han, in the mean time, passed over the city-walls; and
when they were in the open field, the Devil despatched an attendant
spirit to the hotel, in order to pay the reckoning, and to fetch away
Faustus's baggage. Then turning to the young German, he asked him if he
were contented with this first feat.

_Faustus_. Hem! if the Devil wants praise, I am content to give it him.
But I should never have imagined that yon pompous scoundrel would have
sold his wife for ambition's sake.

_Devil_. Let us proceed a little further, my Faustus, and I will soon
convince thee that Ambition is the godhead which ye all worship; although
you disguise it under all kind of glittering forms, in order to conceal
its nakedness. Till now you have studied man merely in books and
philosophical treatises; or, in other words, you have been thrashing
empty straw. But the film will soon fall from your eyes. We will
shortly quit this dirty country of yours, where priestcraft, pedantry,
and oppression reign unmolested and undisturbed. I will usher you upon a
stage where the passions have a freer scope, and where great energies are
employed to great ends.

_Faustus_. But I will force thee to believe in the moral worth of man
before we quit my native land. Not far from hence lives a prince, whom
all Germany praises as a paragon of every virtue. Let us seek him, and
put him to the test.

_Devil_. Agreed; such a man would please me for his rarity.

The spirit now returned with the baggage, and was sent forward to Mayence
to bespeak a lodging in an hotel. Faustus, for secret reasons which the
Devil guessed, proposed spending the night with a hermit who dwelt in the
hill of Homburg, and who was renowned through the whole neighbourhood for
his piety. They reached the hermitage about midnight, and knocked at the
door. The solitary opened it; and Faustus, who had dressed himself in
the richest clothes which the Devil had provided for him, begged pardon
for disturbing the repose of the holy man, and said that the night had
surprised him and his companion while hunting, and had separated them
from their attendants, and that they should be obliged by his giving them
house-room for a few hours. The hermit looked on the ground, and
replied, with a deep sigh:

"He who lives for heaven seldom abandons himself to dangerous repose.
You have not disturbed me; and, if you wish to stay here till sunrise,
you must take things as you find them. Bread and