They now went into the wood, and concealed themselves among the bushes, where they perceived the emissaries of the king in conference with some men and women, and the priest of the parish. Four little children were stretched upon the grass, one of them crying pitiably. The mother lifted it up and gave it pap, in order to quiet it; whilst the others crept upon the ground, and played with the flowers. The emissaries counted money into the hands of the husbands; the priest had his share, and the children were delivered up. The echoes of the wood repeated for a long time the cries of the little wretches as they were carried away. The mothers groaned; but the men said to them, "Here is gold; let us go to the public-house and buy wine, and drink to a fresh offspring. It is better that the king should eat the brats now they are young than flay them when they are old, or tie them up in a sack and fling them into the Seine. It would have been much better for us if we had been devoured as soon as we were born." The priest comforted them, and said: "They had done a meritorious act, and one which was pleasing to the Mother of God, to whom the king was entirely devoted." He added, "that subjects were born for the king; and that, as he reigned upon earth as Heaven's vicegerent, he had a right to dispose of them according to his pleasure, and that they were bound to revere the slightest of his fancies as a sacred law." The peasants then went to the public-house, where they spent half the blood-money in drink, and kept the rest to pay the king's taxes. The Devil now looked at Faustus with an air of mockery, and said, "Hast thou still doubts whether the gentleman will sell thee his daughter? Thou at least wilt not eat her." _Faustus_. I swear by the black hell which at this moment appears to me a paradise when compared with the earth, that I will henceforward give boundless scope to all my passions, and, by ravaging and destroying, believe that I am acting consistently to such a monster as man. Fly, and purchase me his daughter: she is doomed to destruction, as is every thing that breathes.