_Devil_. Cry and groan! The hour approaches in which I must remove the thick veil from before thine eyes, and blow away, with a single breath, the labyrinth in which thou hast so long wandered. I will fling light upon the moral world, and show thee how thou hast outraged it by each of thy actions. I, a devil, will show thee what are the consequences when a worm like thyself dares to stop the wheel of so exact and so enormous a machine. Dost thou remember the youth whom I, at our departure from Mayence, saved from drowning by thy command? I gave thee warning, but thou wouldst obey the rash impulse of thy heart. If thou hadst permitted that miscreant to perish, thy son would not now be rotting on yon gibbet. He on whose account thou didst change the order of things, insinuated himself, shortly after thy departure, into the society of thy young wife. The glitter of the gold which we had left her in such abundance, attracted him much more than her youth and beauty. It was no difficult thing for him to win the affections of her who had been forsaken by thee; and in a short time he gained such influence over her, that she delivered up herself and all she possessed to his will and control. Thy old father endeavoured to oppose his shameless sway; but the young man insulted him and beat him: the poor old man sought an asylum in the workhouse, where he died, a few days ago, of grief for thee and thy family. Thy son, having taken his grandfather's part, and threatened the life of his mother's seducer, was by him turned out of the house also. The boy wandered among the woods and wildernesses till he was half famished. Arriving at length in this city, and being ashamed to beg, he stole a few pence from the poor-box in a church, in order to assuage his hunger; but he committed this theft so artlessly, that several people perceived him, and the most worshipful magistrate, in consideration of his youth, sentenced him only to be hanged: he was accordingly hanged; although he protested, with tears, that for the last four days he had swallowed nothing but grass. Thy daughter is at Frankfort, where she subsists upon the earnings of vice; thy second son is in the profligate service of an infamous prelate. The young man whom thou didst save from death robbed thy wife not long ago of her last stiver; thy friend whom we preserved from beggary refused thy old father the slightest assistance, and spurned thy children from his door when they came to him for bread. And I will now show thee thy family, in order that thou mayest see to what a state thou hast reduced them. I will then bring thee here again, and hold reckoning with thee; for I am no longer thy slave--thou art mine. The worm of despair begins to gnaw within thee; thou art no longer fit to live, and hell only is fit to receive thee.