r
world. Though he received his commission with a very ill grace, he
nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto's imperial mandate, and
prepared to execute whatever had been determined upon in council. At
the same time he took an oath to observe the tenor of his
instructions, as they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and
ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were to the following
effect:--_Imprimis_, that the better to promote the object in view, he
should be furnished with a hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly,
that he should make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the
world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he should enter
into the marriage state; and lastly, that he should live with his wife
for the space of ten years. At the expiration of this period, he was
to feign death and return home, in order to acquaint his employers, by
the fruits of experience, what really were the respective conveniences
and inconveniences of matrimony. The conditions further ran, that
during the said ten years he should be subject to all kinds of
miseries and disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty,
prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall, unless, indeed,
he could contrive by his own skill and ingenuity to avoid them. Poor
Belphagor having signed these conditions and received the money,
forthwith came into the world, and having set up his equipage, with a
numerous train of servants, he made a very splendid entrance into
Florence. He selected this city in preference to all others, as being
most favourable for obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and
having assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he took a
house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because he was unable to
explain the instructions under which he acted, he gave out that he was
a merchant, who having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria,
and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo, whence he had lastly
set out for Italy, with the intention of marrying and settling there,
as one of the most polished and agreeable countries he knew.

Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently about thirty
years of age, and he lived in a style of life that showed he was in
pretty easy circumstances, if not possessed of immense wealth. Being,
moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted the notice
of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and
small