These words rolled like thunder in the ears of the guests. The drunken became sober, and the sober drunk; the lips of the women turned blue with rage, and could scarcely stammer out a congratulation. The alderman was seized with an apoplectic fit, and his wife was near dying of her husky cough. Fear, in the mean time, obliged the rest to assume a joyous countenance; and they drank, with a loud huzza, the health of the new-made knight. While the tumult was at the highest pitch, a thin vapour suddenly filled the hall; the glasses began to dance about upon the tables; and the roasted geese, turkeys, and fowls cackled, gobbled, and crowed. The calves, sheep, and boars' heads cried, bleated, and grunted, bounced across the table, and snapped at the fingers of the guests. The wine issued in blue flames from out the flasks; and the patent of nobility caught fire, and was burnt to ashes in the hands of the trembling mayor. The whole assembly now sat like so many ridiculous characters in a mad masquerade. The mayor bore a stag's head upon his shoulders; and the rest, men and women, adorned with grotesque masks, spoke, cackled, crowed, neighed, or bellowed, according to the kind of mask which had been allotted to each individual. The alderman alone, in the dress of a harlequin, sat motionless; and Faustus avowed to the Devil that the ruse did great honour to his ingenuity. After Faustus had satiated himself by gazing at the spectacle, he gave the Devil the wink, and they both flew out of the window; the latter personage, according to custom, leaving behind him the sulphurous stench. By and by the whole illusion disappeared; and when the sapient magistrates re-assembled next morning in the council-chamber, they scarcely mentioned to each other what had taken place the night before. They kept the whole matter a state secret, and only revealed it now and then to a chosen few. All that the mayor got by this business was, that his adversary, the alderman, lost the use of his limbs, and never again took his seat in the council. Faustus and Leviathan, in the mean time, passed over the city-walls; and when they were in the open field, the Devil despatched an attendant spirit to the hotel, in order to pay the reckoning, and to fetch away Faustus's baggage. Then turning to the young German, he asked him if he were contented with this first feat. _Faustus_. Hem! if the Devil wants praise, I am content to give it him. But I should never have imagined that yon pompous scoundrel would have sold his wife for ambition's sake.