The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

by Francisco de Quevedo

I left these late repentants, (as it appeared) in exchange for worse, which were shut up in a base court, and the nastiest that ever I saw. These were such as had ever in their mouths, “God is merciful, and will pardon me.” “How can this be,” said I, “that these people should be damned? when condemnation is an act of justice, not of mercy.” “I perceive you are simple,” quoth the devil, “for half these you see here, are condemned with the mercy of God in their mouths. And to explain myself, consider I pray’e how many sinners are there, that go on in their ways, in spite of reproof, and good counsel; and still this is their answer, ‘God is merciful, and will not damn a soul for so small a matter.’ But let them talk of mercy as they please, so long as they persist in a wicked life, we are like to have their company at last.” “By your argument,” said I, “there’s no trusting to Divine Mercy.” “You mistake me,” quoth the devil, “for every good thought and work flows from that mercy. But this I say: He that perseveres in his wickedness, and makes use of the name of mercy, only for a countenance to his impieties, does but mock the Almighty, and has no title to that mercy. For ’tis vain to expect mercy from above, without doing anything in order to it. It properly belongs to the righteous and the penitent; and they that have the most of it upon the tongue have commonly the least thought of it in their hearts: and ’tis a great aggravation of guilt, to sin the more, in confidence of an abounding mercy. It is true that many are received to mercy, that are utterly unworthy of it, which is no wonder, since no man of himself can deserve it: but men are so negligent of seeking it betimes, that they put that off to the last, which should have been the first part of their business; and many times their life is at end, before they begin their repentance.” I did not think so damned a doctor could have made so good a sermon. And there I left him.

I came next to a noisome dark hole, and there I saw a company of dyers, all in dirt and smoke, intermixed with the devils, and so alike that it would have posed the subtlest inquisitor in Spain to have said, which were the devils and which the dyers.

There stood at my elbow a strange kind of mongrel devil, begot betwixt a black and a white; with a head so bestruck with little horns, that it looked at a distance like a hedgehog. I took the boldness to ask him, where they quartered the Sodomites, the old women and the cuckolds. “As for the cuckolds,” said he, “they are all over hell, without any certain quarter or station; and in truth, ’tis no easy matter to know a cuckold from a devil, for (like kind husbands) they wear their wives’ favours still, and the very same headpieces in hell that they wore living in the world. As to the Sodomites, we have no more to do with them than needs must; but upon all occasions, we either fly, or face them: for if ever we come to give them a broadside, ’tis ten to one but we get a hit betwixt wind and water; and yet we fence with our tails, as well as we can, and they get now and then a flap o’er the mouth into the bargain. And for the old women, we make them stand off; for we take as little pleasure in them, as you do: and yet the jades will be persecuting us with their passions; and ye shall have a bawd of five-and-fifty do ye all the gambols of a girl of fifteen. And yet, after all this, there’s not an old woman in hell; for let her be as old as Paul’s — bald, blind, toothless, wrinkled, decrepit: this is not long of her age, she’ll tell you; but a terrible fit of sickness last year, that fetched off her hair, and brought her so low that she has not yet recovered her flesh again. She lost her eyes by a hot rheum; and utterly spoiled her teeth with cracking of peach-stones and eating of sweet-meats when she was a maid. And when the weight of her years has almost brought both ends together, ’tis nothing she’ll tell ye but a crick she has got in her back: and though she might recover her youth again, by confessing her age, she’ll never acknowledge it.”

My next encounter was, a number of people making their moan that they had been taken away by sudden death. “That’s an impudent lie,” cried a devil, “(saving this gentleman’s presence) for no man dies suddenly. Death surprises no man, but gives all men sufficient warning and notice.” I was much taken with the devil’s civility and discourse; which he pursued after this manner. “Do ye complain,” says he, “of sudden death? that have carried death about ye, ever since you were born; that have been entertained with daily spectacles of carcasses and funerals; that have heard so many sermons upon the subject; and read so many good books upon the frailty of life and the certainty of death. Do ye not know that every moment ye live brings ye nearer to your end? Your clothes wear out, your woods and your houses decay, and yet ye look that your bodies should be immortal. What are the common accidents and diseases of life, but so many warnings to provide yourself for a remove? Ye have death at the table, in your daily food and nourishment; for your life is maintained by the death of other creatures. And you have the lively picture of it, every night for your bedfellow. With what face then can you charge your misfortunes upon sudden death? that have spent your whole life, both at bed, and at board, among so many remembrances of your mortality. No, no; change your style, and hereafter confess yourselves to have been careless and incredulous. You die, thinking you are not to die yet; and forgetting that death grows upon you, and goes along with ye from one end of your life to the other, without distinguishing of persons or ages, sex or quality; and whether it finds ye well or ill-doing; As the tree falls, so it lies.”

