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"As for the ways and talk of society, what are these worth? and cannot they be acquired? And what are her manners save those of the most perfect refinement and purity?" Thus far Conscience. Then Arnold, or Arnold's secret advocatus diaboli, began upon another and quite different line.

Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such words as leno matris suæ, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius, yet the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed against the dead, which, to quote the energetic language of Dean Milman, were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly issued and however manfully resisted.

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood. Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron.

"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood. Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron.

Till, at length, the very Pope and Cardinals at Rome were forced to hear of it; and they, summing up as correctly as they well could, with Advocatus Diaboli pleadings and other forms of process, the general verdict of mankind, declared that he had in very fact led a hero's life in this world: and, being now gone, was gone, as they conceived, to God above and reaping his reward there.

I can conceive of nothing more corrupting or worse for a set of poor ignorant people than that two combinations of well-taught and rich men should constantly offer to defer to their decision, and compete for the office of executing it. Vox populi will be Vox diaboli if it is worked in that manner. And, on the other hand, my imagination conjures up a contrary danger.

It now regarded them as the special representatives of the despised element of sex in life. The eccentric Tertullian had once declared that woman was janua Diaboli; nearly seven hundred years later, even the gentle and philosophic Anselm wrote: Femina fax est Satanæ.

Upon this he attacked me in the character of a real advocatum diaboli, and told me such a quantity of things, out of old Chronicles and from other sources, that my head fairly reeled. And then, when Theodore fell ill, I was seized upon and overmastered by real, bitter gloom and misery. Somehow, I scarce know how or why, Cyprian's 'Singers' Contest' came back to my mind again.

One is always ready to look with lenity on the partiality of a biographer, whether he urge the claims of his hero to a niche in the Valhalla of great men, or act as the Advocatus Diaboli to degrade his memory.

In some cases the tastes of people differ so that an article considered by one race as disgusting would be held as a delicacy by another class. The ancients used asafetida as a seasoning, and what we have called "stercus diaboli," the Asiatics have named the "food of the gods."