The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. Francisco de Quevedo
much as a glister. Oh! these cursed and lawless arbitrators and disposers of our lives! that without either conscience or religion, divide our souls and bodies, by their damned poisonous potions, scarifications, incisions, excessive bleedings, etc., which are but the several ways of executing their tyranny and injustice upon us.
In the tail of these, came the surgeons, laden with pincers, cranes-bills, catheters, desquamatories, dilaters, scissors, saws; and with them so horrid an outcry, of cut, tear, open, saw, flay, burn, that my bones were ready to creep one into another for fear of an operation.
The next that came in, I should have taken by their mien, for devils disguised, if I had not spied their chains of rotten teeth, which put me in some hope they might be tooth-drawers, and so they proved; which is yet one of the lewdest trades in the world; for they are good for nothing but to depopulate our mouths, and make us old before our time. Let a man but yawn, and ye shall have one of these rogues examining his grinders, and there’s not a sound tooth in your head, but he had rather see’t at his girdle, than in the place of its nativity: nay, rather than fail, he’ll pick a quarrel with your gums. But that which puts me out of all patience, is to see these scoundrels ask twice as much for drawing an old tooth as would have bought ye a new one.
“Certainly,” said I to myself, “we are now past the worst, unless the devil himself come next.” And in that instant I heard the brushing of guitars, and the rattling of citterns, raking over certain passacailles and sarabands. These are a kennel of barbers thought I, or I’ll be hanged; and any man that had ever seen a barber’s shop might have told you as much without a conjurer, both by the music and by the very instruments, which are as proper a part of a barber’s furniture as his comb-cases and wash-balls. It was to me a pleasant entertainment, to see them lathering of asses’ heads, of all sorts and sizes, and their customers all the while winking and sputtering over their basins.
Presently after these, appeared a consort of loud and tedious talkers, that tired and deafened the company with their shrill, and restless gaggle; but as one told me, these were of several sorts. Some they called swimmers from the motion of their arms in all their discourses, which was just as if they had been paddling. Others they called apes (and we mimics); these were perpetually making of mops, and mows, and a thousand antic ridiculous gestures, in derision and imitation of others. In the third place, were make-bates, and sowers of dissension, and these were still rolling their eyes (like a Bartlemey puppet, without so much as moving the head) and leering over their shoulders, to surprise people at unawares in their familiarities, and privacies, and gather matter for calumny and detraction. The liars followed next; and these seemed to be a jolly contented sort of people, well fed, and well clothed; and having nothing else to trust to, methought it was a strange trade to live upon. I need not tell you, that they are never without a full audience, since all fools and impertinents are of their congregation.
After these, came a company of meddlers, a pragmatical insolent generation of men that will have an oar in every boat, and are indeed the bane of honest conversation, and the troublers of all companies and affairs, the most prostitute of all flatterers, and only devoted to their own profit. I thought this had been the last scene, because no more came upon the stage for a good while; and indeed I wondered that they came so late themselves, but one of the babblers told me (unasked) that this kind of serpent carrying his venom in his tail; it seemed reasonable, that being the most poisonous of the whole gang, they should bring up the rear.
I began then to take into thought, what might be the meaning of this oglio of people of several conditions and humours met together; but I was quickly diverted from that consideration by the apparition of a creature which looked as if ’twere of the feminine gender. It was a person, of a thin and slender make, laden with crowns, garlands, sceptres, scythes, sheep-hooks, pattens, hobnailed shoes, tiaras, straw hats, mitres, Monmouth caps, embroideries, skins, silk, wool, gold, lead, diamonds, shells, pearl, and pebbles. She was dressed up in all the colours of the rainbow; she had one eye shut, the other open; young on the one side, and old o’ the other. I thought at first, she had been a great way off, when indeed she was very near me, and when I took her to be at my chamber door, she was at my bed’s head. How to unriddle this mystery I knew not; nor was it possible for me to make out the meaning of an equipage so extravagant, and so fantastically put together. It gave me no affright, however, but on the contrary I could not forbear laughing, for it came just then into my mind that I had formerly seen in Italy a farce, where the mimic, pretending to come from the other world, was just thus accoutred, and never was anything more nonsensically pleasant. I held as long as I could, and at last, I asked what she was. She answered me, “I am Death.” Death! (the very word brought my heart into my mouth) “and I beseech you, madam,” quoth I (with great humility and respect) “whither is your honour a going?” “No further,” said she, “for now I have found you, I am at my journey’s end.” “Alas, alas! and must I die then,” said I. “No, no,” quoth Death, “but I’ll take thee quick along with me; for since so many of the dead have been to visit the living, it is but equal for once, that one of the living should return a visit to the dead. Get up then and come along; and never hang an arse for the matter; for what you will not do willingly, you shall do in spite of your teeth.” This put me in a cold fit; but without more delay up I started, and desired leave only to put on my breeches. “No, no,” said she, “no matter for clothes, nobody wears them upon this road; wherefore come away, naked as you are, and you’ll travel the better.” So up I got, without a word more and followed her, in such a terror, and amazement, that I was but in an ill condition to take a strict account of my passage; yet I remember, that upon the way, I told her: “Madam, under correction, you are no more like the Deaths that I have seen, than an apple’s like an oyster. Our Death is pictured with a scythe in her hand; and a carcass of bones, as clean as if the crows had picked it.” “Yes, yes,” said she, turning short upon me, “I know that very well; but in the meantime your designers and painters are but a company of buzzards. The bones you talk of are the dead, or otherwise the miserable remainders of the living; but let me tell you that you yourselves are your own death, and that which you call death, is but the period of your life, as the first moment of your birth is the beginning of your death; and effectually, ye die living, and your bones are no more than what death has left and committed to the grave. If this were rightly understood, every man would find a memento mori, or a death’s head, in his own looking-glass; and consider every house with a family in’t but as a sepulchre filled with dead bodies; a truth which you little dream of, though within your daily view and experience. Can you imagine a death elsewhere, and not in yourselves? Believe’t y’are in a shameful mistake; for you yourselves are skeletons before ye are aware.”
“But, madam, under favour, what may all these people be that keep your ladyship company? and since you are Death (as you say) how comes it, that the babblers, and make-bates, are nearer your person, and more in your good graces than the physicians?” “Why,” says she, “there are more people talked to death and dispatched by babblers, than by all the pestilential diseases in the world. And then your make-bates, and meddlers kill more than your physicians, though (to give the gentlemen of the faculty their due) they labour night and day for the enlargement of our empire. For you must understand, that though distempered humours make a man sick, ’tis the physician kills him; and looks to be well paid for’t too: (and ’tis fit that every man should live by his trade) so that when a man is asked, what such or such a one died of, he is not presently to make answer, that he died of a fever, pleurisy, the plague, purples, or the like; but that he died of the doctor. In one point, however, I must needs acquit the physician; ye know that the style of right honourable, and right worshipful, which was heretofore appropriate only to persons of eminent degree and quality, is now in our days used by all sorts of little people; nay the very barefoot friars, that live under vows of humility and mortification, are stung with this itch of title and vainglory. And your ordinary tradesmen, as vintners, tailors, masons, and the like, must be all dressed up forsooth in the right worshipful: whereas your physician does not so much court honour of appellation (though, if it should rain dignities, he might be persuaded happily to venture the wetting) but sits down contentedly with the honour of disposing of your lives and moneys, without troubling himself about any other sort of reputation.”
The entertainment of these lectures, and discourses made the way seem short and pleasant,