Faustus

Faustus is by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger and carries the headings Faustus: his Life, Death, and Doom, A Romance in Prose, and Translated from the German. The translator's note says that although strange scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is in the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked. The text describes nuns assembled in the refectory and busied in dressing up a Madonna for the next festival.

A speaker labelled Faustus says that, in summoning another, he shall have threaded the labyrinth in which the rest must grope about to all eternity. A speaker labelled Devil says it is well that the rest of men do not possess the magic art, else would hell soon be emptied. The text asks whether the thirsty traveller knows, or cares, if the spring of which he drinks gushes out of a mountain filled with poison, provided he cools his hot blood without receiving any harm.