Demoniality; or, Incubi and Succubi — Story, Setting & Ideas

The original was printed with the Latin on verso and English on recto pages with sections aligned. To preserve as much as possible of this effect, Latin sections are followed immediately by the corresponding translation.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_, except in the main Latin text which is almost entirely printed in italic script. Here the italics are unmarked and plain text is indicted thus =plain=.

S. Augustinus (or Augustini) in the Latin text is translated as S. Austin in the English.

DEMONIALITY OR INCUBI AND SUCCUBI A TREATISE

_wherein is shown that there are in existence on earth rational creatures besides man, endowed like him with a body and a soul, that are born and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus-Christ, and capable of receiving salvation or damnation_,

BY THE REV. FATHER SINISTRARI OF AMENO

_Published from the original Latin manuscript discovered in London in the year 1872, and translated into French by_ ISIDORE LISEUX Now first translated into English With the Latin Text.

PARIS _Isidore LISEUX, 2, Rue Bonaparte._ 1879

TO THE FIRST EDITION (_Paris, 1875, in-8º_)

I was in London in the year 1872, and I hunted after old books:

_Car que faire là bas, à moins qu’on ne bouquine?_[1]

They caused me to live in past ages, happy to escape from the present, and to exchange the petty passions of the day for the peaceable intimacy of Aldus, Dolet or Estienne.

[1] What can one do over there, unless he hunts up old books?

One of my favourite booksellers was Mr Allen, a venerable old gentleman, whose place of business was in the Euston road, close to the gate of Regent’s park. Not that his shop was particularly rich in dusty old books; quite the reverse: it was small, and yet never filled. Scarcely four or five hundred volumes at a time, carefully dusted, bright, arrayed with symmetry on shelves within reach of one’s hand; the upper shelves remained unoccupied. On the right, Theology; on the left, the Greek and Latin Classics in a majority, with some French and Italian books; for such were Mr Allen’s specialties; it seemed as if he absolutely ignored Shakespeare and Byron, and as if, in his mind, the literature of his country did not go beyond the sermons of Blair or Macculloch.

What, at first sight, struck one most in those books, was the moderateness of their price, compared with their excellent state of preservation. They had evidently not been bought in a lot, at so much a cubic yard, like the rubbish of an auction, and yet the handsomest, the most ancient, the most venerable from their size, folios or quartos, were not marked higher than 2 or 3 shillings; an octavo was sold 1 shilling, the duodecimo six pence: each according to its size. Thus ruled Mr Allen, a methodical man, if ever there was one; and he was all the better for it, since, faithfully patronized by clergymen, scholars and collectors, he renewed his stock at a rate which more assuming speculators might have envied.

But how did he get those well bound and well preserved volumes, for which, everywhere else, five or six times more would have been charged? Here also Mr Allen had his method, sure and regular. No one attended more assiduously the auctions which take place every day in London: his stand was marked at the foot of the auctioneer’s desk. The rarest, choicest books passed before his eyes, contended for at often fabulous prices by Quaritch, Sotheran, Pickering, Toovey, and other bibliopolists of the British metropolis; Mr Allen smiled at such extravagance; when once a bid had been made by another, he would not add a penny, had an unknown _Gutenberg_ or _Valdarfer’s Boccaccio_ been at stake. But if occasionally, through inattention or weariness, competition slackened (_habent sua fata libelli_), Mr Allen came forward: _six pence!_, he whispered, and sometimes the article was left him; sometimes even, two consecutive numbers, joined together for want of having separately met with a buyer, were knocked down to him, still for the minimum of six pence which was his maximum.

Many of those slighted ones doubtless deserved their fate; but among them might slip some that were not unworthy of the honours of the catalogue, and which, at any other time, buyers more attentive, or less whimsical might perhaps have covered with gold. This, however, did not at all enter into Mr Allen’s calculation: the size was the only rule of his estimate.