The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain.
Chapter 1
It was in 1590—winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever.
Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams, and was infinitely content.
At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines;
beyond the river, a league to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards and shade trees.
The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a prince, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in five years.
When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.
Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys.
We were not overmuch pestered with schooling.
Mainly we were trained to be good Christians;
to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the
saints above everything.
Beyond these matters we were not required
to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to.
Knowledge was not good for the common people,
and could make them discontented with the
lot which God had appointed for them, and
God would not endure discontentment with His
plans.
We had two priests.
One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous
and strenuous priest, much considered.
There may have been better priests, in some
ways, than Father Adolf, but there was never
one in our commune who was held in more solemn
and awful respect.
This was because he had absolutely no fear
of the Devil.
He was the only Christian I have ever known
of whom that could be truly said.
People stood in deep dread of him on that
account; for they thought that there must
be something supernatural about him, else
he could not be so bold and so confident.
All men speak in bitter disapproval of the
Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly;
but Father Adolf's way was very different;
he called him by every name he could lay his
tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that
heard him; and often he would even speak of
him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people
crossed themselves and went quickly out of
his presence, fearing that something fearful
might happen.
Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to
face more than once, and defied him.
This was known to be so.
Father Adolf said it himself.
He never made any secret of it, but spoke
it right out.
And that he was speaking true there was proof
in at least one instance, for on that occasion
he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly
threw his bottle at him; and there, upon the
wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where
it struck and broke.
But it was Father Peter, the other priest,
that we all loved best and were sorriest for.
Some people charged him with talking around
in conversation that God was all goodness
and would find a way to save all his poor
human children.
It was a horrible thing to say, but there
was never any absolute proof that Father Peter
said it; and it was out of character for him
to say it, too, for he was always good and
gentle and truthful.
He wasn't charged with saying it in the pulpit,
where all the congregation could hear and
testify, but only outside, in talk; and it
is easy for enemies to manufacture that.
Father Peter had an enemy and a very powerful
one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled
old tower up the valley, and put in his nights
studying the stars.
Every one knew he could foretell wars and
famines, though that was not so hard, for
there was always a war, and generally a famine
somewhere.
But he could also read any man's life through
the stars in a big book he had, and find lost
property, and every one in the village except
Father Peter stood in awe of him.
Even Father Adolf, who had defied the Devil,
had a wholesome respect for the astrologer
when he came through our village wearing his
tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe
with stars on it, carrying his big book, and
a staff which was known to have magic power.
The bishop himself sometimes listened to the
astrologer, it was said, for, besides studying
the stars and prophesying, the astrologer
made a great show of piety, which would impress
the bishop, of course.
But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer.
He denounced him openly as a charlatan—a
fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind,
or powers beyond those of an ordinary and
rather inferior human being, which naturally
made the astrologer hate Father Peter and
wish to ruin him.
It was the astrologer, as we all believed,
who originated the story about Father Peter's
shocking remark and carried it to the bishop.
It was said that Father Peter had made the
remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget
denied it and implored the bishop to believe
her and spare her old uncle from poverty and
disgrace.
But the bishop wouldn't listen.
He suspended Father Peter indefinitely, though
he wouldn't go so far as to excommunicate
him on the evidence of only one witness; and
now Father Peter had been out a couple of
years, and our other priest, Father Adolf,
had his flock.
Those had been hard years for the old priest
and Marget.
They had been favorites, but of course that
changed when they came under the shadow of
the bishop's frown.
Many of their friends fell away entirely,
and the rest became cool and distant.
Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when
the trouble came, and she had the best head
in the village, and the most in it.
She taught the harp, and earned all her clothes
and pocket money by her own industry.
But her scholars fell off one by one now;
she was forgotten when there were dances and
parties among the youth of the village; the
young fellows stopped coming to the house,
all except Wilhelm Meidling—and he could
have been spared; she and her uncle were sad
and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace,
and the sunshine was gone out of their lives.
Matters went worse and worse, all through
the two years.
Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder
and harder to get.
And now, at last, the very end was come.
Solomon Isaacs had lent all the money he was
willing to put on the house, and gave notice
that to-morrow he would foreclose.
Chapter 2
Three of us boys were always together, and
had been so from the cradle, being fond of
one another from the beginning, and this affection
deepened as the years went on—Nikolaus Bauman,
son of the principal judge of the local court;
Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the
principal inn, the “Golden Stag,” which
had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching
down to the riverside, and pleasure boats
for hire; and I was the third—Theodor Fischer,
son of the church organist, who was also leader
of the village musicians, teacher of the violin,
composer, tax-collector of the commune, sexton,
and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected
by all.
We knew the hills and the woods as well as
the birds knew them; for we were always roaming
them when we had leisure—at least, when
we were not swimming or boating or fishing,
or playing on the ice or sliding down hill.
And we had the run of the castle park, and
very few had that.
It was because we were pets of the oldest
servingman in the castle—Felix Brandt; and
often we went there, nights, to hear him talk
about old times and strange things, and to
smoke with him (he taught us that) and to
drink coffee; for he had served in the wars,
and was at the siege of Vienna; and there,
when the Turks were defeated and driven away,
among the captured things were bags of coffee,
and the Turkish prisoners explained the character
of it and how to make a pleasant drink out
of it, and now he always kept coffee by him,
to drink himself and also to astonish the
ignorant with.
When it stormed he kept us all night; and
while it thundered and lightened outside he
told us about ghosts and horrors of every
kind, and of battles and murders and mutilations,
and such things, and made it pleasant and
cozy inside; and he told these things from
his own experience largely.
He had seen many ghosts in his time, and witches
and enchanters, and once he was lost in a
fierce storm at midnight in the mountains,
and by the glare of the lightning had seen
the Wild Huntsman rage on the blast with his
specter dogs chasing after him through the
driving cloud-rack.
Also he had seen an incubus once, and several
times he had seen the great bat that sucks
the blood from the necks of people while they
are asleep, fanning them softly with its wings
and so keeping them drowsy till they die.
He encouraged us not to fear supernatural
things, such as ghosts, and said they did
no harm, but only wandered about because they
were lonely and distressed and wanted kindly
notice and compassion; and in time we learned
not to be afraid, and even went down with
him in the night to the haunted chamber in
the dungeons of the castle.
The ghost appeared only once, and it went
by very dim to the sight and floated noiseless
through the air, and then disappeared; and
we scarcely trembled, he had taught us so
well.
He said it came up sometimes in the night
and woke him by passing its clammy hand over
his face, but it did him no hurt; it only
wanted sympathy and notice.
But the strangest thing was that he had seen
angels—actual angels out of heaven—and
had talked with them.
They had no wings, and wore clothes, and talked
and looked and acted just like any natural
person, and you would never know them for
angels except for the wonderful things they
did which a mortal could not do, and the way
they suddenly disappeared while you were talking
with them, which was also a thing which no
mortal could do.
And he said they were pleasant and cheerful,
not gloomy and melancholy, like ghosts.
It was after that kind of a talk one May night
that we got up next morning and had a good
breakfast with him and then went down and
crossed the bridge and went away up into the
hills on the left to a woody hill-top which
was a favorite place of ours, and there we
stretched out on the grass in the shade to
rest and smoke and talk over these strange
things, for they were in our minds yet, and
impressing us.
But we couldn't smoke, because we had been
heedless and left our flint and steel behind.
Soon there came a youth strolling toward us
through the trees, and he sat down and began
to talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew
us.
But we did not answer him, for he was a stranger
and we were not used to strangers and were
shy of them.
He had new and good clothes on, and was handsome
and had a winning face and a pleasant voice,
and was easy and graceful and unembarrassed,
not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like
other boys.
We wanted to be friendly with him, but didn't
know how to begin.
Then I thought of the pipe, and wondered if
it would be taken as kindly meant if I offered
it to him.
But I remembered that we had no fire, so I
was sorry and disappointed.
But he looked up bright and pleased, and said:
“Fire?
Oh, that is easy; I will furnish it.”
I was so astonished I couldn't speak; for
I had not said anything.
He took the pipe and blew his breath on it,
and the tobacco glowed red, and spirals of
blue smoke rose up.
We jumped up and were going to run, for that
was natural; and we did run a few steps, although
he was yearningly pleading for us to stay,
and giving us his word that he would not do
us any harm, but only wanted to be friends
with us and have company.
So we stopped and stood, and wanted to go
back, being full of curiosity and wonder,
but afraid to venture.
He went on coaxing, in his soft, persuasive
way; and when we saw that the pipe did not
blow up and nothing happened, our confidence
returned by little and little, and presently
our curiosity got to be stronger than our
fear, and we ventured back—but slowly, and
ready to fly at any alarm.
He was bent on putting us at ease, and he
had the right art; one could not remain doubtful
and timorous where a person was so earnest
and simple and gentle, and talked so alluringly
as he did; no, he won us over, and it was
not long before we were content and comfortable
and chatty, and glad we had found this new
friend.
When the feeling of constraint was all gone
we asked him how he had learned to do that
strange thing, and he said he hadn't learned
it at all; it came natural to him—like other
things—other curious things.
“What ones?”
“Oh, a number; I don't know how many.”
“Will you let us see you do them?”
“Do—please!” the others said.
“You won't run away again?”
“No—indeed we won't.
Please do.
Won't you?”
“Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn't forget
your promise, you know.”
We said we wouldn't, and he went to a puddle
and came back with water in a cup which he
had made out of a leaf, and blew upon it and
threw it out, and it was a lump of ice the
shape of the cup.
We were astonished and charmed, but not afraid
any more; we were very glad to be there, and
asked him to go on and do some more things.
And he did.
He said he would give us any kind of fruit
we liked, whether it was in season or not.
We all spoke at once;
“Orange!”
“Apple!”
“Grapes!”
“They are in your pockets,” he said, and
it was true.
And they were of the best, too, and we ate
them and wished we had more, though none of
us said so.
“You will find them where those came from,”
he said, “and everything else your appetites
call for; and you need not name the thing
you wish; as long as I am with you, you have
only to wish and find.”
And he said true.
There was never anything so wonderful and
so interesting.
Bread, cakes, sweets, nuts—whatever one
wanted, it was there.
He ate nothing himself, but sat and chatted,
and did one curious thing after another to
amuse us.
He made a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and
it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead
and barked down at us.
Then he made a dog that was not much larger
than a mouse, and it treed the squirrel and
danced about the tree, excited and barking,
and was as alive as any dog could be.
It frightened the squirrel from tree to tree
and followed it up until both were out of
sight in the forest.
He made birds out of clay and set them free,
and they flew away, singing.
At last I made bold to ask him to tell us
who he was.
“An angel,” he said, quite simply, and
set another bird free and clapped his hands
and made it fly away.
A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him
say that, and we were afraid again; but he
said we need not be troubled, there was no
occasion for us to be afraid of an angel,
and he liked us, anyway.
He went on chatting as simply and unaffectedly
as ever; and while he talked he made a crowd
of little men and women the size of your finger,
and they went diligently to work and cleared
and leveled off a space a couple of yards
square in the grass and began to build a cunning
little castle in it, the women mixing the
mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings
in pails on their heads, just as our work-women
have always done, and the men laying the courses
of masonry—five hundred of these toy people
swarming briskly about and working diligently
and wiping the sweat off their faces as natural
as life.
In the absorbing interest of watching those
five hundred little people make the castle
grow step by step and course by course, and
take shape and symmetry, that feeling and
awe soon passed away and we were quite comfortable
and at home again.
We asked if we might make some people, and
he said yes, and told Seppi to make some cannon
for the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some
halberdiers, with breastplates and greaves
and helmets, and I was to make some cavalry,
with horses, and in allotting these tasks
he called us by our names, but did not say
how he knew them.
Then Seppi asked him what his own name was,
and he said, tranquilly, “Satan,” and
held out a chip and caught a little woman
on it who was falling from the scaffolding
and put her back where she belonged, and said,
“She is an idiot to step backward like that
and not notice what she is about.”
It caught us suddenly, that name did, and
our work dropped out of our hands and broke
to pieces—a cannon, a halberdier, and a
horse.
Satan laughed, and asked what was the matter.
I said, “Nothing, only it seemed a strange
name for an angel.”
He asked why.
“Because it's—it's—well, it's his name,
you know.”
“Yes—he is my uncle.”
He said it placidly, but it took our breath
for a moment and made our hearts beat.
He did not seem to notice that, but mended
our halberdiers and things with a touch, handing
them to us finished, and said, “Don't you
remember?—he was an angel himself, once.”
“Yes—it's true,” said Seppi; “I didn't
think of that.”
“Before the Fall he was blameless.”
“Yes,” said Nikolaus, “he was without
sin.”
“It is a good family—ours,” said Satan;
“there is not a better.
He is the only member of it that has ever
sinned.”
I should not be able to make any one understand
how exciting it all was.
You know that kind of quiver that trembles
around through you when you are seeing something
so strange and enchanting and wonderful that
it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look
at it; and you know how you gaze, and your
lips turn dry and your breath comes short,
but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not
for the world.
I was bursting to ask one question—I had
it on my tongue's end and could hardly hold
it back—but I was ashamed to ask it; it
might be a rudeness.
Satan set an ox down that he had been making,
and smiled up at me and said:
“It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should
forgive it if it was.
Have I seen him?
Millions of times.
From the time that I was a little child a
thousand years old I was his second favorite
among the nursery angels of our blood and
lineage—to use a human phrase—yes, from
that time until the Fall, eight thousand years,
measured as you count time.”
“Eight—thousand!”
“Yes.”
He turned to Seppi, and went on as if answering
something that was in Seppi's mind: “Why,
naturally I look like a boy, for that is what
I am.
With us what you call time is a spacious thing;
it takes a long stretch of it to grow an angel
to full age.”
There was a question in my mind, and he turned
to me and answered it, “I am sixteen thousand
years old—counting as you count.”
Then he turned to Nikolaus and said: “No,
the Fall did not affect me nor the rest of
the relationship.
It was only he that I was named for who ate
of the fruit of the tree and then beguiled
the man and the woman with it.
We others are still ignorant of sin; we are
not able to commit it; we are without blemish,
and shall abide in that estate always.
We—” Two of the little workmen were quarreling,
and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they
were cursing and swearing at each other; now
came blows and blood; then they locked themselves
together in a life-and-death struggle.
