Part 11 (1/2)
Faustus asked some of the unfortunates the cause of their captivity; and he heard stories which pierced him to the heart. At last, coming to a cage wherein was a venerable-looking old man, he put the same question to him, and the prisoner answered, in a plaintive tone:
”Whoever you are, let my sad story serve you as a warning never to a.s.sist a tyrant in his cruelties. You behold in me the Bishop of Verdun, who first gave to the king the idea of these horrible cages, and was the very first to be shut up in one of them after they were completed. Here have I, for fourteen years, done penance for my sins, praying daily to G.o.d to end my torments by death.”
_Faustus_. Ha, ha! Your excellence, then, like another Perillus, has found a Phalaris. Do you know that story? You shake your head. Well, I will tell it you.
”This Perillus, who was neither a bishop nor a Christian, constructed a brazen bull, which he showed to the tyrant Phalaris as a masterpiece of invention, and a.s.sured him that it was constructed in such a manner, that, if his majesty would shut up a man in it, and then heat it red-hot by a fire laid beneath it, the shrieks of the tormented man would exactly resemble the bellowings of a bull, which would doubtless afford his majesty great pleasure. 'My dear Perillus,' said the tyrant, 'I am much indebted to you; but it is right that the artist should prove his own work.' He then made Perillus creep into the beast's belly; and when the fire was laid beneath it, he did in reality bellow like a bull. Thus did Phalaris, a thousand years ago, play very much the same part with Perillus which the most Christian king has been playing with you, most reverend Bishop of Verdun.”
_Bishop_. I wish I had heard this story twenty years ago; I should then have taken warning from it.
_Faustus_. You see that history may sometimes be useful, even to a bishop. I weep for the fate of your companions in misery; but I laugh at yours.
Faustus wished now to see this king, whose horrible deeds had so heated his imagination, that he could hardly represent him to himself under a human figure. The Devil told him that it would be impossible for them in their present forms to enter the Castle of Plessis du Parc, where cowardice and fear kept the tyrant a prisoner. He added, that no one, with the exception of some necessary domestics, the physician, the confessor, and one or two astrologers, could enter without a particular order.
_Faustus_. Then let us a.s.sume other figures and dresses.
_Devil_. Good; I will instantly remove two of his guards, and we will do their duty. This is an excellent time to see the tyrant. The fear of death is already avenging upon his cowardly spirit the thousands whom he has slaughtered. Day and night he only thinks of putting off the moment which is to terminate his existence, and death seems to him more hideous every second. I will make you a witness of his torments.
The Devil instantly put his project into execution, and they found themselves standing sentinels in the interior of the castle, where reigned the mournful silence of the tomb. Thither had he, before whom millions trembled, banished himself, in order to escape from the vengeance of the relations of the murdered. Although he could thus fly from the sight of his subjects, he could not escape the cutting remorse of his own heart, nor the pains of his emaciated body. In vain did he implore Heaven to grant him health and repose; in vain did he attempt to bribe it by presents to saints, to priests, and to churches; in vain did he cover himself with relics from all parts of the world: that frightful sentence, _thou shall die_, seemed always ringing in his ears. He scarcely ventured to move out of his chamber, lest he should find an a.s.sa.s.sin in one of those whom he might meet. If anguish drove him into the free air, he went armed with lance and dagger, just as if he had strength to use either. Four hundred guards watched day and night around the stronghold of the half-dead monster; three times every hour did their hoa.r.s.e calls, echoing from post to post, break the solemn stillness, and remind the tyrant of the flight of time. All around his castle gibbets were erected; and the hangman, Tristan, his only true friend, went about the country every day, and returned at night with fresh victims, in order, by their execution, to diminish the fears of the tyrant, who from time to time would walk in an apartment which was only separated from the torture-room by a thin part.i.tion. There he listened to the groans and shrieks of the wretches on the rack, and found in the sufferings of others a slight alleviation 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 sanct.i.ty 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, superst.i.tious, 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 languis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.blemen 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 a.s.sistant 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 for gold and t.i.tles. In h.e.l.l there is very little respect paid to these gloomy islanders, who would suck the marrow from all the carca.s.ses in the universe, if they thought to find gold in the bones. They boast of their morality, and despise all other nations; yet if you were to place what you call virtue in one scale, and vice, with twopence, in the other, they would forget their morality, and pocket the money. They talk of their honour and integrity, but never enter into a treaty but with a firm resolution of breaking it as soon as a farthing is to be gained by so doing. After death, they inhabit the most pestilential marsh of the kingdom of darkness, and their souls are scourged without mercy. None of the other d.a.m.ned will have any communication with them. If the inhabitants of the Continent could do without sugar and coffee, the sons of proud England would soon return to the state in which they were when Julius Caesar, Canute of Denmark, or William the Conqueror, did them the honour to invade their island.”
