h is now sunk into the refuse of humanity,
would have been blooming and prosperous; lamented by them, thou wouldst
have died calmly on thy bed, and thy example would have guided thy
posterity along the thorny path of life.

_Faustus_. Ah, the greatest torment of the damned is, no doubt, to hear
the devil preach penitence.

_Devil_. It is pleasant enough that you force us to moralise; but,
wretch, if the voice of truth and of penitence were to echo down from
heaven, you would close your ears to it.

_Faustus_. Destroy me at once, and do not kill me by thy prattling,
which tears my heart without convincing my spirit. Pour out thy venom,
and do not distil it upon me drop by drop. I am not to blame if, having
sown the seeds of good, bad has arisen from them. A good action has
caused the ignominious death of my son, and a good action has
precipitated my family into the most profound misery.

_Devil_. Why dost thou boast to me of thy good deed? How does it
deserve that name? I suppose because thou didst give me a command,
which, by the by, did not cost thee much. To have made the action
meritorious, thou shouldst have cast thyself into the water, and have
saved the young man at the risk of thine own life. I brought him to the
shore, and disappeared; he would have known thee, and, moved by
gratitude, would probably have become the protector, instead of the
destroyer, of thy family.

_Faustus_. Thou canst torment me, Devil; but thou canst not, from
stupidity, or thou wilt not, from wickedness, dispel my doubts. Never
have they torn my heart more venomously than at this moment, when I
consider the miseries of my existence and of my after-destination. Is
human life any thing else than a tissue of crimes, torments, pains,
hypocrisy, contradictions, and false virtues? What are free agency,
choice, will, and that so much vaunted faculty of distinguishing good
from evil, if the passions drown the feeble voice of reason, as the roar
of the sea drowns the voice of the pilot whose vessel is about to be
dashed against the rocks? Is it possible for man to destroy and root out
of his breast the germ of evil which has been designedly introduced
there? I hate, more bitterly than ever, the world, my fellow-creatures,
and myself. Destined to suffer, why was I born with the desire of being
happy? Born for darkness, why was I filled with the desire of seeing
light? Why had the slave the thirst for freedom? Why had the w