WHAT FOLLOWED THE DELIVERANCE OF ASMODEUS.
Upon perceiving that his appearance had not prepossessed the student
very greatly in his favour, the Demon said to him, smiling: "Well,
Signor Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo, you behold the charming
god of love, that sovereign master of the human heart. What think you
of my air and beauty? Confess that the poets are excellent painters."
"Frankly!" replied Don Cleophas, "I must say they have a little
flattered you. I fancy, it was not in this form that you won the love
of Psyche." "Certainly not," replied the Devil: "I borrowed the graces
of a little French marquis, to make her dote upon me. Vice must be
hidden under a pleasing veil, or it wins not even woman. I take what
shape best pleases me; and I could have discovered myself to you under
the form of the Apollo Belvi, but that as I have nothing to disguise
from you, I preferred you should see me under a figure more agreeable
to the opinion which the world generally entertains of me and my
performances." "I am not surprised," said Leandro, "to find you rather
ugly--excuse the phrase, I pray you; the transactions we are about to
have with each other demand a little frankness: your features indeed
almost exactly realise the idea I had formed of you. But tell me, how
happens it that you are on crutches?"
"Why," replied the Demon, "many years ago, I had an unfortunate
difference with Pillardoc, the spirit of gain, and the patron of
pawnbrokers. The subject of our dispute was a stripling who came to
Paris to seek his fortune. As he was capital game, a youth of promising
talents, we contested the prize with a noble ardour. We fought in the
regions of mid-air; and Pillardoc, who excelled me in strength, cast me
on the earth after the mode in which Jupiter is related by the poets
to have tumbled Vulcan. The striking resemblance of our mishaps gained
me, from my witty comrades, the sobriquet of the Limping Devil, or the
Devil on Two Sticks, which has stuck to me from that time to this.
Nevertheless, limping as I am, I am tolerably quick in my movements;
and you shall witness for my agility.
"But," added he, "a truce to idle talk; let us get out of this
confounded garret. My friend the magician will be here shortly; as he
is hard at work on rendering a handsome damsel, who visits him nightly,
immortal. If he should surprise us, I shall be snug in a bottle in no
time; and it may go hard but he finds one to fit you also. So let us
away! But first to throw the pieces, of that which was once my prison,
out of the window; for such 'dead men' as these _do_ tell tales."
"What if your friend does find out that you are 'missing?'" "What!"
hastily replied the Demon; "I see you have never studied the Treatise
on Compulsions. Were I hidden at the extremity of the earth, or in the
region where dwells the fiery salamander; though I sought the murkiest
cavern of the gnomes, or plunged in the most unfathomable depths of the
ocean, I should vainly strive to evade the terrors of his wrath. Hell
itself would tremble at the potency of his spells. In vain should I
struggle: despite myself should I be dragged before my master, to feel
the weight of his dreaded chains."
[Illustration: Asmodeus carried off]
"That being the case," said the Student, "I fear that our intimacy will
not be of long duration: this redoubtable necromancer will doubtless
soon discover your flight." "That is more than I know," replied the
Spirit; "there is no foreseeing what may happen." "What!" cried Leandro
Perez; "a demon, and ignorant of the future!" "Exactly so," answered
the Devil; "and they are only our dupes who think otherwise. However,
there are enough of them to find good employment for diviners and
fortune-tellers, especially among your women of quality; for those are
always most eager about the future who have best reason to be contented
with the present, which and the past are all we know or care for. I am
ignorant, therefore, whether my master will soon discover my absence;
but let us hope he will not: there are plenty of phials similar to
the one in which I was enclosed, and he may never miss that. Besides,
in his laboratory, I am something like a law-book in the library of a
financier. He never thinks of me; or if he does, he would think he did
me too great an honour if he condescended to notice me. He is the most
haughty enchanter of my acquaintance: long as he has deprived me of my
liberty, we have never exchanged a syllable."
"That is extraordinary!" said Don Cleophas; "what have you done
to deserve so much hatred or scorn?" "I crossed him in one of his
projects," replied Asmodeus. "There was a chair vacant in a certain
Academy, which he had designed for a friend of his, a professor of
necromancy; but which I had destined for a particular friend of my own.
The magician set to work with one of the most potent talismans of the
Cabala; but I knew better than that: I had placed my man in the service
of the prime minister; whose word is worth a dozen talismans, with the
Academicians, any day."
While the Demon was thus conversing, he was busily engaged in
collecting every fragment of the broken phial; which having thrown out
of the window, "Signor Zambullo," said he, "let us begone! Hold fast by
the end of my mantle, and fear nothing." However perilous this appeared
to Leandro Perez, he preferred the possible danger to the certainty of
the magician's resentment; and, accordingly, he fastened himself as
well as he could to the Demon, who in an instant whisked him out of the
apartment.
[Illustration: Asmodeus and Zambullo flying over Madrid]