The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

by Francisco de Quevedo

I cut this visit short, to see what news in a deep vault near at hand, where we heard a great bustle and contest betwixt divers souls and the devils. There were the presumptuous, the revengeful, and the envious, gaping and crying out as they would break their hearts. “Oh, that I could but be born again!” says one; “Oh, that I might back into the world again!” says another; “Oh, that I were but to die once more!” cries a third. Insomuch that they put the devils out of all patience, with their impertinent and unprofitable wishes and exclamations. “Hang yourselves,” cried they, “for a pack of cozening, bawling rascals: you live again? and be born again? and what if you might do’t a thousand times over? You would only die at last a thousand times greater villains than now you are, and there would be no clearing hell of you with a dog-whip. However, to try you and make you know yourselves, we have commission to let you live again and return. Up then ye varlets, go, be born again; get ye into the world again. Away,” cried the devils, with a lusty lash at every word, and thrust hard to have got them out. But the poor rogues hung an arse, and were struck with such a terror, to hear of living again, and returning, that they slunk into a corner, and lay as quiet upon’t, as lambs.

At length, one of the company that seemed to have somewhat more brain and resolution than his fellows, entered very gravely upon the debate, whether they should go out or no. “If I should now,” says he, “at my second birth, come into the world a bastard, the shame would be mine, though my parents committed the fault; and I should carry the scandal and the infamy of it to my grave. Now put case, my mother should be honest, (for that’s not impossible) and that I came into the world, legitimate; how many follies, vices, and diseases are there that run in a blood! Who knows, but I should be mad, or simple? swear, lie, cheat, whore; nay if I came off, with a little mortification of my carcase, as the stone, the scurvy, or the noble pox, I were a happy man. But oh the lodging, the diet, and the cookery that I am to expect for a matter of nine months in my mother’s belly; and then the butter and beer that must be spent to sweeten me, when I change my quarter. I must come crying into the world, and live in ignorance even of what life is till I die; and then as ignorant of death too, till ’tis passed. I fancy my swaddling-clouts and blankets to be worse than my winding-sheet; my cradle represents my tomb. And then who knows, whether my nurse shall be found, or no? She’ll over-lay me perhaps; leave me some four and twenty hours, it may be, without clean clouts, and a pin or two all the while, perchance, up to the hilts in my backside. And then follows breeding of teeth, and worms; with all the gripes and disorders that are caused by unwholesome milk. These miseries are certain, and why should I run them over again?

“If it happen that I pass the state of infancy, without the pox or measles, I must be then packed away to school, to get the itch, a scaled head, or a pair of kibed heels. In winter, ’tis ten to one you find me with a snotty nose, and perpetually under the lash, if I either miss my lesson or go late to school. So that hang him, for my part, that would be born again, for any thing I see yet.

“When I come up toward man, the women will have me as sure as a gun, for they have a thousand ginnes and devices to catch wood-cocks; and if ever I come to set eye upon a lass that understands dress and raillery, I’m gone, if there were no more lads in Christendom. But, for my part, I am as sick as a dog, of powdering, curling, and playing the ladybird. I would not for all the world be in the shoemaker’s stocks, and choke myself over again in a straight doublet, only to have the ladies say, ‘Look, what a delicate shape and foot that gentleman has.’ And I would take as little pleasure to spend six hours, of the four and twenty, in picking grey hairs out of my head or beard, or turning white into black. To stand half ravished in the contemplation of my own shadow; to dress fine, and go to church only to see handsome ladies; to correct the midnight air with ardent sighs and ejaculations; and to keep company with owls and bats, like a bird of evil omen; to walk the round of a mistress’ lodging, and play at bo-peep at the corner of every street; to adore her imperfections, (or as the song says, — for her ugliness, and for her want of coin); to make bracelets of her locks, and truck a pearl necklace for a shoestring. At this rate, I say, cursed again and again be he, for my part, that would live over again so wretched a life.