Satan reached out his hand and crushed the
life out of them with his fingers, threw them
away, wiped the red from his fingers on his
handkerchief, and went on talking where he
had left off: “We cannot do wrong; neither
have we any disposition to do it, for we do
not know what it is.”
It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances,
but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked
and grieved at the wanton murder he had committed—for
murder it was, that was its true name, and
it was without palliation or excuse, for the
men had not wronged him in any way.
It made us miserable, for we loved him, and
had thought him so noble and so beautiful
and gracious, and had honestly believed he
was an angel; and to have him do this cruel
thing—ah, it lowered him so, and we had
had such pride in him.
He went right on talking, just as if nothing
had happened, telling about his travels, and
the interesting things he had seen in the
big worlds of our solar system and of other
solar systems far away in the remotenesses
of space, and about the customs of the immortals
that inhabit them, somehow fascinating us,
enchanting us, charming us in spite of the
pitiful scene that was now under our eyes,
for the wives of the little dead men had found
the crushed and shapeless bodies and were
crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting,
and a priest was kneeling there with his hands
crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds
and crowds of pitying friends were massed
about them, reverently uncovered, with their
bare heads bowed, and many with the tears
running down—a scene which Satan paid no
attention to until the small noise of the
weeping and praying began to annoy him, then
he reached out and took the heavy board seat
out of our swing and brought it down and mashed
all those people into the earth just as if
they had been flies, and went on talking just
the same.
An angel, and kill a priest!
An angel who did not know how to do wrong,
and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of
helpless poor men and women who had never
done him any harm!
It made us sick to see that awful deed, and
to think that none of those poor creatures
was prepared except the priest, for none of
them had ever heard a mass or seen a church.
And we were witnesses; we had seen these murders
done and it was our duty to tell, and let
the law take its course.
But he went on talking right along, and worked
his enchantments upon us again with that fatal
music of his voice.
He made us forget everything; we could only
listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves,
to do with us as he would.
He made us drunk with the joy of being with
him, and of looking into the heaven of his
eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that thrilled
along our veins from the touch of his hand.
Chapter 3
The Stranger had seen everything, he had been
everywhere, he knew everything, and he forgot
nothing.
What another must study, he learned at a glance;
there were no difficulties for him.
And he made things live before you when he
told about them.
He saw the world made; he saw Adam created;
he saw Samson surge against the pillars and
bring the temple down in ruins about him;
he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily
life in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing
in the red waves of hell; and he made us see
all these things, and it was as if we were
on the spot and looking at them with our own
eyes.
And we felt them, too, but there was no sign
that they were anything to him beyond mere
entertainments.
Those visions of hell, those poor babes and
women and girls and lads and men shrieking
and supplicating in anguish—why, we could
hardly bear it, but he was as bland about
it as if it had been so many imitation rats
in an artificial fire.
And always when he was talking about men and
women here on the earth and their doings—even
their grandest and sublimest—we were secretly
ashamed, for his manner showed that to him
they and their doings were of paltry poor
consequence; often you would think he was
talking about flies, if you didn't know.
Once he even said, in so many words, that
our people down here were quite interesting
to him, notwithstanding they were so dull
and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and
so diseased and rickety, and such a shabby,
poor, worthless lot all around.
He said it in a quite matter-of-course way
and without bitterness, just as a person might
talk about bricks or manure or any other thing
that was of no consequence and hadn't feelings.
I could see he meant no offense, but in my
thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
“Manners!” he said.
“Why, it is merely the truth, and truth
is good manners; manners are a fiction.
The castle is done.
Do you like it?”
Any one would have been obliged to like it.
It was lovely to look at, it was so shapely
and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all
its particulars, even to the little flags
waving from the turrets.
Satan said we must put the artillery in place
now, and station the halberdiers and display
the cavalry.
Our men and horses were a spectacle to see,
they were so little like what they were intended
for; for, of course, we had no art in making
such things.
Satan said they were the worst he had seen;
and when he touched them and made them alive,
it was just ridiculous the way they acted,
on account of their legs not being of uniform
lengths.
They reeled and sprawled around as if they
were drunk, and endangered everybody's lives
around them, and finally fell over and lay
helpless and kicking.
It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful
thing to see.
The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a
salute, but they were so crooked and so badly
made that they all burst when they went off,
and killed some of the gunners and crippled
the others.
Satan said we would have a storm now, and
an earthquake, if we liked, but we must stand
off a piece, out of danger.
We wanted to call the people away, too, but
he said never mind them; they were of no consequence,
and we could make more, some time or other,
if we needed them.
A small storm-cloud began to settle down black
over the castle, and the miniature lightning
and thunder began to play, and the ground
to quiver, and the wind to pipe and wheeze,
and the rain to fall, and all the people flocked
into the castle for shelter.
The cloud settled down blacker and blacker,
and one could see the castle only dimly through
it; the lightning blazed out flash upon flash
and pierced the castle and set it on fire,
and the flames shone out red and fierce through
the cloud, and the people came flying out,
shrieking, but Satan brushed them back, paying
no attention to our begging and crying and
imploring; and in the midst of the howling
of the wind and volleying of the thunder the
magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the
ground wide, and the castle's wreck and ruin
tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it
from sight, and closed upon it, with all that
innocent life, not one of the five hundred
poor creatures escaping.
Our hearts were broken; we could not keep
from crying.
“Don't cry,” Satan said; “they were
of no value.”
“But they are gone to hell!”
“Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty
more.”
It was of no use to try to move him; evidently
he was wholly without feelings, and could
not understand.
He was full of bubbling spirits, and as gay
as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish
massacre.
And he was bent on making us feel as he did,
and of course his magic accomplished his desire.
It was no trouble to him; he did whatever
he pleased with us.
In a little while we were dancing on that
grave, and he was playing to us on a strange,
sweet instrument which he took out of his
pocket; and the music—but there is no music
like that, unless perhaps in heaven, and that
was where he brought it from, he said.
It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could
not take our eyes from him, and the looks
that went out of our eyes came from our hearts,
and their dumb speech was worship.
He brought the dance from heaven, too, and
the bliss of paradise was in it.
Presently he said he must go away on an errand.
But we could not bear the thought of it, and
clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay;
and that pleased him, and he said so, and
said he would not go yet, but would wait a
little while and we would sit down and talk
a few minutes longer; and he told us Satan
was only his real name, and he was to be known
by it to us alone, but he had chosen another
one to be called by in the presence of others;
just a common one, such as people have—Philip
Traum.
It sounded so odd and mean for such a being!
But it was his decision, and we said nothing;
his decision was sufficient.
We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts
began to run on the pleasure it would be to
tell them when I got home, but he noticed
those thoughts, and said:
“No, all these matters are a secret among
us four.
I do not mind your trying to tell them, if
you like, but I will protect your tongues,
and nothing of the secret will escape from
them.”
It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be
helped, and it cost us a sigh or two.
We talked pleasantly along, and he was always
reading our thoughts and responding to them,
and it seemed to me that this was the most
wonderful of all the things he did, but he
interrupted my musings and said:
“No, it would be wonderful for you, but
it is not wonderful for me.
I am not limited like you.
I am not subject to human conditions.
I can measure and understand your human weaknesses,
for I have studied them; but I have none of
them.
My flesh is not real, although it would seem
firm to your touch; my clothes are not real;
I am a spirit.
Father Peter is coming.”
We looked around, but did not see any one.
“He is not in sight yet, but you will see
him presently.”
“Do you know him, Satan?”
“No.”
“Won't you talk with him when he comes?
He is not ignorant and dull, like us, and
he would so like to talk with you.
Will you?”
“Another time, yes, but not now.
I must go on my errand after a little.
There he is now; you can see him.
Sit still, and don't say anything.”
We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching
through the chestnuts.
We three were sitting together in the grass,
and Satan sat in front of us in the path.
Father Peter came slowly along with his head
down, thinking, and stopped within a couple
of yards of us and took off his hat and got
out his silk handkerchief, and stood there
mopping his face and looking as if he were
going to speak to us, but he didn't.
Presently he muttered, “I can't think what
brought me here; it seems as if I were in
my study a minute ago—but I suppose I have
been dreaming along for an hour and have come
all this stretch without noticing; for I am
not myself in these troubled days.”
Then he went mumbling along to himself and
walked straight through Satan, just as if
nothing were there.
It made us catch our breath to see it.
We had the impulse to cry out, the way you
nearly always do when a startling thing happens,
but something mysteriously restrained us and
we remained quiet, only breathing fast.
Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little,
and Satan said:
“It is as I told you—I am only a spirit.”
“Yes, one perceives it now,” said Nikolaus,
“but we are not spirits.
It is plain he did not see you, but were we
invisible, too?
He looked at us, but he didn't seem to see
us.”
“No, none of us was visible to him, for
I wished it so.”
It seemed almost too good to be true, that
we were actually seeing these romantic and
wonderful things, and that it was not a dream.
And there he sat, looking just like anybody—so
natural and simple and charming, and chatting
along again the same as ever, and—well,
words cannot make you understand what we felt.
It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing
that will not go into words; it feels like
music, and one cannot tell about music so
that another person can get the feeling of
it.
He was back in the old ages once more now,
and making them live before us.
He had seen so much, so much!
It was just a wonder to look at him and try
to think how it must seem to have such experience
behind one.
But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial,
and the creature of a day, and such a short
and paltry day, too.
And he didn't say anything to raise up your
drooping pride—no, not a word.
He always spoke of men in the same old indifferent
way—just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles
and such things; you could see that they were
of no consequence to him, one way or the other.
He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that;
just as we don't mean to insult a brick when
we disparage it; a brick's emotions are nothing
to us; it never occurs to us to think whether
it has any or not.
Once when he was bunching the most illustrious
kings and conquerors and poets and prophets
and pirates and beggars together—just a
brick-pile—I was shamed into putting in
a word for man, and asked him why he made
so much difference between men and himself.
He had to struggle with that a moment; he
didn't seem to understand how I could ask
such a strange question.
Then he said:
“The difference between man and me?
The difference between a mortal and an immortal?
between a cloud and a spirit?”
He picked up a wood-louse that was creeping
along a piece of bark: “What is the difference
between Caesar and this?”
I said, “One cannot compare things which
by their nature and by the interval between
them are not comparable.”
“You have answered your own question,”
he said.
“I will expand it.
Man is made of dirt—I saw him made.
I am not made of dirt.
Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities;
he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow; he
begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am
of the aristocracy of the Imperishables.
And man has the Moral Sense.
You understand?
He has the moral Sense.
That would seem to be difference enough between
us, all by itself.”
He stopped there, as if that settled the matter.
I was sorry, for at that time I had but a
dim idea of what the Moral Sense was.
I merely knew that we were proud of having
it, and when he talked like that about it,
it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels
who thinks her dearest finery is being admired
and then overhears strangers making fun of
it.
For a while we were all silent, and I, for
one, was depressed.
Then Satan began to chat again, and soon he
was sparkling along in such a cheerful and
vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more.
He told some very cunning things that put
us in a gale of laughter; and when he was
telling about the time that Samson tied the
torches to the foxes' tails and set them loose
in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting
on the fence slapping his thighs and laughing,
with the tears running down his cheeks, and
lost his balance and fell off the fence, the
memory of that picture got him to laughing,
too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly
time.
By and by he said:
“I am going on my errand now.”
“Don't!” we all said.
“Don't go; stay with us.
You won't come back.”
“Yes, I will; I give you my word.”
“When?
To-night?
Say when.”
“It won't be long.
You will see.”
“We like you.”
“And I you.
And as a proof of it I will show you something
fine to see.
Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now
I will dissolve myself and let you see me
do it.”
He stood up, and it was quickly finished.
He thinned away and thinned away until he
was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his
shape.
You could see the bushes through him as clearly
as you see things through a soap-bubble, and
all over him played and flashed the delicate
iridescent colors of the bubble, and along
with them was that thing shaped like a window-sash
which you always see on the globe of the bubble.
You have seen a bubble strike the carpet and
lightly bound along two or three times before
it bursts.
He did that.
He sprang—touched the grass—bounded—floated
along—touched again—and so on, and presently
exploded—puff! and in his place was vacancy.
It was a strange and beautiful thing to see.
We did not say anything, but sat wondering
and dreaming and blinking; and finally Seppi
roused up and said, mournfully sighing:
“I suppose none of it has happened.”
Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.
I was miserable to hear them say it, for it
was the same cold fear that was in my own
mind.
Then we saw poor old Father Peter wandering
along back, with his head bent down, searching
the ground.
When he was pretty close to us he looked up
and saw us, and said, “How long have you
been here, boys?”
“A little while, Father.”
“Then it is since I came by, and maybe you
can help me.
Did you come up by the path?”
“Yes, Father.”
“That is good.
I came the same way.
I have lost my wallet.
There wasn't much in it, but a very little
is much to me, for it was all I had.
I suppose you haven't seen anything of it?”
“No, Father, but we will help you hunt.”
“It is what I was going to ask you.
Why, here it is!”
We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right
where Satan stood when he began to melt—if
he did melt and it wasn't a delusion.
Father Peter picked it up and looked very
much surprised.
“It is mine,” he said, “but not the
contents.
This is fat; mine was flat; mine was light;
this is heavy.”
He opened it; it was stuffed as full as it
could hold with gold coins.
He let us gaze our fill; and of course we
did gaze, for we had never seen so much money
at one time before.
All our mouths came open to say “Satan did
it!” but nothing came out.
There it was, you see—we couldn't tell what
Satan didn't want told; he had said so himself.
“Boys, did you do this?”
It made us laugh.
And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he
thought what a foolish question it was.
“Who has been here?”
Our mouths came open to answer, but stood
so for a moment, because we couldn't say “Nobody,”
for it wouldn't be true, and the right word
didn't seem to come; then I thought of the
right one, and said it:
“Not a human being.”
“That is so,” said the others, and let
their mouths go shut.
“It is not so,” said Father Peter, and
looked at us very severely.
“I came by here a while ago, and there was
no one here, but that is nothing; some one
has been here since.
I don't mean to say that the person didn't
pass here before you came, and I don't mean
to say you saw him, but some one did pass,
that I know.
On your honor—you saw no one?”
“Not a human being.”
“That is sufficient; I know you are telling
me the truth.”
He began to count the money on the path, we
on our knees eagerly helping to stack it in
little piles.
