Devil Stories Part 35

The devil is erroneously represented in this story as very lazy.

Industry, it has been said, is the great Satanic virtue. "If we were all as diligent and as conscientious as the devil," observed an old Scotch woman to her minister, "it wad be muckle better for us."

The highest peak of a mountain is always consecrated to St. Michael.

The Mont St.-Michel on the Norman Coast played a conspicuous part in the wars of the sons of William the Conqueror. Maupa.s.sant uses it as the background for several of the chapters of his novel _Notre Coeur_ (1890). The mountain also figures in his story "Le Horla" (1886).

THE DEMON POPE

BY RICHARD GARNETT

The following two stories by Richard Garnett have been taken from his book _The Twilight of the G.o.ds_, which was first published anonymously in 1888, and in a "new and augmented edition," with the author's name, in 1902. The t.i.tle recalls Richard Wagner's opera _Gotterdammerung_, but may have been directly suggested by Elemir Bourges, whose novel _Le Crepuscule des dieux_ appeared four years earlier than Garnett's collection of stories. In his book Richard Garnett plays havoc with all religions. The demons, naturally enough, fare worse at his hands than the G.o.ds. _The Twilight of the G.o.ds_ is a panorama of human folly and farce. Franz c.u.mont has said that human folly is a more interesting study than ancient wisdom. The author finds a great joy in pointing out all the mysterious cobwebs which have collected on the ceiling of man's brain in the course of the ages. Mr. Arthur Symons rightly calls this book "a Punch and Judy show of the comedy of civilization."

The story of "The Demon Pope" is based upon a legend of a compact between a Pope and the devil. It is believed that Gerbert, who later became Pope Silvester II, sold his soul to Satan in order to acquire a knowledge of physics, arithmetic and music. The fullest account of this legend will be found in J. J. Dollinger's _Fables Respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages_ (Engl. Translation, 1871). _The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil_ by Paul Carus (1900) contains the following pa.s.sages on this legend:

"An English Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury, says of Pope Sylvester II., who was born in France, his secular name being Gerbert, that he entered the cloister when still a boy. Full of ambition, he flew to Spain where he studied astrology and magic among the Saracens. There he stole a magic-book from a Saracen philosopher, and returned flying through the air to France. Now he opened a school and acquired great fame, so that the king himself became one of his disciples. Then he became Bishop of Rheims, where he had a magnificent clock and an organ constructed. Having raised the treasure of Emperor Octavian which lay hidden in a subterrenean vault at Rome, he became Pope. As Pope he manufactured a magic head which replied to all his questions. This head told him that he would not die until he had read Ma.s.s in Jerusalem. So the Pope decided never to visit the Holy Land. But once he fell sick, and, asking his magic head, was informed that the church's name in which he had read Ma.s.s the other day was 'The Holy Cross of Jerusalem.' The Pope knew at once that he had to die. He gathered all the cardinals around his bed, confessed his crime, and, as a penance, ordered his body to be cut up alive, and the pieces to be thrown out of the church as unclean.

"Sigabert tells the story of the Pope's death in a different way. There is no penance on the part of the Pope, and the Devil takes his soul to h.e.l.l. Others tell us that the Devil constantly accompanied the Pope in the shape of a black dog, and this dog gave him the equivocal prophecy.

"The historical truth of the story is that Gerbert was unusually gifted and well educated. He was familiar with the wisdom of the Saracens, for Borell, Duke of Hither Spain, carried him as a youth to his country where he studied mathematics and astronomy. He came early in contact with the most influential men of his time, and became Pope in 999. He was liberal enough to denounce some of his unworthy predecessors as 'monsters of more than human iniquity,' and as 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of G.o.d and playing the part of the Devil' (the text inadvertently reads: and playing the part of G.o.d); but at the same time he pursued an independent and vigorous papal policy, foreshadowing in his aims both the pretensions of Gregory the Great and the Crusades."

