I began then to take into thought, what might be the meaning of this oglio of people of several conditions and humours met together; but I was quickly diverted from that consideration by the apparition of a creature which looked as if ’twere of the feminine gender. It was a person, of a thin and slender make, laden with crowns, garlands, sceptres, scythes, sheep-hooks, pattens, hobnailed shoes, tiaras, straw hats, mitres, Monmouth caps, embroideries, skins, silk, wool, gold, lead, diamonds, shells, pearl, and pebbles. She was dressed up in all the colours of the rainbow; she had one eye shut, the other open; young on the one side, and old o’ the other. I thought at first, she had been a great way off, when indeed she was very near me, and when I took her to be at my chamber door, she was at my bed’s head. How to unriddle this mystery I knew not; nor was it possible for me to make out the meaning of an equipage so extravagant, and so fantastically put together. It gave me no affright, however, but on the contrary I could not forbear laughing, for it came just then into my mind that I had formerly seen in Italy a farce, where the mimic, pretending to come from the other world, was just thus accoutred, and never was anything more nonsensically pleasant. I held as long as I could, and at last, I asked what she was. She answered me, “I am Death.” Death! (the very word brought my heart into my mouth) “and I beseech you, madam,” quoth I (with great humility and respect) “whither is your honour a going?” “No further,” said she, “for now I have found you, I am at my journey’s end.” “Alas, alas! and must I die then,” said I. “No, no,” quoth Death, “but I’ll take thee quick along with me; for since so many of the dead have been to visit the living, it is but equal for once, that one of the living should return a visit to the dead. Get up then and come along; and never hang an arse for the matter; for what you will not do willingly, you shall do in spite of your teeth.” This put me in a cold fit; but without more delay up I started, and desired leave only to put on my breeches. “No, no,” said she, “no matter for clothes, nobody wears them upon this road; wherefore come away, naked as you are, and you’ll travel the better.” So up I got, without a word more and followed her, in such a terror, and amazement, that I was but in an ill condition to take a strict account of my passage; yet I remember, that upon the way, I told her: “Madam, under correction, you are no more like the Deaths that I have seen, than an apple’s like an oyster. Our Death is pictured with a scythe in her hand; and a carcass of bones, as clean as if the crows had picked it.” “Yes, yes,” said she, turning short upon me, “I know that very well; but in the meantime your designers and painters are but a company of buzzards. The bones you talk of are the dead, or otherwise the miserable remainders of the living; but let me tell you that you yourselves are your own death, and that which you call death, is but the period of your life, as the first moment of your birth is the beginning of your death; and effectually, ye die living, and your bones are no more than what death has left and committed to the grave. If this were rightly understood, every man would find a memento mori, or a death’s head, in his own looking-glass; and consider every house with a family in’t but as a sepulchre filled with dead bodies; a truth which you little dream of, though within your daily view and experience. Can you imagine a death elsewhere, and not in yourselves? Believe’t y’are in a shameful mistake; for you yourselves are skeletons before ye are aware.”
“But, madam, under favour, what may all these people be that keep your ladyship company? and since you are Death (as you say) how comes it, that the babblers, and make-bates, are nearer your person, and more in your good graces than the physicians?” “Why,” says she, “there are more people talked to death and dispatched by babblers, than by all the pestilential diseases in the world. And then your make-bates, and meddlers kill more than your physicians, though (to give the gentlemen of the faculty their due) they labour night and day for the enlargement of our empire. For you must understand, that though distempered humours make a man sick, ’tis the physician kills him; and looks to be well paid for’t too: (and ’tis fit that every man should live by his trade) so that when a man is asked, what such or such a one died of, he is not presently to make answer, that he died of a fever, pleurisy, the plague, purples, or the like; but that he died of the doctor. In one point, however, I must needs acquit the physician; ye know that the style of right honourable, and right worshipful, which was heretofore appropriate only to persons of eminent degree and quality, is now in our days used by all sorts of little people; nay the very barefoot friars, that live under vows of humility and mortification, are stung with this itch of title and vainglory. And your ordinary tradesmen, as vintners, tailors, masons, and the like, must be all dressed up forsooth in the right worshipful: whereas your physician does not so much court honour of appellation (though, if it should rain dignities, he might be persuaded happily to venture the wetting) but sits down contentedly with the honour of disposing of your lives and moneys, without troubling himself about any other sort of reputation.”
The entertainment of these lectures, and discourses made the way seem short and pleasant, and we were just now entering into a place, betwixt light and dark, and of horror enough, if Death and I had not by this time been very well acquainted. Upon one side of the passage, I saw three moving figures, armed, and of human shape, and so alike, that I could not say which was which. Just opposite, on the other side, a hideous monster, and these three to one, and one to three, in a fierce, and obstinate combat. Here Death made a stop, and facing about, asked me if I knew these people. “Alas! no,” quoth I, “Heaven be praised, I do not, and I shall put it in my litany that I never may.” “Now to see thy ignorance,” cried Death; “these are thy old acquaintance, and thou hast hardly kept any other company since thou wert born. Those three are the world, the flesh, and the devil, the capital enemies of thy soul; and they are so like one another, as well in quality, as appearance, that effectually, whoever has one, has all. The proud and ambitious man thinks he has got the world, but it proves the devil. The lecher, and the epicure, persuade themselves that they have gotten the flesh, and that’s the devil too; and in fine, thus it fares with all other kinds of extravagants.” “But what’s he there,” said I, “that appears in so many several shapes? and fights against the other three?” “That,” quoth Death, “is the devil of money, who maintains that he himself alone is equivalent to them three, and that wherever he comes, there’s no need of them. Against the world, he argues from their own confession and experience: for it passes for an oracle, that there’s no world but money; he that’s out of money’s out of the world. Take away a man’s money, and take away his life. Money answers all things. Against the second enemy, he pleads that money is the flesh too: witness the girls and the ganymedes it procures, and maintains. And against the third, he urges that there’s nothing to be done without this devil of money. Love does much but money does all; and money will make the pot boil, though the devil piss in the fire.” “So that for ought I see,” quoth I, “the devil of money has the better end of the staff.”