“It's eleven hundred ducats odd!” he said.
“Oh dear! if it were only mine—and I need
it so!” and his voice broke and his lips
quivered.
“It is yours, sir!” we all cried out at
once, “every heller!”
“No—it isn't mine.
Only four ducats are mine; the rest...!”
He fell to dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing
some of the coins in his hands, and forgot
where he was, sitting there on his heels with
his old gray head bare; it was pitiful to
see.
“No,” he said, waking up, “it isn't
mine.
I can't account for it.
I think some enemy... it must be a trap.”
Nikolaus said: “Father Peter, with the exception
of the astrologer you haven't a real enemy
in the village—nor Marget, either.
And not even a half-enemy that's rich enough
to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you
a mean turn.
I'll ask you if that's so or not?”
He couldn't get around that argument, and
it cheered him up.
“But it isn't mine, you see—it isn't mine,
in any case.”
He said it in a wistful way, like a person
that wouldn't be sorry, but glad, if anybody
would contradict him.
“It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness
to it.
Aren't we, boys?”
“Yes, we are—and we'll stand by it, too.”
“Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade
me; you do, indeed.
If I had only a hundred-odd ducats of it!
The house is mortgaged for it, and we've no
home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow.
And that four ducats is all we've got in the—”
“It's yours, every bit of it, and you've
got to take it—we are bail that it's all
right.
Aren't we, Theodor?
Aren't we, Seppi?”
We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the
money back into the shabby old wallet and
made the owner take it.
So he said he would use two hundred of it,
for his house was good enough security for
that, and would put the rest at interest till
the rightful owner came for it; and on our
side we must sign a paper showing how he got
the money—a paper to show to the villagers
as proof that he had not got out of his troubles
dishonestly.
Chapter 4
It made immense talk next day, when Father
Peter paid Solomon Isaacs in gold and left
the rest of the money with him at interest.
Also, there was a pleasant change; many people
called at the house to congratulate him, and
a number of cool old friends became kind and
friendly again; and, to top all, Marget was
invited to a party.
And there was no mystery; Father Peter told
the whole circumstance just as it happened,
and said he could not account for it, only
it was the plain hand of Providence, so far
as he could see.
One or two shook their heads and said privately
it looked more like the hand of Satan; and
really that seemed a surprisingly good guess
for ignorant people like that.
Some came slyly buzzing around and tried to
coax us boys to come out and “tell the truth;”
and promised they wouldn't ever tell, but
only wanted to know for their own satisfaction,
because the whole thing was so curious.
They even wanted to buy the secret, and pay
money for it; and if we could have invented
something that would answer—but we couldn't;
we hadn't the ingenuity, so we had to let
the chance go by, and it was a pity.
We carried that secret around without any
trouble, but the other one, the big one, the
splendid one, burned the very vitals of us,
it was so hot to get out and we so hot to
let it out and astonish people with it.
But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept
itself in.
Satan said it would, and it did.
We went off every day and got to ourselves
in the woods so that we could talk about Satan,
and really that was the only subject we thought
of or cared anything about; and day and night
we watched for him and hoped he would come,
and we got more and more impatient all the
time.
We hadn't any interest in the other boys any
more, and wouldn't take part in their games
and enterprises.
They seemed so tame, after Satan; and their
doings so trifling and commonplace after his
adventures in antiquity and the constellations,
and his miracles and meltings and explosions,
and all that.
During the first day we were in a state of
anxiety on account of one thing, and we kept
going to Father Peter's house on one pretext
or another to keep track of it.
That was the gold coin; we were afraid it
would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy
money.
If it did—But it didn't.
At the end of the day no complaint had been
made about it, so after that we were satisfied
that it was real gold, and dropped the anxiety
out of our minds.
There was a question which we wanted to ask
Father Peter, and finally we went there the
second evening, a little diffidently, after
drawing straws, and I asked it as casually
as I could, though it did not sound as casual
as I wanted, because I didn't know how:
“What is the Moral Sense, sir?”
He looked down, surprised, over his great
spectacles, and said, “Why, it is the faculty
which enables us to distinguish good from
evil.”
It threw some light, but not a glare, and
I was a little disappointed, also to some
degree embarrassed.
He was waiting for me to go on, so, in default
of anything else to say, I asked, “Is it
valuable?”
“Valuable?
Heavens! lad, it is the one thing that lifts
man above the beasts that perish and makes
him heir to immortality!”
This did not remind me of anything further
to say, so I got out, with the other boys,
and we went away with that indefinite sense
you have often had of being filled but not
fatted.
They wanted me to explain, but I was tired.
We passed out through the parlor, and there
was Marget at the spinnet teaching Marie Lueger.
So one of the deserting pupils was back; and
an influential one, too; the others would
follow.
Marget jumped up and ran and thanked us again,
with tears in her eyes—this was the third
time—for saving her and her uncle from being
turned into the street, and we told her again
we hadn't done it; but that was her way, she
never could be grateful enough for anything
a person did for her; so we let her have her
say.
And as we passed through the garden, there
was Wilhelm Meidling sitting there waiting,
for it was getting toward the edge of the
evening, and he would be asking Marget to
take a walk along the river with him when
she was done with the lesson.
He was a young lawyer, and succeeding fairly
well and working his way along, little by
little.
He was very fond of Marget, and she of him.
He had not deserted along with the others,
but had stood his ground all through.
His faithfulness was not lost on Marget and
her uncle.
He hadn't so very much talent, but he was
handsome and good, and these are a kind of
talents themselves and help along.
He asked us how the lesson was getting along,
and we told him it was about done.
And maybe it was so; we didn't know anything
about it, but we judged it would please him,
and it did, and didn't cost us anything.
Chapter 5
On the fourth day comes the astrologer from
his crumbling old tower up the valley, where
he had heard the news, I reckon.
He had a private talk with us, and we told
him what we could, for we were mightily in
dread of him.
He sat there studying and studying awhile
to himself; then he asked:
“How many ducats did you say?”
“Eleven hundred and seven, sir.”
Then he said, as if he were talking to himself:
“It is ver-y singular.
Yes... very strange.
A curious coincidence.”
Then he began to ask questions, and went over
the whole ground from the beginning, we answering.
By and by he said: “Eleven hundred and six
ducats.
It is a large sum.”
“Seven,” said Seppi, correcting him.
“Oh, seven, was it?
Of course a ducat more or less isn't of consequence,
but you said eleven hundred and six before.”
It would not have been safe for us to say
he was mistaken, but we knew he was.
Nikolaus said, “We ask pardon for the mistake,
but we meant to say seven.”
“Oh, it is no matter, lad; it was merely
that I noticed the discrepancy.
It is several days, and you cannot be expected
to remember precisely.
One is apt to be inexact when there is no
particular circumstance to impress the count
upon the memory.”
“But there was one, sir,” said Seppi,
eagerly.
“What was it, my son?” asked the astrologer,
indifferently.
“First, we all counted the piles of coin,
each in turn, and all made it the same—eleven
hundred and six.
But I had slipped one out, for fun, when the
count began, and now I slipped it back and
said, 'I think there is a mistake—there
are eleven hundred and seven; let us count
again.'
We did, and of course I was right.
They were astonished; then I told how it came
about.”
The astrologer asked us if this was so, and
we said it was.
“That settles it,” he said.
“I know the thief now.
Lads, the money was stolen.”
Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled,
and wondering what he could mean.
In about an hour we found out; for by that
time it was all over the village that Father
Peter had been arrested for stealing a great
sum of money from the astrologer.
Everybody's tongue was loose and going.
Many said it was not in Father Peter's character
and must be a mistake; but the others shook
their heads and said misery and want could
drive a suffering man to almost anything.
About one detail there were no differences;
all agreed that Father Peter's account of
how the money came into his hands was just
about unbelievable—it had such an impossible
look.
They said it might have come into the astrologer's
hands in some such way, but into Father Peter's,
never!
Our characters began to suffer now.
We were Father Peter's only witnesses; how
much did he probably pay us to back up his
fantastic tale?
People talked that kind of talk to us pretty
freely and frankly, and were full of scoffings
when we begged them to believe really we had
told only the truth.
Our parents were harder on us than any one
else.
Our fathers said we were disgracing our families,
and they commanded us to purge ourselves of
our lie, and there was no limit to their anger
when we continued to say we had spoken true.
Our mothers cried over us and begged us to
give back our bribe and get back our honest
names and save our families from shame, and
come out and honorably confess.
And at last we were so worried and harassed
that we tried to tell the whole thing, Satan
and all—but no, it wouldn't come out.
We were hoping and longing all the time that
Satan would come and help us out of our trouble,
but there was no sign of him.
Within an hour after the astrologer's talk
with us, Father Peter was in prison and the
money sealed up and in the hands of the officers
of the law.
The money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs
said he had not touched it since he had counted
it; his oath was taken that it was the same
money, and that the amount was eleven hundred
and seven ducats.
Father Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical
court, but our other priest, Father Adolf,
said an ecclesiastical court hadn't jurisdiction
over a suspended priest.
The bishop upheld him.
That settled it; the case would go to trial
in the civil court.
The court would not sit for some time to come.
Wilhelm Meidling would be Father Peter's lawyer
and do the best he could, of course, but he
told us privately that a weak case on his
side and all the power and prejudice on the
other made the outlook bad.
So Marget's new happiness died a quick death.
No friends came to condole with her, and none
were expected; an unsigned note withdrew her
invitation to the party.
There would be no scholars to take lessons.
How could she support herself?
She could remain in the house, for the mortgage
was paid off, though the government and not
poor Solomon Isaacs had the mortgage-money
in its grip for the present.
Old Ursula, who was cook, chambermaid, housekeeper,
laundress, and everything else for Father
Peter, and had been Marget's nurse in earlier
years, said God would provide.
But she said that from habit, for she was
a good Christian.
She meant to help in the providing, to make
sure, if she could find a way.
We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show
friendliness for her, but our parents were
afraid of offending the community and wouldn't
let us.
The astrologer was going around inflaming
everybody against Father Peter, and saying
he was an abandoned thief and had stolen eleven
hundred and seven gold ducats from him.
He said he knew he was a thief from that fact,
for it was exactly the sum he had lost and
which Father Peter pretended he had “found.”
In the afternoon of the fourth day after the
catastrophe old Ursula appeared at our house
and asked for some washing to do, and begged
my mother to keep this secret, to save Marget's
pride, who would stop this project if she
found it out, yet Marget had not enough to
eat and was growing weak.
Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed
it; and she ate of the food that was offered
her like a starving person, but could not
be persuaded to carry any home, for Marget
would not eat charity food.
She took some clothes down to the stream to
wash them, but we saw from the window that
handling the bat was too much for her strength;
so she was called back and a trifle of money
offered her, which she was afraid to take
lest Marget should suspect; then she took
it, saying she would explain that she found
it in the road.
To keep it from being a lie and damning her
soul, she got me to drop it while she watched;
then she went along by there and found it,
and exclaimed with surprise and joy, and picked
it up and went her way.
Like the rest of the village, she could tell
every-day lies fast enough and without taking
any precautions against fire and brimstone
on their account; but this was a new kind
of lie, and it had a dangerous look because
she hadn't had any practice in it.
After a week's practice it wouldn't have given
her any trouble.
It is the way we are made.
I was in trouble, for how would Marget live?
Ursula could not find a coin in the road every
day—perhaps not even a second one.
And I was ashamed, too, for not having been
near Marget, and she so in need of friends;
but that was my parents' fault, not mine,
and I couldn't help it.
I was walking along the path, feeling very
down-hearted, when a most cheery and tingling
freshening-up sensation went rippling through
me, and I was too glad for any words, for
I knew by that sign that Satan was by.
I had noticed it before.
Next moment he was alongside of me and I was
telling him all my trouble and what had been
happening to Marget and her uncle.
While we were talking we turned a curve and
saw old Ursula resting in the shade of a tree,
and she had a lean stray kitten in her lap
and was petting it.
I asked her where she got it, and she said
it came out of the woods and followed her;
and she said it probably hadn't any mother
or any friends and she was going to take it
home and take care of it.
Satan said:
“I understand you are very poor.
Why do you want to add another mouth to feed?
Why don't you give it to some rich person?”
Ursula bridled at this and said: “Perhaps
you would like to have it.
You must be rich, with your fine clothes and
quality airs.”
Then she sniffed and said: “Give it to the
rich—the idea!
The rich don't care for anybody but themselves;
it's only the poor that have feeling for the
poor, and help them.
The poor and God.
God will provide for this kitten.”
“What makes you think so?”
Ursula's eyes snapped with anger.
“Because I know it!” she said.
“Not a sparrow falls to the ground without
His seeing it.”
“But it falls, just the same.
What good is seeing it fall?”
Old Ursula's jaws worked, but she could not
get any word out for the moment, she was so
horrified.
When she got her tongue, she stormed out,
“Go about your business, you puppy, or I
will take a stick to you!”
I could not speak, I was so scared.
I knew that with his notions about the human
race Satan would consider it a matter of no
consequence to strike her dead, there being
“plenty more”; but my tongue stood still,
I could give her no warning.
But nothing happened; Satan remained tranquil—tranquil
and indifferent.
I suppose he could not be insulted by Ursula
any more than the king could be insulted by
a tumble-bug.
The old woman jumped to her feet when she
made her remark, and did it as briskly as
a young girl.
It had been many years since she had done
the like of that.
That was Satan's influence; he was a fresh
breeze to the weak and the sick, wherever
he came.
His presence affected even the lean kitten,
and it skipped to the ground and began to
chase a leaf.
This surprised Ursula, and she stood looking
at the creature and nodding her head wonderingly,
her anger quite forgotten.
“What's come over it?” she said.
“Awhile ago it could hardly walk.”
“You have not seen a kitten of that breed
before,” said Satan.
Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with
the mocking stranger, and she gave him an
ungentle look and retorted: “Who asked you
to come here and pester me, I'd like to know?
And what do you know about what I've seen
and what I haven't seen?”
“You haven't seen a kitten with the hair-spines
on its tongue pointing to the front, have
you?”
“No—nor you, either.”
“Well, examine this one and see.”
Ursula was become pretty spry, but the kitten
was spryer, and she could not catch it, and
had to give it up.
Then Satan said:
“Give it a name, and maybe it will come.”
