of his own. Wearing on his hat a leaden image of the Virgin,—his pretended protectress,—he drank the blood of murdered sucklings, and allowed himself to be tormented by his physician, whom he requited with ten thousand crowns a month.
This was the wretch whom Faustus saw; and his heart rejoiced when he contemplated the paleness of his cheeks, and the farrows which anguish and despair had made in his brow. He was on the point of leaving this abode of monotonous horror, when the Devil whispered him to remain until the next day, and he would see a singular spectacle. The king had heard that a hermit lived in Calabria, who was honoured as a saint through all Sicily. This fool had, from his fourteenth to his fortieth year, dwelt upon a naked rock, where, exposed to the rains and tempests of heaven, he martyred his body by stripes and fasting, and refused his mind all cultivation. But, the rays of sanctity concealing his stupidity, he soon saw the prince and the peasant at his feet. Louis had requested the
King of Sicily to send him this creature, because he hoped to be cured by him. The hermit was now on the road; and as he brought with him the holy oil of Rheims, to anoint the tyrant’s body, the latter imagined that all his disorders would soon vanish, and he should become young again. The happy day arrived: the Calabrian boor approached the castle; the king received him at the gate, fell at his feet, and asked him for life and health. The Calabrian played his part in so ridiculous a manner, that Faustus could not avoid laughing aloud at the farce. Tristan and his myrmidons were advancing to seize him, and he would doubtlessly have paid for laughing with his life, had not the Devil rescued him from their claws, and flown away with him. When they arrived at Paris, Faustus said:
“Is it by this contemptible, superstitious, tottering object, that the bold sons of France allow themselves to be enslaved? He is a mere skeleton in purple, who can scarcely cough out of his asthmatic throat the desire to live; yet
they tremble before him, as if he were a giant, whose terrible arms could encircle the whole earth. When the lion, enfeebled by age, lies languishing in his den, the most insignificant beasts of the forests are not afraid of him, but approach and mock the fallen tyrant.”
Devil. It is this which chiefly distinguishes the king of men from the king of beasts. The latter is only formidable as long as he can use his own strength; but the former, who binds the strength of his slaves to his will, is as powerful when lying on the bed of sickness, as when, in the vigour of health, he is at the head of his armies. Are you not now convinced that men are only guided by folly, which dooms them to be slaves? Break their chains to-day, and they would forge themselves others to-morrow. Do what you can, they will always go on in the same eternal circle, and are condemned for ever to seize the shadow for the reality.
The Devil, having shown Faustus all that was remarkable in and about the capital of France, took him to Calais; and, crossing the Channel,
they arrived in London at the very moment that hideous abortion, the Duke of Gloucester, made himself Protector of the kingdom, and was endeavouring to take away the crown from the children of his brother, the late king. He had removed the father by means of poison, and had already persuaded the queen (who, upon the first discovery of his projects, had fled for refuge, with her children, to Westminster Sanctuary) to deliver up to him the youthful heir of the throne, together with his brother York. Faustus was present when Doctor Shaw, by the command of the Protector, informed the astonished people from the pulpit, that the yet living mother of the duke and the deceased king had admitted various lovers; that the late king was the offspring of such adultery; and that no one of the royal line, except the Protector, could boast of a legitimate birth. He saw those noblemen executed who would not accede to the execrable plot; and the Devil conducted him into the Tower at the very moment when Tyrrell and his assistant murdered the lawful king and his brother,
and buried them beneath the threshold of the dungeon. He was a witness of the base submission of the Parliament, and of the coronation of the frightful tyrant. He witnessed the negotiation of the queen to support the murderer of her sons in his usurped throne, by giving him the hand of her eldest daughter, in order that she herself might still retain a shadow of sovereignty; although at the same time she had entered into a secret alliance with the Earl of Richmond, who was destined to be her avenger. Faustus felt himself so enraged, that not all the charms of the blooming Englishwomen could keep him any longer in this cursed isle, which he quitted with hatred and disgust; for neither in Germany nor in France had he seen crimes committed with so much coolness and impunity. When they were on the point of embarking, the Devil said to him:
“These people will groan for a time beneath the yoke of despotism; they will then sacrifice one of their kings upon the scaffold of freedom, in order that they may sell themselves to his successors