they, for example, replied to the insult, they would thereby have
acknowledged that they felt the force of it; but when they let it fall
flat upon the ground, as if it were nothing to any of them, it lost all
its power, and assumed the colour of an unfair reproach. Genius alone is
capable in such critical moments of like discrimination.

At the word "mayor," Faustus pricked up his ears, and the Devil gave him
a significant side-glance. Faustus thereupon took the Bible from the
casket, handed it over to the senators, and said, with some degree of
complaisance,

"That, upon due consideration, he was determined to make the city a
present of his Bible, on condition that they showed the sentence which he
marked under, and of which he wrote a German translation on the margin,
to the assembled magistrates; and, in remembrance of him, caused it to be
written in letters of gold on the wall of the council-chamber."

The senators hastened back to their brethren, as delighted as envoys who,
after a ruinous war, return with an advantageous peace. They were
received with great joy, and, the Bible being opened at the appointed
place, they read--

"_And lo_!_ the fools sat in council_, _and idiots clamoured in the
judgment-chamber_."

They swallowed this bitter pill, because the presumptive shadow of
imperial majesty, in the form of the demon, prevented them from spitting
it out. They comforted themselves with having been spared the four
hundred gold guilders, and wished each other joy for having escaped so
well out of this unpleasant affair. The envoys received a vote of
thanks, and it is to be regretted that their names are not handed down to
posterity. When at last they spoke of Faustus's well-filled money-chest,
the glitter of gold darted like lightning through the souls of all, and
each secretly determined to make the man his friend, in order to get
possession of it. The alderman shouted, "We must make him a citizen, and
give him a seat and voice in the council. Policy demands that we should
overstep law and custom, if the advantage of the State depends upon it."

Faustus, in the mean time, strolled out with the Devil; but they found
the people of the place modelled after so unsightly a pattern, with such
ugly figures and fiat features, that the Devil owned he had never seen
them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town called N---,
when dressed in their Sunday's best. "Envy, malice, curiosity, and
av