"'Now,' he replied, his face, or rather my face, wreathing with smiles, 'now you are talking sense. I thought you would come to it. It would be the height of folly for you to ruin yourself simply to gratify your love of retaining your form. I promise you that to-morrow night, after the great speech has been made in court--a speech which will ring out through the whole country, that will echo from the hills of Scotland across the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, to re-echo thence to the Himalayas, and so on until your fame has encircled the earth--I promise you that then I will depart hence and trouble you no more, except it be your desire that I return.'" "That was a fair proposition--he wasn't such a mean fiend after all," said Hopkins. "At that moment I thought he was rather a square fiend," returned the spirit sadly; "but he developed as time went on." "And the speech next day? How was that? Did he keep his word?" Hopkins asked. "Indeed he did," said the spirit with enthusiasm, "and it was simply marvellous. That night, after we had had the conversation I have just told you of, that fellow worked like a slave getting up his points, consulting the records, classifying the testimony and making notes for his great oratorical effort. Hardly a poet in the history of literature was there who did not contribute some little line or two to make the speech more interesting, or to emphasize some point in a manner certain to appeal to a polished mind or overawe an uncultivated one. Greek and Latin authors were levied upon for tribute. Parallels in ancient and modern history utterly unknown to me were instituted for the elucidation of the arguments advanced--in short, a more polished bit of oratory than that prepared for my tongue to utter never fell from mortal lips before, and as for the peroration--well, it would require the consummate art of the fiend himself adequately to describe it. It was simply dazzling. "'There is only one drawback, one thing I fear for to-morrow,' said the fiend, as he finished his preparations, 'and that is that these miserable mortal lungs of yours will not be able to do justice to that speech, and some of these quotations rasp on your unpractised tongue, so that I fear their effect may be weakened. However, I'll do the best I can with poor tools; but one thing is certain, you must make a sacrifice to me who have sacrificed time and comfort to you.' "'What is that?' I asked.