desired to search out the reasons of all in heaven and on earth.'

He now takes to 'Zauberei'--magic. Where four roads meet in the Spessart
Wald, a forest near Wittenberg, he inscribes mystic circles and performs
incantations for the purpose of summoning the devil. After all kinds of
fearful apparitions and noises, by which Faust is almost terrified to
death, a demon appears in the shape of a 'grey monk.' Faust invites him
to visit him at his house in Wittenberg. The demon visits him there and
tells him of all the horrors of hell. But Faust persists in his plan and
makes a second rendezvous with the demon, who has now procured leave
from his lord and master Lucifer to offer his services and attendance.
The compact is made. The demon is to serve him for twenty-four years.
Faust is to renounce Christianity and to hate all Christians, and at the
end of twenty-four years he is to belong to the demon 'to have power,
rule and dominion over his soul, body, flesh, blood, and possessions,
and that for all eternity.' This compact has to be signed with blood.
Faust pierces his hand, and the blood flows out and forms the words 'O
homo fuge!'--'O man, escape!'--but Faust, though alarmed, is not
deterred. It is now agreed that the demon shall appear, whenever
summoned, in the form of a Franciscan monk. He then reveals his name:
Mephistopheles, or, as the old legend gives it, Meph_o_stoph_i_les--the
meaning of which is probably 'not loving the light'--[Greek: me phos
philon]--a compound which you may rightly remark must have been
concocted by a rather second-rate Greek scholar.

After a season of dissipation, during which Faust is supplied with all
the luxuries that he desires--wine stolen from ducal, electoral, and
episcopal cellars, soft and costly raiment from the draperies and
naperies of Nuernberg and Frankfurt and so on (he had, for instance, only
to open his window and call any bird, goose, turkey, or capon, and it
would at once fly in, ready roasted)--getting tired of this kind of
thing he falls in love and wishes to marry. But Mephisto angrily tells
him that marriage is a thing pleasing to God and against the terms of
the compact. You will notice here the Lutheran and anti-papal
tendency--marriage being a thing pleasing to God in itself, and any
compact being devilish which forbade it, as in the case of priests and
monks.

Then follow long discussions and disputations between Faust and Mephisto
on the creation of the world,