Ursula tried several names, but the kitten
was not interested.
“Call it Agnes.
Try that.”
The creature answered to the name and came.
Ursula examined its tongue.
“Upon my word, it's true!” she said.
“I have not seen this kind of a cat before.
Is it yours?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know its name so pat?”
“Because all cats of that breed are named
Agnes; they will not answer to any other.”
Ursula was impressed.
“It is the most wonderful thing!”
Then a shadow of trouble came into her face,
for her superstitions were aroused, and she
reluctantly put the creature down, saying:
“I suppose I must let it go; I am not afraid—no,
not exactly that, though the priest—well,
I've heard people—indeed, many people...
And, besides, it is quite well now and can
take care of itself.”
She sighed, and turned to go, murmuring: “It
is such a pretty one, too, and would be such
company—and the house is so sad and lonesome
these troubled days...
Miss Marget so mournful and just a shadow,
and the old master shut up in jail.”
“It seems a pity not to keep it,” said
Satan.
Ursula turned quickly—just as if she were
hoping some one would encourage her.
“Why?” she asked, wistfully.
“Because this breed brings luck.”
“Does it?
Is it true?
Young man, do you know it to be true?
How does it bring luck?”
“Well, it brings money, anyway.”
Ursula looked disappointed.
“Money?
A cat bring money?
The idea!
You could never sell it here; people do not
buy cats here; one can't even give them away.”
She turned to go.
“I don't mean sell it.
I mean have an income from it.
This kind is called the Lucky Cat.
Its owner finds four silver groschen in his
pocket every morning.”
I saw the indignation rising in the old woman's
face.
She was insulted.
This boy was making fun of her.
That was her thought.
She thrust her hands into her pockets and
straightened up to give him a piece of her
mind.
Her temper was all up, and hot.
Her mouth came open and let out three words
of a bitter sentence,... then it fell silent,
and the anger in her face turned to surprise
or wonder or fear, or something, and she slowly
brought out her hands from her pockets and
opened them and held them so.
In one was my piece of money, in the other
lay four silver groschen.
She gazed a little while, perhaps to see if
the groschen would vanish away; then she said,
fervently:
“It's true—it's true—and I'm ashamed
and beg forgiveness, O dear master and benefactor!”
And she ran to Satan and kissed his hand,
over and over again, according to the Austrian
custom.
In her heart she probably believed it was
a witch-cat and an agent of the Devil; but
no matter, it was all the more certain to
be able to keep its contract and furnish a
daily good living for the family, for in matters
of finance even the piousest of our peasants
would have more confidence in an arrangement
with the Devil than with an archangel.
Ursula started homeward, with Agnes in her
arms, and I said I wished I had her privilege
of seeing Marget.
Then I caught my breath, for we were there.
There in the parlor, and Marget standing looking
at us, astonished.
She was feeble and pale, but I knew that those
conditions would not last in Satan's atmosphere,
and it turned out so.
I introduced Satan—that is, Philip Traum—and
we sat down and talked.
There was no constraint.
We were simple folk, in our village, and when
a stranger was a pleasant person we were soon
friends.
Marget wondered how we got in without her
hearing us.
Traum said the door was open, and we walked
in and waited until she should turn around
and greet us.
This was not true; no door was open; we entered
through the walls or the roof or down the
chimney, or somehow; but no matter, what Satan
wished a person to believe, the person was
sure to believe, and so Marget was quite satisfied
with that explanation.
And then the main part of her mind was on
Traum, anyway; she couldn't keep her eyes
off him, he was so beautiful.
That gratified me, and made me proud.
I hoped he would show off some, but he didn't.
He seemed only interested in being friendly
and telling lies.
He said he was an orphan.
That made Marget pity him.
The water came into her eyes.
He said he had never known his mamma; she
passed away while he was a young thing; and
said his papa was in shattered health, and
had no property to speak of—in fact, none
of any earthly value—but he had an uncle
in business down in the tropics, and he was
very well off and had a monopoly, and it was
from this uncle that he drew his support.
The very mention of a kind uncle was enough
to remind Marget of her own, and her eyes
filled again.
She said she hoped their two uncles would
meet, some day.
It made me shudder.
Philip said he hoped so, too; and that made
me shudder again.
“Maybe they will,” said Marget.
“Does your uncle travel much?”
“Oh yes, he goes all about; he has business
everywhere.”
And so they went on chatting, and poor Marget
forgot her sorrow for one little while, anyway.
It was probably the only really bright and
cheery hour she had known lately.
I saw she liked Philip, and I knew she would.
And when he told her he was studying for the
ministry I could see that she liked him better
than ever.
And then, when he promised to get her admitted
to the jail so that she could see her uncle,
that was the capstone.
He said he would give the guards a little
present, and she must always go in the evening
after dark, and say nothing, “but just show
this paper and pass in, and show it again
when you come out”—and he scribbled some
queer marks on the paper and gave it to her,
and she was ever so thankful, and right away
was in a fever for the sun to go down; for
in that old, cruel time prisoners were not
allowed to see their friends, and sometimes
they spent years in the jails without ever
seeing a friendly face.
I judged that the marks on the paper were
an enchantment, and that the guards would
not know what they were doing, nor have any
memory of it afterward; and that was indeed
the way of it.
Ursula put her head in at the door now and
said:
“Supper's ready, miss.”
Then she saw us and looked frightened, and
motioned me to come to her, which I did, and
she asked if we had told about the cat.
I said no, and she was relieved, and said
please don't; for if Miss Marget knew, she
would think it was an unholy cat and would
send for a priest and have its gifts all purified
out of it, and then there wouldn't be any
more dividends.
So I said we wouldn't tell, and she was satisfied.
Then I was beginning to say good-by to Marget,
but Satan interrupted and said, ever so politely—well,
I don't remember just the words, but anyway
he as good as invited himself to supper, and
me, too.
Of course Marget was miserably embarrassed,
for she had no reason to suppose there would
be half enough for a sick bird.
Ursula heard him, and she came straight into
the room, not a bit pleased.
At first she was astonished to see Marget
looking so fresh and rosy, and said so; then
she spoke up in her native tongue, which was
Bohemian, and said—as I learned afterward—“Send
him away, Miss Marget; there's not victuals
enough.”
Before Marget could speak, Satan had the word,
and was talking back to Ursula in her own
language—which was a surprise to her, and
for her mistress, too.
He said, “Didn't I see you down the road
awhile ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah, that pleases me; I see you remember
me.”
He stepped to her and whispered: “I told
you it is a Lucky Cat.
Don't be troubled; it will provide.”
That sponged the slate of Ursula's feelings
clean of its anxieties, and a deep, financial
joy shone in her eyes.
The cat's value was augmenting.
It was getting full time for Marget to take
some sort of notice of Satan's invitation,
and she did it in the best way, the honest
way that was natural to her.
She said she had little to offer, but that
we were welcome if we would share it with
her.
We had supper in the kitchen, and Ursula waited
at table.
A small fish was in the frying-pan, crisp
and brown and tempting, and one could see
that Marget was not expecting such respectable
food as this.
Ursula brought it, and Marget divided it between
Satan and me, declining to take any of it
herself; and was beginning to say she did
not care for fish to-day, but she did not
finish the remark.
It was because she noticed that another fish
had appeared in the pan.
She looked surprised, but did not say anything.
She probably meant to inquire of Ursula about
this later.
There were other surprises: flesh and game
and wines and fruits—things which had been
strangers in that house lately; but Marget
made no exclamations, and now even looked
unsurprised, which was Satan's influence,
of course.
Satan talked right along, and was entertaining,
and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully;
and although he told a good many lies, it
was no harm in him, for he was only an angel
and did not know any better.
They do not know right from wrong; I knew
this, because I remembered what he had said
about it.
He got on the good side of Ursula.
He praised her to Marget, confidentially,
but speaking just loud enough for Ursula to
hear.
He said she was a fine woman, and he hoped
some day to bring her and his uncle together.
Very soon Ursula was mincing and simpering
around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing
out her gown and prinking at herself like
a foolish old hen, and all the time pretending
she was not hearing what Satan was saying.
I was ashamed, for it showed us to be what
Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial.
Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal,
and to have a clever woman presiding over
the festivities would double the attractions
of the place.
“But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?”
asked Marget.
“Yes,” said Satan indifferently; “some
even call him a Prince, out of compliment,
but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit
is everything, rank nothing.”
My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes
came along and licked it; by this act a secret
was revealed.
I started to say, “It is all a mistake;
this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles
on her tongue point inward, not outward.”
But the words did not come, because they couldn't.
Satan smiled upon me, and I understood.
When it was dark Marget took food and wine
and fruit, in a basket, and hurried away to
the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my
home.
I was thinking to myself that I should like
to see what the inside of the jail was like;
Satan overheard the thought, and the next
moment we were in the jail.
We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said.
The rack was there, and the other instruments,
and there was a smoky lantern or two hanging
on the walls and helping to make the place
look dim and dreadful.
There were people there—and executioners—but
as they took no notice of us, it meant that
we were invisible.
A young man lay bound, and Satan said he was
suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners
were about to inquire into it.
They asked the man to confess to the charge,
and he said he could not, for it was not true.
Then they drove splinter after splinter under
his nails, and he shrieked with the pain.
Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure
it, and had to be whisked out of there.
I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived
me, and we walked toward my home.
I said it was a brutal thing.
“No, it was a human thing.
You should not insult the brutes by such a
misuse of that word; they have not deserved
it,” and he went on talking like that.
“It is like your paltry race—always lying,
always claiming virtues which it hasn't got,
always denying them to the higher animals,
which alone possess them.
No brute ever does a cruel thing—that is
the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense.
When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently;
it is not wrong; for him there is no such
thing as wrong.
And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure
of inflicting it—only man does that.
Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his!
A sense whose function is to distinguish between
right and wrong, with liberty to choose which
of them he will do.
Now what advantage can he get out of that?
He is always choosing, and in nine cases out
of ten he prefers the wrong.
There shouldn't be any wrong; and without
the Moral Sense there couldn't be any.
And yet he is such an unreasoning creature
that he is not able to perceive that the Moral
Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of
animated beings and is a shameful possession.
Are you feeling better?
Let me show you something.”
Chapter 6
In a moment we were in a French village.
We walked through a great factory of some
sort, where men and women and little children
were toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of
dust; and they were clothed in rags, and drooped
at their work, for they were worn and half
starved, and weak and drowsy.
Satan said:
“It is some more Moral Sense.
The proprietors are rich, and very holy; but
the wage they pay to these poor brothers and
sisters of theirs is only enough to keep them
from dropping dead with hunger.
The work-hours are fourteen per day, winter
and summer—from six in the morning till
eight at night—little children and all.
And they walk to and from the pigsties which
they inhabit—four miles each way, through
mud and slush, rain, snow, sleet, and storm,
daily, year in and year out.
They get four hours of sleep.
They kennel together, three families in a
room, in unimaginable filth and stench; and
disease comes, and they die off like flies.
Have they committed a crime, these mangy things?
No.
What have they done, that they are punished
so?
Nothing at all, except getting themselves
born into your foolish race.
You have seen how they treat a misdoer there
in the jail; now you see how they treat the
innocent and the worthy.
Is your race logical?
Are these ill-smelling innocents better off
than that heretic?
Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial compared
with theirs.
They broke him on the wheel and smashed him
to rags and pulp after we left, and he is
dead now, and free of your precious race;
but these poor slaves here—why, they have
been dying for years, and some of them will
not escape from life for years to come.
It is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory
proprietors the difference between right and
wrong—you perceive the result.
They think themselves better than dogs.
Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning
race!
And paltry—oh, unspeakably!”
Then he dropped all seriousness and just overstrained
himself making fun of us, and deriding our
pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes,
our imperishable fames, our mighty kings,
our ancient aristocracies, our venerable history—and
laughed and laughed till it was enough to
make a person sick to hear him; and finally
he sobered a little and said, “But, after
all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a
sort of pathos about it when one remembers
how few are your days, how childish your pomps,
and what shadows you are!”
Presently all things vanished suddenly from
my sight, and I knew what it meant.
The next moment we were walking along in our
village; and down toward the river I saw the
twinkling lights of the Golden Stag.
Then in the dark I heard a joyful cry:
“He's come again!”
It was Seppi Wohlmeyer.
He had felt his blood leap and his spirits
rise in a way that could mean only one thing,
and he knew Satan was near, although it was
too dark to see him.
He came to us, and we walked along together,
and Seppi poured out his gladness like water.
It was as if he were a lover and had found
his sweetheart who had been lost.
Seppi was a smart and animated boy, and had
enthusiasm and expression, and was a contrast
to Nikolaus and me.
He was full of the last new mystery, now—the
disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village
loafer.
People were beginning to be curious about
it, he said.
He did not say anxious—curious was the right
word, and strong enough.
No one had seen Hans for a couple of days.
“Not since he did that brutal thing, you
know,” he said.
“What brutal thing?”
It was Satan that asked.
“Well, he is always clubbing his dog, which
is a good dog, and his only friend, and is
faithful, and loves him, and does no one any
harm; and two days ago he was at it again,
just for nothing—just for pleasure—and
the dog was howling and begging, and Theodor
and I begged, too, but he threatened us, and
struck the dog again with all his might and
knocked one of his eyes out, and he said to
us, 'There, I hope you are satisfied now;
that's what you have got for him by your damned
meddling'—and he laughed, the heartless
brute.”
Seppi's voice trembled with pity and anger.
I guessed what Satan would say, and he said
it.
“There is that misused word again—that
shabby slander.
Brutes do not act like that, but only men.”
“Well, it was inhuman, anyway.”
“No, it wasn't, Seppi; it was human—quite
distinctly human.
It is not pleasant to hear you libel the higher
animals by attributing to them dispositions
which they are free from, and which are found
nowhere but in the human heart.
None of the higher animals is tainted with
the disease called the Moral Sense.
Purify your language, Seppi; drop those lying
phrases out of it.”
He spoke pretty sternly—for him—and I
was sorry I hadn't warned Seppi to be more
particular about the word he used.
I knew how he was feeling.
He would not want to offend Satan; he would
rather offend all his kin.
There was an uncomfortable silence, but relief
soon came, for that poor dog came along now,
with his eye hanging down, and went straight
to Satan, and began to moan and mutter brokenly,
and Satan began to answer in the same way,
and it was plain that they were talking together
in the dog language.
