.


Faustus found himself here in his element.  He flew from
conquest to conquest, and made very little use of the power of
the Devil, but a great deal of his gold, which has some influence
even over devout minds.  Angelica became invisible, and all
the endeavours of Faustus to see her once more were of no avail;
but he soon p. 174forgot her in the tumult of his
pleasures.  Reading by chance some of the manuscript
publications of the monk, he was irritated by the self-conceit
and ignorance of the author.  He proposed to the Devil to
play him a trick, and with that intention they both went to the
convent.  As they were exceedingly well dressed, and
appeared to be persons of distinction, they were received by the
young monk in the most cordial and friendly manner.  His
eyes had scarcely met those of the Devil when he became so
agitated by his physiognomy, that, forgetting all the forms of
politeness, he shook him violently by the hand; and going to some
distance, he looked at him first full in the face, and then in
the profile.  He then cried out:


“Ha! who art thou, most mighty one?  Yes; you can
do what you like; and what you wish you can also do: your
physiognomy tells me this; therefore it is not necessary for me
to know you.  Never have I been more perfectly convinced of
the truth of my science than at this moment.  Who can behold
such a human visage without p. 175interest,
without admiration?  Who cannot perceive in that nose,
original greatness; in that eye, penetration, strength, and
expression?”


He felt his forehead, and then continued:


“Permit me, with my measure, to ascertain the height of
your brow?  Yes; I see unshaken courage in that forehead, as
clearly as I do steadfast friendship, fidelity, love of God and
man, in those lips.  What a nobleness in the whole! 
Thy face is the physiognomy of an extraordinary man, who thinks
deeply, who holds fast to whatever he undertakes, works, flies,
triumphs, finds few men in whom he will confide, but many who
will rely on him.


“Ah! if a common mortal had such a brow, such a mouth,
such a nose, or even such hair, what would become of
physiognomy?


“Perhaps there is not a man existing whom thy
countenance would not by turns attract and repel.  What
infantine simplicity!  What heroic grandeur!  Few
mortals can be so well known and so little known as yourself.


“Eagle, lion, destroyer, reformer of mankind, p.
176move on, move on, and reclaim men from their blindness;
share with them the intellectual strength which nature has given
thee; and announce thyself to all as I have just announced thee
to thyself.”


Faustus craunched his teeth while the monk was saying all
these noble things about the countenance of the Devil, who
turning coolly to the physiognomist, said,


“And what is thy opinion of that gentleman?  Tell
me what he is.”


Monk.  Great, bold, mighty, powerful, soft, and
mild; but thou, his companion, art greater, bolder, mightier,
more powerful, more soft, more mild.


Then looking at Faustus, he exclaimed:


“Mighty pupil of a mightier man, if thy spirit and thy
heart could entirely catch his greatness, thou wouldst still be
merely reflecting the rays of his glory.  But seat thyself,
and let me take thy shadow.”


Faustus, more and more enraged to see how infinitely the monk
rated him below the Devil, now burst forth:


p.
177“Shadows! yes, indeed, shadows only hast thou
seen.  How darest thou thus judge and measure the human
race?  Hast thou seen men?  Where, and how?  Thou
hast merely seen their shadows, which thou adornest with the
tinsel of thy crazed imagination, and givest them out as the true
forms.  Tell me what kind of human beings thou hast
seen.  Were they not sectaries, fanatics, visionaries, the
very offscourings of human nature?  Were they not vain
devotees, young wives who have cold husbands, and widows who have
sleepless nights?  Were they not authors eager to have every
mark and pimple on their insignificant features turned into a
sign and prognostication of genius?  Were they not grandees,
whose brilliant stations rendered their physiognomies imposing to
thine eye?  Thou seest that I know thy customers, and have
read thy book.”


Devil.  Bravo, Faustus!  Let me now put in a
word, and tell his reverence a few mortifying truths. 
Brother monk, thou hast formed in thy solitary cell a phantom of
perfection, and wouldst p. 178fain thrust
that into people’s heads, which, when there, poisons the
brain, as the gangrene corrupts all the flesh around it. 
There were men long ago who ventured to judge of the innermost of
their fellow-creatures from the outside; but there was some
difference between them and thee.  They had travelled over a
considerable part of the earth; experience had made them gray;
they had lived and conversed with men, visited all the lurking
holes of vice and iniquity, roved from the palace to the cot,
crept into the caves of savages, and thus knew what belonged to a
well-organised man, and what he could do with his
faculties.  But shalt thou—swollen with prejudices,
pent up in a convent like a toad in the trunk of an
oak—pretend to have a clear idea of that which even they
barely understood?


The monk stood between the two speakers as between two
volcanoes in eruption; he crossed his hands humbly upon his
breast, and cried, “Have mercy!”


The Devil continued:


“Among the many impudent follies which I p.
179observed in thy book was an attempt to draw the
Devil’s portrait.  It is now high time for him to
appear to thee, in order that thou mayst correct the
likeness.  Look at me; and for once thou shalt be able to
say thou hast seen an object in its proper form.”


The Devil then appeared to him in the most frightful of
infernal figures; but he rolled a thick mist before the eyes of
Faustus, in order that he might not blast his sight.  The
monk fell to the earth; and the Devil, resuming all his former
comeliness, exclaimed:


“Now thou mayst paint the Devil in his proper colours,
provided thou hast strength.  Thou wouldst often be thus
overcome, if thou didst in reality see the innermost of those
whom thou makest angels.”


Faustus.  Persist in thy folly; communicate it to
others; and by thy extravagances render religion repulsive to
reasonable people.  Thou canst not farther more
efficaciously the interests of the enemy.  Farewell!


The monk had lost his senses through terror; p.
180but he still continued writing notwithstanding his
madness; and his readers never once perceived his derangement, so
much did his new books resemble his old ones.


Faustus was delighted with this adventure; but becoming weary
of the town, he quitted it the next morning with the Devil, and
took the road to France.


p. 181CHAPTER IV.


When Faustus and the Devil entered upon the fertile soil of
France, it was groaning beneath the oppression of that cruel and
cowardly tyrant Louis the Eleventh, who was the first that ever
styled himself “the most Christian king.”  The
Devil had determined not to give Faustus the slightest
information beforehand concerning this prince.  He had
resolved to drive him to despair, and then overwhelm him with the
most frightful blow a mortal can receive who has rebelliously
transgressed the bounds which a powerful hand has drawn around
him.


The Devil had learnt from one of his spies that the most
Christian king was meditating a masterpiece of state policy; or,
in other words, was on the point of getting rid of his brother,
the Duke de Berry, in order that a province which had been p.
182granted to him might revert to the crown.  The
malicious fiend resolved to make Faustus a spectator of this
horrid scene.  They rode through a wood of oaks contiguous
to a castle, and saw among the trees a Benedictine monk, who
seemed to be telling his rosary.  The Devil rejoiced
inwardly at this sight; for he read upon the countenance of the
monk that he was imploring the Mother of God to assist him in the
great enterprise which his abbot had intrusted him with, and
likewise to save him from all danger.  This monk was Faber
Vesois, confessor of the king’s brother.  The Devil
did not disturb him in his pious meditations, but went on to the
castle with Faustus.  They were received with all the
respect generally shown to persons of distinction who come to
visit a prince.  The duke passed his days here in the
company of his beloved Monserau, thinking of no harm, and
expecting no misfortune.  His agreeable manners soon gained
him the good-will of Faustus, who was delighted to see a scion of
royalty think and act like a man; for he had been accustomed to
see among the p. 183German princes nothing but pride,
coldness, and that foolish ceremony which is only intended to
make visitors appear contemptible in their own eyes.  Some
days were very pleasantly spent in hunting and other amusements,
and the prince gained more and more upon the heart of
Faustus.  The only thing that displeased him in the prince
was the weakness he displayed in regard to his confessor, the
Benedictine.  He loaded him with so much tenderness, and
submitted with so much complaisance to his will, and the monk
always looked so studiously devout, that Faustus could not
conceive how a man so frank himself could prize such a
hypocrite.  The Devil, however, soon let him into the secret
by informing him of the duke’s connexion with
Monserau.  His love for this fair lady was equalled by his
fear of hell; and, Madame de Monserau having a husband still
living, he was not altogether easy in respect to his amours with
her.  As he neither wished to renounce her nor expose
himself to eternal punishment, he greedily caught at the baits
which the monks hang out in order to make themselves p.
184masters of the minds of men; and when the dread of hell
tormented him too much, he allayed his fears by receiving
absolution for his sins; while he thought it impossible for him
to be too grateful to a man who encouraged him to enjoy the
present, and tranquillised him in respect to the future. 
“Thou seest, O Faustus,” said the Devil, “what
men have made of religion.  Its abuse has often been
associated with crimes and horrors, but is nevertheless used by
the wicked to cajole and appease their rebellious
consciences.”


The conduct of the prince in this respect did him little
honour in the opinion of Faustus, who had long ago parted with
his own conscience, and this last remark of the Devil’s
operated strongly upon his mind; however, he permitted things to
go on in their own way, and chiefly thought of passing his time
pleasantly.


They were one evening at table in excellent humour; the Devil
was diverting the company with his pleasant stories, and Faustus
was employed in saying soft things to a pretty French widow, who
listened to him very complaisantly; p. 185when all of
a sudden, Death, in his most frightful shape, came to disturb the
festival.  The Benedictine caused a basket of
extraordinarily large peaches, which he had just received as a
present, to be brought in at dessert; and, selecting one of the
finest, he offered it to the prince with a smiling and benignant
air.  The prince divided it with his beloved, and both ate
of the peach without the slightest suspicion.  They then
rose from table; the monk gave his benediction to all, and
hurried away.  The Devil was about to commence a new story,
when Madame de Monserau uttered a loud shriek.  Her lovely
features were distorted, her lips became blue, and the paleness
of death covered her countenance.  The prince rushed to her
assistance; but the terrible poison began likewise to operate
upon him; he fell at her feet, and cried, “Listen, O
Heaven: my brother, my cruel brother, has assassinated me by the
hand of that monster.  He who caused his father to die of
hunger in order to avoid being poisoned, has now bribed the
minister of religion to poison me.”


Faustus ran out of the room to seize the confessor, p.
186but he had fled; a troop of horse were waiting for him
in the forest, and accompanied him in his flight.  Faustus
returned; but Death had seized his victims, and they had ceased
to struggle with him.  Faustus and the fiend instantly
quitted the place.


Devil.  Well, Faustus, what think you of the deed
committed by the Benedictine in the name of the most Christian
king?


Faustus.  I am almost inclined to believe that our
bodies are animated by fiendish spirits, and that we are only
their instruments.


Devil.  What a debasing employment for an immortal
spirit to have to animate such an ill-contrived machine! 
Although I am a haughty demon, yet, believe me, I would rather
animate a swine that wallows in the mire than one of ye, who roll
in all manner of vice, and yet have the confidence to call
yourselves images of the Most High.


Faustus was silent; for the adventures he was every day
compelled to witness forced him, against his inclination, to
believe in the moral worthlessness p. 187of
man.  They travelled forward, and found every where hideous
monuments of the cruelty of Louis the Eleventh.  Faustus
frequently made use of the Devil’s gold and treasure to
stop the bleeding wounds which the hand of the tyrant had
inflicted.


At length they arrived at Paris.  Upon entering the city
they found every thing in commotion.  The people were
rushing in crowds down one particular street; they followed the
populace, and arrived in front of a scaffold covered with black
cloth, and which communicated, by means of a door, with an
adjoining building.  Faustus asked what was the cause of all
this; and he was told “that the rich Duke of Nemours was
just going to be executed.”  “And for
what?”  “The king has commanded it: there is a
report, indeed, that he had hostile designs against the royal
house, and that he intended to murder the dauphin; but as he has
only been tried in his dungeon by judges named by the king, we
know nothing for certain.”


“Say, rather,” exclaimed another of the
bystanders, “that it is his property which costs him p.
188his life; for our sovereign, in order to make us a
great and celebrated nation, cuts off the heads of all our
wealthy men, and would serve us in the same manner if we were to
find fault with his proceedings.”


The Devil left the horses at the nearest inn, and then led
Faustus through the crowd.  They saw the duke, accompanied
by his children, enter a chamber hung round with black, where a
monk waited to receive his last confession.  The father had
his eyes fixed upon his sons, and could not look to heaven. 
After he had confessed himself, he laid his trembling hands upon
the heads of the children, who were sobbing, and said, “May
the blessing of an unhappy father, who falls a victim to tyranny
and avarice, be your safeguard through life; but, alas, ye are
the heirs of misfortune.  Your rights and pretensions will
infallibly doom you to long sufferings; ye are born for misery,
and I shall die in this conviction.”  He wished to say
something more; but the guards silenced him, and hurried him out
upon the scaffold.


The tyrannical king had given orders that the p.
189duke’s children should be placed under the
scaffold, so that the blood of their father might drop through
the boards upon their white robes.  The cries which the
wretched parent uttered at the moment his darlings were torn from
him struck terror to the hearts of all around.  Tristan
alone, who was the executioner, and the king’s most
intimate friend, looked on with perfect coolness, and felt the
sharpness of the axe.  Faustus imagined that the groans of
the unhappy parent would excite Heaven to avenge outraged
humanity.  He lifted his tearful eyes towards the bright
blue sky, which seemed to smile upon the horrid scene.  For
a moment he felt himself strongly tempted to command the Devil to
rescue the duke from the hands of the executioner; but his
troubled and agitated mind was incapable of coming to any
resolution.  The duke fell upon his knees; he heard the
shrieks and lamentations of his children who were beneath the
scaffold; his own infamous death no longer occupied his mind; he
felt for the last time, and felt only for these unfortunates; big
tears hung in his eyes, his lips p. 190trembled;
the executioner gave the fatal blow, and the boiling blood of the
father trickled down upon the trembling children.  Bathed
with paternal gore, they were then led upon the scaffold. 
They were shown the livid headless trunk, were made to kiss it,
and then re-conducted to their prison, where they were chained up
against the damp wall, so that whenever they took repose the
whole weight of their bodies rested on the galling fetters. 
To increase their misery, their teeth were torn out from time to
time.


Faustus, overwhelmed by the frightful scene he had witnessed,
returned shuddering to the inn, and commanded the Devil to
annihilate the tyrant who thus made a sport of human
suffering.


Devil.  I will not annihilate him, for that would
be against the interest of hell; and why should the Devil put a
stop to his cruelties when by some they are viewed with
patience?  If I were to further the projects of thy blind
rage, who would escape thy vengeance?


