He being duly arraigned was, according to law, put to the torture, and forthwith confessed all the particulars I have related. So he was cast into a dungeon to await execution, which secretly he dreaded not, being confident in the efficacy of the elixir he had swallowed.
He was not to be put to death by decapitation. It was justly thought too honourable for so sordid a miscreant. He was sentenced to be hanged, and after hanging a day and a night he was to be laid in an open grave outside the gate on the Roman road, and there impaled, and after three days’ exposure to be covered in, and so committed to the keeping of the earth, no more to groan under his living enormities.
The night before his execution, thinking deeply on the virtue of the elixir, and having assured himself, by many notable instances, which he easily brought to remembrance, that they could not deprive him, even by this severity, of his life, he lifted up his eyes and beheld the young man, in mourning suit, whose visit had been his ruin, standing near him in the cell.
This slave of Satan affected a sad countenance at first; and said he, “We are cast down, Borrhomeo, by reason of thy sentence.”
“But we’ve cheated them,” answers he, pretending, maybe, more confidence than he had; “they can’t kill me.”
“That’s certain,” rejoins the fiend.
“I shall live for a thousand years,” says he.
“Ay, you must continue to live for full one thousand years; ’tis a fair term—is it not?”
“A great deal may be done in that time,” says the old man, while beads of perspiration covered his puckered forehead, and he thought that, perhaps, he might cheat him too, and make his peace with heaven.
“They can’t hang me,” says Borrhomeo.
“Oh! yes, they will certainly hang you; but, then, you’ll live through it.”
“Ay, the elixir,” cried the prisoner.
“Thus stands the case: when an ordinary man is hanged he dies outright; but you can’t die.”
“No—ha, ha!—I can’t die!”
“Therefore, when you are hanged, you feel, think, hear, and soforth during the process.”
“St. Anthony! But then ’tis only an hour—one hour of agony—and it ends.”
“You are to hang for a whole day and night,” continued the fiend; “but that don’t signify. Then when they take you down, you continue to feel, hear, think, and, if they leave your eyes open, to see, just as usual.”
“Why, yes, certainly, I’m alive,” cries Borrhomeo.
“Yes, alive, quite alive, although you appear to be dead,” says the demon with a smile.
“Ay; but what’s the best moment to make my escape?” says Borrhomeo.
“Escape! why, you have escaped. They can’t kill you. No one can kill you, until your time is out. Then you know they lay you in an open grave and impale you.”
“What! ah, ha!” roared the old sinner, “you are jesting.”
“Hush! depend upon it they will go through with it.”
The old man shook in every joint.
“Then, after three days and nights, they bury you,” said his visitor.
“I’ll lose my life, or I’ll break from them!” shouts the gigantic astrologer.
“But you can’t lose your life, and you can’t break from them,” says the fiend, softly.
“Why not? Oh! blessed saints! I’m stronger than you think.”
“Ay, muscle, bones—you are an old giant!”
“Surely,” cries the old man, “and the terror of a dead man rising; ha! don’t you see? They fly before me, and so I escape.
“But you can’t rise.”
“Say—say in heaven’s name what you mean,” thundered old Borrhomeo.
“Do you remember, signor, that nightmare, as we jocularly called it, at the sign of the ‘Red Hat’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, a man who having swallowed the elixir vitae, suffers that sort of shock which in other mortals is a violent death, is afflicted during the remainder of his period of life, whether he be decapitated, or dismembered, or is laid unmutilated in the grave, with that sort of catalepsy, which you experienced for a minute—a catalepsy that does not relax or intermit. For that reason you ought to have carefully avoided this predicament.”
“ ’Tis a lie,” roared the old man, and he ground his teeth, “that’s not living.”
“You’ll find, upon my honour, that it is living,” answered the fiend, with a gentle smile, and withdrawing from the cell.
Borrhomeo told all this to a priest, not under seal of confession, but to induce him to plead for his life. But the good man seeing he had already made himself the liegeman and accomplice of Satan, refused. Nor would his intercession have prevailed in any wise.
So Borrhomeo was hanged, impaled, and buried, according to his sentence; and it came to pass that fourteen years afterwards, that grave was opened in making a great drain from the group of houses thereby, and Borrhomeo was found just as he was laid therein, in no wise decayed, but fresh and sound, which, indeed, showed that there did remain in him that sort of life which was supposed to ward off the common consequences of death.
So he was thrown into a great pit, and with many curses, covered in with stones and earth, where his stupendous punishment proceeds.
Get thee hence, Satan.
