This last stroke was added by their own political wisdom; a proof that they, as skilful negotiators, knew how to supply and fill up every vacuum which had been at first overlooked.
Faustus started up in a fury, stamped on the ground, and cried:
“Base, lying, deceitful pack! How long did I not fawn upon you, from the proud patrician down to the shoemaker and the pepper-seller, around whose necks you hang the magisterial insignia, like halters around asses? And did ye not permit me to wait at your dirty thresholds without deigning me a single look? And now that you hear this noble personage sees that in me which you did not, you come and would pay me back in my own coin. But see, here is gold; for which you would barter the Holy Roman Empire, provided you could find fools gross enough to buy the huge, monstrous carcass, without head, sense, or proportion.”
The Devil highly enjoyed the rage of Faustus and the downcast looks of the young senators; but they, who had never read Roman history, were not so high-spirited as to fling Faustus a declaration of war from beneath their closely-folded robes of office; on the contrary, they communicated the invitation to the mayor’s festival in as unconcerned a tone as if nothing had happened,—a new proof of their expertness in negotiation.
Had they, for example, replied to the insult, they would thereby have acknowledged that they felt the force of it; but when they let it fall flat upon the ground, as if it were nothing to any of them, it lost all its power, and assumed the colour of an unfair reproach. Genius alone is capable in such critical moments of like discrimination.
At the word “mayor,” Faustus pricked up his ears, and the Devil gave him a significant side-glance. Faustus thereupon took the Bible from the casket, handed it over to the senators, and said, with some degree of complaisance,
“That, upon due consideration, he was determined to make the city a present of his Bible, on condition that they showed the sentence which he marked under, and of which he wrote a German translation on the margin, to the assembled magistrates; and, in remembrance of him, caused it to be written in letters of gold on the wall of the council-chamber.”
The senators hastened back to their brethren, as delighted as envoys who, after a ruinous war,
return with an advantageous peace. They were received with great joy, and, the Bible being opened at the appointed place, they read—
“And lo! the fools sat in council, and idiots clamoured in the judgment-chamber.”