Faustus.  Should I not be performing a noble part,
if, like unto another Hercules, I were to p. 191roam the
world, and purge its thrones of such monsters?


Devil.  Short-sighted man, does not your own
corrupt nature prove that you must have these kings?  And
would not new monsters arise out of their ashes?  There
would then be no end of murder; the people would be divided, and
thousands would fall the victims of civil war.  You see here
millions of bipeds like yourself, who suffer a man like
themselves to despoil them of their property, to flay them alive,
and to murder them at his pleasure.  Did not they witness
the execution of this duke, who died innocent as any lamb? 
Did they not gaze with pleasure, mingled with agony and grief,
upon the tragic spectacle?  Does not that prove they deserve
their lot, and are unworthy of a better?  Could they not
crush the tyrant at a blow?  If they have the power of
relieving themselves in their own hands, wherefore should we pity
their sufferings?


Here the disputation ceased.


Faustus shortly afterwards became acquainted with a gentleman
of sense and education, who had p. 192an
excellent character for probity.  Faustus and the Devil
pleased him so much, that he invited them to come and pass some
days with him on his estate at a short distance from Paris, where
he lived with his family, which consisted of his wife and his
daughter, who was about sixteen years old, and lovely as an
angel.  At the sight of this divine object Faustus was like
one enchanted, and felt, for the first time, the sweet torments
of delicate love.  He confided his sufferings to the Devil,
who instantly offered to assist him, and laughed at the pretended
delicacy of his sentiments.  Faustus owned that it was
repugnant to his feelings to violate the laws of
hospitality.  The Devil replied: “Well, Faustus, if
you wish to have the gentleman’s consent, I will engage to
procure it.  For what do you take him?”


Faustus.  For an honest man.


Devil.  It is a great pity, O Faustus, that you
are so liable to deception.  And so you really believe him
to be an honest man!  I admit that all Paris is of the same
opinion.  What do you think he loves best in the world?


p.
193Faustus.  His daughter.


Devil.  I know something which he loves more.


Faustus.  And what is that?


Devil.  Gold; and you ought to have seen that long
ago.  But since I have been obliged to open to thee the
treasures of the earth, and thou hast had them at thy disposal,
thou hast resembled the torrent which inundates the fields,
caring very little where its waters flow, or where they are
received.  How much hast thou lost at play with this
gentleman?


Faustus.  Let them reckon who care more for the
dross than I.


Devil.  He who tricked you can tell to a
ducat.


Faustus.  Tricked!


Devil.  Yes, tricked you.  He saw how little
you cared for money, and has made a noble harvest out of
you.  Think not that the table of this miser would be so
well provided, and that he would be so prodigal of the richest
wines, and that thou wouldst see so many guests around him,
provided thy gold did not work these miracles.  At every
moment he trembles lest we should leave p. 194his
house.  I see by thy astonishment that thou hast been a
spendthrift all thy life, and that thou hast never felt this
thirst for gold, which can extinguish all the desires of the
heart, and even the most pressing wants of nature.  Follow
me, but tread softly.


They descended a staircase, went through several subterranean
passages, and came at last to an iron door.  The Devil then
said to Faustus: “Look through the key-hole.” 
Faustus perceived in a vault, illumined by the feeble light of a
lamp, the gentleman seated by the side of a strong-box, in which
were many sacks of money, which he was looking at with
tenderness.  He then flung the money he had won from Faustus
into another box, and wept because he saw there was not
sufficient to fill it.  The Devil said softly to Faustus:
“For the sum which is wanting to fill that box, he will
sell thee his daughter.”


Faustus was incredulous.  The Devil waxed wroth, and said
impatiently:


“I will show thee that gold has such irresistible power
over the minds of men, that even p. 195at this
moment some fathers and mothers belonging to the village are in
the neighbouring wood selling for money their babes and sucklings
to the emissaries of the king, although they are well aware that
the poor little things are destined to be slaughtered, in order
that the king may drink their blood, with the foolish hope of
renovating and refreshing the corrupt tide which flows in his own
veins.


Faustus (with a shudder).  Then the world
is worse than hell, and I shall quit it without regret.  But
I will be convinced with my own eyes before I credit any thing so
horrible.


They now went into the wood, and concealed themselves among
the bushes, where they perceived the emissaries of the king in
conference with some men and women, and the priest of the
parish.  Four little children were stretched upon the grass,
one of them crying pitiably.  The mother lifted it up and
gave it pap, in order to quiet it; whilst the others crept upon
the ground, and played with the flowers.  The emissaries
counted money into the hands of the husbands; p. 196the priest
had his share, and the children were delivered up.  The
echoes of the wood repeated for a long time the cries of the
little wretches as they were carried away.  The mothers
groaned; but the men said to them, “Here is gold; let us go
to the public-house and buy wine, and drink to a fresh
offspring.  It is better that the king should eat the brats
now they are young than flay them when they are old, or tie them
up in a sack and fling them into the Seine.  It would have
been much better for us if we had been devoured as soon as we
were born.”


The priest comforted them, and said:


“They had done a meritorious act, and one which was
pleasing to the Mother of God, to whom the king was entirely
devoted.”  He added, “that subjects were born
for the king; and that, as he reigned upon earth as
Heaven’s vicegerent, he had a right to dispose of them
according to his pleasure, and that they were bound to revere the
slightest of his fancies as a sacred law.”


The peasants then went to the public-house, p. 197where they
spent half the blood-money in drink, and kept the rest to pay the
king’s taxes.


The Devil now looked at Faustus with an air of mockery, and
said, “Hast thou still doubts whether the gentleman will
sell thee his daughter?  Thou at least wilt not eat
her.”


Faustus.  I swear by the black hell which at this
moment appears to me a paradise when compared with the earth,
that I will henceforward give boundless scope to all my passions,
and, by ravaging and destroying, believe that I am acting
consistently to such a monster as man.  Fly, and purchase me
his daughter: she is doomed to destruction, as is every thing
that breathes.


This was exactly the disposition in which the Devil had long
been desirous to see Faustus, in order that he might precipitate
him to the end of his career, and thereby ease himself of a
grievous burden, and cease to be the slave of a thing so
contemptible as man was in his eyes.  That very evening he
began to sound the father; and the next morning, whilst they
walked together, he made proposals to him, and showed p.
198him gold and jewels, which the miser gazed at with
rapture; but which, however, he would not take until he had made
a parade of his virtue.  At every objection the old
hypocrite started, the Devil augmented the sum; and at last he
bade so high that the miser accepted it, after much ceremony,
laughing secretly at the madman who flung away his gold so
foolishly.  The contract was made, and the father led
Faustus to his daughter; and as he could prove that her parent
was a consenting party, she fell a willing victim.


The father in the mean time went with his gold and a lamp to
the vault where he kept his treasure, and which was known to none
of his family.  He was overjoyed in having obtained
sufficient to fill his second strong-box.  From fear of
being followed, he closed the door hastily behind him, forgetting
that it went with a spring-lock, and that he had left the key on
the outside.  The lamp was extinguished by the wind of the
door, and he found himself suddenly involved in profound
darkness.  The air of the vault was p. 199thick and
damp, and he soon felt a difficulty in his respiration.  He
now first perceived that he had not the key with him, and
death-like anguish shot coldly through his heart.  He had
still strength and instinct sufficient to find his box; he laid
the gold in it, and staggered back to the door, where he
considered whether he should cry out or not.  He was cruelly
agitated by the alternative of discovering his secret, or of
making this vault his tomb.  But his cries would have been
to no purpose; for the cavern had no connexion with the inhabited
part of the house, and he had always so well chosen his time,
that no one had ever yet seen him when he crept to the worship of
his idol.  After having for a long time struggled with
himself, without coming to any resolution, the terrible images
which assailed his imagination, joined to the thickness of the
air, totally disordered his brain.  He sunk to the earth,
and rolling himself to the spot where his box stood, he hugged it
in his arms, and became raving mad.  He struggled with
despair and death at the moment of the ruin of his p.
200daughter, whose innocence he had bartered for
gold.  Some days after, when all the corners of the house
had been closely searched, chance led a servant to the cavern; it
was opened, and the unfortunate wretch was found lying, a blue
and ghastly corpse, upon his dear-bought treasure.  The
Devil informed Faustus upon their return to Paris of the issue of
this affair, and Faustus believed that, on this occasion,
Providence had justified itself.


The fiend having learnt that the Parliament were about to
decide upon a case unexampled and disgraceful to humanity, he
thought it advisable that Faustus should hear it.  The fact
was this: a surgeon, returning late one night to Paris with his
faithful servant, heard, not far from the highway, the groans and
lamentations of a man.  His heart led him to the spot, where
he found a murderer broken alive upon the wheel, who conjured
him, in the name of God, to put an end to his existence. 
The surgeon shuddered with horror and fright; but recovering
himself, he thought whether it would not be possible for p.
201him to reset the bones of this wretch, and preserve his
life.  He spoke a few words to his servant, took the
murderer from the wheel, and laid him gently in the chaise. 
He then carried him to his house, where he undertook his cure,
which he at last accomplished.  He had been informed that
the Parliament had offered a reward of one hundred
louis-d’ors to any one who would discover the person who
had taken the assassin from the wheel.  He told the murderer
of this when he sent him away, and, giving him money, he advised
him not to stay in Paris.  The very first thing which this
monster did was to go to the Parliament and betray his
benefactor, for the sake of the hundred louis-d’ors. 
The cheeks of the judges, which so seldom change colour, became
pallid at this denunciation; for he informed them with the
greatest effrontery that he was the very assassin, who, having
been broken alive upon the place where he had committed the
murder, had been saved by the compassion of the surgeon. 
The latter was sent for; and the Devil conducted Faustus into the
hall of judgment exactly at the p. 202moment he
appeared.  The attorney-general informed the surgeon of what
he was accused; but the surgeon, being certain of his
servant’s fidelity, stoutly denied the charge.  He was
advised to confess, because a most convincing witness could be
brought against him.  He bade them produce him.  A
side-door opened, and the murderer stepped coolly into the court,
and, looking the surgeon full in the face, undauntedly repeated
his accusation, without forgetting a single circumstance. 
The surgeon shrieked, “O monster! what can have urged thee
to this horrible ingratitude?”


Murderer.  The hundred louis-d’ors, which
you told me of when you sent me away.  Did you think that I
was satisfied with merely recovering the use of my limbs?  I
was broken alive on the wheel for a murder which I committed for
ten crowns, and I was not fool enough to lose gaining a hundred
louis without running any risk.


Surgeon.  Thou wretch! thy cries and groans
touched my heart.  I took thee down from the wheel,
comforted thee, and bound up thy wounds.  I fed thee with
mine own hand, till thou couldst p. 203use thy
shattered joints.  I gave thee money, which thou canst not
yet have spent.  I discovered to thee, from regard to thy
own safety, the reward which had been offered by the Parliament;
and I swear to thee, by Heaven above, that if thou hadst told me
of thy devilish intention, I would have sold my last rag, and
have furnished thee with the sum, in order that so horrible a
piece of ingratitude might remain for ever unknown to the
world.  Gentlemen, judge between me and him; I confess
myself guilty.


President.  You have grievously offended justice
by endeavouring to preserve the life of him whom the law, for the
common safety, had condemned to die; but for this once strict
justice shall be silent, and humanity only shall sit in
judgment.  The hundred louis-d’ors shall be yours, and
the murderer shall be again broken upon the wheel.


Faustus, who during the whole of this strange trial had been
snorting like a madman, gave now such a thundering huzza, that
the whole gallery echoed.  The Devil, who observed that the
last p. 204impression was about to destroy the
first, soon led him to another scene.


Some surgeons, doctors of medicine, and naturalists had formed
a secret society, for the purpose of inquiring into the mechanism
of the human body, and the effect of the soul upon matter. 
In order to satisfy their curiosity, they inveigled, under all
sorts of pretences, poor men and women into a house at some
distance from the city, the upper part of which was constructed
in such a manner that it was impossible to discover from without
what was going forward within.  Having tied their victims
with strong cords down upon a long table, and having placed a gag
in their mouths, they then removed their skin and their flesh,
and laid bare their muscles, their nerves, their hearts, and
their brains.  In order to come at what they sought, they
fed the wretches with strengthening broths, and caused them to
die slowly under the slashing of their knives and lancets. 
The Devil knew that they intended this night to assemble, and
said to Faustus, “Thou hast seen a surgeon, who, for the
sake of humanity, p. 205or for love of his art, cured an
assassin whom justice had broken on the wheel; I will now show
thee physicians, who, in pursuit of secrets which they will not
discover, skin their fellow-creatures alive.  Thou appearest
incredulous!  Follow me, and I will convince thee.  We
will represent two doctors.”


He led him to a solitary house.  They entered the
laboratory, which the rays of the sun never penetrated. 
Here they saw the surgeons dissecting a miserable being, whose
flesh quivered beneath their fratricidal hands, and whose bosom
heaved with the most painful agony.  They were so engaged
with their object, that they never once perceived the Devil and
Faustus.  The latter, feeling his nerves thrill with horror,
rushed out, struck his forehead with his hand, and commanded the
fiend to tear down the house upon their heads, and bury them and
their deed beneath its ruins.


Devil.  Why this rage, O Faustus?  Dost thou
not perceive that thou art acting, in respect to the moral world,
in the same manner as they act in regard to the physical
world?  They mangle the p. 206flesh of
the living; and thou, by my destructive hand, exercisest thy fury
upon the whole creation.


Faustus.  Outcast fiend! dost thou think my heart
is made of stone?  Dost thou think that I can see unmoved
the torments of yon poor flayed and butchered wretch?  But
if I can neither dry his tears nor cure his wounds, I can avenge
him, and put him out of pain.  Away! away! do as I have bid
thee, or dread my wrath!


The Devil obeyed with pleasure.  He shook the house to
its foundation, and down it toppled with a hideous noise, and
overwhelmed the wicked doctors.  Faustus hurried to Paris,
without attending to the look of wild exultation which the Devil
cast upon him.