MADAM LUCIFER

BY RICHARD GARNETT

Perhaps the most fascinating--and the most dangerous--character in the infernal world is this _Mater tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness. "A lady devil," says Daniel Defoe, "is about as dangerous a creature as one could meet." When Lucifer fails to bring a man to his fall, he hands the case over to his better half, and it is said that no man has ever escaped the siren seductions of this Diabo-Lady. A poem, _The Diabo-Lady, or a Match in h.e.l.l_, appeared in London in 1777.

According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna is the mother or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became Satan's mother or grandmother by adoption. A mother was a necessary part of the devil's equipment.

Having set his mind to equal Christ in every detail of his life, Satan had to get a mother somehow. In his story "The Vision Malefic" (1920) Mr. Huneker tells of the appearance of this counterfeit Madonna on a Christmas Eve to the organist of a Roman Catholic church in New York.

Partly out of devotion to her and partly also because he could not obtain the sacramental blessing of the Church, Satan was forced to remain single. In the story "Devil-Puzzlers" by Fred B. Perkins the demon Apollyon appears as an old bachelor. "I have a mother, but no wife," he tells the charming Mrs. Hic.o.k. The synagogue was more lenient towards the devil. The rabbis did not hesitate to perform the marriage ceremony for the diabolical pair. According to Jewish tradition the chief of the fallen angels married Lilith, Adam's first wife. She is said to have been in her younger days a woman of great beauty, but with a heart of ice. Now, of course, she is a regular h.e.l.l-hag. If we can trust Rossetti, who painted her Majesty's portrait, she still is a type of beauty whose fascination is fatal.

This woman was created by the Lord to be the help-meet of Adam, but mere man had no attraction for this superwoman. She is said to have started the fight for woman's emanc.i.p.ation from man, and contested Adam's right to be the head of the family. Their married life was very brief. Their incompatibility of character was too great. One fine morning Adam found that his erstwhile angelical wife had deserted him and run away with Lucifer, whom she had formerly known in heaven.

The King-Devil apparently always succeeded somehow or other in breaking the chains with which, according to legend, he had repeatedly been bound and sealed in the lowest depths of h.e.l.l. From antediluvian times the demons appear to have been attracted by the daughters of men and to have come frequently up to earth to pay court to them. The only devil who must always remain in h.e.l.l is the stoker, Brendli by name.

The fires of h.e.l.l must not be allowed to go out.

The anatomically melancholic Burton also tells of a devil who was in love with a mortal maiden. Jacques Cazotte tells the story of Beelzebub as a woman in love with an earth-born man.

LUCIFER

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

This writer has a great sympathy for devil-lore, and many of his characters show the cloven hoof. An a.n.a.lyst of illusions, he has a profound interest in the greatest of illusions. An a.s.sailant of every form of superst.i.tion, he has a tender affection for the greatest of superst.i.tions. An exponent of the radical and ironical spirit in French literature, he feels irresistibly drawn to the eternal Denier and Mocker.

The story of the Florentine painter Spinello Spinelli, to whom Lucifer appeared in a dream to ask him in what place he had beheld him under so brutish a form as he had painted him, is told in Giorgio Vasari's _Vite de' piu eccellenti Pittori, Scultori, ed Architteti_ (1550), which is the basis of the history of Italian art. It was treated by Barrili in his novel _The Devil's Portrait_ (1882; Engl. tr. 1885), from whom Anatole France may have got the idea for his story. But there is also a mediaeval French legend about a monk (_Du moine qui contrefyt l'ymage du Diable, qui s'en corouca_), who was forced by the indignant devil to paint him in a less ugly manner.

The devil is very sensitive in regard to his appearance. On a number of occasions he expressed his bitter resentment at the efforts of a certain cla.s.s of artists to represent him in a hideous form (cf. M. D.

Conway, _Demonology and Devil-Lore_). Daniel Defoe has well remarked that the devil does not think that the people would be terrified half so much if they were to converse face to face with him. "Really," this biographer of Satan goes on to say, "it were enough to fright the devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men." It makes us, indeed, wonder why the devil was always represented in a hideous and horrid form. Rationally conceived, the devil should by right be the most fascinating object in creation. One of his essential functions, temptation, is destroyed by his hideousness. To do the work of temptation a demon might be expected to approach his intended victim in the most fascinating form he could command. This fact is an additional proof that the devil was for the early Christians but the discarded pagan G.o.d, whom they wished to represent as ugly and as repulsive as they could.

