"Tell me! Signor Asmodeus," cried Leandro Perez; "to whom belongs the carriage stopping before that house?" "It is the property of a rich contador, who comes here every morning to visit a frail beauty, whom this ancient sinner of Moorish race protects, and whom he loves to distraction. He learned last night that his female friend had been unfaithful, and in the fury which this intelligence induced, he wrote her a letter full of reproaches and threats. You would never guess what part the lady took on this occasion: instead of having the impudence to deny the fact, she sent to the treasurer this morning, owning that he was justly angered at her conduct; that he ought henceforth to despise her, since she had been capable of deceiving so gallant a lover; that she acknowledged and detested her fault; and that, to punish herself, she had already sacrificed those locks which he had so often admired; in short, that she had resolved to consecrate, in a nunnery, the remainder of her days to repentance.
"The old dotard was unable to withstand the well-feigned remorse of his mistress, and has risen thus early to console her. He found her in tears; and so well has she played her part that he has just assured her of a full pardon for the past: nay, more, to compensate for the sacrifice of her much-prized tresses, he is, at this moment, promising to enable her to cut a figure in the world, by purchasing for her a handsome country-house, which is just about to be sold, near the Escurial."
"All the shops are opened, I perceive," said the Student; "and I observe already a cavalier now entering a tavern." "That cavalier," replied Asmodeus, "is a youth of family, who is troubled with the prevailing mania for writing nonsense, that he may pass as an author. He is not absolutely without talent; he has even enough to enable him to detect its want in the dramas which are at present produced on your stage; but not so much as to qualify him to write a tolerable one himself. He has gone into that house to order a grand repast: he gives a dinner to-day to four comedians, whose good graces he would purchase in favour of a wretched comedy of his concoction, which he is on the point of presenting to their company. What will not money do?
"Apropos of authors," continued the Devil, "there now are two just meeting in the street. Do you notice the mocking style of their salutes? They despise each other thoroughly: and they are right. One of them writes as easily as the poet Crispinus, whom Horace compares to the bellows of a forge; and the other wastes a vast deal of time in composing works as cold and insipid as a water ice."
"Who is the little man descending from his carriage at the door of that church?" asked Zambullo. "He is a person worthy your remark," replied the Cripple. "It is not yet ten years since he abandoned the office of a notary, in which he was senior clerk, to shut himself up in the Carthusian monastery of Saragoza. At the end of a six-months noviciate, however, he left the convent, and re-appeared in Madrid; where those who had formerly known him were amazed to see him all at once become one of the principal members of the Council of the Indies. His sudden fortune is still the wonder of the town. Some say he has sold himself to the Devil; others, that he is the beloved of some rich dowager; and some, again, insist that he must have found a treasure." "Well! you know all about it, of course," interrupted Don Cleophas. "I should wonder if I did not," replied the Demon; "but I will unveil this mystery for you.
"During his aforesaid noviciate, it happened one day that our intended monk, in digging a deep hole in his appointed garden, lighted on a brazen coffer, which he opened, of course, and within which he found a golden casket containing some thirty diamonds of the purest water. Although the pious horticulturist knew little enough of precious stones, he shrewdly suspected that whoever had placed them there was wiser; so resolving on the course which, in one of the comedies of Plautus, is adopted by Gripus, who abandons fishing when he has found a treasure, he threw off his gown, returned to Madrid, and by the assistance of a friendly jeweller, transmuted his diamonds into pieces of gold, and his pieces of gold into an office which has procured for him an exalted station in society."
