placency, leave to guide Faust in his own way, and offers to bet with the Almighty that he will win, is about as frigid a piece of blasphemous mockery as can be found. Obtaining and expressing great thankfulness for the privilege, he goes off from the presence of the Almighty and his angels with the remark, "I like to see the ancient one" (or old gentleman) "occasionally. It's quite civil in so great a Lord to talk with the devil himself" It is this ultimate, impudent depravity, "logical life with moral death," which makes him so fascinating to the skeptics of Germany. Yet, if need be, he can hide this repulsiveness. You may keep him company for weeks and never have a hint of hell or a sniff of brimstone. He may be with you without your knowledge, seeing without being seen, hearing without being heard, coming in without leave, and leaving without noise; can be shut neither in nor out; is seen when he is not known, and is known when he is not seen: so that he is the more potent in his allurements and dangerous in his designs, because he is so complete in his duplicity. As Spenser was called the poet's poet, so may Mephistopheles be called the devil's devil. He assumes the form of a poodle or a gentleman at will; goes off in thin air, or takes substantial form; sings songs with the jovial; talks like an institution with a "we;" argues philosophy with the pedantic, and plays the Satanic all the time.
One of his many sides is the comical. He has his fun, but it is a diabolical fun. In the wine-collar, at Leipzig, is a drinking party, loud in carousal and deep in their cups. The devil would show Faust with what little wit and much content life may fly away; and in the guise of travellers they join the party. He sings a song, furnishes liquor by boring a hole in the edge of the table, draws from-it wine, some of which, spilt by an awkward reveller, turns to flame. Then, indeed, is dismay; then ensues a fight, in which, of course, the devil gets the best; after which he transports, by his necromancy, the carousing company into a paradise of beauty, where, amid flowers and fruit they revel, plucking luscious grapes with avidity, which, as the illusion is dispelled, they find, for grapes, each other's noses.
It is said that the devil has a hand in all the fun and frolic of life. There is some reason for the assertion. The confession may not be
