_How Doctor Faustus with his company visited the Bishop of Saltzburg
his Wine-cellar_
Doctor Faustus having taken his leave of the Duke, he went to
Wittenberg, near about Shrovetide, and being in company with certain
Students, Doctor Faustus was himself the God Bacchus, who having well
feasted the Students before with dainty fare, after the manner of
Germanie, where it is counted no feast except all the bidden guests be
drunk, which Doctor Faustus intending, said: Gentlemen and my guests,
will it please you to take a cup of wine with me in a place or cellar
whereunto I will bring you, and they all said willingly we will: which
when Doctor Faustus heard, he took them forth, set either of them
upon an holly wand, and so were conjured into the Bishop of Saltzburg
his Cellar, for there about grew excellent pleasant Wine: there fell
Faustus and his company to drinking and swilling, not of the worst but
of the best, and as they were merry in the Cellar, came down to draw
drink the Bishop’s butler: which when he perceived so many persons
there he cried with a loud voice, thieves! thieves! This spited Doctor
Faustus wonderfully, wherefore he made every one of his company to
sit on their holly wand and so vanished away, and in parting Doctor
Faustus took the Butler by the hair of the head and carried him away
with them, until they came unto a mighty high-lopped tree, and on the
top of that huge tree he set the Butler, where he remained in a most
fearful perplexity, and Doctor Faustus departed to his house where they
took their VALETE one of another, drinking the Wine the which they had
stolen in great bottles of glass out of the Bishop’s cellar. The Butler
that had held himself by the hand upon the lopped tree all the night,
was almost frozen with cold, espying the day, and seeing the tree of
so huge great highness, thought with himself it is impossible to come
off this tree without peril of death: at length he had espied certain
Clowns which were passing by, he cried for the love of God help me
down: the Clowns seeing him so high, wondered what mad man would climb
to so huge a tree, wherefore as a thing most miraculous, they carried
tidings unto the Bishop of Saltzburg, then was there great running on
every side to see a man in a huge tree, and many devices they practised
to get him down with ropes, and being demanded by the Bishop how he
came there, he said, that he was brought thither by the hair of the
head of certain thieves that were robbing of the Wine-cellar, but what
they were he knew not, for (said he) they had faces like men, but they
wrought like Devils.