, resolved very kindly and wisely to throw none away
upon me. The only instructors of my youth were therefore one Saltator,
who taught me several motions for my legs; and one Ficus, whose business
was to show me the cleanest way (as he called it) of cutting off a man's
head. When I was well accomplished in these sciences, I thought nothing
more wanting, but what was to be furnished by the several mechanics in
Rome, who dealt in dressing and adorning the pope. Being therefore well
equipped with all which their art could produce, I became at the age
of twenty a complete finished beau. And now during forty-five years I
dressed, I sang and danced, and danced and sang, I bowed and ogled, and
ogled and bowed, till, in the sixty-sixth year of my age, I got cold by
overheating myself with dancing, and died.

"Minos told me, as I was unworthy of Elysium, so I was too insignificant
to be damned, and therefore bade me walk back again."

CHAPTER XIV

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 countena