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reverberations died away, strange music floated on the air, and was followed by the clash of
weapons, as if man men were engaged in hostile conflict close at hand. As these startling sounds
ceased, a griffin appeared, then a dragon, and finally a fiery pillar, with the semblance of a man
on the top, who seemed to be burning. The man leaped from the pillar, and fiery globes, like
large balls of red-hot metal, floated round the circle.
Faust being undismayed by these terrific apparitions, Satan himself at length appeared, in the
form of a monk, and, after a brief colloquy with the bold student, agreed to meet him at his
lodging in Wittenberg. The appointment was kept, and a compact was then entered into, by
which Faust was to have all his desires gratified during the term of twenty-four years, on the
condition of renouncing the Christian religion and submitting himself to Satan everlastingly at the
expiration of the term. Faust signed the contract with his blood, and Satan gave him the demon
Mephistopheles to be his constant attendant and the minister of all his desires.
Faust had now abundant wealth, fared sumptuously, and abandoned himself to a life of luxury
and sensual pleasures. Attended by Mephistopheles, he travelled over the greater part of Europe,
and many regions of Asia and Africa, his familiar demon doing his best to annihilate time and
space by taking him on his back, and flying with him through the air. His adventures in the
Sultan's palace, at Constantinople, which he entered by being rendered invisible, and then closed
against its imperial tenant and his guards and attendants, by surrounding it with a dense fog,
throw those of Don Juan far into the shade.
On his return to Germany, he met the Emperor, Charles V., at Innspruck, and for his
entertainment, raised the phantom of Alexander. At Erfurt, where he lectured on Homer, he
made the figures of the deities and heroes of ancient Greece pass before the eyes of the
astonished spectators. At Frankfort he found four itinerant conjurors, who cut off each other's
heads, and replaced them; and he observed that they had by them a vessel containing a liquid
which they pretended was the elixir of life, and into which the heads were dipped as they were
successively severed from the bodies. In this vessel they placed a lily-bud, which expanded into
full blossom when it had been a few moments in the liquid. Faust having rendered himself
invisible, quietly watched the exhibition until the moment when the fourth head was cut off, and
dexterously broke the flower from its stalk. This rendered the charm inoperative, and the
horrified conjurors found themselves unable to restore the head of their unhappy companion to
his shoulders.
The love of mischief which was displayed in this prank appears in several of Faust's adventures,
some of which have a suspiciously close resemblance to stories which are told of other
magicians. On one occasion, he asked permission of a churlish peasant to ride on his waggon,
and, being refused, pronounced a conjuring formula, on which the horses fell down as if dead,
and the wheels, detaching themselves from the waggon, flew through the air in the direction of
the town which the peasant had quitted an hour before. Having enjoyed the fellow's terror for
awhile, he revived the horses by sprinkling some sand upon them, and told, the waggoner that
he would find the wheels at the gates of the town he had come from, one at each of the four
gates, where the wondering and awestricken man found them.
On his return to Wittenberg, he entertained his former college companions with a banquet,
spreading the table with every delicacy, and regaling them with the richest whim. Some of his
guest wishing to behold Helen, he conjured before their admiring eyes the beautiful Greek, as he
had raised Alexander for the entertainment of the emperor. Marlow has altered this incident in
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Lives of Conjurors--Chapter IV
his tragedy by making Mephistopheles raise Helen, between two Cupids, for the gratification of
Faust solus.
We next find Faust on a visit to the Prince of Anhalt, whose hospitality he returns by inviting his
host and hostess to a castle which he had erected by magic on an island in the midst of a lake
near Dessau. Aquatic birds of various kinds floated on the water, and perching birds of brilliantly
coloured plumage flew from tree to tree. There were five towers and two gates to the castle, the
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