Page:Political history of the devil upon two sticks.pdf/9

 overflowed with the filthy remains of their debauchː in one place was a great Mahometan lord coming out of the bath, and encompassed by all the women of his seraglio, officiously crouding to tender him their service: in another, an English gentleman very gallantly presenting a pipe and a pot of beer to his mistress.

There the gamsters were also wonderfully well represented: some of them animated by a sprightly joy, heaping up pieces of gold and silver in their hatsː and others, broken and reduced to play upon honour, casting up their sacriligious eyes to heaven, and gnawing their cards with despair. To conclude, there were as many curious things to be seen on it, as on the admirable buckler of the son of Peleus, which exhausted all Vulcan's art; with this difference betwixt the performance of the two cripples, that the figures on the buckler had no relation to the exploits of Achilles, but on the contrary, those on the cloak were so many lively images of whatever was done in the world by the suggestion of Asmodeo.

dæmon observing that the sight of him did not very agreeably prepossess the student in his favour, smiling said, Well Signior Cleofas, Leandro Perez Zambullo, you see, the charming god of love, the sovereign ruler of hearts, what do you think of my beauty and air? Do you not take the poets for excellent painters? Why, really, answered Cleofas, they do flatter a little. You did not, I suppose, appear in this shape to Pysche! Doubtless no, replied Asmodeo; I borrowed the appearance of a French marquis, to make her doat on me; vice must