"In the next apartment lies the countess, his wife, who loves play to madness. She dreams that she has no money, and that she is pawning her diamonds with a jeweller, who is lending her thereon three hundred pistoles, deducting only a very moderate discount. "In the next house, on the same side, lives a marquis of the same stamp as the count, and who, for the moment, is in love with a celebrated, but capricious, beauty. He dreams that he is borrowing largely of an usurer for the purpose of securing her to himself; while his steward, who is sleeping at the top of the house, is dreaming that he is growing rich as fast as his master is hastening to ruin. Well! what think you of these dreams? Is there anything in them so extravagant?" "No! on my life," replied Don Cleophas, "I begin to think Ovid is right: but who is that man whom I see, lying with his mustachios in paper, and preserving in his sleep an air of gravity which would indicate that he is no ordinary cavalier." "He is a country gentleman," replied the Demon,--"a viscount of Aragon, imbued with all the pride of that province. His soul at this moment swims in delight; he dreams that he is with a grandee who is yielding to him precedence in a public ceremony. "But," continued Asmodeus, "I observe in the same house two brothers, apothecaries, whose dreams are particularly unpleasant. One of them is reading, in his sleep, an ordinance which decrees that doctors shall not be paid, except when they have cured their patients; and his brother is occupied with a similar law, which ordains that medical attendants shall head the procession at the funeral of all who die in their hands." "I could wish," interrupted Zambullo, "that these decrees were as true as they would be just; and that your doctor were thus compelled to be present at the burial of his innocent patient, as a _lieutenant criminel_, in France, is bound to witness the execution of the guilty wretch whom he has condemned." "I like your comparison," exclaimed the Devil: "it might be said in such a case, however, that the one merely superintends the execution of his own sentence; but that the other, having already performed his especial function, pursues his victim after death."