In  Luis  Velez  de  Guevara's  El  diablo  eojiielo,
novela  de  la  otra  vida  traduzida  d  esta,  published
in  1641  at  Madrid,  a  satirical  view  of  society
was  afforded  by  a  different  device  still  further
removed  from  the  picaresque  procedure. Gue-
vara's four  hundred  dramas,  although  they
brought  him  fame  as  an  early  follower  of  Lope
de  Vega,  scarcely  secured  the  vogue  of  this
single  piece,  slight  by  comparison,  but  be-
queathed to    general    literature    through    the


DECADENCE   OF  THE  PICARESQUE  NOVEL     381

rifacimento  of  LeSage. Don  Cleofas,  the  stu-
dent who,  in  eluding  the  pursuit  of  emis-
saries of  the  wily  Dona  Tomasa,  takes  refuge  in
the  garret  chamber  of  an  astrologer  and  there
releases  from  a  phial  the  lame  devil,  has  no
need  of  serving  various  masters  in  order  to  view
the  interior  workings  of  the  households  of
Madrid. Instead,  the  grateful  diablo  cojuelo
becomes  his  cicerone,  magically  unveiling  the
deceits  of  society  in  the  ten  tranoos,  or  strides
through  space,  taken  by  the  pair. The  human
comedy  is  laid  bare  with  the  devil  for  showman
and  interpreter ;  it  is  Mephistopheles  and  Faust
with  the  tragedy  left  out. From  the  shop  for
providing  ancestors  at  Madrid  to  the  inn  and  its
mad  poet  at  Toledo,  from  the  venta  in  the  Sierra
Morena  where  foreigners  wrangle  to  the  fenc-
ing exhibition  at  Cordova  recalling  to  Cleofas
the  Buscon  of  Quevedo,  from  Carmona  to
Seville,  flit  the  devil  and  his  disciple. Rufina
Maria,  the  roguish  hostess  of  the  latter  town,
born  in  gypsy  Triana,  and  therefore  to  be  sus-
pected of  magic,  aids  the  devil  in  showing  to
Cleofas  in  a  mirror  all  that  is  happening  at  that
moment  in  the  Oalle  Mayor  at  Madrid,  the
King  and  the    court   passing   in   review. A


382  ROMANCES   OF   ROGUERY

poetical  academy  is  attended  at  Seville,  and  a
sitting  of  the  rogues'  parliament,  an  obvious  sou-
venir of  Cervantes'  hampa  of  Monipodio. 