My Servant, A
Man Of Wit, Was Surprised As Well As Everybody Else; And I Can
Ascribe To Nothing But A Miracle My Escape From So Many Snares As He
Laid To Entrap Me.
There happened during this perplexity of my affairs an accident of
small consequence in itself, which yet I think
Deserves to be
mentioned, as it shows the credulity and ignorance of the Abyssins.
I received a visit from a religious, who passed, though he was
blind, for the most learned person in all that country. He had the
whole Scriptures in his memory, but seemed to have been at more
pains to retain them than understand them; as he talked much he
often took occasion to quote them, and did it almost always
improperly. Having invited him to sup and pass the night with me, I
set before him some excellent mead, which he liked so well as to
drink somewhat beyond the bounds of exact temperance. Next day, to
make some return for his entertainment, he took upon him to divert
me with some of those stories which the monks amuse simple people
with, and told me of a devil that haunted a fountain, and used to
make it his employment to plague the monks that came thither to
fetch water, and continued his malice till he was converted by the
founder of their order, who found him no very stubborn proselyte
till they came to the point of circumcision; the devil was unhappily
prepossessed with a strong aversion from being circumcised, which,
however, by much persuasion, he at last agreed to, and afterwards
taking a religious habit, died ten years after with great signs of
sanctity. He added another history of a famous Abyssinian monk, who
killed a devil two hundred feet high, and only four feet thick, that
ravaged all the country; the peasants had a great desire to throw
the dead carcase from the top of a rock, but could not with all
their force remove it from the place, but the monk drew it after him
with all imaginable ease and pushed it down. This story was
followed by another, of a young devil that became a religious of the
famous monastery of Aba Gatima. The good father would have favoured
me with more relations of the same kind, if I had been in the humour
to have heard them, but, interrupting him, I told him that all these
relations confirmed what we had found by experience, that the monks
of Abyssinia were no improper company for the devil.
Chapter IX
The viceroy is defeated and hanged. The author narrowly escapes
being poisoned.
I did not stay long at Fremona, but left that town and the province
of Tigre, and soon found that I was very happy in that resolution,
for scarce had I left the place before the viceroy came in person to
put me to death, who, not finding me, as he expected, resolved to
turn all his vengeance against the father Gaspard Paes, a venerable
man, who was grown grey in the missions of Aethiopia, and five other
missionaries newly arrived from the Indies; his design was to kill
them all at one time without suffering any to escape; he therefore
sent for them all, but one happily being sick, another stayed to
attend him; to this they owed their lives, for the viceroy, finding
but four of them, sent them back, telling them he would see them all
together.
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