We all sat down in the grass, in the moonlight,
for the clouds were breaking away now, and
Satan took the dog's head in his lap and put
the eye back in its place, and the dog was
comfortable, and he wagged his tail and licked
Satan's hand, and looked thankful and said
the same; I knew he was saying it, though
I did not understand the words.
Then the two talked together a bit, and Satan
said:
“He says his master was drunk.”
“Yes, he was,” said we.
“And an hour later he fell over the precipice
there beyond the Cliff Pasture.”
“We know the place; it is three miles from
here.”
“And the dog has been often to the village,
begging people to go there, but he was only
driven away and not listened to.”
We remembered it, but hadn't understood what
he wanted.
“He only wanted help for the man who had
misused him, and he thought only of that,
and has had no food nor sought any.
He has watched by his master two nights.
What do you think of your race?
Is heaven reserved for it, and this dog ruled
out, as your teachers tell you?
Can your race add anything to this dog's stock
of morals and magnanimities?”
He spoke to the creature, who jumped up, eager
and happy, and apparently ready for orders
and impatient to execute them.
“Get some men; go with the dog—he will
show you that carrion; and take a priest along
to arrange about insurance, for death is near.”
With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow
and disappointment.
We got the men and Father Adolf, and we saw
the man die.
Nobody cared but the dog; he mourned and grieved,
and licked the dead face, and could not be
comforted.
We buried him where he was, and without a
coffin, for he had no money, and no friend
but the dog.
If we had been an hour earlier the priest
would have been in time to send that poor
creature to heaven, but now he was gone down
into the awful fires, to burn forever.
It seemed such a pity that in a world where
so many people have difficulty to put in their
time, one little hour could not have been
spared for this poor creature who needed it
so much, and to whom it would have made the
difference between eternal joy and eternal
pain.
It gave an appalling idea of the value of
an hour, and I thought I could never waste
one again without remorse and terror.
Seppi was depressed and grieved, and said
it must be so much better to be a dog and
not run such awful risks.
We took this one home with us and kept him
for our own.
Seppi had a very good thought as we were walking
along, and it cheered us up and made us feel
much better.
He said the dog had forgiven the man that
had wronged him so, and maybe God would accept
that absolution.
There was a very dull week, now, for Satan
did not come, nothing much was going on, and
we boys could not venture to go and see Marget,
because the nights were moonlit and our parents
might find us out if we tried.
But we came across Ursula a couple of times
taking a walk in the meadows beyond the river
to air the cat, and we learned from her that
things were going well.
She had natty new clothes on and bore a prosperous
look.
The four groschen a day were arriving without
a break, but were not being spent for food
and wine and such things—the cat attended
to all that.
Marget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation
fairly well, all things considered, and was
cheerful, by help of Wilhelm Meidling.
She spent an hour or two every night in the
jail with her uncle, and had fattened him
up with the cat's contributions.
But she was curious to know more about Philip
Traum, and hoped I would bring him again.
Ursula was curious about him herself, and
asked a good many questions about his uncle.
It made the boys laugh, for I had told them
the nonsense Satan had been stuffing her with.
She got no satisfaction out of us, our tongues
being tied.
Ursula gave us a small item of information:
money being plenty now, she had taken on a
servant to help about the house and run errands.
She tried to tell it in a commonplace, matter-of-course
way, but she was so set up by it and so vain
of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty
plainly.
It was beautiful to see her veiled delight
in this grandeur, poor old thing, but when
we heard the name of the servant we wondered
if she had been altogether wise; for although
we were young, and often thoughtless, we had
fairly good perception on some matters.
This boy was Gottfried Narr, a dull, good
creature, with no harm in him and nothing
against him personally; still, he was under
a cloud, and properly so, for it had not been
six months since a social blight had mildewed
the family—his grandmother had been burned
as a witch.
When that kind of a malady is in the blood
it does not always come out with just one
burning.
Just now was not a good time for Ursula and
Marget to be having dealings with a member
of such a family, for the witch-terror had
risen higher during the past year than it
had ever reached in the memory of the oldest
villagers.
The mere mention of a witch was almost enough
to frighten us out of our wits.
This was natural enough, because of late years
there were more kinds of witches than there
used to be; in old times it had been only
old women, but of late years they were of
all ages—even children of eight and nine;
it was getting so that anybody might turn
out to be a familiar of the Devil—age and
sex hadn't anything to do with it.
In our little region we had tried to extirpate
the witches, but the more of them we burned
the more of the breed rose up in their places.
Once, in a school for girls only ten miles
away, the teachers found that the back of
one of the girls was all red and inflamed,
and they were greatly frightened, believing
it to be the Devil's marks.
The girl was scared, and begged them not to
denounce her, and said it was only fleas;
but of course it would not do to let the matter
rest there.
All the girls were examined, and eleven out
of the fifty were badly marked, the rest less
so.
A commission was appointed, but the eleven
only cried for their mothers and would not
confess.
Then they were shut up, each by herself, in
the dark, and put on black bread and water
for ten days and nights; and by that time
they were haggard and wild, and their eyes
were dry and they did not cry any more, but
only sat and mumbled, and would not take the
food.
Then one of them confessed, and said they
had often ridden through the air on broomsticks
to the witches' Sabbath, and in a bleak place
high up in the mountains had danced and drunk
and caroused with several hundred other witches
and the Evil One, and all had conducted themselves
in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests
and blasphemed God.
That is what she said—not in narrative form,
for she was not able to remember any of the
details without having them called to her
mind one after the other; but the commission
did that, for they knew just what questions
to ask, they being all written down for the
use of witch-commissioners two centuries before.
They asked, “Did you do so and so?” and
she always said yes, and looked weary and
tired, and took no interest in it.
And so when the other ten heard that this
one confessed, they confessed, too, and answered
yes to the questions.
Then they were burned at the stake all together,
which was just and right; and everybody went
from all the countryside to see it.
I went, too; but when I saw that one of them
was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with,
and looked so pitiful there chained to the
stake, and her mother crying over her and
devouring her with kisses and clinging around
her neck, and saying, “Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!” it was too dreadful, and I
went away.
It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's
grandmother was burned.
It was charged that she had cured bad headaches
by kneading the person's head and neck with
her fingers—as she said—but really by
the Devil's help, as everybody knew.
They were going to examine her, but she stopped
them, and confessed straight off that her
power was from the Devil.
So they appointed to burn her next morning,
early, in our market-square.
The officer who was to prepare the fire was
there first, and prepared it.
She was there next—brought by the constables,
who left her and went to fetch another witch.
Her family did not come with her.
They might be reviled, maybe stoned, if the
people were excited.
I came, and gave her an apple.
She was squatting at the fire, warming herself
and waiting; and her old lips and hands were
blue with the cold.
A stranger came next.
He was a traveler, passing through; and he
spoke to her gently, and, seeing nobody but
me there to hear, said he was sorry for her.
And he asked if what she confessed was true,
and she said no.
He looked surprised and still more sorry then,
and asked her:
“Then why did you confess?”
“I am old and very poor,” she said, “and
I work for my living.
There was no way but to confess.
If I hadn't they might have set me free.
That would ruin me, for no one would forget
that I had been suspected of being a witch,
and so I would get no more work, and wherever
I went they would set the dogs on me.
In a little while I would starve.
The fire is best; it is soon over.
You have been good to me, you two, and I thank
you.”
She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out
her hands to warm them, the snow-flakes descending
soft and still on her old gray head and making
it white and whiter.
The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came
flying and struck her in the eye, and broke
and ran down her face.
There was a laugh at that.
I told Satan all about the eleven girls and
the old woman, once, but it did not affect
him.
He only said it was the human race, and what
the human race did was of no consequence.
And he said he had seen it made; and it was
not made of clay; it was made of mud—part
of it was, anyway.
I knew what he meant by that—the Moral Sense.
He saw the thought in my head, and it tickled
him and made him laugh.
Then he called a bullock out of a pasture
and petted it and talked with it, and said:
“There—he wouldn't drive children mad
with hunger and fright and loneliness, and
then burn them for confessing to things invented
for them which had never happened.
And neither would he break the hearts of innocent,
poor old women and make them afraid to trust
themselves among their own race; and he would
not insult them in their death-agony.
For he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense,
but is as the angels are, and knows no wrong,
and never does it.”
Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive
when he chose; and he always chose when the
human race was brought to his attention.
He always turned up his nose at it, and never
had a kind word for it.
Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if
it was a good time for Ursula to be hiring
a member of the Narr family.
We were right.
When the people found it out they were naturally
indignant.
And, moreover, since Marget and Ursula hadn't
enough to eat themselves, where was the money
coming from to feed another mouth?
That is what they wanted to know; and in order
to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried
and began to seek his society and have sociable
conversations with him.
He was pleased—not thinking any harm and
not seeing the trap—and so he talked innocently
along, and was no discreeter than a cow.
“Money!” he said; “they've got plenty
of it.
They pay me two groschen a week, besides my
keep.
And they live on the fat of the land, I can
tell you; the prince himself can't beat their
table.”
This astonishing statement was conveyed by
the astrologer to Father Adolf on a Sunday
morning when he was returning from mass.
He was deeply moved, and said:
“This must be looked into.”
He said there must be witchcraft at the bottom
of it, and told the villagers to resume relations
with Marget and Ursula in a private and unostentatious
way, and keep both eyes open.
They were told to keep their own counsel,
and not rouse the suspicions of the household.
The villagers were at first a bit reluctant
to enter such a dreadful place, but the priest
said they would be under his protection while
there, and no harm could come to them, particularly
if they carried a trifle of holy water along
and kept their beads and crosses handy.
This satisfied them and made them willing
to go; envy and malice made the baser sort
even eager to go.
And so poor Marget began to have company again,
and was as pleased as a cat.
She was like 'most anybody else—just human,
and happy in her prosperities and not averse
from showing them off a little; and she was
humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder
turned to her and be smiled upon by her friends
and the village again; for of all the hard
things to bear, to be cut by your neighbors
and left in contemptuous solitude is maybe
the hardest.
The bars were down, and we could all go there
now, and we did—our parents and all—day
after day.
The cat began to strain herself.
She provided the top of everything for those
companies, and in abundance—among them many
a dish and many a wine which they had not
tasted before and which they had not even
heard of except at second-hand from the prince's
servants.
And the tableware was much above ordinary,
too.
Marget was troubled at times, and pursued
Ursula with questions to an uncomfortable
degree; but Ursula stood her ground and stuck
to it that it was Providence, and said no
word about the cat.
Marget knew that nothing was impossible to
Providence, but she could not help having
doubts that this effort was from there, though
she was afraid to say so, lest disaster come
of it.
Witchcraft occurred to her, but she put the
thought aside, for this was before Gottfried
joined the household, and she knew Ursula
was pious and a bitter hater of witches.
By the time Gottfried arrived Providence was
established, unshakably intrenched, and getting
all the gratitude.
The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly
improving in style and prodigality by experience.
In any community, big or little, there is
always a fair proportion of people who are
not malicious or unkind by nature, and who
never do unkind things except when they are
overmastered by fear, or when their self-interest
is greatly in danger, or some such matter
as that.
Eseldorf had its proportion of such people,
and ordinarily their good and gentle influence
was felt, but these were not ordinary times—on
account of the witch-dread—and so we did
not seem to have any gentle and compassionate
hearts left, to speak of.
Every person was frightened at the unaccountable
state of things at Marget's house, not doubting
that witchcraft was at the bottom of it, and
fright frenzied their reason.
Naturally there were some who pitied Marget
and Ursula for the danger that was gathering
about them, but naturally they did not say
so; it would not have been safe.
So the others had it all their own way, and
there was none to advise the ignorant girl
and the foolish woman and warn them to modify
their doings.
We boys wanted to warn them, but we backed
down when it came to the pinch, being afraid.
We found that we were not manly enough nor
brave enough to do a generous action when
there was a chance that it could get us into
trouble.
Neither of us confessed this poor spirit to
the others, but did as other people would
have done—dropped the subject and talked
about something else.
And I knew we all felt mean, eating and drinking
Marget's fine things along with those companies
of spies, and petting her and complimenting
her with the rest, and seeing with self-reproach
how foolishly happy she was, and never saying
a word to put her on her guard.
And, indeed, she was happy, and as proud as
a princess, and so grateful to have friends
again.
And all the time these people were watching
with all their eyes and reporting all they
saw to Father Adolf.
But he couldn't make head or tail of the situation.
There must be an enchanter somewhere on the
premises, but who was it?
Marget was not seen to do any jugglery, nor
was Ursula, nor yet Gottfried; and still the
wines and dainties never ran short, and a
guest could not call for a thing and not get
it.
To produce these effects was usual enough
with witches and enchanters—that part of
it was not new; but to do it without any incantations,
or even any rumblings or earthquakes or lightnings
or apparitions—that was new, novel, wholly
irregular.
There was nothing in the books like this.
Enchanted things were always unreal.
Gold turned to dirt in an unenchanted atmosphere,
food withered away and vanished.
But this test failed in the present case.
The spies brought samples: Father Adolf prayed
over them, exorcised them, but it did no good;
they remained sound and real, they yielded
to natural decay only, and took the usual
time to do it.
Father Adolf was not merely puzzled, he was
also exasperated; for these evidences very
nearly convinced him—privately—that there
was no witchcraft in the matter.
It did not wholly convince him, for this could
be a new kind of witchcraft.
There was a way to find out as to this: if
this prodigal abundance of provender was not
brought in from the outside, but produced
on the premises, there was witchcraft, sure.
Chapter 7
Marget announced a party, and invited forty
people; the date for it was seven days away.
This was a fine opportunity.
Marget's house stood by itself, and it could
be easily watched.
All the week it was watched night and day.
Marget's household went out and in as usual,
but they carried nothing in their hands, and
neither they nor others brought anything to
the house.
This was ascertained.
Evidently rations for forty people were not
being fetched.
If they were furnished any sustenance it would
have to be made on the premises.
It was true that Marget went out with a basket
every evening, but the spies ascertained that
she always brought it back empty.
The guests arrived at noon and filled the
place.
Father Adolf followed; also, after a little,
the astrologer, without invitation.
The spies had informed him that neither at
the back nor the front had any parcels been
brought in.
He entered, and found the eating and drinking
going on finely, and everything progressing
in a lively and festive way.
