THE DEMON POPE[1]
"So you won't sell me your soul?" said the devil.
"Thank you," replied the student, "I had rather keep it myself, if it's all the same to you."
"But it's not all the same to me. I want it very particularly. Come, I'll be liberal. I said twenty years. You can have thirty."
The student shook his head.
"Forty!"
Another shake.
"Fifty!"
As before.
"Now," said the devil. "I know I'm going to do a foolish thing, but I cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away. I'll make you another kind of offer. We don't have any bargain at present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years. This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your soul, mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant. If you give it, we are quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to this?"
The student reflected for some minutes. "Agreed," he said at last.
- ↑ Taken by permission from The Twilight of the Gods, by Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.
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