Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/565

1858.] taste of the multitude. Scholars turned their backs on him, and we find him only among tipplers and associates of the lowest kind. At one of their carousals his half-intoxicated companions asked him for a specimen of his witchcraft. He declared himself willing to gratify them in any request. They then demanded that he should make a grape-vine full of ripe fruit grow out of the table around which they sat. Faustus enjoined complete silence, ordered them to take their knives and keep themselves in readiness for cutting the fruit, but not to stir before he gave them leave. And, behold, before the eyes of the gaping youths, while they themselves were enveloped in a magic mist, there arose a great vine, with as many bunches of grapes as there were persons in the room. Suddenly the obscuring mist dissolved, and each one saw the others with their hands at their own noses, ready to cut them off, as the promised grapes. But the vine and the magician had disappeared, and the disenchanted drunkards were left to their own rage.

The reader will be aware that this is the tale of which Goethe availed himself in representing Faustus's visit to Auerbach's cellar at Leipzig. Whether it really occurred there is not stated; but that Faustus was said to have been at Leipzig, and even in Auerbach's cellar, is an historical fact, attested by two pictures still extant at this famous old tavern, where many of our curious American travellers may have seen them. These pictures, which have been retouched and renovated more than once,—last in 1759,—are marked at the top with the date 1525. Whether this means the year in which they were painted, or that in which Faustus performed the great feat which the scene represents, remains uncertain. As it occurred in the beginning of his career, upon which we may assume him to have entered somewhere between 1520 and 1525, the date is quite likely to refer to the time of the feat; but, to judge from the costumes and several other signs, the pictures cannot have been painted much later. They were evidently made expressly for the locality, sloping off on both sides at the top, to suit the shape of the vault. The German inscription at the foot of one of the pictures indicates that it was written after the Doctor's death, which must have occurred between 1540 and 1550; but it is probable that these verses were added at a later time, the more so as the traces of an older inscription, now no longer legible, may still be discovered. One of these curious paintings represents Faustus in company with students and musicians sitting around a table covered with dishes and bottles. Faustus is lifting his goblet with one hand, and with the other beating time on the table to the music. At the bottom we read the following verse in barbarous Latin:—

The other picture shows us the same jolly party risen from table, and all expressing their wonder and astonishment, as Dr. Faustus is just riding out of the door on a wine-tub. Beneath it is the following inscription in German:—

On neither of the two pictures does Mephistopheles appear, unless he is meant to be represented in the shape of the black dog. It is not, however, Goethe's