THE DEVIL AT PISA.

Otago Witness, Issue 37, 31 January 1852, Page 4

THE DEVIL AT PISA.

(From Correspondent of Times.) Florence, July 16. One of those ridiculous practical jokes which, so often end fatally to the actor has just^ occurred at Pisa ; and as it occasions a great sensation here, in consequence of the stain it attaches to the friars in one of the convents in that city, I take leave to give you the particulars, partly as I have heard them recounted by others, and partly as I find them in the local journals. At Pisa there lived in latter years a " fast" young man, whose morals were something like the celebrated leaning tower, — a little inclined the wrong way, — and who, among other escapades, had caused a great scandal in a respectable family, and refused to repair it by marriage, according to the prayers of the victim and the commands of the Church. The gentleman was in fact a regular inauvais sujet, — a fit subject for a French novel ; and he went on from day to day, strutting along the^banks of the Arno, and perverting all the foolish maids of that not over-religious vicinity, neither attending to the advice of his friends, or the remonstrances of the clergy, till sickness overtook him in the midst of his sins, and death struck him with its most mortal arrow. Scapegrace as he was, he declined the consolations of religion in his last days, and refused to confess or repent, like another Don Giovanni. In vain an excellent and pious priest spoke of his immortal soul and the penalties prepared in the other world for those who take leave of this in final impenitence, — in vain did the friars declare that the devil would claim him as his own the moment the last sigh -was drawn, — and in vain did one of the reverend gentlemen recount how in a vision he saw his infernal Majesty maltreat a hardened sinner on a similar occasion. Don Giovanni died game, as the greatest criminals often do ; but before he gave up the ghost, he made one of his friends, a Corsican resident at Pisa, promise that he would watch over the body in the Chapelle Mortuaire, and never leave it until it was consigned to its last home. The Corsican kept his word, and alone and in the dead of the night he sat by the side of his departed friend in the convent chapel, where corpses are exposed twenty-four hours before burial, either in consecrated or unconsecrated ground. But just as the clock struck twelve, a deep groan, accompanied by the rattling of chains, was, heard, and the watcher, to his horror, saw a figure enter, dressed according to the most approved receipt for fitting up a devil, with tremendous horns, a long tail, a chain girt round his body, and draped in red and black, as his Sataniq Majesty should be. The Corsican had a bold heart, and he asked the devil what he wanted. The de\il replied by an awful groan, the rattling of chains, and the outspreading of his claws to seize his prey. The Corsican, still undaunted, declared that he would not allow his body to be touched ; and he ■warned the devil that if he did not leave the place, he would send him back to his infernal regions faster than he came from them. To this speech the devil replied by a scornful laugh, such as Zamiel in Der Frieschutz used, and with another rattle of the chains advanced to the coffin-side ; on which the faithful friend produced a loaded pistol, and taking sure aim shot the devil through the heart, and dropped him at his feet, dead, as they say at Amsterdam, as a herring, or, at Birmingham, as a door nail. The report of the pistol alarmed the police, and a number of those guardians of the night having appeared, they saw to their astonishment the corpse lying in its proper place, the Corsican sitting tranj quilly by its side, and a bleeding mass covered with red and black, with a tremendous pair of horns, and the w.ell-known tail. An explanation was soon given, and when, the devil was striped of his finery he turned out to be the bellman of the convent, employed, no doubt, by the friars whose religious assistance -was refused, for the purpose of giving a striking proof of the danger of dying without the consolations of the Church, and of the fate to wh.^i all impenitent sinners are exposed. The Corsican was tried, and acquitted ; as he showed that in the Tuscan code there is no penalty attached to shooting the devil, and as he persisted in saying that when he fired he believed he had to deal with his Satanic Majesty, and no mortal representative.

The best joke of all remains to be told, and that is, the friars of the convent declare the whole stoiy is a fabrication, and the Minister of Instruction announces that he will prosecute the Gazelta dci Tribunale for having inserted it.

A Metropolitan Phenomenon.— lt is a very curious coincidence which has been observed to occur, with an almost unerring accuracy, meteorological phenomena — more especially that branch arising from the difficult process of " Raising the "Wind"' — that if a man has accepted a bill, he is pretty sure to evaporate on the very same day that his bill becomes " dew.'' — Punch.

Kindness.— "Witty sayings are as easily lost as the pearls slipping off a broken string ; but a word of kindness is seldom in vain. It is a seed which, even when dropped by chance, springs up into a flower.