“Being come now to write full man, if I have an estate how many cares, suits, and wrangles go along with it! If I have none, what murmuring and regret at my misfortunes! By this time, the sins of my youth are gotten into my bones; I grow sour and melancholy; nothing pleases me; I curse old age to ten thousand devils; and the youth which I can never recover in my veins, I endeavour to fetch out of the barbers’ shops, from perruques, razors, and patches, to conceal, or at least disguise all the marks and evidences of Nature in her decay. Nay, when I shall have never an eye to see with nor a tooth left in my head, gouty legs, wind-mills in my crown, my nose running like a tap, and gravel in my reins by the bushel, then must I make oath that all this is nothing but mere accident, gotten by lying in the field, or the like, and out-face the truth in the very teeth of so many undeniable witnesses. There is no plague comparable to this hypocrisy of the members. To have an old fop shake his heels, when he’s ready to fall to pieces; and cry, these legs would make a shift yet to play with the best legs in the company; and then, with a lusty thump on’s breast, fetch ye up a hem, and cry, ‘Sound at heart, boy,’ and a thousand other fooleries of the like nature. But all this is nothing to the misery of an old fellow in love, especially if he be put to gallant it against a company of young gamesters. Oh the inward shame and vexation, to see himself scarce so much as neglected. It happens sometimes that a jolly lady, for want of better entertainment, may content herself with one of these reverend fornicators, instead of a whetstone; but alack, alack! the poor man is weak though willing; and after a whole night spent in cold and frivolous pretences and excuses, away he goes with torments of rage and confusion about him, not to be expressed; and many a heavy curse is sent after him for keeping a poor lady from her natural rest to so little purpose. How often must I be put to the blush too, when every old toast shall be calling me old acquaintance, and telling me, ‘Oh sir, ’tis many a fair day since you and I knew one another first. I think ’twas in the four and thirtieth of the Queen, that we were school-fellows. How the world’s altered since!’ etc. And then must my head be turned to a memento mori; my flesh dissolved into rheums; my skin withered and wrinkled; with a staff in my hand, knocking the earth at every trembling step, as if I called upon my grave to receive me; walking, like a moving phantosme; my life little more than a dream; my reins and bladder turned into a perfect quarry; and the urinal or pisspot my whole study. My next heir watching, every minute, for the long-looked-for and happy hour of my departure; and in the meantime, I’m become the physician’s revenue, and the surgeon’s practice, with an apothecary’s shop in my guts; and every old jade calling me grandsire. No, no; I’ll no more living again, I thank ye: one hell rather than two mothers.

“Let us now consider the comforts of life, the humours and the manners. He that would be rich must play the thief or the cheat; he that would rise in the world must turn parasite, informer, or projecter. He that marries ventures fair for the horn, either before or after. There is no valour without swearing, quarrelling, or hectoring. If ye are poor, nobody owns ye. If rich, you’ll know nobody. If you die young, ‘What pity it was,’ they’ll say, ‘that he should be cut off thus in his prime.’ If old, ‘He was e’en past his best; there’s no great miss of him.’ If you are religious, and frequent the church and the sacrament, you’re an hypocrite; and without this, you’re an atheist or an heretic. If you are gay and pleasant, you pass presently for a buffoon; and if pensive and reserved, you are taken to be sour and censorious. Courtesy is called colloguing and currying of favour; downright honesty and plain-dealing is interpreted to be pride and ill manners. This is the world; and for all that’s in’t I would not have it to go over again. If any of ye, my masters,” said he to his camerades, “be of another opinion, hold up your hands.” “No, no,” they cried all unanimously, “no more generation-work, I beseech ye; better the devils than the midwives.”

