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Concerning a Gesticulation. Involving Four Wheels. Concerning Four Sorcerers Who Cut Off. One Another's Heads and Put Them
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Concerning a Gesticulation
Involving Four Wheels
XXX
Doctor Faustus was summoned and commanded to come to the town of Brunswick to cure a marshall there who had consumption. Now he was used to ride neither horseback nor by coach, but was of a mind to walk wherever he was invited as guest or summoned as physician. When he was about a half a quarter from Brunswick and could see the town before him, a peasant with four horses and an empty wagon came clattering along. Doctor Faustus addressed the clown in all kindness, requesting that he be allowed to climb on and be driven the rest of the way up to the town gate, but the bumpkin refused to do this and turned Faustus away, saying he would have enough to haul on his return trip. Doctor Faustus had not been serious in his request, wanting only to prove the peasant, whether there were any love to be found in him, but now he repaid the clown's churlishness (such as is, after all, commonly found among peasants ) in like coin, speaking to him thus:
Thou bumpkin and worthless ass, since thou hast demonstrated such churlishness unto me, and since thou wilt certainly use others the same and probably already hast done so, thou shalt this time be paid for thy trouble. Thy four wheels shalt thou find one at each gate of Brunswick town. Immediately the wagon wheels sprang away, floating along in the air so that each one came to a different gate, without being noticed by anyone there. The peasant's horses also fell down as if they had suddenly died and lay there quite still. At this was the poor clown sore affright, measuring it as a special scourge of God for his misanthropy. All troubled and weeping, with outstretched hands and upon his knees, he did beg Faustus for forgiveness, confessing himself indeed well worthy of such punishment, but vowing that the next time this would serve as a remembrance to him, so that he would never use such misanthropy again.
Doctor Faustus took pity upon the clown's humility and answered him, saying that he must treat no one else in this hard manner, there being nothing more shameful than the qualities of churlishness and misanthropy--and the wicked pride which accompanieth them. Now the man should but take up some earth and throw it upon the team, which would then rise up and live out its days. So it came to pass, Faustus saying as he departed from the peasant:
Thy churlishness cannot go altogether unpunished, but must be repaid in equal measure, inasmuch as thou hast deemed it such a great effort to take a tired man onto an empty wagon. Lo, thy wheels are without the town at four different gates. There wilt thou find all four of them.
The peasant went along and found them as Doctor Faustus had said, but with great effort, travail and neglect of the trade and business which he had intended to accomplish. And thus will churlishness ever punish its owner.
Concerning Four Sorcerers Who Cut Off
One Another's Heads and Put Them
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On Again. Wherein Doctor Faustus
Attending Their Performance,
Doth Play the Major Role
XXXI
Doctor Faustus came to the Carnival in Frankfurt, where his spirit Mephostophiles did inform him that there were four sorcerers at an inn in Jews Alley who were attracting a great audience by chopping off one another's heads and sending them to the barber to be trimmed. Now that vexed Faustus, who liked think that he were the only cock in the Devil's 
basket. When he went to behold the thing, he found the sorcerers just getting ready to chop off their heads, and with them was a barber who was going to trim and wash them. Upon a table they had a glass cruse with distilled water in it. One among them, the chief sorcerer and also their executioner, laid his hands upon the first of his fellows and charmed a lily into this cruse. It waxed green, and he called it the Root of Life. Now he beheaded that first fellow and let the barber dress the head, then set it upon the man's shoulders again. In one and the same instant, the lily disappeared and the man was whole again. This was done with the second and the third sorcerer in like manner. A lily was charmed for each in the water, they were executed, their heads were then dressed and put back on them again.
At last it was the turn of the chief sorcerer and executioner. His Root of Life was blooming. away in the water and waxing green, now his head was smitten off also, and they set to washing it and dressing it in Faustus' presence, which sorcery did sorely vex him: the arrogance of this magicus princeps, how he let his head be chopped off so insolently, with blasphemy and laughter in his mouth. Doctor Faustus went up to the table where the cruse and the flowering lily stood, took out his knife, and snipped the flower, severing the stem. No one was aware of this at the time, but when the sorcerers sought to set the head on again their medium was gone, and the evil fellow had to perish with his sins upon his severed head.
Afterwards they did find the stem cut, but they were not able to discover how this came to pass. This is the way the Devil at last rewards all his servants, absolving them thus, the manner in which Doctor Faustus dealt with this man being entirely consonant with the shameful absolution which he did himself receive when he was repaid for his own sins.
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