The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

by Francisco de Quevedo

So soon as he had done. “There is not in the world,” said I, “a more ridiculous frenzy than yours, to be poetising in hell. The humour sticks close sure, or the fire would have fetched it out.” “Nay,” cried a devil, “these versifiers are a strange generation of buffoons. The time that others spend in tears and groans for their sins and follies, these wretches employ in songs and madrigals; and if they chance to light upon the critical minute, and get a snap at a lady, all’s worth nothing, unless the whole kingdom ring of it, in some miserable sing-song or other, under the name forsooth of Phyllis, Chloris, Silvia, or the like: and the goodly idol must be decked and dressed up with diamond, pearl, rubies, musk, and amber, and both the Indies are too little to furnish eyes, lips, and teeth for this imaginary goddess. And yet after all this magnificence and bounty, it would put the poor devil’s credit upon the stretch, to take up an old petticoat in Long Lane, or a pair of cast-shoes, at the next cobbler’s. Beside, we can give no account either of their country or religion. They have Christian names, but most heretical souls; they are Arabians in their hearts: and in their language, Gentiles; but to say the truth, they fall short of the right Pagans in their manners.” If I stay here a little longer, (said I to myself) this spiteful devil will hit me over the thumbs ere I’m aware; for I was half jealous, that he took me already for a piece of a poet.

For fear of being discovered, I went my way, and my next visit was to the impertinent devotees, whose very prayers are made up of impiety and extravagance. Oh! what sighing was there, and sobbing! groaning and whining! Their tongues were tied up to a perpetual silence; their souls drooping, and their ears condemned to hear eternally the hideous cries and reproaches of a wheezing devil, greeting them after this manner. “Oh, ye impudent and profane abusers of prayer and holy duties! that treat the Lord of heaven and earth in His own house, with less respect than ye would do a merchant upon the Change, sneaking into a corner with your execrable petitions, for fear of being overheard by your neighbours; and yet without any scruple at all, ye can expose and offer them up to that Eternal Purity! shameless wretches that ye are! ‘Lord,’ says one, ‘take the old man, my father, to Thyself, I beseech Thee, that I may have his office and estate. Oh, that this uncle of mine would but march off! There’s a fat Bishopric, and a good Deanery; I would the devil had the incumbent so I had the dignity. Now for a lusty pot of guineas, or a lucky hand at dice if it be Thy pleasure, and then I would not doubt of good matches for my children. Lord, make me His Majesty’s favourite and Thy servant; that I may get what’s convenient, and keep what I have gotten. Grant me this, and I do here engage myself, to entertain six blue-coats, and bind them out to good trades; to set up a lecture for every day of the week; to give one-third part of my clear gains to charitable uses; and another, toward the repairing of Paul’s; and to pay all honest debts, so far as may stand with my private convenience.’ Blind and ridiculous madness! for dust and ashes thus to reason and condition with the Almighty! for beggars to talk of giving, and obtrude their vain and unprofitable offerings upon the inexhaustible fountain of riches and bounty! To pray for those things as blessings, which are commonly showered down upon us for our confusion and punishment. And when, in case your wishes take effect, what becomes of all the sacred vows and promises ye made, in storms, (perhaps) sickness or adversity? so soon as ye have gained your port, recovered your health; or patched up a broken fortune, you show yourselves, all of ye, a pack of cheats; your vows and promises are not worth so many rushes: they are forgotten with your dreams; and to keep a promise upon devotion, that you made out of necessity, is no article of your religion. Why do ye not ask for peace of conscience? Increase of grace? The aid of the Blessed Spirit? But you are too much taken up with the things of this world, to attend those spiritual advantages and treasures; and to consider, that the most acceptable sacrifices and obligations you can make to the Almighty, are purity of mind, an humble spirit, and a fervent charity. The Almighty takes delight to be often called upon, that He may often pour down His blessings upon His petitioners. But such is the corruption of human nature, that men seldom think of Him, unless under afflictions; and therefore it is that they are often visited; for by adversity they are brought to the knowledge and exercise of their duty. I would now have you consider, how little reason there is in your ordinary demands. Put case you have your asking; what are you the better for the grant? since it fails you at last; because you did not ask aright. When you die, your estate goes to your children; and for their parts, you are scarce cold, before you are forgotten. You are not to expect they should bestow much upon works of charity; for if nothing went that way while you were living, they’ll live after your example when you are dead. And, beside, there’s no merit in the case.” At this word some of the poor creatures were about to reply; but the devils had put barnacles upon their lips, that hindered them.

