The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

by Francisco de Quevedo

The good man would have proceeded, if he had not been taken off by the rattling of a gilt coach, wherein was a courtier that was blown up as big as pride and vanity could make him. He sat stiff and upright, as if he had swallowed a stake; and made it his glory to show himself in that posture: it would have hurt his eyes, to have exchanged a glance with anything that was vulgar, and therefore he was very sparing of his looks. He had a deep laced ruff on, that was right Spanish, which he wore erect, and stiff starched, that a man would have thought he had carried his head in a paper-lanthorn. He was a great studier of set faces, and much affected with looking politic and big. But, for his arms and body, he had utterly lost or forgotten the use of them: for he could neither bow nor move his hat to any man that saluted him; no, nor so much as turn from one side to the other; but sat as if he had been boxed up, like a Bartlemew-baby. After this magnificent statue, followed a swarm of gaudy butterfly-lackeys: and his lordship’s company in the coach was a buffoon and a parasite. “Oh blessed prince!” said I, “to live at this rate of ease and splendour, and to have the world at will! What a glorious train is that! Beyond all doubt, there never was a great fortune better bestowed.” With that, the old man took me up, and told me that the judgment I had made upon this occasion, from one end to the other, was all dotage and mistake; save only, when I said he had the world at will: “and in that,” says he, “you have reason; for what is the world but labour, vanity, and folly; which is likewise the composition and entertainment of this cavalier.

“As for the train that follows him let it be examined, and my life for yours, you shall find more creditors in’t, than servants: there are bankers, jewellers, scriveners, brokers, mercers, drapers, tailors, vintners; and these are properly the stays and supporters of this animated machine. The money, meat, drink, robes, liveries, wages, all comes out of their pockets; they have this honour for their security; and must content themselves with promises, and fair words for full satisfaction, unless they had rather have a footman with a cudgel for their pay-master. And after all, if this gallant were taken to shrift, or that a man could enter into the secrets of his conscience, I dare undertake, it would appear that he that digs in a mine for his bread lives ten thousand times more at ease than the other, with beating of his brains night and day for new shifts, tricks and projects to keep himself above water.

“Observe his companions now, his fool and his flatterer. They are too hard for him, ye see; and eat, drink, and make merry at his expense. What greater misery or shame in the world, than for a man to make a friendship with such rascals, and to spend his time and estate in so brutal, and insipid a society! It costs him more (beside his credit) to maintain that couple of coxcombs than would have bought him the conversation of a brace of grave and learned philosophers. But will ye now see the bottom of this scandalous and dishonourable kindness? ‘My lord,’ says the buffoon, ‘you were most infallibly wrapt in your mother’s smock; for let me be — if ye have not set all the ladies about the court agog.’ ‘The very truth is,’ cries the parasite, ‘all the rest of the nobility look like corn-cutters to you; and indeed, wherever you come, you have still the eyes of the whole company upon you.’ ‘Go to, go to, gentlemen,’ says my lord, ‘you must not flatter your friends. This is more your courtesy than my desert; and I have an obligation to you for your kindness.’ After this manner these asses knab and curry one another, and play the fools by turns.”

The old man had his words yet between his teeth, when there passed just by us a lady of pleasure, of so excellent a shape and garb, that it was impossible to see her without a passion for her, and no less impossible to look upon anything else, so long as she was to be seen. They that had seen her once were to see her no more, for she turned her face still to new-comers. Her motion was graceful and free. One while she’d stare ye full in the eyes, under colour of opening her hood, to set it in better order. By and by she’d steal a look at ye with one eye, and a side face, from the corner of her visor, like a witch that’s afraid to be known when she comes from a caterwaul. And then out comes the delicate hand, and discovers the more delicious neck, and breasts, to adjust the handkercher or the scarf, or to remove some other grievance that made her ladyship uneasy. Her hair was most artificially disposed into careless rings; and the best red and white in nature was in her cheeks, if that of her lips and teeth did not exceed it. In a word, all she looked upon was her own; and this was the vision for my money, from all the rest. As she was marching off, I could not choose but take up a resolution to follow her. But my old man laid a block in the way, and stopped me at the very starting; which was an affront to a man that was both in love and in haste, that might very well stir his choler. “My officious friend,” said I, “he that does not love a woman sucked a sow. And questionless, he must be either blind or barbarous that’s proof against the charms of so divine a beauty. Nor would any but a sot let slip the blessed opportunity of so fair an encounter. A handsome woman? why, what was she made for, but to be loved? And he that has her, has all that’s lovely or desirable in nature. For my own part, I would renounce the world for the fellow of her, and never desire anything either beyond her, or beside her. What lightning does she carry in her eyes! What charms, and chains in her looks, and motions, for the very souls of her beholders! Was ever anything so clear as her forehead? or so black as her eyebrows? One would swear that her complexion had taken a tincture of vermilion and milk: and that nature had brought her into the world with pearl and rubies in her mouth. To speak all in little, she’s the masterpiece of the creation, worthy of infinite praise, and equal to our largest desires and imaginations.”

