The Ruined Youth and The Sorcerer's Bargain

Belluacensis (Vincent of Beauvais) and Cesarius.

A young nobleman wasted the fortune his father had left him on a life of vice, and fell so low that he had to beg. To escape the shame of being seen this way, he left his homeland for a distant country where no one knew him.

On the road he met an old servant of his father's, who saw how broken he was by his poverty and told him to take heart, promising to bring him to a prince so generous that he would supply his every need. But the old man was secretly a sorcerer. One day he led the youth into a wood at the edge of a moor and began speaking to someone unseen. When the youth asked who it was, the man answered, "The devil," and told him not to be afraid. He went on speaking with the devil and said that this young man had fallen into terrible need and longed to be restored to his old position.

The devil answered that if the youth would obey him, he would make him richer than before, but first he must renounce God. The youth shuddered, yet under the sorcerer's urging he gave in and renounced God. "That is not enough," said the devil. "He must also renounce Mary, for it is to her that we owe our greatest losses. How many souls she has torn from us and led back to God and saved!" At this the youth cried out, "That I will never do. Deny the Blessed Virgin Mary? She is my only hope. I would rather beg for the rest of my life." With those words he walked away.

On his way he passed a church dedicated to Our Lady. He went inside, knelt before her altar, and wept, begging her to obtain pardon for his sins. Mary at once began to plead with her Son for the wretched young man. Jesus said at first, "But this ungrateful youth has denied me, mother." Yet seeing that she kept on interceding, he finally said, "Oh, my mother, I have never refused you anything. He shall be pardoned, since you ask it." The man who had bought the prodigal's lost inheritance happened to be there in secret, and when he saw Mary's mercy toward this sinner, he gave the youth his only daughter in marriage and made him heir to everything he owned. So through Mary's intercession the young man recovered both the favor of God and the fortune he had thrown away.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the "example" stories that St. Alphonsus Liguori placed at the end of each section of The Glories of Mary. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the 1888 English translation. Liguori himself, in his author's "Protest," noted that the miracles and apparitions in the book are offered on human authority only, not as articles of faith.