Faustus, having heard much talk of the prisons which the most
Christian king had caused to be built for the purpose of
receiving those whom he dreaded, had a strong desire to see the
interior of them.  The Devil willingly undertook to satisfy
his curiosity; and although the guards were forbidden, under pain
of death, to permit any strangers to enter these habitations of
horror, yet p. 207the golden arguments which the Devil
used procured him and his companion a ready admittance. 
They saw there cages of iron, in which it was impossible for a
man to stand upright, or sit down, or place himself in any easy
posture.  The wretches who were compelled to tenant these
iron dwellings had their limbs galled by heavy chains.  The
keeper said, confidentially, that when the king was in good
health, he frequently walked in the gallery, in order to enjoy
the song of his nightingales; for thus did he call these wretched
victims.  Faustus asked some of the unfortunates the cause
of their captivity; and he heard stories which pierced him to the
heart.  At last, coming to a cage wherein was a
venerable-looking old man, he put the same question to him, and
the prisoner answered, in a plaintive tone:


“Whoever you are, let my sad story serve you as a
warning never to assist a tyrant in his cruelties.  You
behold in me the Bishop of Verdun, who first gave to the king the
idea of these horrible cages, and was the very first to be shut
up in one of them after they were completed.  p.
208Here have I, for fourteen years, done penance for my
sins, praying daily to God to end my torments by
death.”


Faustus.  Ha, ha!  Your excellence, then,
like another Perillus, has found a Phalaris.  Do you know
that story?  You shake your head.  Well, I will tell it
you.


“This Perillus, who was neither a bishop nor a
Christian, constructed a brazen bull, which he showed to the
tyrant Phalaris as a masterpiece of invention, and assured him
that it was constructed in such a manner, that, if his majesty
would shut up a man in it, and then heat it red-hot by a fire
laid beneath it, the shrieks of the tormented man would exactly
resemble the bellowings of a bull, which would doubtless afford
his majesty great pleasure.  ‘My dear Perillus,’
said the tyrant, ‘I am much indebted to you; but it is
right that the artist should prove his own work.’  He
then made Perillus creep into the beast’s belly; and when
the fire was laid beneath it, he did in reality bellow like a
bull.  Thus did Phalaris, a thousand years ago, play very
much the same part with p. 209Perillus
which the most Christian king has been playing with you, most
reverend Bishop of Verdun.”


Bishop.  I wish I had heard this story twenty
years ago; I should then have taken warning from it.


Faustus.  You see that history may sometimes be
useful, even to a bishop.  I weep for the fate of your
companions in misery; but I laugh at yours.


Faustus wished now to see this king, whose horrible deeds had
so heated his imagination, that he could hardly represent him to
himself under a human figure.  The Devil told him that it
would be impossible for them in their present forms to enter the
Castle of Plessis du Parc, where cowardice and fear kept the
tyrant a prisoner.  He added, that no one, with the
exception of some necessary domestics, the physician, the
confessor, and one or two astrologers, could enter without a
particular order.


Faustus.  Then let us assume other figures and
dresses.


p.
210Devil.  Good; I will instantly remove two
of his guards, and we will do their duty.  This is an
excellent time to see the tyrant.  The fear of death is
already avenging upon his cowardly spirit the thousands whom he
has slaughtered.  Day and night he only thinks of putting
off the moment which is to terminate his existence, and death
seems to him more hideous every second.  I will make you a
witness of his torments.


The Devil instantly put his project into execution, and they
found themselves standing sentinels in the interior of the
castle, where reigned the mournful silence of the tomb. 
Thither had he, before whom millions trembled, banished himself,
in order to escape from the vengeance of the relations of the
murdered.  Although he could thus fly from the sight of his
subjects, he could not escape the cutting remorse of his own
heart, nor the pains of his emaciated body.  In vain did he
implore Heaven to grant him health and repose; in vain did he
attempt to bribe it by presents to saints, to priests, and to
churches; in vain did he cover himself with p. 211relics from
all parts of the world: that frightful sentence, thou shall
die, seemed always ringing in his ears.  He scarcely
ventured to move out of his chamber, lest he should find an
assassin in one of those whom he might meet.  If anguish
drove him into the free air, he went armed with lance and dagger,
just as if he had strength to use either.  Four hundred
guards watched day and night around the stronghold of the
half-dead monster; three times every hour did their hoarse calls,
echoing from post to post, break the solemn stillness, and remind
the tyrant of the flight of time.  All around his castle
gibbets were erected; and the hangman, Tristan, his only true
friend, went about the country every day, and returned at night
with fresh victims, in order, by their execution, to diminish the
fears of the tyrant, who from time to time would walk in an
apartment which was only separated from the torture-room by a
thin partition.  There he listened to the groans and shrieks
of the wretches on the rack, and found in the sufferings of
others a slight alleviation p. 212of his
own.  Wearing on his hat a leaden image of the
Virgin,—his pretended protectress,—he drank the blood
of murdered sucklings, and allowed himself to be tormented by his
physician, whom he requited with ten thousand crowns a month.


This was the wretch whom Faustus saw; and his heart rejoiced
when he contemplated the paleness of his cheeks, and the farrows
which anguish and despair had made in his brow.  He was on
the point of leaving this abode of monotonous horror, when the
Devil whispered him to remain until the next day, and he would
see a singular spectacle.  The king had heard that a hermit
lived in Calabria, who was honoured as a saint through all
Sicily.  This fool had, from his fourteenth to his fortieth
year, dwelt upon a naked rock, where, exposed to the rains and
tempests of heaven, he martyred his body by stripes and fasting,
and refused his mind all cultivation.  But, the rays of
sanctity concealing his stupidity, he soon saw the prince and the
peasant at his feet.  Louis had requested the p.
213King of Sicily to send him this creature, because he
hoped to be cured by him.  The hermit was now on the road;
and as he brought with him the holy oil of Rheims, to anoint the
tyrant’s body, the latter imagined that all his disorders
would soon vanish, and he should become young again.  The
happy day arrived: the Calabrian boor approached the castle; the
king received him at the gate, fell at his feet, and asked him
for life and health.  The Calabrian played his part in so
ridiculous a manner, that Faustus could not avoid laughing aloud
at the farce.  Tristan and his myrmidons were advancing to
seize him, and he would doubtlessly have paid for laughing with
his life, had not the Devil rescued him from their claws, and
flown away with him.  When they arrived at Paris, Faustus
said:


“Is it by this contemptible, superstitious, tottering
object, that the bold sons of France allow themselves to be
enslaved?  He is a mere skeleton in purple, who can scarcely
cough out of his asthmatic throat the desire to live; yet p.
214they tremble before him, as if he were a giant, whose
terrible arms could encircle the whole earth.  When the
lion, enfeebled by age, lies languishing in his den, the most
insignificant beasts of the forests are not afraid of him, but
approach and mock the fallen tyrant.”


Devil.  It is this which chiefly distinguishes the
king of men from the king of beasts.  The latter is only
formidable as long as he can use his own strength; but the
former, who binds the strength of his slaves to his will, is as
powerful when lying on the bed of sickness, as when, in the
vigour of health, he is at the head of his armies.  Are you
not now convinced that men are only guided by folly, which dooms
them to be slaves?  Break their chains to-day, and they
would forge themselves others to-morrow.  Do what you can,
they will always go on in the same eternal circle, and are
condemned for ever to seize the shadow for the reality.


The Devil, having shown Faustus all that was remarkable in and
about the capital of France, took him to Calais; and, crossing
the Channel, p. 215they arrived in London at the very
moment that hideous abortion, the Duke of Gloucester, made
himself Protector of the kingdom, and was endeavouring to take
away the crown from the children of his brother, the late
king.  He had removed the father by means of poison, and had
already persuaded the queen (who, upon the first discovery of his
projects, had fled for refuge, with her children, to Westminster
Sanctuary) to deliver up to him the youthful heir of the throne,
together with his brother York.  Faustus was present when
Doctor Shaw, by the command of the Protector, informed the
astonished people from the pulpit, that the yet living mother of
the duke and the deceased king had admitted various lovers; that
the late king was the offspring of such adultery; and that no one
of the royal line, except the Protector, could boast of a
legitimate birth.  He saw those noblemen executed who would
not accede to the execrable plot; and the Devil conducted him
into the Tower at the very moment when Tyrrell and his assistant
murdered the lawful king and his brother, p. 216and buried
them beneath the threshold of the dungeon.  He was a witness
of the base submission of the Parliament, and of the coronation
of the frightful tyrant.  He witnessed the negotiation of
the queen to support the murderer of her sons in his usurped
throne, by giving him the hand of her eldest daughter, in order
that she herself might still retain a shadow of sovereignty;
although at the same time she had entered into a secret alliance
with the Earl of Richmond, who was destined to be her
avenger.  Faustus felt himself so enraged, that not all the
charms of the blooming Englishwomen could keep him any longer in
this cursed isle, which he quitted with hatred and disgust; for
neither in Germany nor in France had he seen crimes committed
with so much coolness and impunity.  When they were on the
point of embarking, the Devil said to him:


“These people will groan for a time beneath the yoke of
despotism; they will then sacrifice one of their kings upon the
scaffold of freedom, in order that they may sell themselves to
his successors p. 217for gold and titles.  In hell
there is very little respect paid to these gloomy islanders, who
would suck the marrow from all the carcasses in the universe, if
they thought to find gold in the bones.  They boast of their
morality, and despise all other nations; yet if you were to place
what you call virtue in one scale, and vice, with twopence, in
the other, they would forget their morality, and pocket the
money.  They talk of their honour and integrity, but never
enter into a treaty but with a firm resolution of breaking it as
soon as a farthing is to be gained by so doing.  After
death, they inhabit the most pestilential marsh of the kingdom of
darkness, and their souls are scourged without mercy.  None
of the other damned will have any communication with them. 
If the inhabitants of the Continent could do without sugar and
coffee, the sons of proud England would soon return to the state
in which they were when Julius Cæsar, Canute of Denmark, or
William the Conqueror, did them the honour to invade their
island.”


p.
218Faustus.  For a devil, thou knowest history
passably well.


Hereupon he led him to Milan, where they saw the Duke Galeas
Sforza murdered on St. Stephen’s day in the cathedral;
Faustus having previously heard the assassins loudly beseeching
St. Stephen and St. Ambrose to inspire them with the courage
necessary for so noble a deed.


In Florence, the seat of the Muses, they saw the nephew of the
great Cosmo, the father of his country, murdered in the church of
Santa Reparata, at the altar, just at the moment when the priest
raised the host in his hands; for the Archbishop of Florence,
Salviati, had informed the murderers that this was to be the
signal.  He had been bribed to assist in this enterprise by
the Pope, who was determined to annihilate the Medicis, in order
to rule sole sovereign in Italy.


In the north of Europe they saw wild barbarians and drunken
ruffians murdering and pillaging like the more civilised
Europeans.  In Spain they found upon the throne deceit and
hypocrisy wearing the mask of religion.  They p.
219saw, at an auto-da-fé, men and women
immolated in the flames to the mild Deity of the Christians; and
they heard the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, boast to Ferdinand
and Isabella that, since the establishment of the holy tribunal,
it had tried eighty thousand suspected persons, and had burnt six
thousand convicted heretics.  When Faustus first saw the
ladies and cavaliers assembled in the grand square, dressed in
their richest habits, he imagined that he had come just in time
for some joyous festival; but when he heard the condemned
wretches howling and lamenting in the midst of a mob of monks who
were at their devotions, he was convinced that religion, when
misused, makes man the most execrable monster on the earth. 
He, however, began to imagine that all these horrors were the
necessary consequences of man’s nature, who is an animal
that must either tear his fellow-creatures to pieces, or be torn
to pieces by them.


The Devil, perceiving that Faustus was amazed and confounded
by these scenes, said to him:


“Thou seest how the courts of Europe resemble p.
220each other in wickedness and crime.  Let us now go
to Rome, and see whether the ecclesiastical government goes on
better.”


The malicious Leviathan flattered himself that Alexander the
Sixth, who wore at that time the triple crown, and held in his
hands the keys of heaven and of hell, would give the finishing
blow to the harassed spirit of Faustus, and would enable him to
return below with his victim.  For a long time he had been
weary of staying on the earth; for although he had in the course
of many thousand years so often traversed it, he still saw merely
the same beings and the same actions.  From this we may
learn that there is something so annoying in uniformity, that
even the wild horrors of Satan’s hall are to be preferred
to it.


On the way to Rome they passed by two hostile armies encamped
face to face.  The one was commanded by Malatesta of Rimini,
the other by a papal general.  The crafty Alexander was now
endeavouring, either by poisoning, secret assassination, or open
war, to deprive all the p. 221Italian
noblemen of their property, in order that he might convert their
castles and domains into principalities for his
illegitimates.  He began with the weakest, and had
despatched this little army to eject Malatesta from his fief of
Rimini.  Faustus and the Devil, riding along the road,
perceived upon an eminence contiguous to the papal camp two men,
magnificently dressed, engaged in a furious combat.  Moved
by curiosity, Faustus advanced to the spot; the fiend followed
him; and they perceived, by the rage of the antagonists, that
nothing less than the death of one of them would end the
struggle.  But what appeared to Faustus most extraordinary
was a milk-white goat, adorned with ribbons of various colours,
which a page seemed to hold as the prize of victory, as he stood,
with the utmost coolness, near the two raging warriors. 
Many cavaliers had assembled upon the height, and awaited the
issue of the affair.  Faustus approached one of them, and
asked, with his German simplicity, whether the gentlemen were
fighting for that handsome goat.  He had observed that the
two champions, whenever p. 222they paused
to take breath, looked at the goat with much tenderness, and each
seemed, according to knightly custom, to entreat it to assist him
in his danger.  The Italian, turning to Faustus, coolly
answered, “Yes, certainly; and I hope our general will
punish with death the audacious knight who dared to remove from
his tent the handsomest goat in the world, at the time he was
gone to reconnoitre the enemy’s camp.”  Faustus
stepped back, shook his head, and scarcely knew whether he was
dreaming or awake.  The Devil let him remain for some time
in this perplexity; he then took him aside, and whispered certain
things in his ear, which made Faustus blush, and which will not
bear repetition.  The duel in the mean time went on as hotly
as ever, until the sword of the papal general found an opening in
the knight’s mail, and laid him wallowing in blood upon the
ground.  He yielded up his soul amidst curses and
imprecations, and took, with his last look, a tender farewell of
the pretty animal.  The general was congratulated by the
surrounders, and the page delivered him the goat.  He called
it p.
223“his dearest, his best-beloved,” and loaded
it with the most tender caresses.


