I entered the room, and instead of the dwarf demon Le Sage described, I beheld a comely man seated at the table, with a high forehead, a sharp face, and a pair of spectacles on his nose.  He was employed in reading the new novel of “The Usurer’s Daughter.”

“This cannot be the devil!” said I to myself; so I bowed, and asked the gentleman his business.

“Tush!” quoth my visiter; “and how did you leave the Doctor?”

“It is you, then!” said I; “you have grown greatly since you left Don Cleofas.”

“Wars fatten our tribe,” answered the Devil; “besides shapes are optional with me, and in England men go by appearances more than they do abroad; one is forced to look respectable and portly; the Devil himself could not cheat your countrymen with a shabby exterior.  Doubtless you observe that all the swindlers, whose adventures enliven your journals, are dressed ’in the height of fashion,’ and enjoy ‘a mild prepossessing demeanour.’  Even the Cholera does not menace ‘a gentleman of the better ranks;’ and no bodies are burked with a decent suit of clothes on their backs.  Wealth in all countries is the highest possible morality; but you carry the doctrine to so great an excess, that you scarcely suffer the poor man to exist at all.  If he take a walk in the country, there’s the Vagrant Act; and if he has not a penny to hire a cellar in town, he’s snapped up by a Burker, and sent off to the surgeons in a sack.  It must be owned that no country affords such warnings to the spendthrift.  You are one great moral against the getting rid of one’s money.”

On this, Asmodeus and myself had a long conversation; it ended in our dining together, (for I found him a social fellow, and fond of a broil in a quiet way,) and adjourning in excellent spirits, to the theatre.

“Certainly,” said the Devil, taking a pinch of snuff, “certainly, your drama is wonderfully fine, it is worthy of a civilized nation; formerly you were contented with choosing actors among human kind, but what an improvement to go among the brute creation! think what a fine idea to have a whole play turn upon the appearance of a broken-backed lion!  And so you are going to raise the drama by setting up a club; that’s another exquisite notion!  You hire a great house in the neighbourhood of the theatre; you call it the Garrick Club.  You allow actors and patrons to mix themselves and their negus there after the play; and this you call a design for exalting the drama.  Certainly you English are a droll set; your expedients are admirable.”

“My good Devil, any thing that brings actors and spectators together, that creates an esprit de corps among all who cherish the drama, is not to be sneered at in that inconsiderate manner.”