"Look towards the east! He rises on your sight. A million birds of baneful omen fly before his advent in terror, and announce his presence with funereal cries. His tireless hand is armed with the fatal scythe which mows successive generations as they spring from earth. But if, as mocking at humanity, on one wing is depicted war, pestilence, famine, shipwreck, conflagration, with other direful modes by which he sweeps upon his prey, the other shows the priests who offer to him daily hecatombs in sport; as youthful doctors, who receive from himself their diplomas, after swearing, in his presence, never to practise surgery or medicine contrary to the rules of the courts."
Although Don Cleophas suspected that all he saw was an illusion, and that it was merely to gratify his taste for the marvellous that the Devil raised this form of Death before his eyes, he could not look on it without trembling. He assumed, however, all the courage he was possessed of, and said to the Demon: "This fearful spectre will not, I suppose, pass vainly over Madrid: he will doubtless leave some awful traces of his flight?" "Yes! certainly," replied the Cripple; "he comes not here for nothing; and it depends but on yourself to be the witness of his visitation." "I take you at your word," exclaimed the Student; "let us follow in his train; let me visit with him the unhappy families on whom he will expend his present wrath. What tears are about to flow!" "Beyond a doubt," replied Asmodeus; "but many which come at convenience. Death, despite his horrors, causes at least as much joy as grief."
[Illustration: Death flies over the poor man's bed]
Our two spectators took their flight, and followed the grim monarch in his progress. He entered first a modest house, whose owner lay in helpless sickness on his bed; the autocrat but touched the poor man with his scythe, and he expired in the midst of his weeping relations, who instantly commenced an affecting concert of cries and lamentions. "There is no mockery here," said the Demon: "the wife and children of this worthy citizen loved him with real affection: besides, they depended on him for their bread; and the belly is rarely a hypocrite.
"Not so, however, is it in the next house, in which you perceive his grisly majesty now occupied in releasing a bed-ridden old gentleman from his pains. He is an aged counsellor who, having always lived a bachelor of law, has passed his life as badly as he could, that he might leave behind him a good round sum for the benefit of his three nephews, who have flocked round his bed on hearing that he is about to quit it, at last. They of course displayed an extreme affliction, and very well they did it; but are now, you see, letting fall the mask, and are preparing to do their duties as heirs, after having performed their parts as relations. How they will rummage the old gentleman's effects! What heaps of gold and silver will they discover! 'How delightful!' said one of these heart-broken descendants to another, this moment,--'how delightful is it for nephews to be blessed with avaricious old uncles, who renounce the pleasures of life for their sakes!'" "A superb funeral oration," said Leandro Perez. "Oh! as to that," replied the Devil, "the majority of wealthy parents, who live to a good old age, ought not to expect a better from their own children.