The earliest known representation of the devil in human form is found on an ivory diptych of the time of Charles the Bald (9th century).

Many artists have since then painted his Majesty's portrait.

Schongauer, Durer, Michelangelo, t.i.tian, Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Breughel and other masters on canvas vied with each other to present us with a real likeness of Satan. None has, however, equalled the power of Gustave Dore in the portrayal of the Diabolical. This Frenchman was at his best as an artist of the infernal (Dante's "Great Dis" and Milton's "Satan at the gates of h.e.l.l").

Modern artists frequently represent the devil as a woman. Felicien Rops, Max Klinger, and Franz Stuck may be cited as ill.u.s.trations.

Apparently the devil has in modern times changed s.e.x as well as custom and costume. Victor Hugo has said:

"Dieu s'est fait homme; soit.

Le diable s'est fait femme."

"Lucifer," as well as the other stories which form the volume _The Well of St. Claire_, is told by the abbe Jerome Coignard on the edge of Santa Clara's well at Siena. The book was first published serially in the _Echo de Paris_ (1895). It has just been rendered into Spanish (_El Pozo de Santa Clara_).

THE DEVIL

BY MAXIM GORKY

This story shows reminiscences of Le Sage's _Le Diable boiteux_. It will be recalled that Asmodeus also lifts the roofs of the houses of Madrid and exhibits their interior to his benefactor.

The fate of a Russian author was, indeed, a very sad affair. "In all lands have the writers drunk of life's cup of bitterness, have they been bruised by life's sharp corners and torn by life's pointed thorns. Chill penury, public neglect, and ill health have been the lot of many an author in countries other than Russia. But in the land of the Czars men of letters had to face problems and perils which were peculiarly their own, and which have not been duplicated in any other country on the globe.... Every man of letters was under suspicion. The government of Russia treated every author as its natural enemy, and made him feel frequently the weight of its heavy hand. The wreath of laurels on the brow of almost every poet was turned by the tyrants of his country into a crown of thorns." (From the present writer's essay "The Gloom and Glory of Russian Literature" in _The Open Court_ for July, 1918.)

THE DEVIL AND THE OLD MAN

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

_POSTCRIPT_

For the benefit of the gentle reader, who is about to shed a tear or two over the demise of the devil, the following episode from Anatole France's _My Friend's Book_ is retold here:

Pierre Noziere (Anatole France) takes his baby-girl to a Punch and Judy show, the culmination point of which always consists of the duel to the death between Punch and the Devil. The terrible battle ends, of course, with the death of the Devil. The spectators applaud the heroic act of Punch, but Pierre Noziere is not happy over the result of the fight. He thinks that it is rather a pity that the Devil has been slain. Paying no heed to Suzanne sitting by his side, he goes on musing:

"The Devil being dead, good-bye to sin! Perhaps Beauty, the Devil's ally, would have to go, too. Perhaps we should never more behold the flowers that enchant us, and the eyes for love of which we would lay down our lives. What, if that is so, what in the world would become of us? Should we still be able to practise virtue? I doubt it. Punch did not sufficiently bear in mind that Evil is the necessary counterpart of Good, as darkness is of light, that virtue wholly consists of effort, and that if there is no more any Devil to fight against, the Saints will remain as much out of work as the Sinners. Life will be mortally dull. I tell you that when he killed the Devil, Punch committed an act of grave imprudence.

"Well, Pulchinello came on and made his bow, the curtain fell, and all the little boys and girls went home; but still I sat on deep in meditation. Mam'zelle Suzanne, perceiving my thoughtful mien, concluded that I was in trouble.... Very gently and tenderly she takes hold of my hand and asks me why I am unhappy. I confess that I am sorry that Punch has slain the Devil. Then she puts her little arms round my neck, and putting her lips to my ears, she whispers: