Текст книги "20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels"

Автор книги: авторов Коллектив

Chapter XI

Scythrop, attending one day the summons to dinner, found in the drawing-room his friend Mr. Cypress the poet, whom he had known at college, and who was a great favourite of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Cypress said, he was on the point of leaving England, but could not think of doing so without a farewell-look at Nightmare Abbey and his respected friends, the moody Mr. Glowry and the mysterious Mr. Scythrop, the sublime Mr. Flosky and the pathetic Mr. Listless; to all of whom, and the morbid hospitality of the melancholy dwelling in which they were then assembled, he assured them he should always look back with as much affection as his lacerated spirit could feel for any thing. The sympathetic condolence of their respective replies was cut short by Raven’s announcement of ‘dinner on table.’

The conversation that took place when the wine was in circulation, and the ladies were withdrawn, we shall report with our usual scrupulous fidelity.

MR. GLOWRY

You are leaving England, Mr. Cypress. There is a delightful melancholy in saying farewell to an old acquaintance, when the chances are twenty to one against ever meeting again. A smiling bumper to a sad parting, and let us all be unhappy together.

MR. CYPRESS ( filling a bumper)

This is the only social habit that the disappointed spirit never unlearns.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX ( filling)

It is the only piece of academical learning that the finished educatee retains.

MR. FLOSKY ( filling)

It is the only objective fact which the sceptic can realise.

SCYTHROP ( filling)

It is the only styptic for a bleeding heart.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS ( filling)

It is the only trouble that is very well worth taking.

MR. ASTERIAS ( filling)

It is the only key of conversational truth.

MR. TOOBAD ( filling)

It is the only antidote to the great wrath of the devil.

MR. HILARY ( filling)

It is the only symbol of perfect life. The inscription ‘HIC NON BIBITUR’ [639]639
  Hic non bibitur! – One doesn’t sing here! ( Latin)


[Закрыть]will suit nothing but a tombstone.

MR. GLOWRY

You will see many fine old ruins, Mr. Cypress; crumbling pillars, and mossy walls – many a one-legged Venus and headless Minerva [640]640
  Minerva – in Roman mythology, the goddess of handicrafts and arts


[Закрыть] – many a Neptune [641]641
  Neptune – in Roman mythology, the god of fresh water and sea


[Закрыть]buried in sand – many a Jupiter turned topsy-turvy – many a perforated Bacchus [642]642
  Bacchus – in Greek mythology, the god of wine and ecstasy


[Закрыть]doing duty as a water-pipe – many reminiscences of the ancient world, which I hope was better worth living in than the modern; though, for myself, I care not a straw more for one than the other, and would not go twenty miles to see any thing that either could show.

MR. CYPRESS

It is something to seek, Mr. Glowry. The mind is restless, and must persist in seeking, though to find is to be disappointed. Do you feel no aspirations towards the countries of Socrates [643]643
  Socrates(470 BC–399 BC) – the greatest Greek philosopher who exerted profound influence on philosophy of all time


[Закрыть]and Cicero? No wish to wander among the venerable remains of the greatness that has passed for ever?

MR. GLOWRY

Not a grain.

SCYTHROP

It is, indeed, much the same as if a lover should dig up the buried form of his mistress, and gaze upon relics which are any thing but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature – a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths of servility and superstition.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

It is the fashion to go abroad. I have thought of it myself, but am hardly equal to the exertion. To be sure, a little eccentricity and originality are allowable in some cases; and the most eccentric and original of all characters is an Englishman who stays at home.

SCYTHROP

I should have no pleasure in visiting countries that are past all hope of regeneration. There is great hope of our own; and it seems to me that an Englishman, who, either by his station in society, or by his genius, or (as in your instance, Mr. Cypress,) by both, has the power of essentially serving his country in its arduous struggle with its domestic enemies, yet forsakes his country, which is still so rich in hope, to dwell in others which are only fertile in the ruins of memory, does what none of those ancients, whose fragmentary memorials you venerate, would have done in similar circumstances.

MR. CYPRESS

Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country. I have written an ode to tell the people as much, and they may take it as they list.

SCYTHROP

Do you suppose, if Brutus [644]644
  Brutus(85 BC–43 BC) – the Roman general who took part in the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC


[Закрыть]had quarrelled with his wife, he would have given it as a reason to Cassius [645]645
  Cassius – Gaius Cassius, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar


[Закрыть]for having nothing to do with his enterprise? Or would Cassius have been satisfied with such an excuse?

