The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas. Francisco de Quevedo
Give over your bawdy haunts for shame, and don’t make a glory of a sin, when you’re past the pleasure of it, and yourself upon all accounts contemptible into the bargain.” “This fellow,” says he, “would make a man break his heart with laughing.” “Come, come, say your prayers, and bethink yourself of eternity; you have one foot in the grave already, and ’tis high time to fit yourself for the other world.” “Thou wilt absolutely kill me with laughing. I tell thee I’m as sound as a rock, and I do not remember that ever I was better in my life.” Others there are, that, let a man advise them upon their deathbeds and even at the last gasp to send for a divine, or to make some handsome settlement of their estates, “Alas, alas!” they’ll cry; “I have been as bad as this many a time before, and (with Falstaffe’s hostess) I hope in the Lord there’s no need to think of him yet.” These men are lost for ever, before they can be brought to understand their danger. This vision wrought strangely upon me, and gave me all the pains and marks imaginable of a true repentance. “Well,” said I, “since so it is, that man has but one life allotted him and so many deaths; but one way into the world and so many millions out of it, I will certainly at my return make it more my care than it has been to live with a good conscience, that I may die with comfort.”
These last words were scarce out of my mouth, when the crier of the court with a loud voice called out, “The dead, the dead; appear the dead.” And so immediately, I saw the earth begin to move, and gently opening itself, to make way, first for heads and arms, and then by degrees for the whole bodies of men and women, that came out, half muffled in their nightcaps, and ranged themselves in excellent order, and with a profound silence. “Now,” says Death, “let everyone speak in his turn;” and in the instant, up comes one of the dead to my very beard, with so much fury and menace, in his face and action, that I would have given him half the teeth in my head for a composition. “These devils of the world,” quoth he, “what would they be at? my masters, cannot a poor wretch be quiet in his grave for ye? but ye must be casting your scorns upon him, and charging him with things that upon my soul he’s as innocent of as the child that’s unborn. What hurt has he done any of you (ye scoundrels you) to be thus abused?” “And I beseech you, sir,” said I, “(under your favourable correction) who may you be? for I confess I have not the honour either to know or to understand ye.” “I am,” quoth he, “the unfortunate Tony, that has been in his grave now this many a fair year, and yet your wise worships forsooth have not wit enough to make yourselves and your company merry, but Tony must still be one-half of your entertainment and discourse. When any man plays the fool or the extravagant, presently he’s a Tony. Who drew this or that ridiculous piece? Tony. Such or such a one was never well taught: no, he had a Tony to his master. But let me tell ye, he that shall call your wisdoms to shrift and take a strict account of your words and actions, will upon the upshot find you all a company of Tonys, and in effect the greater impertinents. As for instance: did I ever make ridiculous wills (as you do) to oblige others to pray for a man in his grave, that never prayed for himself in his life? Did I ever rebel against my superiors? Or, was I ever so arrant a coxcomb, as by colouring my cheeks and hair, to imagine that I could reform nature, and make myself young again? Can ye say that I ever put an oath to a lie? or broke a solemn promise, as you do every day that goes over your heads? Did I ever enslave myself to money? Or, on the other side, make ducks and drakes with it? and squander it away in gaming, revelling, and whoring? Did my wife ever wear the breeches? Or, did I ever marry at all, to be revenged of a false mistress? Was I ever so very a fool as to believe any man would be true to me, who had betrayed his friend? Or, to venture all my hopes upon the wheel of fortune? Did I ever envy the felicity of a court-life, that sells and spends all for a glance? What pleasure did I ever take in the lewd discourses of heretics and libertines? Or, did I ever list myself in the party, to get the name of a gifted brother? Who ever saw me insolent to my inferiors, or basely servile to my betters? Did I ever go to a conjurer, or to your dealers in nativities, and horoscopes upon any occasion of loss or death? Now if you yourselves be guilty of all these fopperies, and I innocent, I beseech ye where’s the Tony? So that you see Tony is not the Tony you take him for. But (to crown his other virtues) he is also endued with so large a stock of patience that whoever needed it had it for the asking, unless it were such as came to borrow money; or in cases of women, that claimed marriage of him; or lackeys that would be making sport with his bauble; and to these, he was as resolute as John Florio.”
