ore pains to retain them than understand
them; as he talked much he often took occasion to quote them, and did it
almost always improperly. Having invited him to sup and pass the night
with me, I set before him some excellent mead, which he liked so well as
to drink somewhat beyond the bounds of exact temperance. Next day, to
make some return for his entertainment, he took upon him to divert me
with some of those stories which the monks amuse simple people with, and
told me of a devil that haunted a fountain, and used to make it his
employment to plague the monks that came thither to fetch water, and
continued his malice till he was converted by the founder of their order,
who found him no very stubborn proselyte till they came to the point of
circumcision; the devil was unhappily prepossessed with a strong aversion
from being circumcised, which, however, by much persuasion, he at last
agreed to, and afterwards taking a religious habit, died ten years after
with great signs of sanctity. He added another history of a famous
Abyssinian monk, who killed a devil two hundred feet high, and only four
feet thick, that ravaged all the country; the peasants had a great desire
to throw the dead carcase from the top of a rock, but could not with all
their force remove it from the place, but the monk drew it after him with
all imaginable ease and pushed it down. This story was followed by
another, of a young devil that became a religious of the famous monastery
of Aba Gatima. The good father would have favoured me with more
relations of the same kind, if I had been in the humour to have heard
them, but, interrupting him, I told him that all these relations
confirmed what we had found by experience, that the monks of Abyssinia
were no improper company for the devil.

CHAPTER IX

The viceroy is defeated and hanged. The author narrowly escapes being
poisoned.

I did not stay long at Fremona, but left that town and the province of
Tigre, and soon found that I was very happy in that resolution, for
scarce had I left the place before the viceroy came in person to put me
to death, who, not finding me, as he expected, resolved to turn all his
vengeance against the father Gaspard Paes, a venerable man, who was grown
grey in the missions of AEthiopia, and five other missionaries newly
arrived from the Indies; his design was to kill them all at one time
without suffering any to escape; he therefore sent for them all, but one
ha