Faustus departed from the place of combat, and was hesitating
between a desire to laugh and a feeling of disgust, when the
Devil said to him:


“This duel has made thee acquainted with the papal
general; but he who commands the hostile army does not deserve
thy attention less.  The one has risked his life for love of
a white goat; and the other has already poisoned and strangled
with his own hand, in order that he might get possession of their
property, two of his wives, sprung from the best families in
Italy.  He is now on the point of marrying a third; and she
will, in all probability, experience the same fate.  Both of
these personages are otherwise very religious men,—attend
processions, make vows to Heaven, and implore it for
assistance.  For which side do you think it will now
declare?”


Faustus gave the Devil a wild look, and left the malicious
question unanswered; but the Devil, who wished to punish him for
having formerly boasted of the moral worth of man, failed p.
224not to make some bitter jokes upon the amours of the
papal general and the conjugal tenderness of Malatesta of
Rimini.


The sight of Rome and its majestic ruins, over which the
mighty spirit of the old Romans seemed yet to hover, filled
Faustus with wonder; and, as he was well acquainted with the
history of those lords of the ancient world, the remembrance of
their heroic actions elevated his soul to a pitch of
enthusiasm.  But the modern inhabitants of this celebrated
city soon inspired him with very different sentiments.  By
the Devil’s advice, they announced themselves as German
noblemen, whom curiosity to see the magnificence of Rome had
brought there.  But their retinue, their pomp, and their
demeanour, caused a suspicion to be entertained that they were of
more consequence than they pretended to be.  Friars and
matrons, quacks and harlequins, flocked to them, as soon as the
noise of their arrival had echoed through all the haunts of those
who get their livelihood by administering to the crimes and the
weaknesses of men.  They offered them p. 225their
several female relations, and depicted their charms and various
attractions with such fiery eloquence, that Faustus, besieged on
every side, knew not which to prefer.  As these wretches
uttered religious maxims in the same breath with the most
stimulant descriptions of voluptuousness, Faustus imagined
himself authorised in believing that they merely made use of
religion to appease the cravings of passion, revolted by their
shameful deeds and wickedness.


The next day after their arrival, Faustus and the Devil were
invited to dinner by the Cardinal Cæsar Borgia, one of the
many illegitimates of the Pope.  He received them in the
most splendid manner, and promised to introduce them to his
holiness.  They went on horseback, attended by a retinue of
servants, to the Vatican, and Faustus and the Devil kissed the
toe of the Pope: the German performed this act of devotion with
all the fervour of a good Christian Catholic; but the Devil
muttered to himself, “If Alexander knew who I am, I should,
most probably, see him at my own feet.”  After the
usual ceremonies were p. 226over, the Pope invited them into his
private apartments, where he spoke to them very freely, and made
them acquainted with his other illegitimates, the famous
Lucretia; Francisco Borgia, Duke of Candia, &c.


The Pope found the society of the handsome and well-made
Leviathan so much to his liking, that, from the first interview,
he showed him particular favour, which grew at length, as we
shall see, to the closest intimacy.  Faustus attached
himself to Cardinal Borgia, who gave him such a glowing
description of the pleasures and temptations of Rome, that he
hardly knew whether he was in the Vatican or in the Temple of
Venus.  The Cardinal made him more nearly acquainted with
his sister, who was married to Alphonso of Arragon.  This
siren displayed voluptuousness and sensuality in a form and face
so attractive and charming, that Faustus stood before her like
one enchanted.


Faustus and the Devil went one evening to the Vatican to see a
play, which astonished the young German more than any thing he
had yet seen at p. 227the papal court.  It was the
Mandragola which was represented.  The noble
Machiavel had composed this licentious and satirical piece, in
order to lay before the eyes of the court of Rome a striking
picture of the boundless corruption of the clergy, and to prove
that to be the sole cause of the dissolute lives of the
laity.  But he deceived himself in his honourable design:
the Mandragola was applauded, not on account of its
morality, which was not understood, but of its
licentiousness.  Faustus heard the Pope and the cardinals,
the nuns and the ladies, praising certain things which, in his
opinion, the most dissolute of the Roman emperors would not have
permitted upon their theatre.  But real scenes yet more
abominable soon put an end to his astonishment; and he perceived
that the actions of Alexander and his children infinitely
surpassed all that which the annals of the human race had
hitherto consigned to infamy and abhorrence.  Lucretia was
pleased yet more by Faustus’s rich presents than his fine
face and form.  By this intimate connexion with her, he
discovered her p. 228incestuous intercourse with her two
brothers, the Cardinal and Francisco; which she also extended to
the Pope her father.  The only one whom she treated ill was
Alphonso, who had the honour to be her spouse.  Faustus now
guessed the cause of the implacable hatred which the Cardinal
entertained against his brother Francisco: it arose from jealousy
at his sister’s preferring the latter to himself; and he
often swore to take vengeance upon his brother.


It was the custom of Faustus, after having the whole day
wallowed in the shameful pleasures of the court and city, to
pester the Devil’s ears with complaints of the wickedness
of men.  He was shocked at their crimes, although he himself
had neither strength nor desire to resist any of his
inclinations.  He generally concluded his sermonising by
asking, “How could such a monster ever have been elected
Pope?”


The Devil, who perfectly knew how that event had been brought
about (for one of the princes of hell had been at the election),
would tell him how “Alexander bought up the votes of the
p.
229cardinals by magnificent promises; and being called
upon, after his installation, to fulfil them, he either banished
or caused to be privately assassinated all those who had any
claims upon him.”


Faustus.  I can easily conceive that the cardinals
were sufficiently corrupt to make him Pope; but how the people
can submit to his decrees is beyond my comprehension.


Devil.  The Romans are perfectly content with
him.  He protects the populace, and ravages and pillages the
great.  Can they wish for a better Pope than one who
sanctifies their crimes by his own example; and who, besides the
indulgences he distributes, shows by his actions that men have no
reason to be terrified at any crime?


The Pope having, at a consistorial court, elevated his eldest
illegitimate, Francisco, to the dignity of General of the Papal
See, the Cardinal instantly formed the Christian resolution of
putting his brother out of the way, and thereby opening a more
extensive field to his own ambition.  p. 230Vanosa, his
mother, had informed him that the Pope intended to raise a throne
for Francisco upon the ruin of the Italian princes; and through
him, as his eldest-born, execute all the projects which he had
formed for the prosperity and aggrandisement of his family. 
The Cardinal, who had always certain assassins in his pay, sent
for his faithful Dom Michelotto, and thus addressed him:


“Brave and honest Michelotto, five years have already
passed since the accession of my father to the papal chair, and I
am not yet what I might have been, had I acted with less delicacy
and more prudence.  He first made me an archbishop, and now
I am become a cardinal; but what is that for a spirit which burns
with a desire to distinguish itself, and which aspires to
glory!  My revenues scarcely supply me with absolute
necessaries, and it is impossible for me to reward, according to
the wish of my heart, those friends who have rendered me
essential services.  Art thou not, O Michelotto, a striking
example of it thyself?  Have I been able to acquit myself
p.
231towards thee in the manner which my obligations to thee
demand?  But shall we always languish in this shameful
inactivity; and shall we wait till fortune or chance do something
for those who will do nothing for themselves?  Dost thou
think that the monotonous life I lead in the conclave and in the
church was intended for a spirit like mine?  Am I born for
all these ridiculous and superstitious ceremonies?  If
nature had not by foolish caprice brought my brother into the
world before me, would not all those situations, all those
honours, by which men are alone enabled to perform great actions,
have fallen to my lot?  Does my brother know how to profit
by the advantages which the Pope and blind Fortune fling in his
way?  Let me once occupy his place, and my name shall soon
resound through all Europe.  Nature stamped me for a hero,
and him for a priest; therefore I must seek to repair the
negligence of Fortune if I wish to fulfil my destiny. 
Compare him and me, and who will say we are sprung from the same
father?  But be he my brother—and it little matters;
for the man who p. 232wishes to rise above the rest should
forget tenderness and relationship—those puny bonds of
nature—and should not hesitate to dip his hands in the
sacrifice of any one whose existence may be an obstacle to his
noble views.  It is thus that all great men act; it is thus
that the founder of immortal Rome acted.  In order that Rome
might arrive at the height of grandeur to which his genius wished
to carry it, he did not hesitate to stab his brother; and, in
order that Cæsar Borgia may attain immortality, his brother
Francisco must bleed beneath thy knife, most courageous
Michelotto.  Yes; for although it would be easy for me, in
the darkness of the night, to assassinate him myself and remain
unsuspected, I reserve for thee this deed, in order that thou
mayst have a greater right to share with me my grandeur and my
future fortunes.  To-morrow I shall go to Naples to assist,
in quality of legate, at the coronation of the king. 
Vanosa, my mother, who, between you and me, is weary of seeing
her enterprising Cæsar a cardinal, gives this evening a
supper to myself, my brother, and a few friends.  p.
233Francisco will go late at night to an assignation in
which he and I mutually share; and I ill know Michelotto if ever
he finds his way back to his palace.  My name is
Cæsar, and I will be all or nothing.”


Michelotto grasped the cardinal’s hand, thanked him for
his confidence, assured him of his fidelity, and went his way in
order to get some of his companions to assist him in the
affair.


Faustus and the Devil were also invited to the supper. 
Gaiety reigned among the guests.  The good-natured Francisco
loaded his brother with caresses, which, however, did not shake
his resolution.  When they rose from table, Cæsar took
leave of his mother, and said he must now go to the Pope and
receive his orders for Naples.  The two brothers walked with
each other a little way, followed by Faustus and the Devil. 
Francisco soon took leave of his brother, having first told him
where he was going.  The Cardinal, with a smiling air,
wished him much pleasure: hurrying to the Vatican, he finished
his business there, and then went to the rendezvous, where he
found p. 234Michelotto and his ruffians, whom he
directed how to proceed.  Faustus had not the slightest
suspicion of what was going forward; but the Devil, who knew when
the horrible drama was to conclude, transported him to the banks
of the Tiber at the very moment Michelotto and his assistants
flung into the stream the corpse of the murdered Francisco. 
Faustus would have attacked the assassins, though he was still
ignorant who their victim was; but the Devil prevented him, and
said:


“Do not approach; keep thyself quiet, and let none of
those people see thee; they swarm so at Rome and at the Vatican,
that thou wouldst not be safe, even at my side, if they were to
perceive that thou didst observe them.  The murdered man
whom they flung into the water is Francisco Borgia, Duke of
Candia; his murderer is his brother, and what thou seest now is
only the prelude to actions which will astonish hell itself and
make it tremble.”


He then discovered to him the whole of the plot, and repeated
to him the Cardinal’s conversation p. 235with
Michelotto.  Faustus replied, with more coolness than the
Devil expected:


“Their deeds will not astonish me, however infamous they
may be; for what else can we expect from a family where the
father lives in incest with his daughter, and the brothers with
their sister?  But henceforth I will never suffer any one to
boast in my presence of the moral worth of man; for, in
comparison with man, especially if he be a priest, the worst
fiend is innocent as an angel.  Oh, why was I not born in
happy Arabia, where I might have passed my solitary existence,
with a palm-tree for my shelter, and with Nature for my
god!”


The body of Francisco being found in the Tiber, his
assassination was soon noised about Rome and through all
Italy.  The Pope was so afflicted at the intelligence, that
he abandoned himself to the most frightful despair, and remained
three days without eating or drinking; but he did not forget to
offer immense rewards for the discovery of the murderers. 
His daughter, who guessed from whence the blow came, p.
236gave her mother intelligence of the severe intentions
of the Pope; and Vanosa, at dead of night, went to the
Vatican.  The Devil, who, in quality of favourite, had
remained alone with his holiness whilst his affliction was at its
height, hastened away upon the appearance of Vanosa; and having
found Faustus, who was consoling the lovely Lucretia, he led him
to the door of the Pope’s apartment, where they heard the
following dialogue.


“A fratricide! a cardinal!—and thou, mother of
them both, dost tell me this with as much coolness as if
Cæsar had merely poisoned one of the Colonnas or
Orsinis.  He has, in murdering his brother, destroyed his
own fame, and has undermined the foundation of that monument of
grandeur which I was about to raise.  But the monster shall
not escape punishment; he shall feel my vengeance.”


Vanosa.  Rodrigo Borgia, thou hast shared the
couch of my mother and myself, and wast the first that
dishonoured Lucretia, my daughter and thine.  Who can number
all those whom thou p. 237hast secretly poisoned and
assassinated?  Yet thou art not less a pope.  Rome
trembles before thee, and all Christianity adores thee. 
Every thing depends upon the situation in which men are when they
commit crimes.  I am the mother of both, Rodrigo, and I knew
that Cæsar would murder Francisco.


Pope.  Thou wretch!


Vanosa.  Am I?  If I be, I have become so in
thy school.  It was right that the timorous and gentle
Francisco should give place to the fiery, the enterprising
Cæsar, in order that the glittering hopes may be fulfilled
which thou didst confide to me upon thy elevation to the papal
chair.  Francisco was intended by nature to be a monk; my
Cæsar to be a conqueror—and I call him so already in
prophetic spirit.  He alone has power to annihilate the
great and petty tyrants of Italy, and to win himself a
crown.  Appoint him standard-bearer to the papal see, and he
will make the Borgias kings of the Italian realms.  Is not
this thy most ardent wish?  All thy poisonings and murders
will have been to no more purpose p. 238if
Cæsar remains a cardinal, than they would have been if yon
feeble driveller had lived.  Only from Cæsar can I
expect protection when thou art no more.  He loves his
mother; but the other boy neglected me, and only flattered thee,
from whom he expected his greatness.  Cæsar feels that
a woman like me, who could bring forth a hero, can likewise point
out to him the way to immortal deeds.  Brighten up, Rodrigo,
and be wise; for know that the hand which dispatched thy
favourite was directed by a daring spirit, who would not hesitate
to take thy own life wert thou to remove the veil which has been
flung over this deed of necessity.


Pope.  The solidity of thy arguments restores me
to myself, and thy eloquence exalts my soul, although it makes me
shudder.  Francisco is dead; Cæsar lives: let him
live, and take his brother’s place, since fate will have it
so.


He rang the bell, caused refreshments to be brought, and was
in excellent spirits.


