Le Diable boiteux (novel)

It is set in Madrid, and tells the story of the demon king Asmodeus, Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo and his beloved, Donna Thomasa.

[1] The title and some of the incidents are borrowed from El Diablo cojuelo (1641) by the Spaniard Luis Vélez de Guevara.

[1] Don Cleofas (Cleophas), a young Spanish profligate of high lineage, proud and revengeful but brave and generous, delivers from his imprisonment in a bottle the demon Asmodée (Asmodeus); who in gratitude assists him in his pranks, and carries him triumphantly through a series of amusing adventures.

[1] It is one of the famous traditions of the book trade that two young French noblemen actually fought a duel in a bookstore for the possession of the only remaining copy.

Chapter 33 “….the historian takes the friendly reader by the hand, and springing with him into the air, and cleaving the same at a greater rate than ever Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo….” Attribution:

Frontispiece and title page of the first English edition of The Devil upon Two Sticks , 1708