_Faustus_. For a devil, thou knowest history pa.s.sably well.
Hereupon he led him to Milan, where they saw the Duke Galeas Sforza murdered on St. Stephen's day in the cathedral; Faustus having previously heard the a.s.sa.s.sins loudly beseeching St. Stephen and St. Ambrose to inspire them with the courage necessary for so n.o.ble a deed.
In Florence, the seat of the Muses, they saw the nephew of the great Cosmo, the father of his country, murdered in the church of Santa Reparata, at the altar, just at the moment when the priest raised the host in his hands; for the Archbishop of Florence, Salviati, had informed the murderers that this was to be the signal. He had been bribed to a.s.sist in this enterprise by the Pope, who was determined to annihilate the Medicis, in order to rule sole sovereign in Italy.
In the north of Europe they saw wild barbarians and drunken ruffians murdering and pillaging like the more civilised Europeans. In Spain they found upon the throne deceit and hypocrisy wearing the mask of religion.
They saw, at an _auto-da-fe_, men and women immolated in the flames to the mild Deity of the Christians; and they heard the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, boast to Ferdinand and Isabella that, since the establishment of the holy tribunal, it had tried eighty thousand suspected persons, and had burnt six thousand convicted heretics. When Faustus first saw the ladies and cavaliers a.s.sembled in the grand square, dressed in their richest habits, he imagined that he had come just in time for some joyous festival; but when he heard the condemned wretches howling and lamenting in the midst of a mob of monks who were at their devotions, he was convinced that religion, when misused, makes man the most execrable monster on the earth. He, however, began to imagine that all these horrors were the necessary consequences of man's nature, who is an animal that must either tear his fellow-creatures to pieces, or be torn to pieces by them.
The Devil, perceiving that Faustus was amazed and confounded by these scenes, said to him:
”Thou seest how the courts of Europe resemble each other in wickedness and crime. Let us now go to Rome, and see whether the ecclesiastical government goes on better.”
The malicious Leviathan flattered himself that Alexander the Sixth, who wore at that time the triple crown, and held in his hands the keys of heaven and of h.e.l.l, would give the finis.h.i.+ng blow to the hara.s.sed spirit of Faustus, and would enable him to return below with his victim. For a long time he had been weary of staying on the earth; for although he had in the course of many thousand years so often traversed it, he still saw merely the same beings and the same actions. From this we may learn that there is something so annoying in uniformity, that even the wild horrors of Satan's hall are to be preferred to it.
On the way to Rome they pa.s.sed by two hostile armies encamped face to face. The one was commanded by Malatesta of Rimini, the other by a papal general. The crafty Alexander was now endeavouring, either by poisoning, secret a.s.sa.s.sination, or open war, to deprive all the Italian n.o.blemen of their property, in order that he might convert their castles and domains into princ.i.p.alities for his illegitimates. He began with the weakest, and had despatched this little army to eject Malatesta from his fief of Rimini. Faustus and the Devil, riding along the road, perceived upon an eminence contiguous to the papal camp two men, magnificently dressed, engaged in a furious combat. Moved by curiosity, Faustus advanced to the spot; the fiend followed him; and they perceived, by the rage of the antagonists, that nothing less than the death of one of them would end the struggle. But what appeared to Faustus most extraordinary was a milk-white goat, adorned with ribbons of various colours, which a page seemed to hold as the prize of victory, as he stood, with the utmost coolness, near the two raging warriors. Many cavaliers had a.s.sembled upon the height, and awaited the issue of the affair. Faustus approached one of them, and asked, with his German simplicity, whether the gentlemen were fighting for that handsome goat. He had observed that the two champions, whenever they paused to take breath, looked at the goat with much tenderness, and each seemed, according to knightly custom, to entreat it to a.s.sist him in his danger. The Italian, turning to Faustus, coolly answered, ”Yes, certainly; and I hope our general will punish with death the audacious knight who dared to remove from his tent the handsomest goat in the world, at the time he was gone to reconnoitre the enemy's camp.” Faustus stepped back, shook his head, and scarcely knew whether he was dreaming or awake. The Devil let him remain for some time in this perplexity; he then took him aside, and whispered certain things in his ear, which made Faustus blush, and which will not bear repet.i.tion.
The duel in the mean time went on as hotly as ever, until the sword of the papal general found an opening in the knight's mail, and laid him wallowing in blood upon the ground. He yielded up his soul amidst curses and imprecations, and took, with his last look, a tender farewell of the pretty animal. The general was congratulated by the surrounders, and the page delivered him the goat. He called it ”his dearest, his best-beloved,” and loaded it with the most tender caresses.