"If those maidens, as you call them, and whom you admire so much," replied the Cripple, "have the graces of Diana's nymphs, they assuredly want their chastity to complete the picture. They are a parcel of good-natured females, who live upon a common fund. As dangerous as the fair damsels of chivalry who arrested, by their charms, the knights who passed before their castle walls, they seek to draw your less heroic youths within their bowers. And woe betide those whom they ensnare! To warn the passer-by of the peril which awaits him, beacons should be set before their doors, as such friendly monitors are placed on dangerous coasts to mark the places mariners should shun."
"I need not ask you," said Leandro Perez, "whither go those signors whom I see lolling in their carriages: they are doubtless going to the levée of the king." "You have said it," replied the Devil; "and if you also would attend it, I will carry you there before them: we shall have amusement enough, I promise you." "You could not have proposed a thing more suited to my taste," replied Zambullo; "and I anticipate all the pleasure you have promised me."
The Demon, although eager to satisfy Don Cleophas in his desires, carried him leisurely towards the palace, so that, in their way, the Student, perceiving some workmen employed upon a lofty doorway, asked if it were the portal of a church they were constructing. "No," replied Asmodeus, "it is the entrance to a new market; and it is magnificent as you see. However, though they raised its arch until its point were lost in clouds, it would be still unworthy of two Latin lines which are to adorn its front."
"What say you?" cried Leandro;--"what a notion would you give me of the verses that you speak of! I die with anxiety to hear them." "I will repeat them, then," replied the Devil; "and do you prepare to admire them.
'Quam bene Mercurius nunc merces vendit opimas, Momus ubi fatuos vendidit ante sales!
"In these two lines is concealed one of the most delicate puns imaginable." "I cannot say I yet perceive its point," said the Student; "I do not clearly understand what is referred to by your _fatuos sales_." "You are not then aware," replied the Devil, "that on the spot where they are building this market for the sale of provisions, there formerly stood a monkish college in which youth was inducted to the humanities. The rectors of this college were in the habit of getting up plays, in which the students figured on the stage. These plays were, as you may suppose, flat enough as to effect and language; and were enlivened by ballets, so amusingly absurd, that everything danced, even to preterites and supines." "There! that is quite enough," interrupted Zambullo; "I am quite alive to the stuff of which college pieces are composed--excuse my pun--but the inscription is admirable."