After this, advancing a little further, I saw on one hand judgment, and hell on the other (for so Death called them). Upon the sight of hell, making a stop, to take a stricter survey of it, Death asked me, what it was I looked at. I told her, it was hell; and I was the more intent upon it, because I thought I had seen it somewhere else before. She questioned me, where? I told her, that I had seen it in the corruption and avarice of wicked magistrates; in the pride and haughtiness of grandees; in the appetites of the voluptuous; in the lewd designs of ruin and revenge; in the souls of oppressors; and in the vanity of divers princes. But he that would see it whole and entire, in one subject, must go to the hypocrite, who is a kind of religious broker, and puts out at five-and-forty per cent. the very Sacraments and Ten Commandments.
“I am very glad too,” said I, “that I have seen judgment as I find it here, in its purity; for that which we call judgment in the world is a mere mockery: if it were like this, men would live otherwise than they do. To conclude: if it be expected that our judges should govern themselves and us by this judgment, the world’s in an ill case; for there’s but little of’t there. And to deal plainly, as matters are, I have no great maw to go home again: for ’tis better being with the dead, where there’s justice, than with the living, where there’s none.”
Our next step was into a fair and spacious plain, encompassed with a huge wall, where he that’s once in must never look to come out again. “Stop here,” quoth Death, “for we are now come to my judgment-seat, and here it is that I give audience.” The walls were hung with sighs and groans, ill-news, fears, doubts, and surprises. Tears did not there avail either the lover or the beggar; but grief and care were without both measure and comfort; and served as vermin to gnaw the hearts of emperors and princes, feeding upon the insolent and ambitious, as their proper nourishment. I saw Envy there dressed up in a widow’s veil, and the very picture of the government of one of your noblemen’s houses. She kept a continual fast as to the shambles, preying only upon herself; and could not but be a very slender gentlewoman, upon so spare a diet. Nothing came amiss to her teeth (good or bad) which made the whole set of them yellow and rotten, and the reason was that, though she bit, and set her mark upon the good and the sound, she could never swallow it. Under her, sat discord; the legitimate issue of her own bowels. She had formerly conversed much with married people, but finding no need of her there, away she went to colleges and corporations, where it seems they had more already than they knew what to do withal; and then she betook herself to courts and palaces, and officiated there, as the devil’s lieutenant. Next to her was ingratitude, and she out of a certain paste made up of pride and malice, was moulding of new devils. I was extreme glad of this discovery, being of opinion, till now, that the ungrateful had been the devils themselves, because I read, that the angels that fell were made devils for their ingratitude. To be short, the whole place echoed with rage and curses. “What a devil have we here to do,” said I, “does it rain curses in this country?” With that; a death at my elbow asked me, what a devil could I expect else, in a place where there were so many matchmakers, attorneys, and common barristers, who are a pack of the most accursed wretches in nature. Is there anything more common in the world, than the exclamations of husbands and wives? “Oh! that damned devil of a pander: a heavy curse upon that bitch of a bawd that ever brought us together.” “The pillory and ten thousand gibbets to boot take that pickpocket attorney, that advised me to this lawsuit; h’ as ruined me for ever.” “But pray’e,” said I, “what do all these matchmakers and attorneys here together? Do they come for audience?” Death was here a little quick upon me, and called me fool for so impertinent a question. “If there were no matchmakers,” said she, “we should not have the tenth part of these skeletons, and desperadoes. Am not I here the fifth husband of a woman yet living in the world, that hopes to send twice as many more after me, and drink maudlin at the fifteenth funeral?” “You say well,” said I, “as to the business of matchmakers; but why so many pettifoggers, I pray’e?” “Nay, then, I perceive,” quoth Death, “now you have a mind to seize me; for that rascally sort of caterpillars have been my undoing. Had not a man better die by the common hangman than by the hand of an attorney? to be killed by falsities, quirks, cavils, delays, exceptions, cheats, circumventions: yes, yes, and it must not be denied, that these makers of matches, and splitters of causes, are the principal support of this imperial throne.”
At these words, I raised my eyes, and saw Death seated in her chair of state, with abundance of little deaths crowding about her: as the death of love, of cold, hunger, fear, and laughter; all, with their several ensigns and devices. The death of love, I perceived, had very little brain, and to keep herself in countenance, she kept company with Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, and some Amadis’s and Palmerins d’Oliva; all embalmed, steeped in good vinegar, and well dried. I saw a great many other sorts of lovers too, that were brought, in all appearance, to their last agonies, but by the singular miracle of self-interest recovered to the tune of
Will, if looking well won’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
The death of cold was attended by a many prelates, bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics, who had neither wives, nor children, nor indeed anybody else that cared for them, further than for their fortunes. These, when they come to a fit of sickness, are pillaged even to their sheets and bedding, before ye can say a paternoster. Nay, many times they are stripped, ere they are laid, and destroyed for want of clothes to keep them warm.
The death of hunger was encompassed with a multitude of avaricious misers that were cording up of trunks, bolting of doors and windows, locking up of cellars and garrets, and nailing down of trap doors, burying of pots of money, and starting at every breath of wind they heard. Their eyes were ready to drop out of their heads, for want of sleep; their mouths and bellies complaining of their hands, and their souls turned into gold and silver (the idols they adored.)