CHAPTER XX.
OF THE LAST HISTORY RELATED BY ASMODEUS: HOW, WHILE CONCLUDING IT, HE WAS SUDDENLY INTERRUPTED; AND OF THE DISAGREEABLE MANNER, FOR THE WITTY DEMON, IN WHICH HE AND DON CLEOPHAS WERE SEPARATED.
"Pablos de Bahabon, son of an alcade of a village in Old Castile, after having divided with his sister and brother the small inheritance which their father, although one of the most avaricious of men, had left them, set out for Salamanca with the intention of increasing the number of students in its university. He was well made, not without wit, and was just entering upon his twenty-third year.
"With a thousand ducats in his possession, and a disposition fitted to get rid of them, it was not long before he was the talk of the town. The young men, without exception, were eager to cultivate his friendship; the strife, was who were to be included in the joyous parties which Don Pablos gave every day. I say Don Pablos, because he had assumed the Don, that he might live on equal terms with the students whose nobility would otherwise have demanded a formality in his intercourse with them, anything but pleasant. So well did he love gaiety and the good things of this world, and so badly did he manage the only thing which can always command them,—his purse, that at the end of fifteen months he found it one morning empty. He contrived, however, to get on for some time longer, partly by credit and partly by borrowing; but he soon found that these are resources which speedily fail when a man has no other.
"This having come to pass, his friends perceiving that their visits were anything but agreeable,—to themselves, they ceased to call; and his creditors commenced paying him their respects, with an assiduity which was anything but delightful to poor Don Pablos. For although he assured the latter that he was in daily expectation of receiving bills of exchange from his relations, there were some who were uncivil enough to decline waiting their arrival; and they were so sharp in their legal proceedings that our hero was on the point of finishing his studies in jail, when one day he met an acquaintance while walking on the banks of the Tormes, who said to him: 'Signor Don Pablos, beware! I warn you that an alguazil and his archers are on the look-out for you, and they intend to pay you the honour of a guard on your return to the city.'
"Bahabon, alarmed at this intended public attention to his person, which suited so ill to the state of his private affairs, resolved to shun this demonstration of respect, and instantly took to flight and the road to Corita. In his anxiety for privacy, he had not walked far before he turned off to plunge into a neighbouring wood, in which he resolved to conceal himself until night should lend her friendly shades to enable him to travel more secure from observation. It was at that season of the year when the trees are decked in their proudest apparel, and he therefore chose the best dressed in the forest, that it might spare a covering for him: into this he mounted, and arranged himself upon a branch whose wavy ornaments shrouded him from sight.