MR. FLOSKY

Brutus was a senator; so is our dear friend: but the cases are different. Brutus had some hope of political good: Mr. Cypress has none. How should he, after what we have seen in France?

SCYTHROP

A Frenchman is born in harness, ready saddled, bitted, and bridled, for any tyrant to ride. He will fawn under his rider one moment, and throw him and kick him to death the next; but another adventurer springs on his back, and by dint of whip and spur on he goes as before. We may, without much vanity, hope better of ourselves.

MR. CYPRESS

I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false nature; it is not in the harmony of things; it is an all-blasting upas, whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain their poison-dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to the last by phantoms – love, fame, ambition, avarice–all idle, and all ill – one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death.

MR. FLOSKY

A most delightful speech, Mr. Cypress. A most amiable and instructive philosophy. You have only to impress its truth on the minds of all living men, and life will then, indeed, be the desert and the solitude; and I must do you, myself, and our mutual friends, the justice to observe, that let society only give fair play at one and the same time, as I flatter myself it is inclined to do, to your system of morals, and my system of metaphysics, and Scythrop’s system of politics, and Mr. Listless’s system of manners, and Mr. Toobad’s system of religion, and the result will be as fine a mental chaos as even the immortal Kant himself could ever have hoped to see; in the prospect of which I rejoice.

MR. HILARY

‘Certainly, ancient, it is not a thing to rejoice at:’ I am one of those who cannot see the good that is to result from all this mystifying and blue-devilling of society. The contrast it presents to the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity is too forcible not to strike any one who has the least knowledge of classical literature. To represent vice and misery as the necessary accompaniments of genius, is as mischievous as it is false, and the feeling is as unclassical as the language in which it is usually expressed.

MR. TOOBAD

It is our calamity. The devil has come among us, and has begun by taking possession of all the cleverest fellows. Yet, forsooth, this is the enlightened age. Marry, how? Did our ancestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine? Where is the manifestation of our light? By what symptoms do you recognise it? What are its signs, its tokens, its symptoms, its symbols, its categories, its conditions? What is it, and why? How, where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in the workhouse, when they saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, where they saw none. We see paper, where they saw gold. We see men in stays, where they saw men in armour. We see painted faces, where they saw healthy ones. We see children perishing in manufactories, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton [646]646
  Milton – John Milton (1608–1674), an English poet, the author of the famous ‘Paradise Lost’


[Закрыть], and we see Mr. Sackbut.

MR. FLOSKY

The false knave, sir, is my honest friend; therefore, I beseech you, let him be countenanced. God forbid but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request.

MR. TOOBAD

‘Good men and true’ was their common term, like the kalos kagathos [647]647
  kalos kagathos= kind and good ( Greek)


[Закрыть]of the Athenians [648]648
  Athenians – residents of Athens


[Закрыть]. It is so long since men have been either good or true, that it is to be questioned which is most obsolete, the fact or the phraseology.

MR. CYPRESS

There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind’s idea. Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind. Confusion, thrice confounded, is the portion of him who rests even for an instant on that most brittle of reeds – the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict or to endure.

MR. HILARY

Rather to bear and forbear, Mr. Cypress – a maxim which you perhaps despise. Ideal beauty is not the mind’s creation: it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind’s alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is not responsible; and, in the common name of humanity, I protest against these false and mischievous ravings. To rail against humanity for not being abstract perfection, and against human love for not realising all the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail at the summer for not being all sunshine, and at the rose for not being always in bloom.

MR. CYPRESS

Human love! Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the Athenians did their unknown God: but broken hearts are the martyrs of his faith, and the eye shall never see the form which phantasy paints, and which passion pursues through paths of delusive beauty, among flowers whose odours are agonies, and trees whose gums are poison.

MR. HILARY

You talk like a Rosicrucian [649]649
  Rosicrucian – a member of a worldwide secret brotherhood and a follower of teaching that combines esoteric wisdom, mysticism and religious beliefs and practices of the past


[Закрыть], who will love nothing but a sylph [650]650
  sylph – in medieval folklore, an imaginary soulless mortal being that lives in the air


[Закрыть], who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph.

MR. CYPRESS

The mind is diseased of its own beauty, and fevers into false creation. The forms which the sculptor’s soul has seized exist only in himself.

