How Doctor Faustus Traveled. Down to Hell

How Doctor Faustus Traveled

Down to Hell

XV

With each passing day, Doctor Faustus' end drew closer, and he was now come into his eighth year, having been for the most part of the time engaged in inquiry, study, questioning and disputationes. In these days he again did dream of Hell, and it caused him again to summon his servant, the spirit Mephostophiles, demanding that he call his own lord, Belial, unto him. The spirit agreed to do this, but instead of Belial a devil was sent who called himself Beelzebub, a flying spirit reigning beneath Heaven. When he asked what Doctor Faustus desired of him, Faustus asked whether it could not be arranged for a spirit to conduct him into Hell and out again, so that he might see and mark the nature, fundament, quality and substance of Hell.

Yes, answered Beelzebub, I will come at midnight and fetch thee.

Well, when it got pitch dark Beelzebub appeared unto him, bearing upon his back a bone chair which was quite enclosed round about. Here Doctor Faustus took a seat, and they flew away. Now hear how the Devil did mystify and gull him, so that he had no other notion than that he really had been in Hell.

He bare him into the air, where Doctor Faustus fell asleep just as if he were lying in a bath of warm water. Soon afterward he came upon a mountain of a great island, high above which sulphur, pitch and flashes of fire blew and crashed with such a tumult that Doctor Faustus awoke just as his devilish dragon swooped down into the abyss. Although all was violently burning round about him, he sensed neither heat nor fire, but rather little spring breezes as in May. Then he heard many different instruments whose music was exceeding sweet, but, as bright as shone the fire, he could see no one playing, nor durst he ask, questions having been strictly forbidden him.

Meanwhile, three more devilish dragons had flown up alongside Beelzebub. They were just like him and they went flying along ahead of him as he penetrated further into the chasm. Now a great flying stag with mighty antlers and many points came at Doctor Faustus and would have dashed him off his chair and down into the pit. It frightened him greatly, but the three dragons flying ahead repulsed the hart. When he was better come down into the spelunca, he could see hovering about him a great multitude of serpents and snakes, the latter being unspeakably big. Flying lions came to his aid this time. They wrestled and struggled with the great snakes until they conquered them, so that he passed through safely and well.

When Doctor Faustus had attained a greater depth, he saw a huge, flying, angry bull come forth out of a hole which might have been an old gate. Bellowing and raging, he charged Faustus, goring his sedan chair with such a force as to overturn pavilion, dragon and Faustus, who now did fall off from his chair into the abyss, down and down, screaming woe and waily and thinking: All is over now. He could no longer see his spirit, but at last an old wrinkled ape caught him up as he fell, held him and saved him. But then a thick dark fog fell upon Hell, so that he could not see anything at all until presently a cloud opened up, out of which climbed two big dragons pulling a coach along after them. The old ape was setting Faustus upon it when there arose such a storm wind with terrible thunder claps and stench of sulphur and quaking of the mountain or abyss that Faustus thought he must faint away and die.

He was indeed enveloped in a deep darkness for about a quarter of an hour, during which time he had no perception of the dragons or of the coach, but he did have a sensation of movement. Again the thick dark fog disappeared, and he could see his steeds and coach. Down the cavern shot such multitude of lightning and flames upon his head that the boldest man--not to mention Faustus--would have trembled for fear. The next thing he perceived was a great turbid body of water. His dragons entered it and submerged. Yet Faustus felt no water at all, but great heat and radiance instead. The current and waves beat upon him until he again lost both steeds and coach and went falling deeper and deeper into the terror of the depths. At last he found himself upon a high, pointed crag and here he sat, feeling half dead.

He looked about, but as he was able to see and hear no one, he began contemplating the bottomless pit. A little breeze arose. All around him was naught but water. He thought to himself: What shalt thou do now, being forsaken even by the spirits in Hell? Why thou must hurl thyself either into the water or into the pit. At this thought he fell into a rage, and in a mad, crazy despair he leapt into the fiery hole, calling out as he cast himself in: Now, spirits, accept my offering. I have earned it. My soul hath caused it.

Well, just at the moment when he hurled himself head over heels and went tumbling down, such a frightful loud tumult and banging assailed his ears, and the mountainpeak shook so furiously that he thought many big cannons must have been set off, but it was only that he had come to the bottom of Hell. Here were many worthy personages in a fire: emperors, kings, princes and lords, many thousand knights and men-at-arms. A cool stream ran along at the edge of the fire, and here some were drinking, refreshing themselves, and bathing, but some were fleeing from its cold, back into the fire. Doctor Faustus stepped up, thinking he might seize one of the damned souls, but even when he thought he had one in his hand it would vanish. On account of the intense heat, he knew he could not stay in this vicinity, and was seeking some way out when his spirit Beelzebub came with the sedan chair. Doctor Faustus took a seat and away they soared, for he could not long have endured the thunderclaps, fog, fumes, sulphur, water, cold and heat, particularly since it was compounded with wailing, weeping and moaning of woe, anguish and pain.

Now Doctor Faustus had not been at home for a long while. His famulus felt sure that, if he had achieved his desire of seeing Hell, he must have seen more than he had bargained for and would never come back. But even while he was thinking thus, Doctor Faustus, asleep in his pavilion, came flying home in the night and was cast, still asleep, into his bed. When he awoke early the next morning and beheld the light of dawn, he felt exactly as if he had been imprisoned for some time in a dark tower. At a later date, of course, he became acquainted only with the fire of Hell, and with the effects of those flames, but now he lay in bed trying to recollect what he had seen in Hell. At first he was firmly convinced that he had been there and had seen it, but then he began to doubt himself, and assumed that the Devil had charmed a vision before his eyes. --And this is true, for he had not seen Hell, else he would not have spent the rest of his life trying to get there. This history and account of what he saw in Hell--or in a vision--was written down by Doctor Faustus himself and afterwards found in his own handwriting upon a piece of paper in a locked book.