At these words, I raised my eyes, and saw Death seated in her chair of state, with abundance of little deaths crowding about her: as the death of love, of cold, hunger, fear, and laughter; all, with their several ensigns and devices. The death of love, I perceived, had very little brain, and to keep herself in countenance, she kept company with Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, and some Amadis’s and Palmerins d’Oliva; all embalmed, steeped in good vinegar, and well dried. I saw a great many other sorts of lovers too, that were brought, in all appearance, to their last agonies, but by the singular miracle of self-interest recovered to the tune of
Will, if looking well won’t move her, Looking ill prevail?
The death of cold was attended by a many prelates, bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics, who had neither wives, nor children, nor indeed anybody else that cared for them, further than for their fortunes. These, when they come to a fit of sickness, are pillaged even to their sheets and bedding, before ye can say a paternoster. Nay, many times they are stripped, ere they are laid, and destroyed for want of clothes to keep them warm.
The death of hunger was encompassed with a multitude of avaricious misers that were cording up of trunks, bolting of doors and windows, locking up of cellars and garrets, and nailing down of trap doors, burying of pots of money, and starting at every breath of wind they heard. Their eyes were ready to drop out of their heads, for want of sleep; their mouths and bellies complaining of their hands, and their souls turned into gold and silver (the idols they adored.)
The death of fear had the most magnificent train and attendance of all the rest, being accompanied with a great number of usurpers arid tyrants, who commonly do justice upon themselves, for the injuries they have done to others, their own consciences doing the office of tormentors, and avenging their public crimes by their private sufferings; for they live in a perpetual anguish of thought, with fears and jealousies.
The death of laughter was the last of all, and surrounded with a throng of people, hasty to believe, and slow to repent, living without fear of justice, and dying without hope of mercy. These are they that pay all their debts and duties with a jest. Bid any of them, “Give every man his due, and return what he has either borrowed, or wrongfully taken,” his answer is, “You’d make a man die with laughing.” Tell him, “My friend, you are now in years, your dancing days are done, and your body is worn out; what should such a scarecrow as you are do with a bed-fellow? Give over your bawdy haunts for shame, and don’t make a glory of a sin, when you’re past the pleasure of it, and yourself upon all accounts contemptible into the bargain.” “This fellow,” says he, “would make a man break his heart with laughing.” “Come, come, say your prayers, and bethink yourself of eternity; you have one foot in the grave already, and ’tis high time to fit yourself for the other world.” “Thou wilt absolutely kill me with laughing. I tell thee I’m as sound as a rock, and I do not remember that ever I was better in my life.” Others there are, that, let a man advise them upon their deathbeds and even at the last gasp to send for a divine, or to make some handsome settlement of their estates, “Alas, alas!” they’ll cry; “I have been as bad as this many a time before, and (with Falstaffe’s hostess) I hope in the Lord there’s no need to think of him yet.” These men are lost for ever, before they can be brought to understand their danger. This vision wrought strangely upon me, and gave me all the pains and marks imaginable of a true repentance. “Well,” said I, “since so it is, that man has but one life allotted him and so many deaths; but one way into the world and so many millions out of it, I will certainly at my return make it more my care than it has been to live with a good conscience, that I may die with comfort.”