Help, what temptations on me throng! Shall I yet do some violence? Ah, youth, canst thou bear up so long? Can reason offer no defence? How should I stomach such offence All guiltless? Whosoe’er he be, None living hath patience. Wanhope doth drive me from my sense. Help me lament mine innocence, God or the Devil, ’tis all one to me. ¶ The Devil, who always spreadeth his nets and snares wherein to catch souls ripe unto damnation, on hearing these words said with himself as follows: Ah! I’m the richer by one more soul! Ye see me disguised and, on the whole, Quite the sort of gentleman God approves, And, except for my one eye, just as behoves; The other perchance was cast out by a spell. It’s not in our power, we devils of hell, To incarnate ourselves, as ye are aware, Without some little defect here or there, Be it in the head or the hands or the feet. Now as I may I will make my voice sweet, And speak with such modest and winsome cheer As to do none offense to my sweet lemman here. With the women ’tis doucely at first that gets on. Fair child, why sit ye here sorrow-begone? Hath some one misdone you, sans reason or right, As a good honest fellow would gladly requite? The picture of innocence, child, ye resemble, Wherefore I would comfort you. MARY Help, God, how I tremble! How stands it with me? I know not aright Since first this good man came on my sight. Help, how all faintly throbbeth my heart! THE DEVIL Fair child, fear ye no grief nor smart. I will do you neither harm nor let, But I make avouch if your course ye will set By my avise, and go with me by all means, I will make you ere long a queen among queens. ... MARY ... Friend, I sit now all at my wits’ end, This my machine so wrought to hurt By shameful words, the which without desert I needs must bear: slut, harlot, whore, That to the Fiend I’d liefly give me o’er As to God, for I be half from my wit. THE DEVIL By Lucifer, ’tis purchase, all of it! She hath drunk up her wrath at one And sits in wanhope like a stone. Hope bids me shed no tears today: I shall not fail.—Fair child, I pray That we in friendship may agree. MARY Who are ye, friend? THE DEVIL A master of much subtlety, Who never comes short in aught he essays. MARY It skills not with whom I go my ways, As well with the worst as with the best. THE DEVIL If to mewards your love were dress’d I would teach you in all their parts Music, rhetoric, all the seven arts, Logic, grammar, geometry, Arithmetic and alchemy, All the which be worthy of heed; No woman on earth in learning shall speed As ye shall do. MARY