Adventures in the person of a monk.
“Fortune now placed me in the character of a younger brother of a good
house, and I was in my youth sent to school; but learning was now at so
low an ebb, that my master himself could hardly construe a sentence
of Latin; and as for Greek, he could not read it. With very little
knowledge therefore, and with altogether as little virtue, I was set
apart for the church, and at the proper age commenced monk. I lived many
years retired in a cell, a life very agreeable to the gloominess of my
temper, which was much inclined to despise the world; that is, in other
words, to envy all men of superior fortune and qualifications, and in
general to hate and detest the human species. Notwithstanding which,
I could, on proper occasions, submit to flatter the vilest fellow in
nature, which I did one Stephen, an eunuch, a favorite of the emperor
Justinian II, one of the wickedest wretches whom perhaps the world ever
saw. I not only wrote a panegyric on this man, but I commended him as
a pattern to all others in my sermons; by which means I so greatly
ingratiated myself with him, that he introduced me to the emperor’s
presence, where I prevailed so far by the same methods, that I was
shortly taken from my cell, and preferred to a place at court. I was no
sooner established in the favor of Justinian than I prompted him to all
kind of cruelty. As I was of a sour morose temper, and hated nothing
more than the symptoms of happiness appearing in any countenance, I
represented all kind of diversion and amusement as the most horrid sins.
I inveighed against cheerfulness as levity, and encouraged nothing but
gravity, or, to confess the truth to you, hypocrisy. The unhappy
emperor followed my advice, and incensed the people by such repeated
barbarities, that he was at last deposed by them and banished.
“I now retired again to my cell (for historians mistake in saying I was
put to death), where I remained safe from the danger of the irritated
mob, whom I cursed in my own heart as much as they could curse me.
“Justinian, after three years of his banishment, returned to
Constantinople in disguise, and paid me a visit. I at first affected
not to know him, and without the least compunction of gratitude for his
former favors, intended not to receive him, till a thought immediately
suggested itself to me how I might convert him to my advantage, I
pretended to recollect him; and, blaming the shortness of my memory
and badness of my eyes, I sprung forward and embraced him with great
affection.
“My design was to betray him to Apsimar, who, I doubted not, would
generously reward such a service. I therefore very earnestly requested
him to spend the whole evening with me; to which he consented. I formed
an excuse for leaving him a few minutes, and ran away to the palace to
acquaint Apsimar with the guest whom I had then in my cell. He presently
ordered a guard to go with me and seize him; but, whether the length of
my stay gave him any suspicion, or whether he changed his purpose after
my departure, I know not; for at my return we found he had given us the
slip; nor could we with the most diligent search discover him.
“Apsimar, being disappointed of his prey, now raged at me; at first
denouncing the most dreadful vengeance if I did not produce the deposed
monarch. However, by soothing his passion when at the highest, and
afterwards by canting and flattery, I made a shift to escape his fury.
“When Justinian was restored I very confidently went to wish him joy
of his restoration: but it seems he had unfortunately heard of my
treachery, so that he at first received me coldly, and afterwards
upbraided me openly with what I had done. I persevered stoutly in
denying it, as I knew no evidence could be produced against me; till,
finding him irreconcilable, I betook myself to reviling him in my
sermons, and on every other occasion, as an enemy to the church and good
men, and as an infidel, a heretic, an atheist, a heathen, and an Arian.
This I did immediately on his return, and before he gave those flagrant
proofs of his inhumanity which afterwards sufficiently verified all I
had said.
“Luckily I died on the same day when a great number of those forces
which Justinian had sent against the Thracian Bosphorus, and who had
executed such unheard-of cruelties there, perished. As every one
of these was cast into the bottomless pit, Minos was so tired with
condemnation, that he proclaimed that all present who had not been
concerned in that bloody expedition might, if they pleased, return to
the other world. I took him at his word, and, presently turning about,
began my journey.”