hould find an
assassin in one of those whom he might meet. If anguish drove him into
the free air, he went armed with lance and dagger, just as if he had
strength to use either. Four hundred guards watched day and night around
the stronghold of the half-dead monster; three times every hour did their
hoarse calls, echoing from post to post, break the solemn stillness, and
remind the tyrant of the flight of time. All around his castle gibbets
were erected; and the hangman, Tristan, his only true friend, went about
the country every day, and returned at night with fresh victims, in
order, by their execution, to diminish the fears of the tyrant, who from
time to time would walk in an apartment which was only separated from the
torture-room by a thin partition. There he listened to the groans and
shrieks of the wretches on the rack, and found in the sufferings of
others a slight alleviation of his own. Wearing on his hat a leaden
image of the Virgin,--his pretended protectress,--he drank the blood of
murdered sucklings, and allowed himself to be tormented by his physician,
whom he requited with ten thousand crowns a month.

This was the wretch whom Faustus saw; and his heart rejoiced when he
contemplated the paleness of his cheeks, and the farrows which anguish
and despair had made in his brow. He was on the point of leaving this
abode of monotonous horror, when the Devil whispered him to remain until
the next day, and he would see a singular spectacle. The king had heard
that a hermit lived in Calabria, who was honoured as a saint through all
Sicily. This fool had, from his fourteenth to his fortieth year, dwelt
upon a naked rock, where, exposed to the rains and tempests of heaven, he
martyred his body by stripes and fasting, and refused his mind all
cultivation. But, the rays of sanctity concealing his stupidity, he soon
saw the prince and the peasant at his feet. Louis had requested the King
of Sicily to send him this creature, because he hoped to be cured by him.
The hermit was now on the road; and as he brought with him the holy oil
of Rheims, to anoint the tyrant's body, the latter imagined that all his
disorders would soon vanish, and he should become young again. The happy
day arrived: the Calabrian boor approached the castle; the king received
him at the gate, fell at his feet, and asked him for life and health.
The Calabrian played his part in so ridiculous a manner, that Faustus
could not avoid laughing