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Whiz! whirr! Away flew the Fiddler like a bullet, and there was Ill-Luck carrying him by the belt again. Away they sped, over hill and valley, over moor and mountain, until the Fiddler’s head grew so dizzy that he had to shut his eyes. Suddenly Ill-Luck let him drop, and down he fell–thump! bump!–on the hard ground. Then he opened his eyes and sat up, and, lo and behold! there he was, under the oak-tree whence he had started in the first place. There lay his fiddle, just as he had left it. He picked it up and ran his fingers over the strings–trum, twang! Then he got to his feet and brushed the dirt and grass from his knees. He tucked his fiddle under his arm, and off he stepped upon the way he had been going at first.

“Just to think!” said he, “I would either have been the richest man in the world, or else I would have been a king, if it had not been for Ill-Luck.”

And that is the way we all of us talk.

Dr. Faustus had sat all the while neither drinking ale nor smoking tobacco, but with his hands folded, and in silence. “I know not why it is,” said he, “but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew–a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher as well.”

“Tis a long list of excellency,” said old Bidpai.

“Tis not as long as was his head,” said Dr. Faustus.

“It would be good for us all to hear a story of such a man,” said old Bidpai.

“Nay,” said Dr. Faustus, “the story is not altogether of the man himself, but rather of a pupil who came to learn wisdom of him.”

“And the name of your story is what?” said Fortunatus.

“It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus.

“Nay,” said St. George, “everything must have a name.”

“It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus. “But I shall give it a name, and it shall be–“