Francisco was forgotten, and the Pope thought of nothing else
than to open to the daring Cæsar p. 239a wider
field in which he might exercise his dangerous talents.  The
latter, in the mean time, crowned the King of Naples, with hands
yet reeking with fraternal blood.  He returned to Rome; and
Faustus saw, with a malicious laugh, the cardinals and the
ambassadors of Spain and Venice receive the fratricide, whom they
knew for such, at the city-gate, and then conduct him in triumph
to the Pope, who embraced him with great tenderness.  Vanosa
laid aside her mourning, and celebrated the day of his return by
a festival, at which appeared all the grandees of Rome. 
Cæsar shortly afterwards changed his cardinal’s hat
for a helmet, and was with much pomp and magnificence consecrated
Gonfalonier, or Standard-bearer of the Holy See.


The Devil saw, with much pleasure, Faustus endeavouring, by
the wildest excesses, to escape the pangs by which his heart was
now torn.  He remarked how every new scene of horror he was
doomed to witness galled his soul, and that he was becoming more
and more convinced that all he saw or heard had its origin in the
nature of p. 240man.  The Devil supported him
in this idea by sophisms, which later philosophers have worked up
into systems.  He ransacked the earth of its treasures, and
showered gold and precious gems upon his victim; and Faustus,
dishonouring the wives and daughters of Rome, believed that he
could not sufficiently corrupt the human family, which, in his
opinion, was doomed to misfortune and destruction.  The
lessons he had learnt from Lucretia had long since poisoned his
senses.  All the sweet ties of humanity, which had so long
fettered his heart, were now totally destroyed.  He
represented the world to himself as a stormy sea, on which the
human race is cast, and is tossed here and there by the wind,
which drives this man upon a rock, where he is dashed to pieces,
and blows the other happily to his haven.  But what seemed
to Faustus most incomprehensible was, that the shipwrecked
mariner should be punished in an after-state for not having
guided his vessel better; when the rudder which had been given
him to shape his course by was so weak that any extraordinary
billow could not fail to shatter it.


p.
241A new scene now presented itself.  Alexander had
determined on taking the amusements of the chase at Ostia. 
He was accompanied thither by a vast throng of cardinals,
bishops, ladies, and nuns; the latter being summoned from their
cloisters, and, by their beauty, rendering the cavalcade a
glorious spectacle.  The Devil was constantly by the side of
the Pope, and Faustus and Lucretia were inseparable.  Every
one abandoned himself at Ostia to pleasure, and in the course of
a few days excesses were committed there from which even Tiberius
and Nero might have learnt something.  Faustus had now an
excellent opportunity of examining man in his nakedness, as the
Devil had expressively termed it; but what were all these scenes
of wickedness when compared with the plans which the Pope formed
with his bastards, by way of relaxation, in the presence of
Faustus and the Devil?  It was here determined that Alphonso
of Arragon, the husband of Lucretia, should be assassinated, in
order that they might give the King of France a proof that they
were willing to break entirely with the King of Naples, p.
242and to assist the former in his usurpation of the crown
of Sicily.  Louis the Twelfth had already, with the
approbation of Alexander, invaded Italy, and the Borgias thereby
saw all their projects ripening.  Lucretia intrusted this
bloody deed to the management of her brother, and already
considered herself as a widow.  The plan of the ensuing
campaign was then adjusted in a very expeditious manner; for it
was merely to take possession of all the towns, castles, and
domains of the noblemen of Italy, who were one and all of them to
be murdered, together with their offspring and relations, in
order that not a soul might remain alive who had the slightest
claim upon the property, and who might therefore trouble the
assassins with future conspiracies.  To support the army in
the interim, the Pope and Cæsar dictated to Lucretia a list
of rich cardinals and prelates, who were to be poisoned
successively, and their goods to be taken possession of by the
right of inheritance vested in the papal chair.


When this secret council was broken up, the members of it
repaired to the grand hall, where p. 243supper
awaited them.  The Pope was so contented with his schemes,
and the certainty of their accomplishment, that he committed, in
his joy, the most shameful extravagances, and by his example
incited his guests to actions similar to what we have read of in
the pages of Petronius Arbiter, and other writers of the same
character.  He, nevertheless, did not entirely forget the
cares of the state; for he suddenly asked those present how the
revenues of the papal see might be increased, so as to support
its numerous army during the approaching campaign.  After
various projects, Ferrara of Modena, Bishop of Patria,
Alexander’s worthy minister, by whom he caused the
benefices of the Church to be disposed of to the highest bidder,
proposed that indulgences should be sold through Europe, under
the pretence of an approaching war with the Turks; adding, like a
true papal financier, “that the foolish idea which men
entertained, of being able to wash away their sins by means of
gold, was the surest source from which the income of a pope
arose.”


p.
244Lucretia, who lay on the lap of her father, and played
with Faustus’s yellow looks, incidentally remarked, with a
smile,


“The present list of indulgences contains such insipid,
antiquated, and absurd crimes, that it is impossible to turn it
to much account.  It was composed in stupid and barbarous
times; and it is now highly necessary to make a new tariff of
sin, for which Rome herself can furnish the most important
articles.”


The company, hot with wine, and reeking from their
abominations, eagerly caught up this sally of female wantonness;
and the Pope commanded each one present to propose some
particular sin, and to tax it; recommending them, above all, to
choose those which were most in vogue, and which would
consequently bring in the most wealth.


Borgia.  Holy father, leave this to the cardinals
and prelates; they are better versed in crime than any other
people.


Ferrara of Modena sat down to fulfil the office of
secretary.


p.
245A Cardinal.  Absolution to each and every
priest who commits fornication, let it be with whom it may; with
permission to perform all the duties of the Church, and to
receive and hold new benefices, provided he pay into the papal
treasury nine gold ducats.


Pope.  Write down nine gold ducats, Bishop; and
then let us drink absolution to those priests who shall pay the
sum.


Each guest filled his glass, and exclaimed in chorus,
“Absolutio! dispensatio!”


* * * * *


A Nun.  Ha; what means all this?  Will no one
think of us?  Holy father, have we alone no claim to your
paternal favour?  I entreat you to let us be taxed also, in
order that we may sin in peace.


Pope.  Right, my daughter; and you shall not be
dealt with more hardly than the priests.  Bishop, write
down: Absolution for each nun who shall commit carnal sin, be it
with whom it may, within or out of the circle of the cloister;
with p. 246fall capacity of assuming any
conventual dignity when called upon so to do: nine ducats.


Chorus.  Absolutio! dispensatio!


A Bishop.  Absolution and dispensation to each
priest who publicly keeps a mistress: five ducats.


Lucretia then interposed: “Absolution for carnal
knowledge, the enormity of which is indicated by fifteen
ducats.”


Faustus, whom this scene had horribly mortified, on account of
the triumph which it afforded the Devil over him, but who,
nevertheless, wished to have a hit at Borgia, exclaimed, with a
voice of thunder,


“Absolution to any parricide, matricide, or fratricide,
for three ducats.”


Pope.  Ho, ho, friend; what are you aiming at
now?  Will you tax murder lower than fornication?


Cæsar Borgia.  Holy father, he does not
wish, by too high a penalty, to deter men from the commission of
the crime.


Devil.  You are well aware, gentlemen, that the
poor are incapable of receiving benefit from p. 247any of the
above-named absolutions and dispensations.


Chorus (amidst shouts of laughter). 
Damnation to him who has no money!


Cæsar Borgia.  Whoever commits theft, be it
sacrilege or not, shall have his soul secured from damnation,
upon depositing in the papal treasury three parts of what he has
stolen.


Chorus.  Absolution to all thieves, sacrilegious
or not, provided they share their booty with the Pope.


Pope.  Thou hast opened a rich mine,
Cæsar.  Write that down, Bishop.


Faustus.  Absolution to any one who shall practise
magic, or enter into an alliance with the Devil.  How high
shall I tax that, father?


Pope.  My son, you will not, by this last article,
enrich the papal treasury.  The fiend does not understand
his own advantage; we call upon him in vain.


Faustus.  But provided that should so happen, how
high, I repeat?


Pope.  For rarity’s sake, one hundred
ducats.


p.
248Faustus.  Here they are; and now write me
out an absolution, that I may be able to shake it in the face of
the Devil, provided I ever sell myself to him.


Chorus.  Absolution to him who shall sell himself
to the fiend.


A Nun.  Most reverend Bishop, since you are
writing out the absolution for the magician, be so good as to
furnish me with a paper likewise,—you know for what. 
Here is my rosary; it is worth fifteen ducats; I shall have,
therefore, something in bank until another absolution becomes
necessary.


Ferrara wrote, and the Pope signed his name beneath.


Devil.  Does your holiness imagine that Satan will
pay any regard to these scraps of paper?


The grand inquisitor snatched his hand out of the bosom of an
abbess, and screamed, with stammering tongue:


“I smell heresy!  Who is the atheist? who has
uttered that blasphemy?”


The Pope pressed his forefinger softly upon p. 249the mouth
of the Devil, and said, “Cavalier, these are state secrets:
handle them not; for if you do, I myself, with all my authority,
shall not be able to protect you.”


Every male in the assembly now opened his purse, either from a
wish to pay his court to the Pope, or to quiet his
conscience.  The Bishop had so many applications, that he
was soon obliged to call in other secretaries, to assist him in
expediting absolutions.  Each applicant took away his
particular license, and each sought and found an opportunity of
using it during the remainder of the night.  Never were sins
committed with more quiet minds.


Ferrara of Modena, the next day, caused this tariff to be
fairly copied; he then sent it to the press, [249] and caused it to be secretly
circulated throughout Christendom.


Cæsar Borgia did not forget the promise which he had
made to his sister.  Alphonso of Arragon was dispatched on
the steps of the Gonfalonier’s p. 250palace, at
the moment he was about to enter, in order to be present at a
play to which all the nobility of Rome had been invited, and
which represented the victories of the great Cæsar, whom
Borgia intended henceforward to imitate, if not excel.  This
latter personage shortly after marched out of Rome with his army;
and, within the space of a few months, the Devil purloined from
the Pope’s pocket the following letter, which he gave
Faustus to read:


“Reverend
Father,—


“I kiss the feet of your holiness.  Victory and
fortune have followed my steps, and I drag them behind my car
like slaves.  I hope now that Cæsar is worthy of his
name; for I also can say, Veni, vidi,
vici.  The Duke of Urbino has fallen into the snare
which I laid for him.  By virtue of your holiness’
letter, I asked him for his artillery to fight your enemies
with.  Dazzled by the marks of friendship and affection
which I showed him, and which flattered his self-love, he sent to
me a gentleman with his consent in writing.  Having thus a
very decent pretence, I instantly despatched p. 251some
thousands of men to Urbino, who, by my commands, took possession
of that city and of the whole duchy.  The duke,
unfortunately, escaped; but I revenged myself for his flight upon
the powerful and dangerous family of Montefeltro, and annihilated
their whole race.  Vitelozzo was fool enough to join me,
with all his troops, near Camerino.  I deceived Cæsar
di Varono by promising him honourable conditions if he would
evacuate Camerino, and I attacked the city at the very moment he
was engaged in signing the articles of capitulation.  I had
hoped to have exterminated the whole family at once; but the
father found means to elude me.  However, I strangled his
wife, and cut the throats of his two sons; and I flatter myself
that despair and grief will soon send the old fellow after
them.  I left Camerino, and despatched Paul Orsino,
Vitelozzo, and Oliverotto, to Sinegaglia, with orders to take the
town by storm, so that they might prepare their future grave with
their own hands.  When I saw them all in the net, I sent
forward my trusty Michelotto and his associates, with directions
to seize the fools p. 252when I should give the signal. 
I then put myself upon the march, and Orsino, Vitelozzo, and
Oliverotto came to meet me, and pay me their respects.  They
had left all the troops behind them, according to my
expectations.  I received them with caresses, and went with
them into the city; and at the very moment my people fell upon
their straggling soldiers, Michelotto and his comrades each
seized his man.  Thus I made myself master of the domains
and fortresses of those whom we deceived by pretending to assist
them in subduing their enemies.  The following night I
caused them to be slaughtered in their dungeons. 
Michelotto, to whom I intrusted this business, told me, with much
laughter, that all the mercy Vitelozzo prayed for was, that he
might not be murdered until he had received, from your
holiness, absolution for his sins.  Who now will
tell me that it requires much art to make oneself master of the
minds of men?  As soon as your holiness shall have put out
of the way the Orsinis and the rest, I will send the Pagolas, the
Duke of Gravina, and my other prisoners, to bear them
company.  If p. 253Carraccioli, General of the
Venetians, whose lovely wife I seized upon her journey, and who
now sweetens my labour, should come to Rome with his
complaint, send him Michelotto’s brother to be his
physician.  I hear that he is a turbulent, hot-headed
fellow, and therefore it will be as well to get rid of him. 
The tumult of arms has not made me forget my sister’s
widowhood: the envoy of the eldest son of the Duke of Este is
already on the way to marry her, in his name.  We have now
massacred the most dangerous of our foes; if we can win over or
exterminate (which is almost the same thing) the houses of Este
and Medici, who will then have the audacity to oppose the Borgias
in Italy?  I kiss the feet of your holiness.


“Cæsar Borgia, Gonfalonier.”




Faustus, after reading this letter, looked angrily upward; but
the Devil, without giving him time to moralise, led him to the
Vatican, where they found the Pope overjoyed at the success which
had attended his weapons.  He had already ordered the
remaining Orsinis, Alvianis, p. 254Santa
Croces, and the other cardinals and archbishops, to be arrested,
and awaited the event with impatience.  All Rome hastened to
congratulate him.  Those who were marked out for destruction
were seized in the Vatican, conducted into different prisons, and
privately executed; whilst the myrmidons of the Pope plundered
their palaces.  The Cardinal Orsini alone was sent to the
Castle of Saint Angelo, and was permitted, for a few days, to be
supplied with food from his mother’s kitchen; but the Pope,
having heard that he possessed a pearl, very precious on account
of its extraordinary size, retracted this favour.  The
mother of the once mighty and flourishing Orsinis went to the
Vatican, and offered the Pope the pearl and two thousand crowns
if he would liberate her son; when he seized the pearl and the
money with one hand, and with the other gave the sign for the
cardinal’s execution.


When Cæsar Borgia learnt that the Pope had accomplished
his design, he instantly commanded all his own prisoners to be
assassinated; and, entering Rome in triumph, shared, with his
holiness p. 255and the other illegitimates, the
booty he had brought with him; and, in return, received his
dividend of the confiscated property of the slaughtered cardinals
and ecclesiastics.


