Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) Read Online Free PDF

weary themselves; and they humbly asked permission of the Padre Eterno to make a little gita down to the earth, and to have a little divel to play with next time they were off duty. And the Padre Eterno, Who always allows you to have your own way when He knows it will teach you a lesson, making the sign of the cross, said, “ + It is allowed to you.”
      So the following day a very large number—I believe about ninety-five millions, but I should not like to be quite sure, because I do not exactly know—of these beautiful little blue birds of Heaven were taken by San Michele Arcangiolo down into the world, and they perched on the trees in the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, in that city over the lake.
      San Michele Arcangiolo left them there, and made the second of his journeys into the pit of hell. The first, you know, was after he had conquered the King of the divels in a dreadful duel and bound him in chains and flames for ever and the day after. As he passed along the pathway, down the red-hot rocks, the flames of the burning divels licked up till, meeting the cool air of Heaven which San Michele Arcangiolo breathed, they curved backward, and still upward, forming a sort of triumphal arch of yellow flame above his head.
      When he arrived at the gate where hope must be laid down, he called aloud that the Father and King of gods and men had occasion for the services of a young imp named Aeschmai Davi. The arch-fiend shook his chains with rage, because he was obliged to obey; and caused a horrible dæmon to flash into bodily shape from a puddle of molten brimstone.
      If you looked at his face or his body, you would have thought he was a boy about fourteen years old; but his eyeballs glittered with the red of a burning coal. If you looked at his arms, you would have thought he was a bat, for wings grew there of spikes and skin. Oh, and he had nasty little horns in his hair, but it was not hair but vipers; and from his waist to his feet he was a he-goat, and all over he was scarlet. It was a different scarlet to the scarlet coat of that English soldier whom I saw once near the Porta Pia of Rome. I can only make you understand what I mean, by saying that it was the colour of the ashes of burning wood, which have been almost dead, but which you have blown up again into a fiery glow. He was of the most bad and hideous from his hoofs to his horns; and no one, whether he was a saint, or an angel, or a man like you, sir, as long as he had the protection of the Madonna, would need to be a bit afraid of him, because his nastiness was clear, and he could be seen through like a piece of glass; and in the middle of him there was his dirty dangling heart as black as ink.
      San Michele Arcangiolo, who knows exactly how to deal with everybody, and especially with a scimiotto like this, stuck his lance into the middle of the little divel’s stomach, just as Gianetta would spit a woodcock for toasting, and holding it out before him, because it is always best to see mischief in front of you, carried the writhing, wriggling little divel up into the world. The flames, as before, licked upward and around the great archangel, but never a feather was singed nor a blister came upon his whitest skin, because they could not pierce the ice of his purity; but they made the little divel kick and struggle,—just as I should, sir, if you whipped me naked with a whip of red-hot wires, instead of with the lilac twigs you do use when I am disobedient.
      So they came into the Prince his garden; and having released the little divel from his uncomfortable position, San Michele Arcangiolo—who, because he commands the armies in heaven, is very fond of soldiers—went down into the city to pass a half-hour inspecting the barracks.
      When the little divel found himself free, he could hardly believe his good luck, and sat for a few minutes rubbing the sparks out of his eyes, and wondering what his next torture would be. Meanwhile, the