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Updated: June 5, 2025
"Can you explain to me what benefit you proposed to yourself when you played for such stakes as that?" "I hoped to win back what I had lost." "Facilis descensus Averni!" said the Duke, shaking his head. "Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis." No doubt, he thought, that as his son was at Oxford, admonitions in Latin would serve him better than in his native tongue.
He smoked, he could call for a "small port" in quite an off-hand fashion, he had played "shell out" with loafers at the little "'ouse," and he began to know a little more of betting, "gee-gees," and other kindred matters, than an average young fellow should know. "Facilis descensus Averni" you know the old tag.
"There are at this hour," continued the stranger, "two brave gentlemen lying sadly in their beds, while we chat gayly at the ball; and that because a certain Chevalier d'Harmental, a great listener at doors, did not remember a hemistich of Virgil." "And what is this hemistich?" asked the chevalier, more and more astonished. "'Facilis descensus Averni," said the mask, laughing.
Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering others from that folly which has embittered my own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER from the dreary mansions of wretchedness and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully constructed, as to fly open for the reception of strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of adamant to such as are within them: Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.
"Poh!" said Jorrocks, "did you ever know a Surrey fox not take to the hills? If he does not, I'll eat him without mint sauce," again harping on the quarter of lamb. Facilis descensus Averni two-thirds of the field went down, leaving Jorrocks, two horse-dealers in scarlet, three chicken-butchers, half a dozen swells in leathers, a whip, and the Yorkshireman on the summit.
Take care, my lad," to the post-boy, who was crossing with difficulty the literally "pathless waste." "Don't lurch us into the quarry-pits, or topple us at once down the slope, where we shall roll over and over facilis descensus Averni and lodge in Mrs. Tod's garden hedge." "Mrs. Tod would feel flattered if she knew Latin. You don't look upon our future habitation as a sort of Avernus?"
Well, you will see greater splendours than these, I hope. Now let us march: march!" He had better have said slide, for we did nothing but drop down the steep inclines. It was the facifs descensus Averni of Virgil. The compass, which I consulted frequently, gave our direction as southeast with inflexible steadiness. This lava stream deviated neither to the right nor to the left.
What was to be done? We applied for work at several "honourable shops"; but at all we received the same answer. Their trade was decreasing the public ran daily more and more to the cheap show-shops and they themselves were forced, in order to compete with these latter, to put more and more of their work out at contract prices. Facilis descensus Averni!
In poverty "Facilis descensus Averni." But many a poor soldier had sloped down there into the boggy canal of Avernus before him. Nay, he had three corporals and a sergeant for company. But his lot was relieved by two strange things, presently to appear. In 1793 war again broke out, the great French war.
As he approached the entrance to that den of infamy, from which his mind recoiled even while in the act of taking shelter there, his pace slackened, while the steep and broken stairs reminded him of the facilis descensus Averni, and rendered him doubtful whether it were not better to brave the worst which could befall him in the public haunts of honourable men, than to evade punishment by secluding himself in those of avowed vice and profligacy.
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