on their insignificant features turned into a sign and
prognostication of genius? Were they not grandees, whose brilliant
stations rendered their physiognomies imposing to thine eye? Thou seest
that I know thy customers, and have read thy book."

_Devil_. Bravo, Faustus! Let me now put in a word, and tell his
reverence a few mortifying truths. Brother monk, thou hast formed in thy
solitary cell a phantom of perfection, and wouldst fain thrust that into
people's heads, which, when there, poisons the brain, as the gangrene
corrupts all the flesh around it. There were men long ago who ventured
to judge of the innermost of their fellow-creatures from the outside; but
there was some difference between them and thee. They had travelled over
a considerable part of the earth; experience had made them gray; they had
lived and conversed with men, visited all the lurking holes of vice and
iniquity, roved from the palace to the cot, crept into the caves of
savages, and thus knew what belonged to a well-organised man, and what he
could do with his faculties. But shalt thou--swollen with prejudices,
pent up in a convent like a toad in the trunk of an oak--pretend to have
a clear idea of that which even they barely understood?

The monk stood between the two speakers as between two volcanoes in
eruption; he crossed his hands humbly upon his breast, and cried, "Have
mercy!"

The Devil continued:

"Among the many impudent follies which I observed in thy book was an
attempt to draw the Devil's portrait. It is now high time for him to
appear to thee, in order that thou mayst correct the likeness. Look at
me; and for once thou shalt be able to say thou hast seen an object in
its proper form."

The Devil then appeared to him in the most frightful of infernal figures;
but he rolled a thick mist before the eyes of Faustus, in order that he
might not blast his sight. The monk fell to the earth; and the Devil,
resuming all his former comeliness, exclaimed:

"Now thou mayst paint the Devil in his proper colours, provided thou hast
strength. Thou wouldst often be thus overcome, if thou didst in reality
see the innermost of those whom thou makest angels."

_Faustus_. Persist in thy folly; communicate it to others; and by thy
extravagances render religion repulsive to reasonable people. Thou canst
not farther more efficaciously the interests of the enemy. Farewell!

The monk had lost his senses through terror; but he still c