While we were upon this discourse, another of the dead came marching up to me, with a Spanish pace and gravity; and giving me a touch o’ the elbow, “Look me in the face,” quoth he with a stern countenance, “and know, sir, that you are not now to have to do with a Tony.” “I beseech your lordship,” said I, “(saving your reverence) let me know your honour, that I may pay my respects accordingly; for I must confess, I thought all people here had been, hail fellow well met.” “I am called,” quoth he, “by mortals, Queen Dick; and whether you know me or not, I’m sure you think and talk of me often enough; and if the devil did not possess ye, you would let the dead alone, and content yourselves to persecute one another. Ye can’t see a high crowned hat, a threadbare cloak, a basket-hilt sword, or a dudgeon dagger, nay not so much as a reverend matron, well stricken in years, but presently ye cry, “This or that’s of the mode or date of Queen Dick.” If ye were not every mother’s child of ye stark mad, ye would confess that Queen Dick’s were golden days to those ye have had since, and ’tis an easy matter to prove what I say. Will ye see a mother now teaching her daughter a lesson of good government? ‘Child,’ says she, ‘you know that modesty is the great ornament of your sex; wherefore be sure, when ye come in company, that you don’t stand staring the men in the face, as if ye were looking babies in their eyes, but rather look a little downward, as a fashion of behaviour more suitable to the obligations of your sex.’ ‘Downward?’ says the girl, ‘I beseech you, madam, excuse me: this was well enough in the days of Queen Dick, when the poor creatures knew no better. Let the men look downward towards the clay of which they were made, but man was our original, and it will become us to keep our eyes upon the matter from whence we came.’ If a father give his son in charge, to worship his Creator, to say his prayers morning and evening, to give thanks before and after meat, to have a care of gaming and swearing, ye shall have the son make answer, that ’tis true, this was practised in the time of Queen Dick, but it is now quite out of mode; and in plain English, men are better known nowadays by their atheism and blasphemy than by their beards.”
Hereupon, Queen Dick withdrew, and then appeared a large glass-bottle, wherein was luted up (as I heard) a famous necromancer, hacked and minced according to his own order, to render him immortal. It was boiling upon a quick fire, and the flesh by little and little began to piece again, and made first an arm, then a thigh, after that a leg; and at last there was an entire body, that raised itself upright in the bottle. Bless me (thought I!) what’s here? A man made of a pottage, and brought into the world out of the belly of a bottle? This vision affrighted me to the very heart; and while I was yet panting and trembling, a voice was heard out of the glass. “In what year of our Lord are we?” “1636,” quoth I. “And welcome,” said he; “for ’tis the happy year I have longed for so many a day.” “Who is it, I pray’e,” quoth I, “that I now see and hear in the belly of this bottle?” “I am,” said he, “the great necromancer of Europe; and certainly you cannot but have heard both of my operations in general, and of this particular design.” “I have heard talk of you from a child,” quoth I, “but all those stories I took only for old wives’ fables. You are the man then it seems: I must confess that at first, at a distance I took this bottle for the vessel that the ingenious Rabelais makes mention of; but coming near enough to see what was in it, I did then imagine it might be some philosopher by the fire, or some apothecary doing penance for his errors. In fine, it has cost me many a heavy step to come hither, and yet to see so great a rarity I cannot but think my time and pains very well bestowed.” The necromancer called to me then to unstop the bottle, and as I was breaking the clay to open it, “Hold, hold a little,” he cried; “and I prithee tell me first how go squares in Spain? What money? Force? Credit?” “The plate fleets go and come,” said I, “reasonably well; but the foreigners that come in for their snips have half spoiled the trade. The Genoeses run out as far as the mountains of Potosi, and have almost drained them dry.” “My child,” quoth he, “that trade can never be secure and open, so long as Spain has any enemy that’s potent