The marriage of Lucretia was soon afterwards celebrated with
more than Asiatic pomp, and the Romans contributed to render it
as brilliant as possible.  The bells pealed from the
churches; the artillery thundered from Saint Angelo; there were
bull-fights; the most immoral and indecent comedies were
performed; and the delighted populace shouted before the Vatican,
“Long live Pope Alexander! long live Lucretia, Duchess of
Este!”  Faustus huzzaed with the best of them, and
said to the Devil: “If these acclamations ascend to heaven
with the groans of the assassinated, which will the Eternal
believe?”  The fiend bowed himself to the earth, and
was silent.


In order to crown the festivities of the marriage, Alexander
and his daughter commanded a spectacle which must for ever stand
unparalleled in the annals of human infamy.  The Pope sat,
with his daughter, upon a couch, in a vast illuminated p.
256hall.  Faustus, the Devil, and others who had been
invited to this scene, stood around them.  Suddenly the
doors opened, and in rushed fifty nude courtesans,—more
beautiful than the houris in Mahomet’s paradise,—and
performed, to the voluptuous sound of flutes and other
instruments, a dance which decency forbids us to describe,
although it was a Pope who designed the figure.  When the
dance was ended, his Holiness gave the signal for a combat which
we are still less permitted to depict,—he himself holding
the prize of victory.  They proclaimed Faustus to be the
conqueror.  Lucretia overwhelmed him with kisses, and
crowned him with laurels; while the Pope delivered to him the
prize,—a golden goblet, on which Lucretia had caused to be
engraven the School of Pleasure.  Faustus gave it the very
next day to a Venetian monk, in whose possession Aretino saw it a
long time afterwards, and illustrated some of its incidents in
his sonnets.


The Pope, on the day of his daughter’s marriage, had
made an election of cardinals, choosing p. 257only the
richest prelates for that dignity.  Cæsar Borgia,
being in want of large sums of money for the next campaign,
determined to send some of the newly-elected into the other
world, at a festival which his father intended to give at one of
his villas.  [The details of these marriage-festivities are
omitted; inasmuch as the grossness of the spectacle renders it
unfit for the general reader.  The conduct of Lucretia
Borgia has been the subject of much obloquy, which her defenders
maintain rests chiefly on inferences from her living in a
flagitious court, where she witnessed the most profligate
scenes.  It is asserted that some of the accusations have no
better foundation than the epigrams of Pontano, and other
Neapolitan poets, the natural enemies of her
family.—Transl.]  The Pope went in a coach,
with his daughter, the Devil, Faustus, Borgia, and the wife of
the Venetian general.  Here, after witnessing a gross
spectacle, Lucretia retired with Faustus; and Borgia went with
the Venetian; and the Pope remained alone with the Devil. 
His holiness now made to the fiend certain proposals, which so
exasperated p. 258the Devil that he appeared under a
form which no mortal eye had ever yet been able to sustain. 
The Pope, who knew him immediately, uttered a cry of joy.


“Ah, ben venuto Signor Diavolo!  You could not have
come to me at a more seasonable time than the present; I have
long wished to see you, for I know perfectly well what a deal of
use might be made of so powerful a spirit as yourself.  Ha,
ha, ha! you please me now much better than you did before, you
rogue, you!  Come, be my friend; assume your former figure,
and I will make you a cardinal; for you only can raise me at once
to the height which I wish to attain.  I entreat you to
destroy my foes, procure me money, and drive the French out of
Italy, since I have no further occasion for them.  This to
you will merely be the work of a moment; and you may then ask me
for any reward you please.  But by all means do not discover
yourself to my son Cæsar: he is so great a wretch, that I
verily believe he would poison me, his father, in order to
become, by thy help, King of Italy and Pope at the same
time.”


p.
259The Devil, who had at first been a little mortified
that his frightful exterior had produced no greater effect, was
now unable to refrain from laughing; for what he saw and heard
surpassed every thing which had as yet come to the knowledge of
hell.  But recovering himself, he said, with a serious air,
“Pope Alexander, Satan once showed to the Son of the
Eternal all the kingdoms of the world, and offered him them, if
he would fall down and worship him.”


Pope.  I understand you.  He was a God, and
wanted nothing; had he been a man, and a pope, he would have done
what I will now do.


He fell upon his knees, and kissed the fiend’s feet.


The Devil stamped upon the floor, so that the whole villa
trembled.  Faustus and Lucretia, Cæsar and the
Venetian, saw through the door, which had been burst open by the
shock, the Pope kneeling with clasped hands before the frightful
figure of the Devil, who seized the trembling miscreant,
strangled him, and gave his soul to an p. 260attendant
spirit to be conveyed to hell.  Borgia fell to the ground in
an agony of terror; and the horrible spectacle brought upon him
an illness, which soon sent him after his father.  The body
of the Pope, frightfully disfigured, was buried with much pomp;
and his historians, who are not well acquainted with his tragic
end, invented the story, which is partly founded on truth, that
he and his son having drunk, by the cupbearer’s mistake,
some poisoned wine which had been intended for the cardinals,
were thus caught in their own net.


p. 261CHAPTER V.


The horrible death of the Pope, and the frightful figure of
the Devil, whom Faustus had hitherto only seen majestic and
comely, made so strong an impression upon him, that he hastened
from the villa to Rome; and, having packed up his things,
instantly departed, with perturbed mind and beating heart. 
His spirit had become so weak from all that he had seen and
heard, that he who once dared to defy the Eternal in thought
scarcely ventured now to look Satan in the face, though he still
had absolute dominion over him.  Hatred and contempt for
men, cruel doubt, indifference to every thing which occurred
around him, murmurings at the insufficiency of his moral and
physical powers, were the rewards of his experience and the
fruits of his life; yet he consoled himself with the idea that
what he had witnessed p. 262authorised in him these gloomy
sentiments, and confirmed him in the opinion, that there either
existed on earth no connexion between man and his Creator, or
that, if any did exist, such connexion ran so confusedly and
equivocally through the labyrinth of life, that it was impossible
for the eye of man to follow it.  He yet flattered himself
with the delusion, that his crimes, when added to the vast mass
of earthly wickedness, would be like a drop of water falling into
the ocean.  The Devil willingly permitted him to repose in
this dream, in order that the blow he intended for him might fall
with greater violence.  Faustus resembled those men of the
world who abandon themselves to their pleasures without thinking
of the consequences; and at length, worn out and dejected, look
morosely on the world, and judge of the human race according to
their own sad experience, without reflecting that they have only
trodden the worst paths of life, and seen the worst part of the
creation.  In a word, he was on the point of becoming a
philosopher of the species of Voltaire, who, whenever p. 263he
found the bad, always held it forth to public view; and,
with unexampled industry, always endeavoured to keep the
good in the background.


Faustus was lying in a sweet morning slumber on the frontiers
of Italy, when a portentous dream depicted itself to his soul in
the liveliest colours; and this dream was followed by a frightful
apparition.  He saw the Genius of Man, whom he had once
before seen.  He saw him upon a vast and blooming island,
surrounded by a stormy sea, wandering up and down, and looking
very anxiously upon the raging billows.  The ocean was
covered with innumerable barks, in which men, aged and young,
children, women, and maidens, of all the nations of the world,
were struggling against the tempest, in order to reach the
island.  When they arrived there, their first care was to
bring to land different building materials, which they flung
together confusedly.  After an immense number had gained the
shore, the Genius marked out, upon the most elevated part of the
island, the plan of a vast edifice; and each of the crowd, young
and old, weak or p. 264strong, took, according to his or
her strength, a piece from the mass of materials, and, directed
by those whom the Genius had chosen, carried it, and deposited it
at the proper place.  All worked with pleasure, with
courage, and without relaxation; and the fabric had already risen
high above the ground, when they were suddenly attacked by
numerous foes, who advanced out of a dark ambush in three
columns.  At the head of each of these columns stood a
general.  The first bore a glittering crown upon his head;
on his brazen shield was written the word Power; and in
his right hand he held a sceptre, which, like the rod of Mercury,
had a snake and a scourge twisted round it.  Before him went
a fierce hyena, holding in its jaws a book, on the back of which
was written My Word.  His troops were armed with
swords, spears, and other implements of destruction.  The
second column was commanded by a majestic matron, whose noble
figure was clothed in a sacerdotal robe.  On her right stood
Superstition, a gloomy-eyed spectre, bearing in his hand a
bow formed from the bones of the p. 265dead, and
on his back a quiver filled with poisoned arrows.  On her
left hovered a wild, fantastically clothed figure, called
Fanaticism, bearing a blazing torch.  These two
phantoms, with menacing gestures and frightful grimaces, led the
noble matron in chains, like a prisoner.  Before them went
Ambition, whose head was adorned with a triple crown; in
his hand was an episcopal staff, and on his mailed breast shone
the word Religion.  Fanaticism and Superstition
waited, with the utmost impatience, until Religion should give
them the signal to vent their fury, which they could scarcely
restrain.  The army was a confused and howling rabble, and
each soldier carried a dagger and a flaming torch.  The
chief of the third column advanced with bold and haughty steps;
he was clothed in the simple dress of the sages, and was called
Philosophy.  He bore in his hand, as did all his
followers, a golden cup, filled with foaming and intoxicating
liquor.  These two last armies howled and screamed so
frightfully, that even the bellowing of the waters and the roar
of the tempest were no longer audible.


p.
266When the three columns arrived near the labourers, they
united, by the directions of their generals, and attacked them
furiously with their murderous weapons.  The most courageous
of the workmen flung away their implements of labour, and drew
their swords, which hung at their belts, in order to drive their
foes back.  The others, in the mean time, endeavoured, with
redoubled zeal, to complete the fabric they had begun.  The
Genius protected his brave warriors and his industrious labourers
with a huge glittering shield, which was handed to him from the
sky; but he could not cover the whole of the countless
multitude.  He saw with deep sorrow thousands of his people
sink to the earth beneath the swords and poisoned darts of their
adversaries.  Many allowed themselves to be ensnared by the
invitations and allurements of those who offered them the
enchanted cup to refresh themselves with; and, in their
intoxication, they soon destroyed the laborious work of their
hands.


Those who bore torches made their way with their daggers, and
hurled the torches into the p. 267unfinished
edifice, when the flames, rearing up, threatened to reduce it to
ashes.  The Genius looked mournfully upon the slain, and on
those who had been intoxicated by the deceitful beverage; but he
encouraged the rest, and inspired them, by his firmness and his
dignity, with strength and patience.  They extinguished the
flames; replaced what the others had overturned; and laboured,
amid death and destruction, with so much zeal, that, in spite of
the fury and malignity of their foes, they raised at length a
vast and sublime temple.  The Genius then healed the
wounded, comforted the weary, praised the bold warriors, and
conducted them all, amid songs of triumph, into the temple. 
The foes stood confounded at the enormous work; and, after they
had in vain attempted to shatter its solidity, they retreated,
with rage in their hearts.  Faustus now found himself upon
the island.  The field around the majestic building was
covered with dead bodies of all ages and of both sexes; and those
who had tasted of the enchanted cup walked coolly among the
corpses, disputed with each other, p. 268and laughed
at and criticised the structure of the temple.  Faustus went
past them, and as he approached the edifice he read over the
entrance the following words: “Mortal, if thou hast bravely
struggled, and hast remained faithful, enter, and learn to know
thy noble destiny.”


At these words he felt his heart leap with joy, and he hoped
to be now able to penetrate the obscurity which had so long
tormented him.  With bold and daring pace he ran up the
lofty steps, and caught a glimpse of the interior of the edifice,
which seemed filled with the roseate colours of morning.  He
heard the soft voice of the Genius, and was about to enter; but
the gate of brass closed before him with a harsh sound, and he
recoiled in terror.  His desire to penetrate into the
secrets of the temple was increased by the impossibility. 
All of a sudden he felt wings, and rising high into the air, he
precipitated himself furiously against the brazen gate, was
hurled back, and started out of his sleep just as he was on the
point of touching the ground.  He opened his eyes in
dismay.  A ghastly figure, p. 269wrapped in
a winding-sheet, drew back the curtains of his bed.  He
recognised the features of his old father, who, gazing upon him
for a moment, said, in a lamentable voice:


“Faustus! Faustus! never yet did father beget a more
unfortunate son; and in this feeling I have just died.  For
ever—ah! for ever!—must the gulf of damnation lie
between thee and me.”


The portentous dream and this horrible apparition filled the
soul of Faustus with affright.  He sprang from his bed, and
opened the window to inhale the fresh air.  Before him lay
the enormous Alps, whose tops were just gilded by the rising
sun.  He surveyed them for some time, and at last fell into
a profound reverie.  He trembled as he thought of his
nocturnal vision, and was endeavouring to explain to himself its
most prominent passages, when, falling anew into his cruel
doubts, he exclaimed:


“Whence came those monsters who attacked the industrious
labourers?  By whom were they authorised to disturb and
destroy them while engaged in their noble occupation?  Who
permitted p. 270it?  Was he who permitted it
unable, or did he not wish, to hinder it?  And why did the
Supreme Genius protect and save only a part of them who were
assailed by those cannibals?  Were some predestined to
perish, in order that the others might triumph and taste
repose?  Who, then, will dare to tell me that I am not one
of those who are born with destruction for their lot?  What
evil had those unfortunates committed, and why should those be
esteemed criminal who, pressed by a burning thirst, endeavoured
to quench it by tasting the enchanted cup?”


Faustus wandered for a long time in a maze of doubt; but,
remembering the apparition of his father, it brought back to his
mind his long-forgotten family.  He instantly determined to
return to them; to become again a member of society; to resume
his business; and to get rid of his infernal companion.  He
pursued his journey towards home like many others, who, mistaking
the ardour of insensate youth for genius, enter upon the career
of the world with high pretensions, and, having quickly exhausted
the little fire p. 271which their souls possess, soon find
themselves a burden to their kindred and their friends, at the
very place from whence they started.  Faustus brooded over
all this, while he rode silently and moodily by the side of the
Devil.


The latter left him to his reflections, laughed inwardly at
his resolution, and shortened the time with the sweet idea of
soon being able to breathe the pleasant vapours of hell.  He
determined to have a bitter laugh at Satan, who had represented
to him as a man of superior strength of mind this Faustus, whom
he now saw completely dejected even before he knew the horrors of
his fate.  He compared his present downcast and timid looks
with the haughty and bold glances he had cast upon him when he
first made him appear before his magic circle.  His hatred
against him increased, and he rejoiced in his black soul when he
saw Worms lie before them in the plain.


