Photinus had no sooner made an end, but Domitian appeared in a monstrous rage, and lugging of poor Suetonius after him like a bear to the stake. “There is not in nature,” says he, “so damned a generation of scribbling rogues as these historians. We can neither be quiet for them, living nor dead: for they haunt us in our very graves; and when they have vented the humour and caprice of their own brains, that forsooth must be called, The Life of such an Emperor. And, for an instance, I’ll show ye what this impertinent chronicler says of myself. ‘He had squandered away his treasure,’ says he, ‘in expensive buildings, comedies, and donatives to the soldiers.’
“Now would I fain know which way it could have been better employed.
“In another place, he says, that ‘Domitian had some thoughts of easing himself in his military charges, by reducing the number; but that he durst not do, for fear some of his neighbours should put an affront upon him. So that, to lick himself whole, he fell to raking and scraping whatever he could get, either from dead or living; and any rascal’s testimony was proof enough for a confiscation: for there needed no more to undo an honest man, than to tell a tale at court that such a one had spoken ill of the prince.’
“Is this the way of treating majesty? what could this impudent pedant have said worse, if he had been speaking of a pick-pocket or a pirate? But princes and thieves are all one to them.
“He says further, that ‘Domitian made seizure of several estates, without any sort of right whatsoever; and there went no more to his title than for a false witness to depose that he heard the defunct declare, before he died, that he made Cæsar his heir. He set such a tax upon the Jews, that many of them denied their religion to avoid it; and I remember that, when I was a young fellow, I saw an old man of fourscore and ten taken upon suspicion by one of Domitian’s spies, and turned up in a public assembly, to see if he were circumcised.’
“Be ye now judges, gentlemen of the Black Guard, if this be not a most intolerable indignity. Am I to answer for the actions of my inferior officers? It amazes me that my successors should ever endure these scandalous reports to be published, especially against a prince that had laid out so much money in repairing the libraries that were burnt.”
“It is very true,” said Suetonius in a doleful tone, “and I have not forgotten to make mention of it to your honour. But what will you say, if I show you, in a warrant under your hand, this execrable and impious blasphemy? It is the command of your Lord and God. And in fine, if I speak nothing but truth, where’s your cause of complaint? I have written the Lives too of the great Julius Cæsar, and the divine Augustus, and the world will not say but I have done them right. But for yourself, and such as you, that are effectually but so many incarnate and crowned plagues, what fault have I committed in setting before your eyes those tyrannies, which heaven and earth cannot but look upon with dread and horror?”
This discourse of Suetonius was interrupted by the babbler, or Boutefeu, that rounded Lucifer in the ear, and told him, “Look ye, sir,” says he, pointing with his finger, “that limping devil there, that looks as if he were surbated with beating the hoof, has been abroad in the world, this twenty year, and is but just now come back again.” “Come hither, sirrah,” cries Lucifer; and so the poor cur went wriggling and glotting up toward his prince. “You are a fine rogue to be sent of an errand, are ye not?” says Lucifer, “to stay twenty year out, and come back again e’en as wise as ye went: what souls have ye brought now? or what news from t’other world?” “Ha! your highness,” quoth the devil, “has too much honour and justice to condemn me unheard. Wherefore be pleased to remember, that at my going out you gave me charge of a certain merchant; it cost me the first ten year of my time to make him a thief, and ten more to keep him from turning honest again, and restoring what he had stolen.” “A fine fetch for a devil this, is it not?” cried Lucifer. “But hell is no more the hell it was when I knew it first, than chalk is cheese; and the devils nowadays are so damnedly insipid and dry, they’re hardly worth the roasting. A senseless puppy to come back to me with a story of Waltham’s calf, that went nine mile to suck a bull. But he’s not master of his trade yet.” And with that Lucifer bade one of his officers take him away and put him to school again; “for I perceive he’s a rascal,” says he, “and he has e’en been roguing at a play-house, when he should have been at church.” In that instant, from behind a little hill, a great many men came running as hard as they could drive after a company of women: the men crying out, “Stop, stop,” and the women crying for help. Lucifer commanded them all to be seized, and asked what was the matter. “Alas, alas!” cried one of the men, quite out of breath, “these carrions have made us fathers, though we never had children.” “Govern your tongue, sirrah,” cried a devil of honour, out of respect to the ladies, “and speak truth: for ’tis utterly impossible you should be fathers without children.” “Pardon me,” said the fellow, “we were married men, and honest men and good house-keepers, and have born offices in the parish, and have children that call us fathers; but ’tis a strange thing, we have been abroad some of us by the seven year together; others, as long bed-rid; and so impotent, that the civilians would have put us inter frigidos et maleficiatos: and yet our wives have brought us every year a child, which we were such fools as to keep and bring up, and give ourselves to the devil at last to get them estates; out of a charitable persuasion (forsooth) they might yet be our own, though for a twelve-month together (perhaps) we never so much as examined whether our wives were fish or flesh. But now since the mothers are dead, and the children grown up, we have found the tools that made them. One has the coachman’s nose, another the gentleman-usher’s legs, a third a cousin-german’s eyes. And some, we are to presume, conceived purely by strength of imagination, or else by the ears like weazels.”
Thereupon appeared a little remnant of a man, a dapper Spaniard, with a kind of a besome-beard, and a voice not unlike the yapping of a foysting cur. As he came near the company, he set up his throat, and called out, “Ah jade!” says he, “I shall now take ye to task, ye whore you, for making me father my negro’s bastard, and for the estate I settled upon him. I did ever misdoubt foul play, but should never have dreamt of that ugly toad, when there was such choice of handsome, lusty young fellows about us; but it may be she had them too. I cursed the monks many and many a time, I remember, to the pit of hell, heaven forgive me for’t; for the strumpet would be perpetually gadding abroad, under colour of going to confession, and in sooth I was never any great friend to penance and mortification. And then would I be easing my mind ever and anon to this cursed Moor. ‘I cannot imagine,’ said I, ‘where this mistress of thine should commit all the sins that she goes every hour of the day to confess at yonder monastery.’ And then would this dog-Moor answer me. ‘Alas, good lady! I would e’en venture my soul with hers with all my heart; she spends all her time you see in holy duties.’ I was at that time so innocent, that I suspected nothing more than a pure respect and civility to my wife; but I have learnt better since, and that effectually his soul and hers were commonly ventured in the same bottom; yes, and their bodies too, as I perceive by their magpie issue, for the bastards take after both father and mother.”
“So that at this rate,” cried the adopted fathers, “the husband of a whore has a pleasant time on’t. First, he’s subjected to all the pukings, longings, and peevish importunities, that a breeding woman gives those about her till she’s laid; and then comes the squalling of the child, and the twittle-twattle-gossipings of the nurse and midwife, that must be well treated too, well lodged, and well paid. ‘A sweet baby,’ says one (to the jade the mother on’t) ‘’tis e’en as like the father as if he had spit it out on’s mouth; it has the very lips, the very eyes of him,’ when ’tis no more like him than an apple is like an oyster. And, in conclusion, when we have borne all this, and twenty times more in t’other world with a Christian patience, we are hurried away to hell, and here we lie a company of damned cuckolds of us; and here we are like to lie, for ought I see, in sæcula sæculorum: which is very hard, and in truth out of all reason.”