MR. FLOSKY

Permit me to discept. They are the mediums of common forms combined and arranged into a common standard. The ideal beauty of the Helen [651]651
  Helen – in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman of her time, the cause of the Trojan War


[Закрыть]of Zeuxis [652]652
  Zeuxis(5th century BC) – one of the best known artists of ancient Greece


[Закрыть]was the combined medium of the real beauty of the virgins of Crotona [653]653
  Crotona – an ancient town in southern Italy, founded by the Greeks about 710 BC


[Закрыть].

MR. HILARY

But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and, like the dog in the fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom, whatever it may be of genius. To reconcile man as he is to the world as it is, to preserve and improve all that is good, and destroy or alleviate all that is evil, in physical and moral nature – have been the hope and aim of the greatest teachers and ornaments of our species. I will say, too, that the highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakspeare and Socrates were the most festive of companions. But now the little wisdom and genius we have seem to be entering into a conspiracy against cheerfulness.

MR. TOOBAD

How can we be cheerful with the devil among us?

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

How can we be cheerful when our nerves are shattered?

MR. FLOSKY

How can we be cheerful when we are surrounded by a reading public, that is growing too wise for its betters?

SCYTHROP

How can we be cheerful when our great general designs are crossed every moment by our little particular passions?

MR. CYPRESS

How can we be cheerful in the midst of disappointment and despair?

MR. GLOWRY

Let us all be unhappy together.

MR. HILARY

Let us sing a catch.

MR. GLOWRY

No: a nice tragical ballad. The Norfolk Tragedy to the tune of the Hundredth Psalm.

MR. HILARY

I say a catch.

MR. GLOWRY

I say no. A song from Mr. Cypress.

ALL

A song from Mr. Cypress.

MR. CYPRESS sung —

 
There is a fever of the spirit,
The brand of Cain’s unresting doom,
Which in the lone dark souls that bear it
Glows like the lamp in Tullia’s [654]654
  Tullia – Cicero’s daughter


[Закрыть]tomb:
Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire
Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart,
Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire,
Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart.
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust – spectral memories – dead and cold —
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling’s desolation —
The soul is its own monument.
 

MR. GLOWRY

Admirable. Let us all be unhappy together.

MR. HILARY

Now, I say again, a catch.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

I am for you.

MR. HILARY

‘Seamen three.’

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

Agreed. I’ll be Harry Gill, with the voice of three. Begin.

MR. HILARY AND THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

 
Seamen three! What men be ye?
Gotham’s three wise men we be.
Whither in your bowl so free?
To rake the moon from out the sea.
The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.
And our ballast is oldwine;
And your ballast is old wine.
Who art thou, so fast adrift?
I am he they call Old Care.
Here on board we will thee lift.
No: I may not enter there.
Wherefore so? ‘Tis Jove’s decree,
In a bowl Care may not be;
In a bowl Care may not be.
Fear ye not the waves that roll?
No: in charmed bowl we swim.
What the charm that floats the bowl?
Water may not pass the brim.
The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine.
And our ballast is old wine;
And your ballast is old wine.
 

This catch was so well executed by the spirit and science of Mr. Hilary, and the deep tri-une voice of the reverend gentleman, that the whole party, in spite of themselves, caught the contagion, and joined in chorus at the conclusion, each raising a bumper to his lips:

 
The bowl goes trim: the moon doth shine:
And our ballast is old wine.
 

Mr. Cypress, having his ballast on board, stepped, the same evening, into his bowl, or travelling chariot, and departed to rake seas and rivers, lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty.

Chapter XII

It was the custom of the Honourable Mr. Listless, on adjourning from the bottle to the ladies, to retire for a few moments to make a second toilette, that he might present himself in becoming taste. Fatout, attending as usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, and informed his master that he had just ascertained that the abbey was haunted. Mr. Hilary’s gentlewoman, for whom Fatout had lately conceived a tendresse [655]655
  tendresse= tenderness ( French)


[Закрыть], had been, as she expressed it, ‘fritted out of her seventeen senses’ the preceding night, as she was retiring to her bedchamber, by a ghastly figure which she had met stalking along one of the galleries, wrapped in a white shroud, with a bloody turban on its head. She had fainted away with fear; and, when she recovered, she found herself in the dark, and the figure was gone. ‘ Sacre – cochon– bleu!’ [656]656
  Sacre – cochon – bleu! – Damn! ( French)


[Закрыть]exclaimed Fatout, giving very deliberate emphasis to every portion of his terrible oath ‘I vould not meet de revenant, de ghost – non – not for all de bowl-de-ponchin de vorld.’