From thence, I went to the witches and wizards; such as pretend to cure man and beast by charms, words, amulets, characters: and these were all burning alive. “These,” says a devil, “are a company of cozening rogues; the most accursed villains in nature. If they help one man, they kill another, and only remove the disease from a worse to a better: and yet there’s no great clamour against them neither; for if the patient recover, he’s well enough content, and the doctor gets both reputation and reward for his pains. If he dies, his mouth is stopped, and forty to one the next heir does him a good turn for the dispatch. So that, hit or miss, all is well at last. If you enter into a debate with them about their remedies, they’ll tell you, they learned the mystery of a certain Jew; and there’s the original of the secret. Now to hear these quacks give you the history of their cures, is beyond all the plays and farces in the world. You shall have a fellow tell you of fifteen people that were run clean through the body, and glad for a matter of three days to carry their puddings in their hands; that in four-and-twenty hours he made them as whole as fishes, and not so much as a scar for a remembrance of the orifice. Ask him, when and where? you’ll find it some twelve hundred leagues off, in a terra incognita, by the token, that at that time he was physician in ordinary to a great prince that died about five-and-twenty years ago.”

“Come, come,” cried a devil, “make an end of this visit, and you shall see those now that Judas told you were ten times worse than himself.” I went along with him, and he brought me to a passage into a great hall, where there was a damned smell of brimstone, and a company of match-makers, as I thought at first; but they proved afterward to be alchymists, and the devils examining them upon interrogatories, who were filthily put to’t, to understand their gibberish. Their talk was much of the planetary metals; gold they called Sol; silver, Luna; tin, Jupiter; copper, Venus. They had about them their furnaces, crucibles, coal, bellows, clay, minerals, dung, man’s blood, powders, and alembics. Some were calcining, others washing, here purifying, there separating. Fixing what was volatile in one place, and rarefying what was fix in another. Some were upon the work of transmutation, and fixing of mercury with monstrous hammers upon an anvil. And after they had resolved the vicious matter, and sent out the subtler parts, that they came to the coppel, all went away in fume. Some again were in a hot dispute, what fuel was best; and whether Raymund Lullius his fire, and no fire, could be anything else than lime; or otherwise to be understood of the light effective of heat, and not of the effective heat of fire. Others were making their entrance upon the great work, after the hermetical method. Here they were watching the progress of their operations, and making their observations upon proportions and colour. While all the rest of these blind oracles lay waiting for the recovery of the materia prima, till they brought themselves to the last cast both of their lives and fortunes, and instead of turning base metals and materials into gold, as they pretended, they made the contrary inversion, and were glad at length to take up with beggarly fools and false coiners. What a stir was there, with crying out, ever and anon! “Look ye, look ye! the old father is got up again; down with him, down with him;” what glossing and commenting upon the old chymical text, that says, “Blessed be Heaven, that has ordered the most excellent thing in nature out of the vilest.” “If so,” quoth one, “let’s try if we can fetch the Philosopher’s Stone out of a common strumpet, which is of all creatures undoubtedly the vilest.” And the word was no sooner out, but a matter of three-and-twenty whores went to pot, but the flesh was so cursedly mawmish and rotten, that they soon gave over the thought of that projection. And then they entered upon a fresh consultation, and concluded, nemine contradicente, that the mathematicians, by that rule, were the only fit matter to work upon; as being most damnably dry, (to say nothing of their divisions among and against themselves) so that with one voice, they called for a parcel of mathematicians, to the furnace, to begin the experiment. But a devil came in just in the God-speed, and told them, “Gentlemen philosophers,” says he, “if you would know the wretchedest and most contemptible thing in the world, it is an alchymist: and we are of opinion, that you’ll make as good philosopher’s stones as the mathematicians. However, for curiosity’s sake, we’ll try for once.” And so he threw them all together into a great caldron; and to say the truth, the poor snakes suffered very contentedly; out of a desire, I suppose, to help on toward the perfecting of the operation.

On the other side were a knot of astrologers, and one among the rest that had studied chiromancy or palmistry, who took all the damned by the hands, one after another. One he told, that it was as plain as the nose on his face, that he was to go to the devil, for he perceived it by the Mount of Saturn. “You,” says he to another, “have been a swindging whore-master in your days; I see that by the Mount of Venus here, and by her girdle.” And in short, every man’s destiny he read in his fist. After him advanced another, creeping upon all four, with a pair of compasses betwixt his teeth, his spheres and globes about him, his Jacob’s staff before him, and his eyes upon the stars, as if he were taking a height or making an observation. When he had gazed a while, up he starts of a sudden, and, wringing his hands, “Good Lord,” says he, “what an unlucky dog was I! If I had come into the world but one half quarter of an hour sooner, I had been saved; for just then Saturn shifted, and Mars was lodged in the house of life.” One that followed him, bade his tormentors be sure he was dead; “for,” says he, “I am a little doubtful of it myself; in regard that I had Jupiter for my ascendant, and Venus in the house of life, and no malevolent aspect to cross me. So that by the rules of astrology, I was to live, precisely, a hundred years and one, two months, six days, four hours, and three minutes.” The next that came up was a geomancer; one that reduced all his skill to certain little points, and by them would tell you, as well things past as to come: these points he bestowed at a venture, among several unequal lines; some long, others shorter, like the fingers of a man’s hand; and then, with a certain ribble-rabble of mysterious words, he proceeds to his calculation, upon even or odd, and challenges the whole world to allow him the most learned and infallible of the trade.

