Yea, Hypocrisy crawls in between a
man and his own heart, and so skilfully does she hide every wrong under
the name and guise of some virtue that she has caused well nigh all to
lose cognisance of their own selves. Greed she calls thrift; in her
tongue riotous living is innocent joy; pride is courtesy; the froward, a
clever, courageous man; the drunkard, a boon companion; and adultery is a
mere freak of youth. On the other hand, if she and her scholars' {110a}
are to be believed, the godly is a hypocrite or a fool; the gentle, a
coward; the abstemious, a churl, and so for every other quality. Send
her thither in all her adornment, and I warrant you she will deceive
everyone; she will blinden the counsellors, the soldiers, and all the
officers of church and state, and will draw them hither in hurrying
multitudes with the varicolored mask upon their eyes." Whereupon he too
sat down.
Then Beelzebub, the devil of thoughtlessness stood up, and in a harsh
voice said: "I am the great prince of heedlessness whose duty it is to
prevent a man taking reflective heed of his state; I am chief of the
incessant hell-flies who utterly amaze men, ever dinning in their ears
concerning their possessions or their pleasures, and never willingly
allowing them a moment's leisure to think of their ways or of their end.
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