They rode towards the celebrated city; and when they were
about half a mile distant from it, they perceived a gibbet, to
which was suspended a tall, slender youth.  Faustus lifted
up his eyes p. 272and gazed upon him.  The
evening wind blew freshly among his long hair, which
half-concealed his face, and swung his body to and fro. 
Faustus burst into tears at this spectacle, and cried, with
trembling voice:


“Poor youth! hanging at the cursed tree before thou
hadst reached the flower of life!  What sin hast thou
committed, which induced the tribunal of men to cut thee off so
soon?”


Devil (in a solemn and impressive tone). 
Faustus, this is thy work.


Faustus.  My work!


Devil.  Thy work.  Look at him closer. 
He is thy eldest son.


Faustus looked up, recognised him, and sunk from his
horse.


Devil.  Cry and groan!  The hour approaches
in which I must remove the thick veil from before thine eyes, and
blow away, with a single breath, the labyrinth in which thou hast
so long wandered.  I will fling light upon the moral world,
and show thee how thou hast outraged it by each of thy
actions.  I, a devil, will show thee what p. 273are the
consequences when a worm like thyself dares to stop the wheel of
so exact and so enormous a machine.  Dost thou remember the
youth whom I, at our departure from Mayence, saved from drowning
by thy command?  I gave thee warning, but thou wouldst obey
the rash impulse of thy heart.  If thou hadst permitted that
miscreant to perish, thy son would not now be rotting on yon
gibbet.  He on whose account thou didst change the order of
things, insinuated himself, shortly after thy departure, into the
society of thy young wife.  The glitter of the gold which we
had left her in such abundance, attracted him much more than her
youth and beauty.  It was no difficult thing for him to win
the affections of her who had been forsaken by thee; and in a
short time he gained such influence over her, that she delivered
up herself and all she possessed to his will and control. 
Thy old father endeavoured to oppose his shameless sway; but the
young man insulted him and beat him: the poor old man sought an
asylum in the workhouse, where he died, a few days ago, of grief
for thee and thy family.  p. 274Thy son,
having taken his grandfather’s part, and threatened the
life of his mother’s seducer, was by him turned out of the
house also.  The boy wandered among the woods and
wildernesses till he was half famished.  Arriving at length
in this city, and being ashamed to beg, he stole a few pence from
the poor-box in a church, in order to assuage his hunger; but he
committed this theft so artlessly, that several people perceived
him, and the most worshipful magistrate, in consideration of his
youth, sentenced him only to be hanged: he was accordingly
hanged; although he protested, with tears, that for the last four
days he had swallowed nothing but grass.  Thy daughter is at
Frankfort, where she subsists upon the earnings of vice; thy
second son is in the profligate service of an infamous
prelate.  The young man whom thou didst save from death
robbed thy wife not long ago of her last stiver; thy friend whom
we preserved from beggary refused thy old father the slightest
assistance, and spurned thy children from his door when they came
to him for bread.  And I will now show thee p.
275thy family, in order that thou mayest see to what a
state thou hast reduced them.  I will then bring thee here
again, and hold reckoning with thee; for I am no longer thy
slave—thou art mine.  The worm of despair begins to
gnaw within thee; thou art no longer fit to live, and hell only
is fit to receive thee.


The Devil seized the wretched man, flew with him to Mayence,
and showed him his wife and two youngest children sitting at the
gate of the Franciscan convent in expectation of the remnant of
the monks’ supper.  When the mother beheld Faustus,
she screamed, “O Heaven!  Faustus! your
father—” then, covering her eyes with her hands, she
fell into a swoon.  The children ran to him, clung about
him, and cried for bread.


Faustus.  Devil, decide upon my fate: let it be
more frightful than the heart of man can support or conceive, but
supply these unfortunate creatures with bread, and rescue them
from misery and hunger.


Devil.  I have plundered for thee the earth of its
treasures; thou hast sacrificed them to thy p. 276infamous
pleasures, without once thinking of these wretches.  Feel
now thy folly; thou hast spun the web of their destiny, and thy
hungry, beggarly, miserable brood will transmit to their remotest
posterity the misery of which thou art the cause.  Thou
didst beget children—wherefore hast thou not been a father
to them?  Wherefore hast thou sought happiness where mortal
never yet found it?  Look at them once more.  In hell
thou shalt see them again; and they will there curse thee for the
inheritance which thou didst entail upon them.


He tore him from his miserable family at the moment the wife
was about to embrace his knees, and to ask his pardon. 
Faustus wished to comfort her; but the Devil grasped him, and
placed him once more beneath the gibbet at Worms.


Night sunk dark upon the earth.  Faustus stood gazing on
the remains of his unfortunate son; madness glowed in his brain,
and he cried, in the wild tone of despair:


“Devil, let me bury this poor victim; take then my life,
and bear me to hell, where I shall p. 277never again
see men in flesh and bone.  I have learnt to know them; I am
disgusted with them, with their destination, with the world, and
with life.  Since one good action brings on my head such
inexpressible evils, I have reason to believe that the wicked
only have a right to happiness.  If such be the order of
things in this world, hurl me at once into hell.  Its
darkness is a thousand times preferable to the light of day.


Devil.  Not so fast, Faustus.  In the first
place, I take away from thee thy mighty magic rod, and confine
thee in the narrow circle which I draw around thee.  Here
shalt thou listen to me, and howl and tremble.  I will
unfold to thee the consequences of thy deeds, and will
assassinate thee through downright despair.


“Fool! thou sayest thou hast learnt to know man! 
Where?  How and when hast thou attained this
knowledge?  Hast thou ever sounded his nature?  Hast
thou separated from him that which he has acquired, and which is
foreign to him?  Hast thou distinguished that which proceeds
from his heart, from that which is merely p. 278the affect
of an imagination corrupted by artifice?  Hast thou compared
the wants and the desires resulting from his nature, with those
which he owes to civilisation?  Hast thou considered man in
his proper shape, where each of his movements bears the stamp of
his inward disposition?  Thou hast taken the mask of
society for his natural figure; and thou hast only known
that man whom his titles, his rank, his riches,
his power, and his acquirements have
corrupted.  Thou hast only known him who has
sacrificed his nature to thy own idol,—to
vanity.  Thou hast merely frequented palaces and courts,
where men spurn away the unfortunate, and laugh at the complaints
of the oppressed, whilst they are dissipating in revel-rout and
roar that which they have robbed them of.  Thou hast seen
the sovereigns of the world; thou hast seen tyrants surrounded by
their parasites and their infamous courtesans; and thou hast seen
priests who make use of religion as an instrument of
oppression.  Such are the men thou hast seen, and not him
who groans under the heavy yoke, and comforts himself with the
hope of p. 279futurity.  Thou hast passed by
with disdain the hut of the poor and simple man, who does not
even know your artificial wants by name, who gains his bread by
the sweat of his brow, shares it faithfully with his wife and
children, and rejoices, at the last moment of his life, in having
completed his long and laborious task.  If thou hadst opened
his door, thou wouldst not indeed have found a vain ideal of
heroic and over-refined virtue, which is only the offspring of
your vices and your crimes; but thou wouldst have seen a man who,
in meekness and resigned magnanimity, shows more force of soul,
than do your renowned heroes in their blood-stained fields of
battle, or your ministers in their perfidious cabinets.  If
it were not for these, and for your priests, and above all for
your false philosophers, the gates of hell would soon be
closed.  Canst thou say that thou knowest man, when thou
hast only sought for him in the paths of vice and crime? 
Dost thou know thyself?  I will make your wounds yet deeper,
and pour poison into them.  But if I had a thousand human
tongues, and were to keep thee here p. 280confined
for as many years, I should still be unable to enumerate to thee
all the frightful consequences of thy actions and thy
temerity.  Know now the result of thy life, and remember,
that I have scarcely fulfilled one of thy insensate desires
without having forewarned thee to check it.  It is by thy
command that I have interrupted the course of things, and
committed crimes which I myself could scarcely have imagined; so
that, devil as I am, I am not so bad as thyself.


“Dost thou remember the nun Clara, and the voluptuous
night which thou didst pass with her?  But how canst thou
have forgotten her?  Listen now to the consequences.  A
short time after thy departure, the Bishop, who was her friend
and protector, died; and she, having become a mother, was
condemned, as an object of public horror, to be starved with her
child in a dark dungeon.  In her ravenous hunger she fell
upon the newly-born, ate of thy flesh and her own, and prolonged
her existence as long as there was a bone for her to gnaw. 
In what had she sinned?—she who did not comprehend her
crime; she who did not know, p. 281or even
suspect, the author of her ignominy and her frightful
death.  Feel now the result of one single moment of
pleasure, and tremble!  Hast thou not strengthened the
delusion which condemned her?  Must not hell now bear the
reproach of thy crime?  Those people condemned the child as
the spawn of Satan, and murdered the mother under the idea that
she had been possessed by him; and through this thy deed thou
hast bewildered their minds, and those of their posterity.


“Thou wast not more fortunate with the Prince
Bishop.  He caused, it is true, Hans Ruprecht to be buried,
and provided for his family.  He likewise, by the trick I
played him, lost his fat, and became the most mild and merciful
of princes; but he so relaxed the band of social order by his
over-indulgence, that his subjects soon became a horde of
drunkards, sluggards, ruffians, and highwaymen.  The present
Bishop is obliged to be their executioner, and to disperse and
destroy a hundred families, in order that the rest, terrified by
their example, may again become p. 282humanised,
and submit to the laws.  The furies themselves could not do
half the injury to these people which those now do to whom the
Bishop has been obliged to intrust the sword of justice and the
power of vengeance.


“Doctor Robertus, the renowned champion of freedom, the
man after thine own heart, was from his earliest youth an enemy
to the Minister, whom he hated on account of his talents. 
Envy and jealousy caused his independence of spirit; and if he
had been in the situation of the other, he would have adopted
with pleasure the most cruel principles of despotism, for which
his wild and ferocious heart was only formed.  The honest
man was the Minister; Robertus was a monster, who would have set
the whole world in a blaze, and has done it partly, in order to
satisfy his boundless ambition.  Thou didst oblige me to
rescue him, and to furnish him with a large sum of money. 
He made such good use of his freedom, his gold, and the
enthusiasm which his miraculous escape had caused among the
people, that he soon succeeded in stirring up a dreadful
rebellion.  He p. 283armed the peasants; they murdered
the nobility, and desolated the whole land.  The noble
Minister fell a victim to his revenge; and Robertus, the friend
of liberty, the champion of the oppressed, is the author of the
calamitous war of the peasants, which by degrees will spread over
the whole of Germany, and will ravage it.  Murders,
assassinations, robberies, and sacrilege are now committed with
impunity; and thy noble hero stands at the head of a furious
rabble, and threatens to make Germany the cemetery of the human
race.  Satan himself could not have laboured more
effectually for the destruction of mankind, than thou didst when
I was forced by thee to rescue this madman from the stroke of
justice.


“Let us now return to the court of the German prince,
where thou so audaciously didst make thyself the avenger of
virtue and oppressed innocence.  That prince and his
favourite affected virtues which they did not possess; but their
actions contributed to the good of the people, because both had
sense enough to perceive that the happiness of the people
constitutes that of the p.
284prince.  Does the thirsty traveller know, or does
he care, if the spring of which he drinks gushes out of a
mountain filled with poison, provided he cools his hot blood
without receiving any harm?  That hypocrite displeased thee
because he did not answer to thy preconceived high opinion, which
thou, for certain reasons, didst wish to thrust upon me; and I
was compelled to strangle him by thy orders.  His infant son
was destined to succeed him in the government.  His tutors
harassed and oppressed the people, once happy under the dominion
of his father; they corrupted the heart and the mind of the
future regent, who having enervated his body through early
pleasure, they rule him now he is come of age, and are his and
his people’s tyrants.  Hadst thou not compelled me to
murder the father, he would have brought up his son in his own
maxims; he would have developed his faculties, and have made him
a man fit to govern a nation.  The numerous subjects who are
now groaning beneath iron-handed oppression, and whose misery is
all to be imputed to thee, would then have been the happiest in
Germany.  p. 285Let their tears, their despair, and
the horrors of an approaching insurrection, reward thee for
having rashly exercised the duty of a judge.


“Madman! in obedience to thy command, I burnt the castle
of the fierce Wildgrave, with all its inhabitants, with his wife
and his infant.  What crime had they committed?  It was
a moment of delight to me.  If the infant was consumed on
the breast of the mother, it was thy work.  If the Wildgrave
attacked a neighbouring nobleman as the cause of the
conflagration, set fire to his house, and ignominiously whipped
him, it was thy work.  Thousands have already fallen beneath
their reciprocal vengeance, and tranquillity will not be restored
to that part of Germany until the hostile families shall be
completely exhausted and annihilated.  And thus, poor worm,
hast thou avenged the innocent; thou, who all thy life hast been
wallowing in the grossest sensuality; thou, who didst pull me out
of hell merely to satiate thy lusts.  Groan and weep; but I
will overwhelm thee with fresh horrors.


“By thy order I infused the poison of lust p.
286into the heart of the innocent Angelica, she who was
the ornament of her sex and of the world.  Thou didst enjoy
her in the wild intoxication of thy senses, and she scarcely knew
what had happened to her.  Shudder at the
consequences!  I, who find pleasure in evil and destruction,
think with pity and compassion on her end.  She fled from
her native place, and a feeling of shame forced her to conceal
the state in which she found herself, and to which thou hadst
reduced her.  Alone, in solitude, and without help, amid
agonising throes and deadly pains, she became a mother.  The
child died as soon as it saw the light of day.  She, the
wretched victim of thy momentary pleasure, was cast into prison,
and publicly executed as an infanticide.  Thou shouldst have
seen her in the last moments of her life; thou shouldst have seen
her pure blood spouting high into the air, when the sword of the
executioner separated her lovely neck.”


Faustus gave a loud groan.  Despair was raging in his
heart.


Devil.  The daughter of the miser in France, p.
287whom thou didst seduce, and in whose bosom thou didst
cause slumbering desire to awake, became shortly afterwards the
mistress of the youthful king.  She ruled him entirely, and
in order that he might not disturb her in her intercourse with
another lover, she urged him to the disastrous expedition into
Italy, and brought misfortunes upon France which many future
reigns will not be able to heal.  The flower of the French
nobility, and the heroes of the kingdom, are rotting on the
sun-scorched plains of Italy; and the king has returned home
overwhelmed with shame and ignominy.  Thus, wherever thou
hast wandered, thou hast scattered around thee the seeds of
misery, which have sprung up, and will bear fruit to all
eternity.