After this came a testator, cursing and raving like a bedlam, that he had made his last will and testament. “Ah villein!” said he, “for a man to murder himself as I have done! If I had not sealed, I had not died. Of all things, next a physician, deliver me from a testament. It has killed more than the pestilence. Oh miserable mortals, let the living take warning by the dead, and make no testaments. It was my hard luck, first to put my life into the physician’s power, and then, by making my will, to sign the sentence of death upon myself, and my own execution. ‘Put your soul and your estate in order,’ says the doctor, ‘for there’s no hope of life;’ and the word was no sooner out, but I was so wise and devout (forsooth) as to fall immediately upon the prologue of my will, with an In nomine Domini, Amen, etc. And when I came to dispose of my goods and chattels I pronounced these bloody words (I would I had been tongue-tied when I did it), ‘I make and constitute my son, my sole executor. Item, to my dear wife, I give and bequeath all my plays and romances, and all the furniture in the rooms upon the second storey. To my very good friend T. B. my large tankard, for a remembrance. To my foot-boy Robin, five pound to bind him prentice. To Betty, that tended me in my sickness, my little caudle-cup. To Mr. Doctor, my fair table diamond, for his care of me in my illness.’ After signing, and sealing, the ink was scarce dry upon the paper, but methought the earth opened as if it had been hungry to devour me. My son and my legatees were presently casting it up, how many hours I might yet hold out. If I called for the cordial julep, or a little of Dr. Gilbert’s water, my son was taking possession of my estate, my wife so busy about the beds and hangings that she could not intend it. The boy and the wench could understand nothing but about their legacies. My very good friend’s mind was wholly upon his tankard. My kind Dr. I must confess took occasion, now and then, to handle my pulse, and see whether the diamond were of the right black water, or no. If I asked him what I might eat, his answer was, ‘Anything, anything, e’en what you please yourself.’ At every groan I fetched, they were calling for their legacies, which they could not have till I was dead.

“But if I were to begin the world again, I think I should make another kind of testament. I would say: ‘A curse upon him that shall have my estate when I am dead, and may the first bit of bread he eats out on’t choke him. The devil in hell take what I cannot carry away, and him too, that straggles for’t, if he can catch him. If I die, let my boy Robin have the strappado, three hours a day, to be duly paid him during life. Let my wife die of the pip, or the mother (not a halfpenny matter which), but let her first live long enough to plague the damned doctor, and indite him for poisoning her poor husband.’ To speak sincerely, I can never forgive that dog-leech. Was it not enough to make me sick when I was well, without making me dead when I was sick? And not to rest there neither, but to persecute me in my grave too. But, to say the truth, this is only neighbours’ fare; for all those fools that trust in them are served with the same sauce. A vomit or a purge is as good a passport into the other world as a man would wish. And then, when our heads are laid, ’tis never to be endured the scandals they cast upon our bodies and memories! ‘Heaven rest his soul,’ cries one, ‘he killed himself with a debauch.’ ‘How is’t possible,’ says another, ‘to cure a man that keeps no diet?’ ‘He was a madman,’ cries a third, ‘a mere sot, and would not be governed by his physician. His body was as rotten as a pear, he had as many diseases as a horse, and it was not in the power of man to save him. And truly ’twas well that his hour was come, for he had better a great deal die well than live on as he did.’ Thieves and murtherers that ye are, you yourselves are that hour ye talk of. The physician is only death in a disguise, and brings his patient’s hour along with him. Cruel people! Is it not enough to take away a man’s life, and like common hangmen to be paid for’t when ye have done, but you must blast the honour too of those you have dispatched, to excuse your ignorance? Let but the living follow my counsel, and write their testaments after this copy, they shall live long and happily, and not go out of the world at last like a rat with a straw in his arse (as a learned author has it) or be cut off in the flower of their days, by these counterfeit doctors of the faculty of the close-stool.”

The dead man plied his discourse with so much gravity and earnestness, that Lucifer began to believe what he said. But because all truths are not to be spoken, especially among the devils, where hardly any are admitted; and for fear of mischief, if the doctors should come to hear what had been said, Lucifer presently ordered the fellow to be gagged, or put in security for his good behaviour.

His mouth was no sooner stopped but another was opened; and one of the damned came running cross the company, and so up and down, back and forward (like a cur that had lost his master) bawling as if he had been out of his wits, and crying out, “Oh! where am I? Where am I? I am abused, I am choused; what’s the meaning of all this? Here are damning devils, tempting devils, and tormenting devils, but the devil a devil can I find of the devils that brought me hither; they have gotten away my devils; where are they? Give me my devils again.”