Turning toward my left hand, I saw a great many souls that were put up in gallipots, with Assa fœtida, Galbanum, and a company of nasty oils that served them for syrup. “What a damned stink is here,” cried I, stopping my nose. “We are now come undoubtedly to the devil’s house of office.” “No, no,” said their tormentor, (which was a kind of a yellowish complexioned devil) “’tis a confection of apothecaries. A sort of people, that are commonly damned for compounding the medicines by which their patients hoped to be saved. To give them their due, these are your only true and chemical philosophers; and worth a thousand of Raymund Lullius, Hermes, Geber, Ruspicella, Avicen, and their fellows; ’tis true, they have written fine things of the transmutation of metals; but did they ever make any gold? Or if they did, we have lost the secret. Whereas your apothecaries, out of a little puddle-water, a bundle of rotten sticks, a box of flies—nay out of toads, vipers, and a Sir Reverence itself, will fetch ye gold ready minted, and fit for the market; which is more than all your philosophical projectors ever pretended to. There is no herb so poisonous, (let it be hemlock) nor any stone so dry, (suppose the pumice itself) but they’ll draw silver out of it. And then for words, ’tis impossible to make up any word out of the four-and-twenty letters, but they’ll show ye a drug, or a plant of the name; and turn the alphabet into as good money as any’s in your pocket. Ask them for an eye-tooth of a flying toad; they’ll tell ye, yes, ye may have of it, in powder; or if you had rather have the infusion of a tench of the mountains, in a little eel’s milk, ’tis all one to them. If there be but any money stirring, you shall have what you will, though there be no such thing in nature. So that it looks as if all the plants and stones of the creation had their several powers and virtues given them, only for the apothecaries’ sakes; and as if words themselves had been only made for their advantage. Ye call them apothecaries, but instead of that, I pray’e call them armourers; and their shops, arsenals; are not their medicines as certain death as swords, daggers, or muskets? while their patients are purged and blooded into the other world, without any regard either to distemper, measure, or season.

“If you will now see the pleasantest sight you have seen yet, walk up but these two steps, and you shall see a jury (or conspiracy) of barber-surgeons, sitting upon life and death.” You must think that any divertisement there was welcome, so that I went up, and found it in truth a very pleasant spectacle. These barbers were most of them chained by the middle, their hands at liberty, and every one of them a cittern about his neck, and upon his knees a chess-board; and still as he reached to have a touch at the cittern, the instrument vanished; and so did the chess-board, when he thought to have a game at draughts; which is directly tantalising the poor rogues, for a cittern is as natural to a barber as milk to a calf. Some of them were washing of asses’ brains, and putting them in again; and scouring of negroes to make them white.

When I had laughed my fill at these fooleries, my next discovery was, of a great many people, grumbling and muttering, that there was nobody looked after them; no not so much as to torment them; as if their tails were not as well worth the toasting as their neighbours’. Answer was made, that being a kind of devils themselves, they might put in for some sort of authority in the place, and execute the office of tormentors. This made me ask what they were. And a devil told me (with respect) that they were a company of ungracious, left-handed wretches, that could do nothing aright. And their grievance was that they were quartered by themselves; but not knowing whether they were men or no, or indeed what else to make of them, we did not know how to match them, or in what company to put them. In the world they are looked upon as ill omens; and let any man meet one of them, upon a journey in a morning, fasting, ’tis the same thing as if a hare had crossed the way upon him; he presently turns head in a discontent, and goes to bed again. Ye know that Scævola, when he found his mistake, in killing another for Porsenna (the secretary, for the prince) burned his right hand in revenge of the miscarriage; now the severity of the vengeance, was not so much the maiming or the crippling of himself, but the condemning of himself to be for ever left-handed. And so ’tis with a malefactor that suffers justice; the shame and punishment does not lie so much in the loss of his right hand, as that the other is left. And it was the curse of an old bawd, to a fellow that had vexed her, that he might go to the devil by the stroke of a left-handed man. If the poets speak truth, (as ’twere a wonder if they should not) the left is the unlucky side; and there never came any good from it. And for my last argument against these creatures; the goats and reprobates stand upon the left hand, and left-handed men are, in effect, a sort of creature that’s made to do mischief; nay whether I should call them men, or no, I know not.