“Thou didst not pay attention to the look I gave thee
when I tore down the house upon the cruel physicians at
Paris.  I had previously told thee that, by my destructive
hand, thou didst mangle the moral world worse than they did the
flesh of their fellow-creatures.  Thou didst pay no
attention to that look—hear now the cause of p.
288it.  Those wretches deserve to perish beneath the
ruins of their laboratory; but what evil had the poor people
committed who lodged in the lower part of the house, and who were
totally ignorant of what was going forward above their
heads?  Why should an innocent, happy family be crushed
along with those monsters?  To satisfy thy blind vengeance,
I was forced to bury them beneath stones and falling
timbers.  Judge and avenger at the same time, thou hadst not
thought of this.  Consider now all the consequences of thy
delirium and thy folly; cast thine eyes along the whole chain,
extending to the remotest posterity, and then sink beneath the
terrible survey.  Did I not once tell thee that man is much
more rash in his decisions and in his vengeance, than the Devil
is in the accomplishment of wickedness?”


Faustus opened his haggard eyes, and looked towards
heaven.


Devil.  It is deaf to thee.  Be proud of
having lived a moment when thy atrocity was so great that it
almost made the deeds of the devils themselves forgotten.  I
speak of that moment p. 289when thou didst command me to
withdraw the veil which concealed the Eternal from thy
sight.  The angel whose charge it was to register thy sins
averted his face, and struck thy name from the Book of Life.


Faustus (springing up).  Cursed be thou;
cursed be myself; cursed be the hour of my birth; cursed be he
who begot me; cursed be the breast which I sucked!


Devil.  O the delightful moment!  Precious
reward of my toils!  Hell rejoices at thy curses, and
expects a yet more frightful one from thee.  Fool! wast thou
not born free?  Didst thou not bear in thy breast, like all
who live in flesh, the instinct of good as well as of evil? 
Why didst thou transgress, with so much temerity, the bounds
which had been prescribed to thee?  Why didst thou endeavour
to try thy strength with and against Him who is not to be
reached?  Did not God create you in such a manner, that you
were as much elevated above the devils as above the beasts of the
earth?  Did he not grant you the perceptive faculty of good
and evil?  Were p. 290not your will and choice free? 
We wretches are without choice, without will; we are the slaves
of evil and of imperious necessity; constrained and condemned to
all eternity to wish nothing but evil, we are the instruments of
revenge and punishment upon you.  Ye are kings of the
creation, free beings, masters of your destiny, which ye fix
yourselves; masters of the future, which only depends upon your
actions.  It is on account of these prerogatives that we
detest you, and rejoice when, by your follies, your impatience,
and your crimes, you cease to be masters of yourselves.  It
is only in resignation, Faustus, that present or future happiness
consists.  Hadst thou remained what thou wast, and had not
doubt, pride, vanity, and voluptuousness torn thee out of the
happy and limited sphere for which thou wast born, thou mightst
have followed an honourable employment, and have supported thy
wife and children; and thy family, which is now sunk into the
refuse of humanity, would have been blooming and prosperous;
lamented by them, thou wouldst have died calmly on thy bed, and
thy example would p. 291have guided thy posterity along the
thorny path of life.


Faustus.  Ah, the greatest torment of the damned
is, no doubt, to hear the devil preach penitence.


Devil.  It is pleasant enough that you force us to
moralise; but, wretch, if the voice of truth and of penitence
were to echo down from heaven, you would close your ears to
it.


Faustus.  Destroy me at once, and do not kill me
by thy prattling, which tears my heart without convincing my
spirit.  Pour out thy venom, and do not distil it upon me
drop by drop.  I am not to blame if, having sown the seeds
of good, bad has arisen from them.  A good action has caused
the ignominious death of my son, and a good action has
precipitated my family into the most profound misery.


Devil.  Why dost thou boast to me of thy good
deed?  How does it deserve that name?  I suppose
because thou didst give me a command, which, by the by, did not
cost thee much.  To have made the action meritorious, thou
shouldst p. 292have cast thyself into the water,
and have saved the young man at the risk of thine own life. 
I brought him to the shore, and disappeared; he would have known
thee, and, moved by gratitude, would probably have become the
protector, instead of the destroyer, of thy family.


Faustus.  Thou canst torment me, Devil; but thou
canst not, from stupidity, or thou wilt not, from wickedness,
dispel my doubts.  Never have they torn my heart more
venomously than at this moment, when I consider the miseries of
my existence and of my after-destination.  Is human life any
thing else than a tissue of crimes, torments, pains, hypocrisy,
contradictions, and false virtues?  What are free agency,
choice, will, and that so much vaunted faculty of distinguishing
good from evil, if the passions drown the feeble voice of reason,
as the roar of the sea drowns the voice of the pilot whose vessel
is about to be dashed against the rocks?  Is it possible for
man to destroy and root out of his breast the germ of evil which
has been designedly introduced there?  I hate, more bitterly
than ever, the world, my p.
293fellow-creatures, and myself.  Destined to suffer,
why was I born with the desire of being happy?  Born for
darkness, why was I filled with the desire of seeing light? 
Why had the slave the thirst for freedom?  Why had the worm
the wish to fly?  Why had I a boundless imagination, the
teeming mother of bold desires, daring wishes and thoughts? 
Tear from my uncertain and doubtful soul the flesh which envelops
it; destroy in it all remembrance of its ever having animated a
human body: I wish to become henceforward one of you, and only to
live in the desire of evil.  Ah, Devil, this is not so
pleasant to thy ears as the hissing, howling song of despair
which thou didst expect.  But loosen the enchantment which
fetters me in this circle; and let me perform my last sad
duty.  I will not attempt to escape from thee; if I could, I
would not, for the pain of hell cannot be greater than that which
I now feel.


Devil.  Faustus, I am pleased with thy courage,
and I would sooner hear what thou hast said than the wild shriek
of despair.  Be proud that the force of thy spirit has
carried thee even to madness p. 294and
blasphemy, for which the pain of hell awaits thee.  Step out
of thy circle; bury that wretched youth; thy part will then be
played here, and thou must begin another, which will never
end.


Faustus climbed the gibbet, and cut the rope from the neck of
his son.  He then bore him into a neighbouring field which
the plough had lately turned up, and scratching a grave with his
hands, he buried the body of the unfortunate youth.  He then
returned to the Devil, and said, in a wild tone:


“The measure of my wretchedness is full; break now the
vase which can hold nothing more; but I have yet courage to
struggle with thee for my life.  I will not perish like the
slave who yields without resistance to the might of his
master.  Appear to me under whatever form thou wilt, and I
will grapple with thee.  For freedom, for independence, I
once drew thee out of hell; on its verge I will yet assert my
right to both; on the verge of the frightful gulf I will use my
strength, and remember that I once saw thee p. 295tremble
before my magic circle, when I threatened to scourge thee with my
rod.  The tears which thou seest in my eyes ore tears of
indignation, of hate, and of disgust.  Not the fiend, but my
own heart, triumphs over me.


Devil.  Insipid braggart!  With this form I
tear off the mask which belied my courage.  Vengeance is at
hand, and Leviathan is himself once more!


He stood in gigantic stature before him.  His eyes glowed
like full-laden thunder-clouds, which reflect the rays of the
descending sun.  The noise of his breath was like the
rushing of the tempest-blast.  The earth groaned beneath his
iron feet.  The storm rustled in his hair, which waved round
his head like the tail from the threatening comet.  Faustus
lay before him like a worm; for the horrible sight had deprived
him of his senses and his strength.  The Devil uttered a
contemptuous laugh, which hissed over the surface of the earth;
and seizing the trembling being, he tore him to pieces, as a
capricious boy would tear an insect.  He strewed the bloody
members with fury and p. 296disgust about the field, and plunged
with the soul into the depths of hell.


The devils were assembled round Satan, who was consulting with
his princes concerning the punishments which should be inflicted
upon Pope Alexander the Sixth.  His crimes, and the last
moments of his life, had been unparalleled, so that even the
worst devils found themselves at a loss to allot him a punishment
suitable to his deserts.  The Pope stood before his judges,
who treated him as contemptuously as a tribunal of princes treats
an accused person who has nothing else to recommend him than his
being a man.  All of a sudden Leviathan rushed triumphantly
into the midst, held the soul of Faustus on high, and then hurled
it with violence upon the table, saying:


“There you have Faustus!”


He was received with so loud a bellow of joy, that the damned
trembled in their pools: “Welcome, Prince Leviathan! 
There is Faustus!  There is Faustus!”


Satan.  Welcome, prince of hell.  Welcome,
Faustus; we have heard enough of you here.


p.
297Leviathan.  There he is, Satan; see him
yourself.  He has plagued me not a little, but he has been a
good recruit for us, and I hope that thou art contented with my
long sojourn upon earth.  But I entreat thee, for many
centuries to come, to send me no more on such errands; for I am
quite weary of the human race.  I must, however, acknowledge
that this fellow did not badly support the last hour of his life,
hard as it was; but that arose, I suppose, from his having
applied himself in his youth to that philosophy which thou hast
taught mankind.


Satan.  I thank thee, Prince Leviathan; and I
promise thee that thou shalt long continue with me among the
sweet vapours of this place, and scourge the shades of the great
princes of the earth for thy pastime.  Hem! a fine fellow,
and seems to have had quite enough of men and things. 
Despair, audacity, hate, rancour, agony, and pride, have torn
deep furrows in his soul.  He looks even at us and hell
without trembling.  Faustus, art thou become dumb of a
sudden?


Faustus.  Not from fear, I assure thee.  I
have p. 298been bold to one much mightier than
thyself, and therefore am I here.


Satan.  Hey! carry the saucy hound to the pool of
the damned; and after being soused therein, let him be well
scourged by a legion of my most active pages, in order that he
may become a little acquainted with the rules of these
regions.


A devil dragged Faustus to the pool; the legion swarmed after
him.


Leviathan (perceiving the Pope).  Ah!
welcome, Pope Alexander.  I hope you no longer feel any
desire to make a Ganymede of the Devil.


Pope (sighing).  No, alas!


Satan.  Ha, ha, ha!  This is now a good
specimen of the men who at present ravage the earth; but let them
once get to the new world, and they will make it a theatre of
crimes which will put the old one to shame.


Pope.  Would that I could be there too!


Satan.  A wish truly worthy of a pope; but console
thyself,—thy countrymen will murder millions of men for
their gold.


Pope.  What will men not do for gold?


p.
299Faustus came back with his fiendish attendants.


Satan.  Well, Faustus, how do you like your bath,
and those that rubbed you dry?


Faustus.  Maddening and intolerable thought, that
the noble and ethereal part of man must expiate the sins of a
body formed of clay!


The devils laughed till the vaults reëchoed.


Satan.  Bravo, Faustus!  I am convinced, from
thy words and behaviour, that thou art too good for a man. 
I am, besides, much indebted to thee for having invented
Printing, that art which is so singularly useful to us.


Pope.  What, a printer!  He gave himself out
at my court for a gentleman, and won my daughter Lucretia!


Faustus.  Silence, proud Spaniard.  I paid
her richly; and thou wouldst have prostituted thyself to me for a
like sum, if I had been one of thine own stamp.  My noble
invention will sow more good, and will be more profitable to the
human race, than all the popes from St. Peter down to
thyself.


p.
300Satan.  Thou art mistaken, Faustus. 
In the first place, men will rob thee of the honour of having
invented this art.


Faustus.  That is worse than damnation.


Satan.  Observe now this man: he stands before me,
the ruler here, and holds everlasting torments as nothing when
compared with the loss of his fame and glory, those chimeras of
his overheated brain.  In the second place, Faustus, the
shades will descend by hundreds of thousands, will fall upon
thee, and overwhelm thee with curses, for having converted the
little stream which poisoned the human mind into a monstrous
flood.  I, who am the ruler here, and shall gain by it, am
therefore thy debtor; and if thou wilt curse the Eternal, who
either could not or would not make thee better, thou shalt escape
the torments of this place, and I will make thee a prince of my
dark kingdom.


Pope.  Let me be the first to curse, O Satan; as a
pope, I have an undoubted right to the precedence.


Satan.  Observe these men, ye devils, and see p.
301how they outdo ye.  No, Pope; thou didst it when
thy lips kissed the feet of my Leviathan.  Choose,
Faustus.


Faustus stepped forward; raging despair was engraven in
frightful characters on his shadowy face.  He—! 
Who can express what he said?


The devils trembled at his words, and were astonished at his
audacity.  Since hell first existed, no such stillness had
reigned in the dark, frightful kingdom, the abode of eternal
misery.  Faustus broke it, and required Satan to fulfil his
promise.


Satan.  Fool! how canst thou imagine that I, ruler
of hell, will keep my word, as there is no example of a prince of
earth ever having kept his word when he got nothing by so
doing?  If thou canst forget that thou art a man, forget not
that thou standest before the Devil.  My fiendish subjects
turned pale at thy temerity; thy horrid words made my firm and
imperishable throne tremble; and I thought for a moment that I
had risked too much.  Away! thy presence makes me uneasy;
and thou art a proof that man can do more than the Devil can
bear.  Drag him, ye fiends, into p. 302the most
frightful corner; let him there languish in solitude, and madden
at the recollection of his deeds, and of this moment, which he
can never atone for.  Let no shade approach him.  Go,
thou accursed one, and hover alone and abandoned in that land
where neither hope, comfort, nor sleep are found.  Those
doubts which have tormented thee in life shall for ever gnaw thy
soul, and no one shall explain to thee that mystery, the pursuit
of which has brought thee here.  This is the most painful
punishment of all to a philosopher like thee.  Drag him
away, I repeat; torture him.  Seize that Pope, and plunge
him into the hottest pool; for their equals are not to be found
in hell.


After their departure, Satan said to himself, smiling:


“When men wish to represent any thing abominable, they
paint the Devil: let us, therefore, in revenge, when we wish to
represent any thing infamous, depict man; and philosophers,
popes, priests, conquerors, ministers, and authors, shall serve
us as models.”


Footnotes:


[134]  It is not out of fear that I
refrain from giving the names of the German princes who appear in
this work, but because, having discovered the secret springs of
their actions, I should too often have to contradict their lying,
flattering, ignorant historians; and men who willingly allow
themselves to be deceived, might perhaps doubt the truth of my
assertions.  Hercules himself could not clear away all the
ordure which these historians have heaped
up.—Original.


[249] See Taxæ Cancellariæ
Apostolicæ, &c., printed at Rome and Paris.