His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what ailed him. He
told her with chattering teeth, how he had just seen Lucifer and had
been in terror for his ears.

"I told you so," retorted the worthy dame; "I knew all those figures
you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad."

"I am not mad," protested the painter. "I saw him with my own eyes;
and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing
tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its
place the shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong even the
Devil himself."

"You had best go to sleep again," scolded his wife. "You are talking
stark nonsense, and unchristian to boot."

Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back
unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever,
and then died.

THE DEVIL[30]

BY MAXIM GORKY

[30] From the _National Magazine_, vol. XV. By permission of
the Editor and Translator.

Life is a burden in the Fall,--the sad season of decay and death!

The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the
growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows--all that
drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it
with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in
an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what
purpose?...

Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous
thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who
want to assuage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is
the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and
doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.

But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny brambles that
lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in
ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe
has made us acquainted....

My story is about that devil.

* * * * *

The devil suffered from ennui.

He is too wise to ridicule everything.

He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is
not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp
scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell
the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we
were to look more closely at him, we might dis