[Illustration: the cavalier visits the German widow]
"Monsalva has returned this morning, as you see, to pay his devoirs to the lady, whom finding at her toilet, he used every effort to beguile the time by new protestations of devotion. During the conversation, his Saxon mistress was releasing her auburn curls from the papers which had confined them during the night; and our cavalier, happening to take up one of these, heedlessly unfolded it, and, to his great surprise, observed therein his own hand-writing. 'What! madam,' said he, smiling, 'is this the use you make of these pledges of my affection?' 'Yes! Monsalva,' replied the lady; 'you behold the value that I put upon the promises of lovers who would marry me in opposition to their friends; they make excellent _papillotes_.' When, indeed, the cavalier discovered that it was his pledge of forfeiture which his mistress had thus destroyed, he was filled with admiration at this unlooked-for proof of disinterestedness, and he is now very properly vowing to her for the thousandth time, eternal fidelity.
"Cast your eyes," continued the Devil, "upon that tall man who is passing beneath us; he has a large common-place book under his arm, an ink-bottle hanging at his girdle, and a guitar slung at his back." "He is an odd-looking fellow indeed," cried the Student: "I would lay my life he is an original." "It is beyond a doubt," replied the Demon, "that he is a curious compound enough. There are such things as cynical philosophers in Spain; and there goes one. He is walking towards the Buen-Retiro, to reach a meadow in which there is a fountain, whose refreshing waters form a brook that glides like a silver serpent through the flowers. There will he pass the day, contemplating the beauties of nature, tinkling his guitar, and noting the reflections that the scene inspires in his common-place book. He carries in his pockets his ordinary food, that is to say, a piece of bread and some onions. Such is the sober life that he has led during ten years past; and were some Aristippus to say to him, as was erst spoken to Diogenes: 'If thou knewest how to pay thy court to the great, thou wouldst not eat onions;' this modern philosopher would reply: 'I could pay my court to the great as well as thou, if I would abase one man so low, as to make him cringe before another.'