The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. Francisco de Quevedo
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one side of the passage, I saw three moving figures, armed, and of human shape, and so alike, that I could not say which was which. Just opposite, on the other side, a hideous monster, and these three to one, and one to three, in a fierce, and obstinate combat. Here Death made a stop, and facing about, asked me if I knew these people. “Alas! no,” quoth I, “Heaven be praised, I do not, and I shall put it in my litany that I never may.” “Now to see thy ignorance,” cried Death; “these are thy old acquaintance, and thou hast hardly kept any other company since thou wert born. Those three are the world, the flesh, and the devil, the capital enemies of thy soul; and they are so like one another, as well in quality, as appearance, that effectually, whoever has one, has all. The proud and ambitious man thinks he has got the world, but it proves the devil. The lecher, and the epicure, persuade themselves that they have gotten the flesh, and that’s the devil too; and in fine, thus it fares with all other kinds of extravagants.” “But what’s he there,” said I, “that appears in so many several shapes? and fights against the other three?” “That,” quoth Death, “is the devil of money, who maintains that he himself alone is equivalent to them three, and that wherever he comes, there’s no need of them. Against the world, he argues from their own confession and experience: for it passes for an oracle, that there’s no world but money; he that’s out of money’s out of the world. Take away a man’s money, and take away his life. Money answers all things. Against the second enemy, he pleads that money is the flesh too: witness the girls and the ganymedes it procures, and maintains. And against the third, he urges that there’s nothing to be done without this devil of money. Love does much but money does all; and money will make the pot boil, though the devil piss in the fire.” “So that for ought I see,” quoth I, “the devil of money has the better end of the staff.”
After this, advancing a little further, I saw on one hand judgment, and hell on the other (for so Death called them). Upon the sight of hell, making a stop, to take a stricter survey of it, Death asked me, what it was I looked at. I told her, it was hell; and I was the more intent upon it, because I thought I had seen it somewhere else before. She questioned me, where? I told her, that I had seen it in the corruption and avarice of wicked magistrates; in the pride and haughtiness of grandees; in the appetites of the voluptuous; in the lewd designs of ruin and revenge; in the souls of oppressors; and in the vanity of divers princes. But he that would see it whole and entire, in one subject, must go to the hypocrite, who is a kind of religious broker, and puts out at five-and-forty per cent. the very Sacraments and Ten Commandments.
“I am very glad too,” said I, “that I have seen judgment as I find it here, in its purity; for that which we call judgment in the world is a mere mockery: if it were like this, men would live otherwise than they do. To conclude: if it be expected that our judges should govern themselves and us by this judgment, the world’s in an ill case; for there’s but little of’t there. And to deal plainly, as matters are, I have no great maw to go home again: for ’tis better being with the dead, where there’s justice, than with the living, where there’s none.”
Our next step was into a fair and spacious plain, encompassed with a huge wall, where he that’s once in must never look to come out again. “Stop here,” quoth Death, “for we are now come to my judgment-seat, and here it is that I give audience.” The walls were hung with sighs and groans, ill-news, fears, doubts, and surprises. Tears did not there avail either the lover or the beggar; but grief and care were without both measure and comfort; and served as vermin to gnaw the hearts of emperors and princes, feeding upon the insolent and ambitious, as their proper nourishment. I saw Envy there dressed up in a widow’s veil, and the very picture of the government of one of your noblemen’s houses. She kept a continual fast as to the shambles, preying only upon herself; and could not but be a very slender gentlewoman, upon so spare a diet. Nothing came amiss to her teeth (good or bad) which made the whole set of them yellow and rotten, and the reason was that, though she bit, and set her mark upon the good and the sound, she could never swallow it. Under her, sat discord; the legitimate issue of her own bowels. She had formerly conversed much with married people, but finding no need of her there, away she went to colleges and corporations, where it seems they had more already than they knew what to do withal; and then she betook herself to courts and palaces, and officiated there, as the devil’s lieutenant. Next to her was ingratitude, and she out of a certain paste made up of pride and malice, was moulding of new devils. I was extreme glad of this discovery, being of opinion, till now, that the ungrateful had been the devils themselves, because I read, that the angels that fell were made devils for their ingratitude. To be short, the whole place echoed with rage and curses. “What a devil have we here to do,” said I, “does it rain curses in this country?” With that; a death at my elbow asked me, what a devil could I expect else, in a place where there were so many matchmakers, attorneys, and common barristers, who are a pack of the most accursed wretches in nature. Is there anything more common in the world, than the exclamations of husbands and wives? “Oh! that damned devil of a pander: a heavy curse upon that bitch of a bawd that ever brought us together.” “The pillory and ten thousand gibbets to boot take that pickpocket attorney, that advised me to this lawsuit; h’ as ruined me for ever.” “But pray’e,” said I, “what do all these matchmakers and attorneys here together? Do they come for audience?” Death was here a little quick upon me, and called me fool for so impertinent a question. “If there were no matchmakers,” said she, “we should not have the tenth part of these skeletons, and desperadoes. Am not I here the fifth husband of a woman yet living in the world, that hopes to send twice as many more after me, and drink maudlin at the fifteenth funeral?” “You say well,” said I, “as to the business of matchmakers; but why so many pettifoggers, I pray’e?” “Nay, then, I perceive,” quoth Death, “now you have a mind to seize me; for that rascally sort of caterpillars have been my undoing. Had not a man better die by the common hangman than by the hand of an attorney? to be killed by falsities, quirks, cavils, delays, exceptions, cheats, circumventions: yes, yes, and it must not be denied, that these makers of matches, and splitters of causes, are the principal support of this imperial throne.”
At these words, I raised my eyes, and saw Death seated in her chair of state, with abundance of little deaths crowding about her: as the death of love, of cold, hunger, fear, and laughter; all, with their several ensigns and devices. The death of love, I perceived, had very little brain, and to keep herself in countenance, she kept company with Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, and some Amadis’s and Palmerins d’Oliva; all embalmed, steeped in good vinegar, and well dried. I saw a great many other sorts of lovers too, that were brought, in all appearance, to their last agonies, but by the singular miracle of self-interest recovered to the tune of
Will, if looking well won’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
The death of cold was attended by a many prelates, bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics, who had neither wives, nor children, nor indeed anybody else that cared for them, further than for their fortunes. These, when they come to a fit of sickness, are pillaged even to their sheets and bedding, before ye can say a paternoster. Nay, many times they are stripped, ere they are laid, and destroyed for want of clothes to keep them warm.
The death of hunger was encompassed with a multitude of avaricious misers that were cording up of trunks, bolting of doors and windows, locking up of cellars and garrets, and nailing down of trap doors, burying of pots of money, and starting at every breath of wind they heard. Their eyes were ready to drop out of their heads, for want of sleep; their mouths and bellies complaining of their hands, and their souls turned into gold and silver (the idols they adored.)
The death of fear had the most magnificent train and attendance of all the rest, being accompanied with a great number of usurpers arid tyrants, who commonly do justice upon themselves, for the injuries they have done to others, their own consciences doing the office of tormentors, and avenging their public crimes by their private sufferings; for they live in a perpetual anguish of thought, with fears and jealousies.
The death of laughter was the last of all, and surrounded with a throng of people, hasty to believe, and slow to repent, living without fear of justice, and dying without hope of mercy. These are they that pay all their debts and duties with a jest. Bid any of them, “Give every man his due, and return what he has either borrowed, or wrongfully