He glanced around and perceived that many
of the cooked delicacies and all of the native
and foreign fruits were of a perishable character,
and he also recognized that these were fresh
and perfect.
No apparitions, no incantations, no thunder.
That settled it.
This was witchcraft.
And not only that, but of a new kind—a kind
never dreamed of before.
It was a prodigious power, an illustrious
power; he resolved to discover its secret.
The announcement of it would resound throughout
the world, penetrate to the remotest lands,
paralyze all the nations with amazement—and
carry his name with it, and make him renowned
forever.
It was a wonderful piece of luck, a splendid
piece of luck; the glory of it made him dizzy.
All the house made room for him; Marget politely
seated him; Ursula ordered Gottfried to bring
a special table for him.
Then she decked it and furnished it, and asked
for his orders.
“Bring me what you will,” he said.
The two servants brought supplies from the
pantry, together with white wine and red—a
bottle of each.
The astrologer, who very likely had never
seen such delicacies before, poured out a
beaker of red wine, drank it off, poured another,
then began to eat with a grand appetite.
I was not expecting Satan, for it was more
than a week since I had seen or heard of him,
but now he came in—I knew it by the feel,
though people were in the way and I could
not see him.
I heard him apologizing for intruding; and
he was going away, but Marget urged him to
stay, and he thanked her and stayed.
She brought him along, introducing him to
the girls, and to Meidling, and to some of
the elders; and there was quite a rustle of
whispers: “It's the young stranger we hear
so much about and can't get sight of, he is
away so much.”
“Dear, dear, but he is beautiful—what
is his name?”
“Philip Traum.”
“Ah, it fits him!”
(You see, “Traum” is German for “Dream.”)
“What does he do?”
“Studying for the ministry, they say.”
“His face is his fortune—he'll be a cardinal
some day.”
“Where is his home?”
“Away down somewhere in the tropics, they
say—has a rich uncle down there.”
And so on.
He made his way at once; everybody was anxious
to know him and talk with him.
Everybody noticed how cool and fresh it was,
all of a sudden, and wondered at it, for they
could see that the sun was beating down the
same as before, outside, and the sky was clear
of clouds, but no one guessed the reason,
of course.
The astrologer had drunk his second beaker;
he poured out a third.
He set the bottle down, and by accident overturned
it.
He seized it before much was spilled, and
held it up to the light, saying, “What a
pity—it is royal wine.”
Then his face lighted with joy or triumph,
or something, and he said, “Quick!
Bring a bowl.”
It was brought—a four-quart one.
He took up that two-pint bottle and began
to pour; went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling
and gushing into the white bowl and rising
higher and higher up its sides, everybody
staring and holding their breath—and presently
the bowl was full to the brim.
“Look at the bottle,” he said, holding
it up; “it is full yet!”
I glanced at Satan, and in that moment he
vanished.
Then Father Adolf rose up, flushed and excited,
crossed himself, and began to thunder in his
great voice, “This house is bewitched and
accursed!”
People began to cry and shriek and crowd toward
the door.
“I summon this detected household to—”
His words were cut off short.
His face became red, then purple, but he could
not utter another sound.
Then I saw Satan, a transparent film, melt
into the astrologer's body; then the astrologer
put up his hand, and apparently in his own
voice said, “Wait—remain where you are.”
All stopped where they stood.
“Bring a funnel!”
Ursula brought it, trembling and scared, and
he stuck it in the bottle and took up the
great bowl and began to pour the wine back,
the people gazing and dazed with astonishment,
for they knew the bottle was already full
before he began.
He emptied the whole of the bowl into the
bottle, then smiled out over the room, chuckled,
and said, indifferently: “It is nothing—anybody
can do it!
With my powers I can even do much more.”
A frightened cry burst out everywhere.
“Oh, my God, he is possessed!” and there
was a tumultuous rush for the door which swiftly
emptied the house of all who did not belong
in it except us boys and Meidling.
We boys knew the secret, and would have told
it if we could, but we couldn't.
We were very thankful to Satan for furnishing
that good help at the needful time.
Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked
kind of petrified; Ursula the same; but Gottfried
was the worst—he couldn't stand, he was
so weak and scared.
For he was of a witch family, you know, and
it would be bad for him to be suspected.
Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and unaware,
and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be
petted, but Ursula was afraid of her and shrank
away from her, but pretending she was not
meaning any incivility, for she knew very
well it wouldn't answer to have strained relations
with that kind of a cat.
But we boys took Agnes and petted her, for
Satan would not have befriended her if he
had not had a good opinion of her, and that
was indorsement enough for us.
He seemed to trust anything that hadn't the
Moral Sense.
Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered
in every direction and fled in a pitiable
state of terror; and such a tumult as they
made with their running and sobbing and shrieking
and shouting that soon all the village came
flocking from their houses to see what had
happened, and they thronged the street and
shouldered and jostled one another in excitement
and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared,
and they fell apart in two walls like the
cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane
the astrologer came striding and mumbling,
and where he passed the lanes surged back
in packed masses, and fell silent with awe,
and their eyes stared and their breasts heaved,
and several women fainted; and when he was
gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed
him at a distance, talking excitedly and asking
questions and finding out the facts.
Finding out the facts and passing them on
to others, with improvements—improvements
which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a
barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all
and yet remain empty to the last.
When the astrologer reached the market-square
he went straight to a juggler, fantastically
dressed, who was keeping three brass balls
in the air, and took them from him and faced
around upon the approaching crowd and said:
“This poor clown is ignorant of his art.
Come forward and see an expert perform.”
So saying, he tossed the balls up one after
another and set them whirling in a slender
bright oval in the air, and added another,
then another and another, and soon—no one
seeing whence he got them—adding, adding,
adding, the oval lengthening all the time,
his hands moving so swiftly that they were
just a web or a blur and not distinguishable
as hands; and such as counted said there were
now a hundred balls in the air.
The spinning great oval reached up twenty
feet in the air and was a shining and glinting
and wonderful sight.
Then he folded his arms and told the balls
to go on spinning without his help—and they
did it.
After a couple of minutes he said, “There,
that will do,” and the oval broke and came
crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad
and rolled every whither.
And wherever one of them came the people fell
back in dread, and no one would touch it.
It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the people
and called them cowards and old women.
Then he turned and saw the tight-rope, and
said foolish people were daily wasting their
money to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet
degrade that beautiful art; now they should
see the work of a master.
With that he made a spring into the air and
lit firm on his feet on the rope.
Then he hopped the whole length of it back
and forth on one foot, with his hands clasped
over his eyes; and next he began to throw
somersaults, both backward and forward, and
threw twenty-seven.
The people murmured, for the astrologer was
old, and always before had been halting of
movement and at times even lame, but he was
nimble enough now and went on with his antics
in the liveliest manner.
Finally he sprang lightly down and walked
away, and passed up the road and around the
corner and disappeared.
Then that great, pale, silent, solid crowd
drew a deep breath and looked into one another's
faces as if they said: “Was it real?
Did you see it, or was it only I—and was
I dreaming?”
Then they broke into a low murmur of talking,
and fell apart in couples, and moved toward
their homes, still talking in that awed way,
with faces close together and laying a hand
on an arm and making other such gestures as
people make when they have been deeply impressed
by something.
We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened,
catching all we could of what they said; and
when they sat down in our house and continued
their talk they still had us for company.
They were in a sad mood, for it was certain,
they said, that disaster for the village must
follow this awful visitation of witches and
devils.
Then my father remembered that father Adolf
had been struck dumb at the moment of his
denunciation.
“They have not ventured to lay their hands
upon an anointed servant of God before,”
he said; “and how they could have dared
it this time I cannot make out, for he wore
his crucifix.
Isn't it so?”
“Yes,” said the others, “we saw it.”
“It is serious, friends, it is very serious.
Always before, we had a protection.
It has failed.”
The others shook, as with a sort of chill,
and muttered those words over—“It has
failed.”
“God has forsaken us.”
“It is true,” said Seppi Wohlmeyer's father;
“there is nowhere to look for help.”
“The people will realize this,” said Nikolaus's
father, the judge, “and despair will take
away their courage and their energies.
We have indeed fallen upon evil times.”
He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled
voice: “The report of it all will go about
the country, and our village will be shunned
as being under the displeasure of God.
The Golden Stag will know hard times.”
“True, neighbor,” said my father; “all
of us will suffer—all in repute, many in
estate.
And, good God!—”
“What is it?”
“That can come—to finish us!”
“Name it—um Gottes Willen!”
“The Interdict!”
It smote like a thunderclap, and they were
like to swoon with the terror of it.
Then the dread of this calamity roused their
energies, and they stopped brooding and began
to consider ways to avert it.
They discussed this, that, and the other way,
and talked till the afternoon was far spent,
then confessed that at present they could
arrive at no decision.
So they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed
hearts which were filled with bodings.
While they were saying their parting words
I slipped out and set my course for Marget's
house to see what was happening there.
I met many people, but none of them greeted
me.
It ought to have been surprising, but it was
not, for they were so distraught with fear
and dread that they were not in their right
minds, I think; they were white and haggard,
and walked like persons in a dream, their
eyes open but seeing nothing, their lips moving
but uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping
and unclasping their hands without knowing
it.
At Marget's it was like a funeral.
She and Wilhelm sat together on the sofa,
but said nothing, and not even holding hands.
Both were steeped in gloom, and Marget's eyes
were red from the crying she had been doing.
She said:
“I have been begging him to go, and come
no more, and so save himself alive.
I cannot bear to be his murderer.
This house is bewitched, and no inmate will
escape the fire.
But he will not go, and he will be lost with
the rest.”
Wilhelm said he would not go; if there was
danger for her, his place was by her, and
there he would remain.
Then she began to cry again, and it was all
so mournful that I wished I had stayed away.
There was a knock, now, and Satan came in,
fresh and cheery and beautiful, and brought
that winy atmosphere of his and changed the
whole thing.
He never said a word about what had been happening,
nor about the awful fears which were freezing
the blood in the hearts of the community,
but began to talk and rattle on about all
manner of gay and pleasant things; and next
about music—an artful stroke which cleared
away the remnant of Marget's depression and
brought her spirits and her interests broad
awake.
She had not heard any one talk so well and
so knowingly on that subject before, and she
was so uplifted by it and so charmed that
what she was feeling lit up her face and came
out in her words; and Wilhelm noticed it and
did not look as pleased as he ought to have
done.
And next Satan branched off into poetry, and
recited some, and did it well, and Marget
was charmed again; and again Wilhelm was not
as pleased as he ought to have been, and this
time Marget noticed it and was remorseful.
I fell asleep to pleasant music that night—the
patter of rain upon the panes and the dull
growling of distant thunder.
Away in the night Satan came and roused me
and said: “Come with me.
Where shall we go?”
“Anywhere—so it is with you.”
Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight,
and he said, “This is China.”
That was a grand surprise, and made me sort
of drunk with vanity and gladness to think
I had come so far—so much, much farther
than anybody else in our village, including
Bartel Sperling, who had such a great opinion
of his travels.
We buzzed around over that empire for more
than half an hour, and saw the whole of it.
It was wonderful, the spectacles we saw; and
some were beautiful, others too horrible to
think.
For instance—However, I may go into that
by and by, and also why Satan chose China
for this excursion instead of another place;
it would interrupt my tale to do it now.
Finally we stopped flitting and lit.
We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape
of mountain-range and gorge and valley and
plain and river, with cities and villages
slumbering in the sunlight, and a glimpse
of blue sea on the farther verge.
It was a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful
to the eye and restful to the spirit.
If we could only make a change like that whenever
we wanted to, the world would be easier to
live in than it is, for change of scene shifts
the mind's burdens to the other shoulder and
banishes old, shop-worn wearinesses from mind
and body both.
We talked together, and I had the idea of
trying to reform Satan and persuade him to
lead a better life.
I told him about all those things he had been
doing, and begged him to be more considerate
and stop making people unhappy.
I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but
that he ought to stop and consider the possible
consequences of a thing before launching it
in that impulsive and random way of his; then
he would not make so much trouble.
He was not hurt by this plain speech; he only
looked amused and surprised, and said:
“What?
I do random things?
Indeed, I never do.
I stop and consider possible consequences?
Where is the need?
I know what the consequences are going to
be—always.”
“Oh, Satan, then how could you do these
things?”
“Well, I will tell you, and you must understand
if you can.
You belong to a singular race.
Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine
combined.
The two functions work together harmoniously,
with a fine and delicate precision, on the
give-and-take principle.
For every happiness turned out in the one
department the other stands ready to modify
it with a sorrow or a pain—maybe a dozen.
In most cases the man's life is about equally
divided between happiness and unhappiness.
When this is not the case the unhappiness
predominates—always; never the other.
Sometimes a man's make and disposition are
such that his misery-machine is able to do
nearly all the business.
Such a man goes through life almost ignorant
of what happiness is.
Everything he touches, everything he does,
brings a misfortune upon him.
You have seen such people?
To that kind of a person life is not an advantage,
is it?
It is only a disaster.
Sometimes for an hour's happiness a man's
machinery makes him pay years of misery.
Don't you know that?
It happens every now and then.
I will give you a case or two presently.
Now the people of your village are nothing
to me—you know that, don't you?”
I did not like to speak out too flatly, so
I said I had suspected it.
“Well, it is true that they are nothing
to me.
It is not possible that they should be.
The difference between them and me is abysmal,
immeasurable.
They have no intellect.”
“No intellect?”
“Nothing that resembles it.
At a future time I will examine what man calls
his mind and give you the details of that
chaos, then you will see and understand.
Men have nothing in common with me—there
is no point of contact; they have foolish
little feelings and foolish little vanities
and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish
little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction;
and they have no sense.
Only the Moral Sense.
I will show you what I mean.
Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's
head.
Can you imagine an elephant being interested
in him—caring whether he is happy or isn't,
or whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether
his sweetheart returns his love or not, or
whether his mother is sick or well, or whether
he is looked up to in society or not, or whether
his enemies will smite him or his friends
desert him, or whether his hopes will suffer
blight or his political ambitions fail, or
whether he shall die in the bosom of his family
or neglected and despised in a foreign land?
These things can never be important to the
elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot
shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size
of them.
Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant.
The elephant has nothing against the spider—he
cannot get down to that remote level; I have
nothing against man.
