“Yes, I am the Devil,” he said again and again. “Not the Devil of sulfurous nights, of bedtime stories, or childish terrors, but the one and only true Devil, the very genius of nature, who was given that name to drive him from the hearts of men. See how gentle and graceful I am. I am your true father. Come with me: embrace the name that was invented to shame me, make it your trophy and your banner, and I will give you everything, absolutely everything . . .”

Thus he spoke in order to arouse enthusiasm and awaken the indifferent, in short, to gather the multitudes around him. And they came; and once they were with him, the Devil began to set out his doctrine. The doctrine was what one would expect from the mouth of a spirit of denial, at least in terms of substance. As for its form, it was at times clever and at others cynical and shameless.

He proclaimed that the accepted virtues should be replaced with others, the natural and legitimate ones. Pride, Lust, and Sloth were restored, as was Greed, which he declared was nothing but the mother of Thrift, the sole difference being that the mother was robust and the daughter a scrawny wretch. The best argument in favor of Wrath was the existence of Homer, for without the fury of Achilles, there would have been no Iliad. “Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus.” He said the same of Gluttony, which produced the best bits of Rabelais and many fine verses in Diniz’s Hyssope. It was such a superior virtue that no one now remembers Lucullus’s battles, only his banquets; it was Gluttony that made him immortal. But still, setting aside these literary or historical justifications and focusing only on the intrinsic value of such a virtue, who would deny that it feels much better to fill one’s mouth and belly with good food than to get by on meager morsels, or the saliva of fasting? For his part, the Devil promised to replace the Lord’s vineyard, a merely metaphorical expression, with the Devil’s vineyard in the literal sense, for his followers would never want for the fruit of the finest vines. As for Envy, he preached coolly that it was the greatest virtue of all and the source of infinite prosperity; a precious virtue that would come to supplant all the others, even talent itself.

The crowd chased excitedly after him. With great blasts of eloquence, the Devil instilled in them the new order of things, changing all their notions, making them love the things that were wicked and hate those that were wholesome.