‘Fatout,’ said the Honourable Mr. Listless, ‘did I ever see a ghost?’

‘ Jamais [657]657
  Jamais= never ( French)


[Закрыть], monsieur, never.’

‘Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my nerves, I am afraid it would be too much for me. There – loosen the lace of my stays a little, for really this plebeian practice of eating – Not too loose – consider my shape. That will do. And I desire that you bring me no more stories of ghosts; for, though I do not believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in the night, one is apt, if one thinks of them, to have fancies that give one a kind of a chill, particularly if one opens one’s eyes suddenly on one’s dressing gown, hanging in the moonlight, between the bed and the window.’

The Honourable Mr. Listless, though he had prohibited Fatout from bringing him any more stories of ghosts, could not help thinking of that which Fatout had already brought; and, as it was uppermost in his mind, when he descended to the tea and coffee cups, and the rest of the company in the library, he almost involuntarily asked Mr. Flosky, whom he looked up to as a most oraculous personage, whether any story of any ghost that had ever appeared to any one, was entitled to any degree of belief?

MR. FLOSKY

By far the greater number, to a very great degree.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

Really, that is very alarming!

MR. FLOSKY

Sunt geminæ somni portæ. [658]658
  Sunt geminae somni portae. – The doors are open for dreams. ( Latin)


[Закрыть]There are two gates through which ghosts find their way to the upper air: fraud and self-delusion. In the latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visus [659]659
  deceptio visus= deception of vision ( Latin)


[Закрыть], an ocular spectrum, an idea with the force of a sensation. I have seen many ghosts myself. I dare say there are few in this company who have not seen a ghost.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

I am happy to say, I never have, for one.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

We have such high authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came for the express purpose of asking a question, and did not wait for an answer.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

Because Job was too frightened to give one.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

Spectres appeared to the Egyptians during the darkness with which Moses [660]660
  Moses – a Hebrew prophet of the 14th-13th centuries BC who delivered his people from Egyptian slavery


[Закрыть]covered Egypt. The witch of Endor [661]661
  witch of Endor – in the Old Testament, a sorceress, whom king Saul came to and asked to conjure up the spirit of the prophet Samuel


[Закрыть]raised the ghost of Samuel [662]662
  Samuel – in the Old Testament, a Hebrew prophet of the 11th century BC and a religious hero


[Закрыть]. Moses and Elias [663]663
  Elias – in the Old Testament, a Hebrew prophet of the 9th century BC


[Закрыть]appeared on Mount Tabor [664]664
  Mount Tabor – a low mountain in northern Israel, mentioned in the Old Testament


[Закрыть]. An evil spirit was sent into the army of Sennacherib [665]665
  Sennacherib(7th century BC) – king of Assyria, an ancient kingdom in northern Mesopotamia, one of the greatest empires of the ancient Middle East


[Закрыть], and exterminated it in a single night.

MR. TOOBAD

Saying, The devil is come among you, having great wrath.

MR. FLOSKY

Saint Macarius [666]666
  Saint Macarius(4th century BC) – Macarius the Great or Macarius the Egyptian, a monk and ascetic with extraordinary power of prophecy and healing


[Закрыть]interrogated a skull, which was found in the desert, and made it relate, in presence of several witnesses, what was going forward in hell. Saint Martin of Tours [667]667
  Saint Martin of Tours(316–397) – the patron saint of France


[Закрыть], being jealous of a pretended martyr, who was the rival saint of his neighbourhood, called up his ghost, and made him confess that he was damned. Saint Germain [668]668
  Saint Germain(496–576) – one of the most revered saints of France


[Закрыть], being on his travels, turned out of an inn a large party of ghosts, who had every night taken possession of the table d’hôte, and consumed a copious supper.

MR. HILARY

Jolly ghosts, and no doubt all friars. A similar party took possession of the cellar of M. Swebach [669]669
  Swebach(1769–1823) – Jacques FranÇois Joseph Swebach-Desfontaines (1769–1823), a French painter


[Закрыть], the painter, in Paris, drank his wine, and threw the empty bottles at his head.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

An atrocious act.