The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.
The elephant would not take the trouble to
do the spider an ill turn; if he took the
notion he might do him a good turn, if it
came in his way and cost nothing.
I have done men good service, but no ill turns.
“The elephant lives a century, the red spider
a day; in power, intellect, and dignity the
one creature is separated from the other by
a distance which is simply astronomical.
Yet in these, as in all qualities, man is
immeasurably further below me than is the
wee spider below the elephant.
“Man's mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously
patches little trivialities together and gets
a result—such as it is.
My mind creates!
Do you get the force of that?
Creates anything it desires—and in a moment.
Creates without material.
Creates fluids, solids, colors—anything,
everything—out of the airy nothing which
is called Thought.
A man imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine
to make it, imagines a picture, then by weeks
of labor embroiders it on canvas with the
thread.
I think the whole thing, and in a moment it
is before you—created.
“I think a poem, music, the record of a
game of chess—anything—and it is there.
This is the immortal mind—nothing is beyond
its reach.
Nothing can obstruct my vision; the rocks
are transparent to me, and darkness is daylight.
I do not need to open a book; I take the whole
of its contents into my mind at a single glance,
through the cover; and in a million years
I could not forget a single word of it, or
its place in the volume.
Nothing goes on in the skull of man, bird,
fish, insect, or other creature which can
be hidden from me.
I pierce the learned man's brain with a single
glance, and the treasures which cost him threescore
years to accumulate are mine; he can forget,
and he does forget, but I retain.
“Now, then, I perceive by your thoughts
that you are understanding me fairly well.
Let us proceed.
Circumstances might so fall out that the elephant
could like the spider—supposing he can see
it—but he could not love it.
His love is for his own kind—for his equals.
An angel's love is sublime, adorable, divine,
beyond the imagination of man—infinitely
beyond it!
But it is limited to his own august order.
If it fell upon one of your race for only
an instant, it would consume its object to
ashes.
No, we cannot love men, but we can be harmlessly
indifferent to them; we can also like them,
sometimes.
I like you and the boys, I like father Peter,
and for your sakes I am doing all these things
for the villagers.”
He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and
he explained his position.
“I have wrought well for the villagers,
though it does not look like it on the surface.
Your race never know good fortune from ill.
They are always mistaking the one for the
other.
It is because they cannot see into the future.
What I am doing for the villagers will bear
good fruit some day; in some cases to themselves;
in others, to unborn generations of men.
No one will ever know that I was the cause,
but it will be none the less true, for all
that.
Among you boys you have a game: you stand
a row of bricks on end a few inches apart;
you push a brick, it knocks its neighbor over,
the neighbor knocks over the next brick—and
so on till all the row is prostrate.
That is human life.
A child's first act knocks over the initial
brick, and the rest will follow inexorably.
If you could see into the future, as I can,
you would see everything that was going to
happen to that creature; for nothing can change
the order of its life after the first event
has determined it.
That is, nothing will change it, because each
act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets
another, and so on to the end, and the seer
can look forward down the line and see just
when each act is to have birth, from cradle
to grave.”
“Does God order the career?”
“Foreordain it?
No.
The man's circumstances and environment order
it.
His first act determines the second and all
that follow after.
But suppose, for argument's sake, that the
man should skip one of these acts; an apparently
trifling one, for instance; suppose that it
had been appointed that on a certain day,
at a certain hour and minute and second and
fraction of a second he should go to the well,
and he didn't go.
That man's career would change utterly, from
that moment; thence to the grave it would
be wholly different from the career which
his first act as a child had arranged for
him.
Indeed, it might be that if he had gone to
the well he would have ended his career on
a throne, and that omitting to do it would
set him upon a career that would lead to beggary
and a pauper's grave.
For instance: if at any time—say in boyhood—Columbus
had skipped the triflingest little link in
the chain of acts projected and made inevitable
by his first childish act, it would have changed
his whole subsequent life, and he would have
become a priest and died obscure in an Italian
village, and America would not have been discovered
for two centuries afterward.
I know this.
To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus's
chain would have wholly changed his life.
I have examined his billion of possible careers,
and in only one of them occurs the discovery
of America.
You people do not suspect that all of your
acts are of one size and importance, but it
is true; to snatch at an appointed fly is
as big with fate for you as is any other appointed
act—”
“As the conquering of a continent, for instance?”
“Yes.
Now, then, no man ever does drop a link—the
thing has never happened!
Even when he is trying to make up his mind
as to whether he will do a thing or not, that
itself is a link, an act, and has its proper
place in his chain; and when he finally decides
an act, that also was the thing which he was
absolutely certain to do.
You see, now, that a man will never drop a
link in his chain.
He cannot.
If he made up his mind to try, that project
would itself be an unavoidable link—a thought
bound to occur to him at that precise moment,
and made certain by the first act of his babyhood.”
It seemed so dismal!
“He is a prisoner for life,” I said sorrowfully,
“and cannot get free.”
“No, of himself he cannot get away from
the consequences of his first childish act.
But I can free him.”
I looked up wistfully.
“I have changed the careers of a number
of your villagers.”
I tried to thank him, but found it difficult,
and let it drop.
“I shall make some other changes.
You know that little Lisa Brandt?”
“Oh yes, everybody does.
My mother says she is so sweet and so lovely
that she is not like any other child.
She says she will be the pride of the village
when she grows up; and its idol, too, just
as she is now.”
“I shall change her future.”
“Make it better?”
I asked.
“Yes.
And I will change the future of Nikolaus.”
I was glad, this time, and said, “I don't
need to ask about his case; you will be sure
to do generously by him.”
“It is my intention.”
Straight off I was building that great future
of Nicky's in my imagination, and had already
made a renowned general of him and hofmeister
at the court, when I noticed that Satan was
waiting for me to get ready to listen again.
I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap imaginings
to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but
it did not happen.
He proceeded with his subject:
“Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years.”
“That's grand!”
I said.
“Lisa's, thirty-six.
But, as I told you, I shall change their lives
and those ages.
Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus
will wake out of his sleep and find the rain
blowing in.
It was appointed that he should turn over
and go to sleep again.
But I have appointed that he shall get up
and close the window first.
That trifle will change his career entirely.
He will rise in the morning two minutes later
than the chain of his life had appointed him
to rise.
By consequence, thenceforth nothing will ever
happen to him in accordance with the details
of the old chain.”
He took out his watch and sat looking at it
a few moments, then said: “Nikolaus has
risen to close the window.
His life is changed, his new career has begun.
There will be consequences.”
It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.
“But for this change certain things would
happen twelve days from now.
For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from
drowning.
He would arrive on the scene at exactly the
right moment—four minutes past ten, the
long-ago appointed instant of time—and the
water would be shoal, the achievement easy
and certain.
But he will arrive some seconds too late,
now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper
water.
He will do his best, but both will drown.”
“Oh, Satan!
Oh, dear Satan!”
I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes,
“save them!
Don't let it happen.
I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my loving
playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor
mother!”
I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but
he was not moved.
He made me sit down again, and told me I must
hear him out.
“I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this
has changed Lisa's.
If I had not done this, Nikolaus would save
Lisa, then he would catch cold from his drenching;
one of your race's fantastic and desolating
scarlet fevers would follow, with pathetic
after-effects; for forty-six years he would
lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb,
blind, and praying night and day for the blessed
relief of death.
Shall I change his life back?”
“Oh no!
Oh, not for the world!
In charity and pity leave it as it is.”
“It is best so.
I could not have changed any other link in
his life and done him so good a service.
He had a billion possible careers, but not
one of them was worth living; they were charged
full with miseries and disasters.
But for my intervention he would do his brave
deed twelve days from now—a deed begun and
ended in six minutes—and get for all reward
those forty-six years of sorrow and suffering
I told you of.
It is one of the cases I was thinking of awhile
ago when I said that sometimes an act which
brings the actor an hour's happiness and self-satisfaction
is paid for—or punished—by years of suffering.”
I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death
would save her from.
He answered the thought:
“From ten years of pain and slow recovery
from an accident, and then from nineteen years'
pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending
with death at the hands of the executioner.
Twelve days hence she will die; her mother
would save her life if she could.
Am I not kinder than her mother?”
“Yes—oh, indeed yes; and wiser.”
“Father Peter's case is coming on presently.
He will be acquitted, through unassailable
proofs of his innocence.”
“Why, Satan, how can that be?
Do you really think it?”
“Indeed, I know it.
His good name will be restored, and the rest
of his life will be happy.”
“I can believe it.
To restore his good name will have that effect.”
“His happiness will not proceed from that
cause.
I shall change his life that day, for his
good.
He will never know his good name has been
restored.”
In my mind—and modestly—I asked for particulars,
but Satan paid no attention to my thought.
Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer,
and I wondered where he might be.
“In the moon,” said Satan, with a fleeting
sound which I believed was a chuckle.
“I've got him on the cold side of it, too.
He doesn't know where he is, and is not having
a pleasant time; still, it is good enough
for him, a good place for his star studies.
I shall need him presently; then I shall bring
him back and possess him again.
He has a long and cruel and odious life before
him, but I will change that, for I have no
feeling against him and am quite willing to
do him a kindness.
I think I shall get him burned.”
He had such strange notions of kindness!
But angels are made so, and do not know any
better.
Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides,
human beings are nothing to them; they think
they are only freaks.
It seems to me odd that he should put the
astrologer so far away; he could have dumped
him in Germany just as well, where he would
be handy.
“Far away?” said Satan.
“To me no place is far away; distance does
not exist for me.
The sun is less than a hundred million miles
from here, and the light that is falling upon
us has taken eight minutes to come; but I
can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction
of time so minute that it cannot be measured
by a watch.
I have but to think the journey, and it is
accomplished.”
I held out my hand and said, “The light
lies upon it; think it into a glass of wine,
Satan.”
He did it.
I drank the wine.
“Break the glass,” he said.
I broke it.
“There—you see it is real.
The villagers thought the brass balls were
magic stuff and as perishable as smoke.
They were afraid to touch them.
You are a curious lot—your race.
But come along; I have business.
I will put you to bed.”
Said and done.
Then he was gone; but his voice came back
to me through the rain and darkness saying,
“Yes, tell Seppi, but no other.”
It was the answer to my thought.
Chapter 8
Sleep would not come.
It was not because I was proud of my travels
and excited about having been around the big
world to China, and feeling contemptuous of
Bartel Sperling, “the traveler,” as he
called himself, and looked down upon us others
because he had been to Vienna once and was
the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a
journey and seen the world's wonders.
At another time that would have kept me awake,
but it did not affect me now.
No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts
ran upon him only, and the good days we had
seen together at romps and frolics in the
woods and the fields and the river in the
long summer days, and skating and sliding
in the winter when our parents thought we
were in school.
And now he was going out of this young life,
and the summers and winters would come and
go, and we others would rove and play as before,
but his place would be vacant; we should see
him no more.
To-morrow he would not suspect, but would
be as he had always been, and it would shock
me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome
and frivolous things, for to me he would be
a corpse, with waxen hands and dull eyes,
and I should see the shroud around his face;
and next day he would not suspect, nor the
next, and all the time his handful of days
would be wasting swiftly away and that awful
thing coming nearer and nearer, his fate closing
steadily around him and no one knowing it
but Seppi and me.
Twelve days—only twelve days.
It was awful to think of.
I noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling
him by his familiar names, Nick and Nicky,
but was speaking of him by his full name,
and reverently, as one speaks of the dead.
Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship
came thronging into my mind out of the past,
I noticed that they were mainly cases where
I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked
me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung
with remorse, just as it is when we remember
our unkindnesses to friends who have passed
beyond the veil, and we wish we could have
them back again, if only for a moment, so
that we could go on our knees to them and
say, “Have pity, and forgive.”
Once when we were nine years old he went a
long errand of nearly two miles for the fruiterer,
who gave him a splendid big apple for reward,
and he was flying home with it, almost beside
himself with astonishment and delight, and
I met him, and he let me look at the apple,
not thinking of treachery, and I ran off with
it, eating it as I ran, he following me and
begging; and when he overtook me I offered
him the core, which was all that was left;
and I laughed.
Then he turned away, crying, and said he had
meant to give it to his little sister.
That smote me, for she was slowly getting
well of a sickness, and it would have been
a proud moment for him, to see her joy and
surprise and have her caresses.
But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and
only said something rude and mean, to pretend
I did not care, and he made no reply in words,
but there was a wounded look in his face as
he turned away toward his home which rose
before me many times in after years, in the
night, and reproached me and made me ashamed
again.
It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then
it disappeared; but it was back now, and not
dim.
Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset
my ink and spoiled four copy-books, and was
in danger of severe punishment; but I put
it upon him, and he got the whipping.
And only last year I had cheated him in a
trade, giving him a large fish-hook which
was partly broken through for three small
sound ones.
The first fish he caught broke the hook, but
he did not know I was blamable, and he refused
to take back one of the small hooks which
my conscience forced me to offer him, but
said, “A trade is a trade; the hook was
bad, but that was not your fault.”
No, I could not sleep.
These little, shabby wrongs upbraided me and
tortured me, and with a pain much sharper
than one feels when the wrongs have been done
to the living.
Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he was
to me as one already dead.
The wind was still moaning about the eaves,
the rain still pattering upon the panes.
In the morning I sought out Seppi and told
him.
It was down by the river.
His lips moved, but he did not say anything,
he only looked dazed and stunned, and his
face turned very white.
He stood like that a few moments, the tears
welling into his eyes, then he turned away
and I locked my arm in his and we walked along
thinking, but not speaking.
We crossed the bridge and wandered through
the meadows and up among the hills and the
woods, and at last the talk came and flowed
freely, and it was all about Nikolaus and
was a recalling of the life we had lived with
him.
And every now and then Seppi said, as if to
himself:
“Twelve days!—less than twelve days.”
We said we must be with him all the time;
we must have all of him we could; the days
were precious now.
Yet we did not go to seek him.
It would be like meeting the dead, and we
were afraid.
We did not say it, but that was what we were
feeling.
And so it gave us a shock when we turned a
curve and came upon Nikolaus face to face.
He shouted, gaily:
“Hi-hi!
What is the matter?
Have you seen a ghost?”
We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion;
he was willing to talk for us all, for he
had just seen Satan and was in high spirits
about it.
