easier to imagine than to describe. He did not,
however, fail at the rendezvous next night, and found the demon sitting
outside the bell in a most affable frame of mind. It did not take long for
the devil and the saint to become very good friends, both wanting company,
and the former being apparently as much amused by the latter's simplicity
as the latter was charmed by the former's knowingness. Euschemon learned
numbers of things of which he had not had the faintest notion. The demon
taught him how to play cards (just invented by the Saracens), and initiated
him into divers "arts, though unimagined, yet to be," such as smoking
tobacco, making a book on the Derby, and inditing queer stories for Society
journals. He drew the most profane but irresistibly funny caricatures of
Eulogius and Eucherius, and the rest of the host of heaven. He had been one
of the demons who tempted St. Anthony, and retailed anecdotes of that
eremite which Euschemon had never heard mentioned in Paradise. He was
versed in all scandal respecting saints in general, and Euschemon found
with astonishment how much about his own order was known downstairs. On the
whole he had never enjoyed himself so much in his life; he became
proficient in all manner of minor devilries, and was ceasing to trouble
himself about his bell or his ecclesiastical duties, when an untoward
incident interrupted his felicity.

It chanced that the Bishop of Metz, in whose diocese Epinal was situated,
finding himself during a visitation journey within a short distance of the
town, determined to put, up there for the night. He did not arrive until
nightfall, but word of his intention having been sent forward by a
messenger the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, were ready to receive
him. When, escorted in state, he had arrived at the house prepared for his
reception, the Mayor ventured to express a hope that everything had been
satisfactory to his Lordship.

"Everything," said the bishop emphatically. "I did indeed seem to remark
one little omission, which no doubt may be easily accounted for."

"What was that, my Lord?"

"It hath," said the bishop, "usually been the practice to receive a bishop
with the ringing of bells. It is a laudable custom, conducive to the
purification of the air and the discomfiture of the prince of the powers
thereof. I caught no sound of chimes on the present occasion, yet I am
sensible that my hearing is not what it was."

The civil and eccl