The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo VillegasQuevedo, Francisco de
General
The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas
Quevedo, Francisco de
Satire; Spanish literature -- Translations into English
There stood at my elbow a strange kind of mongrel devil, begot betwixt a
black and a white; with a head so bestruck with little horns, that it
looked at a distance like a hedgehog. I took the boldness to ask him,
where they quartered the Sodomites, the old women and the cuckolds. “As
for the cuckolds,” said he, “they are all over hell, without any certain
quarter or station; and in truth, ’tis no easy matter to know a cuckold
from a devil, for (like kind husbands) they wear their wives’ favours
still, and the very same headpieces in hell that they wore living in the
world. As to the Sodomites, we have no more to do with them than needs
must; but upon all occasions, we either fly, or face them: for if ever we
come to give them a broadside, ’tis ten to one but we get a hit betwixt
wind and water; and yet we fence with our tails, as well as we can, and
they get now and then a flap o’er the mouth into the bargain. And for
the old women, we make them stand off; for we take as little pleasure in
them, as you do: and yet the jades will be persecuting us with their
passions; and ye shall have a bawd of five-and-fifty do ye all the
gambols of a girl of fifteen. And yet, after all this, there’s not an
old woman in hell; for let her be as old as Paul’s — bald, blind,
toothless, wrinkled, decrepit: this is not long of her age, she’ll tell
you; but a terrible fit of sickness last year, that fetched off her hair,
and brought her so low that she has not yet recovered her flesh again.
She lost her eyes by a hot rheum; and utterly spoiled her teeth with
cracking of peach-stones and eating of sweet-meats when she was a maid.
And when the weight of her years has almost brought both ends together,
’tis nothing she’ll tell ye but a crick she has got in her back: and
though she might recover her youth again, by confessing her age, she’ll
never acknowledge it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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