CHAPTER VI.
NEW OBJECTS DISPLAYED TO DON CLEOPHAS; AND HIS REVENGE ON DONNA THOMASA.
The Demon now directed the Student's attention to another part of the city. "You see," he continued, "that house which is directly under us: it contains something curious enough,—a man loaded with debt and sleeping profoundly." "Of course then," said Leandro, "he is a person of distinction?" "Precisely so," answered Asmodeus: "he is a marquis, possessed of a hundred thousand ducats per annum, but whose expenses, nevertheless, exceed his income. His table and his mistresses require that he should support them with credit, but that causes him no anxiety; on the contrary, when he opens an account with a tradesman, he thinks that the latter is indebted to him. 'It is you,' said he the other day to a draper, 'it is you, that I shall henceforth trust with the execution of my orders; it is a preference which you owe to my esteem.'
"While the marquis enjoys so tranquilly the sweet repose of which he deprives his creditors, look at a man who——" "Stay, Signor Asmodeus," interrupted Don Cleophas hastily; "I perceive a carriage in the street, and cannot let it pass without asking what it contains." "Hush," said the Cripple, lowering his voice, as though he feared he should be heard:—"learn that that vehicle conceals one of the most dignified personages in this kingdom, a president, who is going to amuse himself with an elderly lady of Asturia, who is devoted to his pleasures. That he may not be known, he has taken the precaution of imitating Caligula, who on a similar occasion disguised himself in a wig.
"But,—to return to the picture I was about to present to your sight when you interrupted me,—observe, in the very highest part of the mansion, where sleeps the marquis, a man who is writing in a chamber filled with books and manuscripts." "He is probably," said Zambullo, "the steward, labouring to devise some means for discharging his master's obligations." "Excellent," exclaimed the Devil; "that, indeed, forms a great part of the amusement of such gentry in the service of noblemen! They seek rather to profit from derangement of their masters' affairs than to put them in order. He is not, then, the steward whom you see; he is an author: the marquis keeps him in his house, to obtain the reputation of a patron of literature." "This author," replied Don Cleophas, "is apparently a man of eminence." "Judge for yourself!" replied the Demon. "He is surrounded by a thousand volumes, and is composing one, on Natural History, in which there will not be a line of his own. He pillages these books and manuscripts without mercy; and, although he does nothing but arrange and connect his larcenies, he has more vanity than the most original writer upon earth.