Faustus's travelling-companion under the name of Mephistopheles, or
whether the prince of the lower regions in person condescended to play
that part, we do not know; but in all popular stories of the Doctor,
his servant bears the latter name,--while in the various books in
which, under the name of _Hoellenzwang_, the system of his magic is
laid down, he is called Aziel.

In possession of such a power, Faustus soon became tired of his lonely
study. He craved the world for his theatre. His travels seem in reality
to have been very extensive, while in the popular stories a magic
mantle carried him over the whole globe. Conrad Gesner, the great
physiologist, who speaks of him with some respect as a physician,
comparing him with Theophrastus Paracelsus, reckons him among the
_scholastici vagantes_, or _fahrende Schueler_, an order of men already
considerably in the decline, and grown disreputable at that period. As
early as the thirteenth century, we find the custom in Germany, of
young clergymen who did not belong to any monkish order travelling
through the land to get a living,--here by instructing in schools for a
certain period,--there by temporarily serving in churches as
choristers, sacristans, or vicars,--often, too, as clerks and copyists
to lawyers or other private men. When they could no longer find a
livelihood at one place, they went to another. Their offices became, in
course of time, of the most varied and unsuitable order. They were
generally received and treated with hospitality, and this may have been
one reason why all kinds of adventurers were ready to join them. Their
unstable mode of life easily explains their frequenting the society of
other vagabonds, who traversed the country as jugglers,
treasure-diggers, quacks, or sorcerers, and that their clerical dignity
did not prevent their occasionally adopting these professions
themselves. The Chronicle of Limburg, in speaking of the Diet of