There were divers great masters of the science that followed him. As Haly, Gerard, Bart’lemew of Parma, and one Toudin; a familiar friend, and companion of the great Cornelius Agrippa, the famous conjurer, who though he had but one soul was yet burning in four bodies. (I mean the four damnable books he left behind him.) There was Trithemius too, with his polygraphy and stenography; that had devils now, his belly-full, though in his lifetime his complaint was, that he could never have enough of their company; over against him was Cardan; but they could not set their horses together, because of an old quarrel, whether was the more impudent of the two. And there I saw Misaldus, tearing his beard, in rage, to find himself pumped dry; and that he could not fool on, to the end of the chapter. Theophrastus was there too, bewailing himself for the time he had spent at the alchymist’s bellows. There was also the unknown author of Clavicula Solomonis, and The Hundred Kings of Spirits, with the composer of the book, Adversus Omnia pericula Mundi; Taysnerus too, with his book of Physiognomy and Chiromancy; and he was doubly punished, first for the fool he was, and then for those he had made. Though, to give the man his due, he knew himself to be a cheat, and that he that gives a judgment upon the lines of a face takes but a very uncertain aim. There were magicians, necromancers, sorcerers, and enchanters innumerable, beside divers private boxes that were kept for lords and ladies; and other personages of great quality, that put their trust in these disciples of the devil, and go to Strand Bridge or Billiter Lane, for resolution in cases of death, love, or marriage, and now and then to recover a gold watch or a pearl necklace.

Not far from these were a company of handsome women, that were tormented in the quality of witches, which grieved my very heart to see it; but to comfort me, “What?” says a devil, “have you so soon forgot the roguery of these carrions? Have you not had trial enough yet of them? they are the very poison of life, and the only dangerous magicians that corrupt all our senses, and disturb the faculties of your soul; these are they that cozen your eyes with false appearances, and set up your wills in opposition to your understanding and reason.” “’Tis right,” said I, “and now you mind me of it, I do very well remember, that I have found them so; but let’s go on and see the rest.”

I was scarce gone three steps farther, but I was got into so hideous a dark place that it was e’en a mercy we knew where we were. There was first at the entrance, Divine Justice, which was most dreadful to behold; and a little beyond stood Vice, with a countenance of the highest pride and insolence imaginable; there was Ingratitude, Malice, Ignorance, obstinate and incorrigible Infidelity, brutish and headstrong Disobedience, rash and imperious Blasphemy, with garments dipped in blood, eyes sparkling, and a hundred pair of chops, barking at Providence, and vomiting rage and poison. I went in (I confess) with fear and trembling, and there I saw all the sects of idolaters and heretics, that ever yet appeared upon the stage of the universe; and at their feet, in a glorious array, was lascivious Barbara, second wife to the Emperor Sigismund, and the queen of harlots: one that agreed with Messalina in this, that virginity was both a burden and a folly; and that in her whole life she was never either wearied or satisfied; but herein she went beyond her, in that she held the mortality as well of the soul as of the body; but she was now better instructed, and burnt like a bundle of matches.

Passing forward still, I spied a fellow in a corner, all alone, with the flames about his ears, gnashing his teeth and blaspheming through fury and despair. I asked him what he was, and he told me he was Mahomet. “Why, then,” said I, “thou art the damnedest reprobate in hell, and hast brought more wretches hither than half the world beside: and Lucifer has done well to allot thee a quarter here by thyself, for certainly thou hast well deserved the first place in his dominions. But since every man chooses to talk of what he loves, I prithee, good impostor, tell me, what’s the reason that thou hast forbidden wine to all thy disciples?” “Oh,” says he, “I have made them so drunk with my Alchoran they need no tipple.” “But why hast thou forbidden them swines’ flesh too?” said I. “Because,” says he, “I would not affront the jambon; for water upon gammon would be false heraldry. And beside I never loved my people well enough to afford them the pleasure, either of the grape or the spare-rib. Nay, and for fear they should chance to grope out the way to heaven, I have established my power and my dominion by force of arms; without subjecting my laws to idle disputes and discourses of reason. Indeed there is little of reason in my precepts, and I would have as little in their obedience. A world of disciples I have, but I think they follow me more out of appetite than religion, or for the miracles I work. I allow them liberty of conscience; they have as many women as they please, and do what they list, provided they meddle not with the Government. But look about ye now, and you’ll find that there are more knaves than Mahomet.”

I did so, and found myself presently surrounded with a ring of heretics, and their adherents; many of which were ready to tear out the throats of their leaders. One among the rest was beset with a brace of devils, and either of them a pair of bellows, puffing into each ear fire instead of air, which made him a little hot-headed. There was another, that, as I was told, was a kind of a symoniac, and had taken up his seat in a pestilential chair; but it was so dark I could not well discern whether it was a Pope or a Presbyter.