But, in fine, let me do what I will my services are not understood. My successor, it may be, will discharge his duty better, and indeed I am very well content to lay down my commission; for (to say the truth) I am in years, and would gladly have a little rest now, in my old age, which I rather propose to myself in the service of some pretender than where I am.” Lucifer heard him with great patience, and, in the end, gave him all the satisfaction imaginable; strictly charging the evil spirits that had abused him to do so no more, upon hazard of pains corporal and spiritual; and they desired him, too, that he would not lay down his employment, for he was strong enough yet to do very good service in it. But to think of easing himself, by going to a pretender, he’d find himself mistaken, for ’twas a duty he’d never be able to endure. “Well!” says he, “e’en what your Highness pleases. But truly I thought a devil might have lived very comfortably in that condition; for he has no more to do, that I can see, than to keep his ears open, and learn his trade. For put case it should be some pretender to a good office, or a fat bishopric (though the fathers and councils are against pretenders in this case) I fancy to myself all the pleasure and divertisement that may be. It is as good as going to school, for these people teach the devils their A B C. And all that we have to do is to sit still and learn.” The vision that followed this was the dæmon of tobacco, which I must confess did not a little surprise me. I have indeed often said to myself, “Certainly these smokers are possessed;” but I could never swear it till now. “I have,” said the devil, “by bringing this weed into Spain, revenged the Indians upon the Spaniards for all the massacres and butcheries they committed there, and done them more mischief than ever Colon, Cortes, Almero, Pizarro did in the Indies: by how much it is more honourable to die upon a sword’s point by gunshot, or at the mouth of a cannon, than for a man to snivel and sneeze himself into another world; or to go away in a meagrim or a spotted fever, perchance, which is the ordinary effect of this poisonous tobacco. It is with tobacconists as ’tis with demoniacs under an exorcism, they fume and vapour, but the devil sticks to them still. Many there are that make a very idol of it; they admire, they adore it, tempting and persecuting all people to take it, and the bare mention of it puts them into an ecstasy. In the smoke it is a probation for hell, where another day they must endure smoking; taken in powder, at the nose, it draws upon youth the incommodities of old age, in the perpetual annoyance of rheum and drivel.”