Perceiving the state of the case, Lucifer with true gentlemanly feeling resumed his proper semblance, and Madam Lucifer’s talons were immediately inserted into his whiskers.

“My dear! my love!” he gasped, as audibly as she would let him, “is this the way it welcomes its own Lucy-pucy?”

“Who is that person?” demanded Madam Lucifer.

“I don’t know her,” screamed the wretched Lucifer.  “I never saw her before.  Take her away; shut her up in the deepest dungeon!”

“Not if I know it,” sharply replied Madam Lucifer, “You can’t bear to part with her, can’t you?  You would intrigue with her under my nose, would you?  Take that! and that!  Turn them both out, I say! turn them both out!”

“Certainly, my dearest love, most certainly,” responded Lucifer.

“Oh, Sire,” cried Moloch and Beelzebub together, “for Heaven’s sake let your Majesty consider what he is doing.  The Inspector——­”

“Bother the Inspector!” screeched Lucifer.  “D’ye think I’m not a thousand times more afraid of your mistress than of all the saints in the calendar?  There,” addressing Adeliza and her betrothed, “be off!  You’ll find all debts paid, and a nice balance at the bank.  Cut!  Run!”

They did not wait to be told twice.  Earth yawned.  The gates of Tartarus stood wide.  They found themselves on the side of a steep mountain, down which they scoured madly, hand linked in hand.  But fast as they ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of Madam Lucifer.

THE TALISMANS

What a wondrous creature is man!  What feats the humblest among us perform, which, if related of another order of beings, we should deem incredible!

By what magic could the young student escape the weary old professor, who was prosily proving Time merely a form of thought; a proposition of which, to judge by the little value he appeared to set on the subject of his discourse, he must himself have been fully persuaded?  Without exciting his suspicions in the smallest degree, the student stole away to a region inconceivably remote, and presented himself at the portal of a magnificent palace, guarded by goblins, imps, lions, serpents, and monsters whose uncouthness forbids description.

A singular transformation seemed to have befallen the student.  In the professor’s class he had been noted as timid, awkward, and painfully respectful.  He now strode up with an air of alacrity and defiance, brandishing a roll of parchments, and confronted the seven principal goblins, by whom he was successively interrogated.

“Hast thou undergone the seven probations?”

“Yes,” said the student.

“Hast thou swallowed the ninety-nine poisons?”

“Ninety-nine times each,” said the student.

“Hast thou wedded a Salamander, and divorced her?”

“I have,” said the student.

“Art thou at this present time betrothed to a Vampire?”