Oh, the bloody terrors of the night! Oh, Grim Death's dark shadow! How many times have I, Roger Shallot, Lord of Burpham Manor, risen from between my silken sheets, forsaking the warmth of those marvellous twins, Phoebe and Margot, leaving their luscious, marble-white limbs sprawled out in wine-soaked sleep? Lovely girls! My satin-skinned bedpans! How many times have I trotted across to my chamber, pulled back the drapes and stared out over a garden bathed in the light of a weeping moon? Oh, phantasm! Oh, horrors! Oh, the effect of too much claret! I have seen the demons dance in the moonbeams as motes in a shaft of sunlight! Oh, the night is the Devil's black book when I retreat to my cushioned chair and let my memories tumble out!

In my soul's eye I sink down into the Valley of Death where eye-pecking ravens hover above rain-sodden, evil-smelling huts in which witches, beldames of Satan, sit mumping their knees against fires of pure ice. I travel on. In the midnight of that valley I meet the Lord Satan raking over the bones of long-dead men as a gardener gathers in the rotting leaves of autumn. Oh, believe me, I have seen the horrors and heard the chilling chimes at midnight! Corpses piled high like maggots caught cold in mouldy cheese! Rivers of blood splashing in torrents! Cities wrapped in the flames of hell which roar up to an implacable sky!

It's always the same at night. I awaken as if some sanctus bell in my soul tolls away the hours, the minutes, and stirs me from my sleep. Oh, I fable not! I have seen visions which would curl your hair and turn you into Medusa. They come at night when my pillows become hard and sharp, as if stuffed with thistles. Like Hamlet or Macbeth, (oh, by the way, I had my hand in both those plays) I am forced to sit until Satan sweeps into my chamber.

'Shallot!' he roars. 'A man should roast away, not wither up! Look at you, past your ninetieth year and stuffed by the physicians with oils and herbs like a cook would stuff a pudding!'