MR. FLOSKY

Pausanias [670]670
  Pausanias – a Greek geographer and traveler of the 2nd century


[Закрыть]relates, that the neighing of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon [671]671
  Marathon – the Marathon plain where a decisive battle between the Greeks and the Persians took place in 490 BC


[Закрыть]: that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered severely for their curiosity; but those who heard them by accident passed with impunity.

THE REVEREND MR. LARYNX

I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where any one but a ghost would look for me. I had not been into it for three months, and was going to consult Tillotson [672]672
  Tillotson – John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury in 1691


[Закрыть], when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing gown, sitting in my armchair, and reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I; and what it was or what it wanted I have never been able to ascertain.

MR. FLOSKY

It was an idea with the force of a sensation. It is seldom that ghosts appeal to two senses at once; but, when I was in Devonshire [673]673
  Devonshire – a historic county along the English Channel coast


[Закрыть], the following story was well attested to me. A young woman, whose lover was at sea, returning one evening over some solitary fields, saw her lover sitting on a stile over which she was to pass. Her first emotions were surprise and joy, but there was a paleness and seriousness in his face that made them give place to alarm. She advanced towards him, and he said to her, in a solemn voice, ‘The eye that hath seen me shall see me no more. Thine eye is upon me, but I am not.’ And with these words he vanished; and on that very day and hour, as it afterwards appeared, he had perished by shipwreck.

The whole party now drew round in a circle, and each related some ghostly anecdote, heedless of the flight of time, till, in a pause of the conversation, they heard the hollow tongue of midnight sounding twelve.

MR. HILARY

All these anecdotes admit of solution on psychological principles. It is more easy for a soldier, a philosopher, or even a saint, to be frightened at his own shadow, than for a dead man to come out of his grave. Medical writers cite a thousand singular examples of the force of imagination. Persons of feeble, nervous, melancholy temperament, exhausted by fever, by labour, or by spare diet, will readily conjure up, in the magic ring of their own phantasy, spectres, gorgons, chimæras, and all the objects of their hatred and their love. We are most of us like Don Quixote, to whom a windmill was a giant, and Dulcinea a magnificent princess: all more or less the dupes of our own imagination, though we do not all go so far as to see ghosts, or to fancy ourselves pipkins and teapots.

MR. FLOSKY

I can safely say I have seen too many ghosts myself to believe in their external existence. I have seen all kinds of ghosts: black spirits and white, red spirits and grey. Some in the shapes of venerable old men, who have met me in my rambles at noon; some of beautiful young women, who have peeped through my curtains at mid– night.

THE HONOURABLE MR. LISTLESS

And have proved, I doubt not, ‘palpable to feeling as to sight.’

MR. FLOSKY

By no means, sir. You reflect upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly my friend Mr. Sackbut, are famous for our purity. No, sir, genuine untangible ghosts. I live in a world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment.

 Mr. Flosky fixed his eyes on a door at the farther end of the library. The company looked in the same direction. The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure, shrouded in white drapery, with the semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly up the apartment. Mr. Flosky, familiar as he was with ghosts, was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mrs. Hilary and Marionetta followed, screaming. The Honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first off the sofa and then under it. The Reverend Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipitation, that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Glowry roared with pain in the ear of Mr. Toobad. Mr. Toobad’s alarm so bewildered his senses, that, missing the door, he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterias and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to land.

Scythrop and Mr. Hilary meanwhile had hastened to his assistance, and, on arriving at the edge of the moat, followed by several servants with ropes and torches, found Mr. Asterias and Aquarius busy in endeavouring to extricate Mr. Toobad from the net, who was entangled in the meshes, and floundering with rage. Scythrop was lost in amazement; but Mr. Hilary saw, at one view, all the circumstances of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter; on recovering from which, he said to Mr. Asterias, ‘You have caught an odd fish, indeed.’ Mr. Toobad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry; but Mr. Hilary softened his anger, by producing a knife, and cutting the Gordian knot [674]674
  the Gordian knot – idioma problem that can be solved by resolute action


[Закрыть]of his reticular envelopment. ‘You see,’ said Mr. Toobad, ‘you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the affairs of this world; and I have no doubt but that the apparition of this night was Apollyon [675]675
  Apollyon – in the Old Testament, a synonym of death


[Закрыть]himself in disguise, sent for the express purpose of terrifying me into this complication of misadventures. The devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.’