Hereupon, a devil beckoned me to come softly to him; and so I did, without a word speaking or the least noise in the world. “Now,” says he, “if you’ll see the daily exercise of ill-favoured women, look through that lattice window.” And there I saw such a kennel of ugly bitches, you would have blest yourself. Some, with their faces so pounced and speckled, as if they had been scarified, and newly passed the cupping-glass; with a world of little plaisters, long, round, square; and briefly, cut out into such variety, that it would have posed a good mathematician to have found out another figure; and you would have sworn that they had been either at cat’s play or cuffs. Others, were scraping their faces with pieces of glass; tearing up their eyebrows by the roots, like mad; and some that had none to tear were fetching out of their black boxes, such as they could get, or make. Others were powdering and curling their false locks, or fastening their new ivory teeth in the place of their old ebony ones. Some were chewing lemon peel, or cinnamon, to countenance a foul breath; and raising themselves upon their ciopines, that their view might be the fairer and their fall the deeper. Others were quarrelling with their looking-glasses, for showing them such hags’ faces: and cursing the State of Venice for entertaining no better workmen. Some were stuffing out their bodies, like pack saddles, to cover secret deformities: and some again had so many hoods over their faces, to conceal the ruins, that I could hardly discern what they were; and these passed for penitents. Others, with their pots of hog’s grease and pomatum were sleeking and polishing their faces, and indeed their foreheads were bright and shining, though there were neither suns nor stars in that firmament. Some there were (in fine) that would have fetched a man’s guts up at’s mouth, to see them with their masques of after-births; and with their menstruous slibber slobbers, daubing one another to take away the heats and bubos. “Nasty and abominable!” I cried. “Well,” quoth the devil, “you see now how far a woman’s wit and invention will carry her to her own destruction.” I could not speak one word for astonishment at so horrid a spectacle, till I had a little recollected myself; and then said I, “If I may deal freely without offence, I dare defy all the devils in hell to outdo these women. But pray’e let’s be gone, for the sight of them makes my very heart ache.”

“Turn about then,” said the devil, and there was a fellow sitting in a chair, all alone; never a devil near him; no fire or frost; no heat or cold, or anything else, that I could perceive, to torment him; and yet crying and roaring out the most hideously of anything I had yet heard in hell; tearing his flesh, and beating his body, like a bedlam; and his heart, all the while, bleeding at his eyes. Good Lord, thought I, what ails this wretch, to yell out thus when nobody hurts him! So I went up to him. “Friend,” said I, “what’s the meaning of all this fury and transport? for, so far as I can see, there’s nothing to trouble you.” “No, no,” says he with a horrid outcry, and with all the extravagances of a man in rage and despair, “you do not see my tormentors; but the all-searching eye of the Almighty sees my pains as well as my transgressions, and with a severe and implacable justice has condemned me to suffer punishments answerable to my crimes.” (Which words he uttered with redoubled clamours.) “My executioners are in my soul, and all the plagues of hell in my conscience. My memory serves me instead of a cruel devil. The remembrance of the good I should have done, and omitted; and of the ill I should not have done, and did. The remembrance of the wholesome counsels I have rejected, and of the ill example I have given. And for the aggravation of my misery; where my memory leaves afflicting me, my understanding begins: showing me the glories and beatitudes I have lost, which others enjoy, who have gained heaven with less anxiety and pain than I have endured to compass my damnation. Now am I perpetually meditating on the comforts, beauties, felicities, and raptures of paradise, only to enflame and exasperate my despair in hell; begging in vain but for one moment’s interval of ease, without obtaining any; for my will is also as inexorable as either my memory or my understanding. And these (my friend of the other world) are the three faculties of my soul, which Divine Justice, for my sins, has converted into three tormentors, that torture me without noise; into three flames, that burn me without consuming. And if I chance at any time to have the least remission or respite, the worm of my conscience gnaws my soul, and finds it, to an insatiable hunger, an immortal aliment and entertainment.” At that word, turning towards me with a hellish yell, “Mortal,” says he, “learn, and be assured from me, that all those that either bury or misemploy their talents, carry a hell within themselves, and are damned even above ground.” And so he returned to his usual clamours. Upon this, I left him, miserably sad and pensive. Well, thought I, what a weight of sin lies upon this creature’s conscience! Whereupon the devil observing me in a muse, told me in my ear, that this fellow had been an atheist, and believed neither God nor devil. “Deliver me then,” said I, “from that unsanctified wisdom, that serves us only for our further condemnation.”

I was gone but a step or two aside, and I saw a world of people running after burning chariots, with a great many souls in them, and the devils tearing them with pincers; and before them marched certain officers, making proclamation of their sentence, which with much ado I got near enough to hear, and it was to this effect. “Divine Justice hath appointed this punishment to the scandalous, for giving ill examples to their neighbours.” And at the same time, several of the damned laid their sins to their charge, and cried out, that ’twas ’long of them they were thus tormented. So that the scandalous were punished both for their own sins and for the offences of those they had misled to their destruction. And these are they of whom ’tis said, that they had better never have been born.