RECAB.
Have you obtained permission for me?
BELPHEGOR.
Yes; I represented you as an ingenious spirit, and likely by practice to become an accomplished tempter. You must endeavour to justify my praises, or I shall be disgraced.
RECAB.
I will certainly apply myself industriously to the employment, for fear I should be sent back into the mines. I have been conversing with the dead, as you advised me, but have not obtained from them any clear insight into the nature of man. I have learned that human life is miserable, and that no man can leave without bitter regret the world in which he has been so wretched. I have also discovered that men are the authors of their own unhappiness; that they are miserable, not by necessity but choice. The first desire of man is to be happy; the power of being happy is given to him, and he prefers the being miserable. The mines may, perhaps, have impaired my faculties, but these things appear to me to be very difficult studies.
BELPHEGOR.
Men are full of contradictions, certainly, but still they may be understood. Come, let us set out; I have an order for the gate to be opened to us.
RECAB.
What have you in that bag?