Paris Sketch Book Author:William Makepeace Thackeray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE DEVIL'S WAGER. It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save churchyard ghosts—when all doors are closed except the gates of graves, and a... more »ll eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men. When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole. And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead good men astraye. When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he flappeth along lazily ; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal broomsticke, whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a Yorkshire ar- chere. It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night), that two beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse with each other. Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the heathens feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Hollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur ofSanterre; Villacerf and aultre lieux. But the great die as well as the humble; and nothing remained of brave Roger, now, but his coffin and his deathless soul. And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the. soul, his companion, had bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him well nigh, sticking into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo, would groan and roar lustily. Now they two had come, together, from the gates of purgatorie, being bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and roast in saecula ssecu- lorum. " It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they w...« less