"How much to be lamented," interrupted the Student, "is the love of gaming which possesses so large a portion of mankind; in what an awful state of excitement does it plunge its victims. Heaven be praised! I am not included in their legion." "You are in high feather," replied the Demon, "in another, whose exploits are not much more ennobling, and scarcely less dangerous. Is the conquest of a courtezan a glory worth achievement? Is the possession of charms common to a whole city worth the peril of a life? Man is an amusing animal! The vision of a mole would enable him to discover the vices of his fellows, while that of the vulture could scarce detect a folly of his own. But let us turn to another affecting spectacle. You can discern, in the house just beyond the one we have been contemplating, a fat old man extended on a bed: he is a canon, who is now in a fit of apoplexy. The two persons, whom you see in his room, are said to be his nephew and niece: they are too much affected by his situation to be able to assist him; so, are securing his valuable effects. By the time this is accomplished, he will be dead; and they will be sufficiently recovered, and at leisure, to weep over his remains.
[Illustration: the canon's nephew and niece steal his possessions]
"Close by, you may perceive the funeral of two brothers; who, seized with the same disorder, took equally successful but different means of ensuring its fatality. One of them had the most utter confidence in his apothecary; the other eschewed the aid of medicine: the first died because he took all the trash his doctor sent him; the last because he would take nothing." "Well! that is very perplexing," said Leandro; "what is a poor sick devil to do?" "Why," replied Asmodeus, "that is more than the one who has the honour of addressing you can determine. I know, for certain, that there are remedies for most ills; but I am not so sure that there are good physicians to administer them when necessary."
"And now I have something more amusing to unriddle. Do you not hear a frightful din in the next street? A widow of sixty was married this morning to an Adonis of seventeen; and all the merry fellows of that part of the town have assembled to celebrate the wedding by a concert of pots and pans, marrow-bones and cleavers." "You told me," said the Student, "that these matches were under your control: at all events, you had no hand in this." "No, truly," answered the Demon, "not I. Had I been free, I should not have meddled with them. The widow had her scruples; and has married for no better reason than that she may enjoy, without remorse, the pleasures she so dearly loves. These are not the unions I care to form; I prefer troubling people's consciences to setting them at rest."