Here the old man cut me short, and bade me make an end of my discourse, “for thou art,” said he, “a man of much wonder, and small experience, and delivered over to the spirit of folly and blindness. Thou hast thy eyes in thy head, and yet not brain enough to know either why they were given thee, or how to use them. Understand then that the office of the eye is to see, but ’tis the privilege of the soul to distinguish and choose, whereas you either do the contrary, or else nothing, which is worse. He that trusts his eyes, exposes his mind to a thousand torments and confusions: he shall take clouds for mountains, straight for crooked, one colour for another, by reason of an undue distance, or an indisposed medium. We are not able sometimes to say which way a river runs, till we throw in a twig or straw to find out the current. And what will you say now, if this prodigious beauty, your new mistress, prove as gross a cheat and imposture as any of the rest? She went to bed last night as ugly as a witch; and yet this morning she comes forth in your opinion as glorious as an angel. The truth of it is, she hires all by the day; and if you did but see this puppet taken to pieces, you would find her little else but paint and plaister. To begin her anatomy at the head. You must know that the hair she wears is borrowed of a tire-woman, for her own was blown off by an unlucky wind from the coast of Naples. Or if she has any left, she keeps it private, as a memorial of her antiquity. She is beholden to the pencil for her eyebrows and complexion. And upon the whole matter, she is but an old picture refreshed. But the wonder is, to see a picture, with life and motion; unless perchance she has got the necromancer’s receipt that made himself young again in his glass bottle. For all that you see of her that’s good, comes from distilled waters, essences, powders, and the like; and to see the washing of her face would fright the devil. She abounds in pomanders, sweet waters, Spanish pockets, perfumed drawers; and all little enough to qualify the poisonous whiffs she sends from her toes and arm-pits, which would otherwise out-stink ten thousand pole-cats. She cannot choose but kiss well, for her lips are perpetually bathed in oil and grease. And he that embraces her, shall find the better half of her the tailor’s, and only a stuffing of cotton and canvas, to supply the defects of her body. When she goes to bed, she puts off one half of her person with her shoes. What do ye think of your adored beauty now? or have your eyes betrayed ye? Well, well; confess your error and mend it; and know that (without more descant upon this woman) ’tis the design and glory of most of the sex to lead silly men captive. Nay take the best of them, and what with the trouble of getting them and the difficulty of pleasing them, he that comes off best will find himself a loser at the foot of the account. I could recommend you here to other remedies of love, inseparable from the very sex, but what I have said already, I hope, will be sufficient.”

THE END OF THE FIFTH VISION

THE SIXTH VISION OF HELL

Being one autumn at a friend’s house in the country (which was indeed a most delicious retreat) I took a walk one moonlight night into the park, where all my past visions came fresh into my head again, and I was well enough pleased with the meditation. At length the humour took me to leave the path, and go further into the wood: what impulse carried me to this, I know not. Whether I was moved by my good angel, or some higher power, but so it was that in half a quarter of an hour, I found myself a great way from home, and in a place where ’twas no longer night; with the pleasantest prospect round about me that ever I saw since I was born. The air was calm and temperate; and it was no small advantage to the beauty of the place, that it was both innocent and silent. On the one hand, I was entertained with the murmurs of crystal rivulets; on the other, with the whispering of the trees; the birds singing all the while either in emulation, or requital of the other harmonies. And now, to show the instability of our affections and desires, I was grown weary even of tranquillity itself, and in this most agreeable solitude began to long for company.

When in the very instant (to my great wonder) I discovered two paths, issuing from one and the same beginning but dividing themselves forwards, more and more, by degrees, as if they liked not one another’s company. That on the right hand was narrow, almost beyond imagination; and being very little frequented, it was so overgrown with thorns and brambles, and so stony withal, that a man had all the trouble in the world to get into’t. One might see, however, the prints and marks of several passengers that had rubbed through, though with exceeding difficulty; for they had left pieces of heads, arms, legs, feet, and many of them their whole skins behind them. Some we saw yet upon the way, pressing forward, without ever so much as looking back; and these were all of them pale-faced, lean, thin, and miserably mortified. There was no passing for horsemen; and I was told that St. Paul himself left his horse, when he went into’t. And indeed, there was not the footing of any beast to be seen. Neither horse nor mule, nor the track of any coach or chariot. Nor could I learn that any had passed that way in the memory of man. While I was bethinking myself of what I had seen, I spied at length a beggar that was resting himself a little to take breath; and I asked him what inns or lodgings they had upon that road. His answer was that there was no stopping there, till they came to their journey’s end. “For this,” said he, “is the way to paradise, and what should they do with inns or taverns, where there are so few passengers? Do not you know that in the course of nature, to die is to be born, to live is to travel; and the world is but a great inn, after which, it is but one stage either to pain or glory?” And with these words he marched forward, and bade me God-b’w’ye, telling me withal that it was time lost to linger in the way of virtue, and not safe to entertain such dialogues as tend rather to curiosity than instruction. And so he pursued his journey, stumbling, tearing his flesh, and sighing, and groaning at every step; and weeping as if he thought to soften the stones with his tears. This is no way for me, thought I to myself; and no company neither; for they are a sort of beggarly, morose people, and will never agree with my humour. So I drew back and struck off into the left-hand way.

And there I found company enough and room for more. What a world of brave cavaliers! Gilt coaches, rich liveries, and handsome, lively lasses, as glorious as the sun! Some were singing and laughing, others tickling one another and toying; some again, at their cheese-cakes and China oranges, or appointing a set at cards: so that taking all together, I durst have sworn I had been at the park. This minded me of the old saying, “Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee thy manners;” and to save the credit of my education, I put myself into the noble mode, and jogged on. And there was I at the first dash up to the ears, in balls, plays, masquerades, collations, dalliances, amours, and as full of joy as my heart could hold.