Satan had told him about our trip to China,
and he had begged Satan to take him a journey,
and Satan had promised.
It was to be a far journey, and wonderful
and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him
to take us, too, but he said no, he would
take us some day, maybe, but not now.
Satan would come for him on the 13th, and
Nikolaus was already counting the hours, he
was so impatient.
That was the fatal day.
We were already counting the hours, too.
We wandered many a mile, always following
paths which had been our favorites from the
days when we were little, and always we talked
about the old times.
All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others
could not shake off our depression.
Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely
gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed
it, and was pleased; and we were constantly
doing him deferential little offices of courtesy,
and saying, “Wait, let me do that for you,”
and that pleased him, too.
I gave him seven fish-hooks—all I had—and
made him take them; and Seppi gave him his
new knife and a humming-top painted red and
yellow—atonements for swindles practised
upon him formerly, as I learned later, and
probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus
now.
These things touched him, and he could not
have believed that we loved him so; and his
pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us
to the heart, we were so undeserving of them.
When we parted at last, he was radiant, and
said he had never had such a happy day.
As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, “We
always prized him, but never so much as now,
when we are going to lose him.”
Next day and every day we spent all of our
spare time with Nikolaus; and also added to
it time which we (and he) stole from work
and other duties, and this cost the three
of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats
of punishment.
Every morning two of us woke with a start
and a shudder, saying, as the days flew along,
“Only ten days left;” “only nine days
left;” “only eight;” “only seven.”
Always it was narrowing.
Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always
puzzled because we were not.
He wore his invention to the bone trying to
invent ways to cheer us up, but it was only
a hollow success; he could see that our jollity
had no heart in it, and that the laughs we
broke into came up against some obstruction
or other and suffered damage and decayed into
a sigh.
He tried to find out what the matter was,
so that he could help us out of our trouble
or make it lighter by sharing it with us;
so we had to tell many lies to deceive him
and appease him.
But the most distressing thing of all was
that he was always making plans, and often
they went beyond the 13th!
Whenever that happened it made us groan in
spirit.
All his mind was fixed upon finding some way
to conquer our depression and cheer us up;
and at last, when he had but three days to
live, he fell upon the right idea and was
jubilant over it—a boys-and-girls' frolic
and dance in the woods, up there where we
first met Satan, and this was to occur on
the 14th.
It was ghastly, for that was his funeral day.
We couldn't venture to protest; it would only
have brought a “Why?” which we could not
answer.
He wanted us to help him invite his guests,
and we did it—one can refuse nothing to
a dying friend.
But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting
them to his funeral.
It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with
a lifetime stretching back between to-day
and then, they are still a grateful memory
to me, and beautiful.
In effect they were days of companionship
with one's sacred dead, and I have known no
comradeship that was so close or so precious.
We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting
them as they wasted away, and parting with
them with that pain and bereavement which
a miser feels who sees his hoard filched from
him coin by coin by robbers and is helpless
to prevent it.
When the evening of the last day came we stayed
out too long; Seppi and I were in fault for
that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus;
so it was very late when we left him at his
door.
We lingered near awhile, listening; and that
happened which we were fearing.
His father gave him the promised punishment,
and we heard his shrieks.
But we listened only a moment, then hurried
away, remorseful for this thing which we had
caused.
And sorry for the father, too; our thought
being, “If he only knew—if he only knew!”
In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at
the appointed place, so we went to his home
to see what the matter was.
His mother said:
“His father is out of all patience with
these goings-on, and will not have any more
of it.
Half the time when Nick is needed he is not
to be found; then it turns out that he has
been gadding around with you two.
His father gave him a flogging last night.
It always grieved me before, and many's the
time I have begged him off and saved him,
but this time he appealed to me in vain, for
I was out of patience myself.”
“I wish you had saved him just this one
time,” I said, my voice trembling a little;
“it would ease a pain in your heart to remember
it some day.”
She was ironing at the time, and her back
was partly toward me.
She turned about with a startled or wondering
look in her face and said, “What do you
mean by that?”
I was not prepared, and didn't know anything
to say; so it was awkward, for she kept looking
at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:
“Why, of course it would be pleasant to
remember, for the very reason we were out
so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how
good you are to him, and how he never got
whipped when you were by to save him; and
he was so full of it, and we were so full
of the interest of it, that none of us noticed
how late it was getting.”
“Did he say that?
Did he?” and she put her apron to her eyes.
“You can ask Theodor—he will tell you
the same.”
“It is a dear, good lad, my Nick,” she
said.
“I am sorry I let him get whipped; I will
never do it again.
To think—all the time I was sitting here
last night, fretting and angry at him, he
was loving me and praising me!
Dear, dear, if we could only know!
Then we shouldn't ever go wrong; but we are
only poor, dumb beasts groping around and
making mistakes.
I shan't ever think of last night without
a pang.”
She was like all the rest; it seemed as if
nobody could open a mouth, in these wretched
days, without saying something that made us
shiver.
They were “groping around,” and did not
know what true, sorrowfully true things they
were saying by accident.
Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with
us.
“I am sorry,” she answered, “but he
can't.
To punish him further, his father doesn't
allow him to go out of the house to-day.”
We had a great hope!
I saw it in Seppi's eyes.
We thought, “If he cannot leave the house,
he cannot be drowned.”
Seppi asked, to make sure:
“Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?”
“All day.
It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful day,
and he is so unused to being shut up.
But he is busy planning his party, and maybe
that is company for him.
I do hope he isn't too lonesome.”
Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened
him to ask if we might go up and help him
pass his time.
“And welcome!” she said, right heartily.
“Now I call that real friendship, when you
might be abroad in the fields and the woods,
having a happy time.
You are good boys, I'll allow that, though
you don't always find satisfactory ways of
improving it.
Take these cakes—for yourselves—and give
him this one, from his mother.”
The first thing we noticed when we entered
Nikolaus's room was the time—a quarter to
10.
Could that be correct?
Only such a few minutes to live!
I felt a contraction at my heart.
Nikolaus jumped up and gave us a glad welcome.
He was in good spirits over his plannings
for his party and had not been lonesome.
“Sit down,” he said, “and look at what
I've been doing.
And I've finished a kite that you will say
is a beauty.
It's drying, in the kitchen; I'll fetch it.”
He had been spending his penny savings in
fanciful trifles of various kinds, to go as
prizes in the games, and they were marshaled
with fine and showy effect upon the table.
He said:
“Examine them at your leisure while I get
mother to touch up the kite with her iron
if it isn't dry enough yet.”
Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs,
whistling.
We did not look at the things; we couldn't
take any interest in anything but the clock.
We sat staring at it in silence, listening
to the ticking, and every time the minute-hand
jumped we nodded recognition—one minute
fewer to cover in the race for life or for
death.
Finally Seppi drew a deep breath and said:
“Two minutes to ten.
Seven minutes more and he will pass the death-point.
Theodor, he is going to be saved!
He's going to—”
“Hush!
I'm on needles.
Watch the clock and keep still.”
Five minutes more.
We were panting with the strain and the excitement.
Another three minutes, and there was a footstep
on the stair.
“Saved!”
And we jumped up and faced the door.
The old mother entered, bringing the kite.
“Isn't it a beauty?” she said.
“And, dear me, how he has slaved over it—ever
since daylight, I think, and only finished
it awhile before you came.”
She stood it against the wall, and stepped
back to take a view of it.
“He drew the pictures his own self, and
I think they are very good.
The church isn't so very good, I'll have to
admit, but look at the bridge—any one can
recognize the bridge in a minute.
He asked me to bring it up....
Dear me! it's seven minutes past ten, and
I—”
“But where is he?”
“He?
Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a minute.”
“Gone out?”
“Yes.
Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's
mother came in and said the child had wandered
off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy
I told Nikolaus to never mind about his father's
orders—go and look her up....
Why, how white you two do look!
I do believe you are sick.
Sit down; I'll fetch something.
That cake has disagreed with you.
It is a little heavy, but I thought—”
She disappeared without finishing her sentence,
and we hurried at once to the back window
and looked toward the river.
There was a great crowd at the other end of
the bridge, and people were flying toward
that point from every direction.
“Oh, it is all over—poor Nikolaus!
Why, oh, why did she let him get out of the
house!”
“Come away,” said Seppi, half sobbing,
“come quick—we can't bear to meet her;
in five minutes she will know.”
But we were not to escape.
She came upon us at the foot of the stairs,
with her cordials in her hands, and made us
come in and sit down and take the medicine.
Then she watched the effect, and it did not
satisfy her; so she made us wait longer, and
kept upbraiding herself for giving us the
unwholesome cake.
Presently the thing happened which we were
dreading.
There was a sound of tramping and scraping
outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with
heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned
bodies on the bed.
“Oh, my God!” that poor mother cried out,
and fell on her knees, and put her arms about
her dead boy and began to cover the wet face
with kisses.
“Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have
been his death.
If I had obeyed, and kept him in the house,
this would not have happened.
And I am rightly punished; I was cruel to
him last night, and him begging me, his own
mother, to be his friend.”
And so she went on and on, and all the women
cried, and pitied her, and tried to comfort
her, but she could not forgive herself and
could not be comforted, and kept on saying
if she had not sent him out he would be alive
and well now, and she was the cause of his
death.
It shows how foolish people are when they
blame themselves for anything they have done.
Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that
your first act hasn't arranged to happen and
made inevitable; and so, of your own motion
you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing
that will break a link.
Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came
wildly plowing and plunging through the crowd
with her dress in disorder and hair flying
loose, and flung herself upon her dead child
with moans and kisses and pleadings and endearments;
and by and by she rose up almost exhausted
with her outpourings of passionate emotion,
and clenched her fist and lifted it toward
the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard
and resentful, and she said:
“For nearly two weeks I have had dreams
and presentiments and warnings that death
was going to strike what was most precious
to me, and day and night and night and day
I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying
Him to have pity on my innocent child and
save it from harm—and here is His answer!”
Why, He had saved it from harm—but she did
not know.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks,
and stood awhile gazing down at the child
and caressing its face and its hair with her
hands; then she spoke again in that bitter
tone: “But in His hard heart is no compassion.
I will never pray again.”
She gathered her dead child to her bosom and
strode away, the crowd falling back to let
her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words
they had heard.
Ah, that poor woman!
It is as Satan said, we do not know good fortune
from bad, and are always mistaking the one
for the other.
Many a time since I have heard people pray
to God to spare the life of sick persons,
but I have never done it.
Both funerals took place at the same time
in our little church next day.
Everybody was there, including the party guests.
Satan was there, too; which was proper, for
it was on account of his efforts that the
funerals had happened.
Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution,
and a collection was taken up for masses,
to get him out of purgatory.
Only two-thirds of the required money was
gathered, and the parents were going to try
to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it.
He told us privately that there was no purgatory,
but he had contributed in order that Nikolaus's
parents and their friends might be saved from
worry and distress.
We thought it very good of him, but he said
money did not cost him anything.
At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was
seized for debt by a carpenter to whom the
mother owed fifty groschen for work done the
year before.
She had never been able to pay this, and was
not able now.
The carpenter took the corpse home and kept
it four days in his cellar, the mother weeping
and imploring about his house all the time;
then he buried it in his brother's cattle-yard,
without religious ceremonies.
It drove the mother wild with grief and shame,
and she forsook her work and went daily about
the town, cursing the carpenter and blaspheming
the laws of the emperor and the church, and
it was pitiful to see.
Seppi asked Satan to interfere, but he said
the carpenter and the rest were members of
the human race and were acting quite neatly
for that species of animal.
He would interfere if he found a horse acting
in such a way, and we must inform him when
we came across that kind of horse doing that
kind of human thing, so that he could stop
it.
We believed this was sarcasm, for of course
there wasn't any such horse.
But after a few days we found that we could
not abide that poor woman's distress, so we
begged Satan to examine her several possible
careers, and see if he could not change her,
to her profit, to a new one.
He said the longest of her careers as they
now stood gave her forty-two years to live,
and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that
both were charged with grief and hunger and
cold and pain.
The only improvement he could make would be
to enable her to skip a certain three minutes
from now; and he asked us if he should do
it.
This was such a short time to decide in that
we went to pieces with nervous excitement,
and before we could pull ourselves together
and ask for particulars he said the time would
be up in a few more seconds; so then we gasped
out, “Do it!”
“It is done,” he said; “she was going
around a corner; I have turned her back; it
has changed her career.”
“Then what will happen, Satan?”
“It is happening now.
She is having words with Fischer, the weaver.
In his anger Fischer will straightway do what
he would not have done but for this accident.
He was present when she stood over her child's
body and uttered those blasphemies.”
“What will he do?”
“He is doing it now—betraying her.
In three days she will go to the stake.”
We could not speak; we were frozen with horror,
for if we had not meddled with her career
she would have been spared this awful fate.
Satan noticed these thoughts, and said:
“What you are thinking is strictly human-like—that
is to say, foolish.
The woman is advantaged.
Die when she might, she would go to heaven.
By this prompt death she gets twenty-nine
years more of heaven than she is entitled
to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery
here.”
A moment before we were bitterly making up
our minds that we would ask no more favors
of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not
seem to know any way to do a person a kindness
but by killing him; but the whole aspect of
the case was changed now, and we were glad
of what we had done and full of happiness
in the thought of it.
After a little I began to feel troubled about
Fischer, and asked, timidly, “Does this
episode change Fischer's life-scheme, Satan?”
“Change it?
Why, certainly.
And radically.
If he had not met Frau Brandt awhile ago he
would die next year, thirty-four years of
age.
Now he will live to be ninety, and have a
pretty prosperous and comfortable life of
it, as human lives go.”
We felt a great joy and pride in what we had
done for Fischer, and were expecting Satan
to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed
no sign and this made us uneasy.
We waited for him to speak, but he didn't;
so, to assuage our solicitude we had to ask
him if there was any defect in Fischer's good
luck.
Satan considered the question a moment, then
said, with some hesitation:
“Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point.
Under his several former possible life-careers
he was going to heaven.”
We were aghast.
“Oh, Satan! and under this one—”
“There, don't be so distressed.
You were sincerely trying to do him a kindness;
let that comfort you.”
“Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us.
You ought to have told us what we were doing,
then we wouldn't have acted so.”
But it made no impression on him.
He had never felt a pain or a sorrow, and
did not know what they were, in any really
informing way.
He had no knowledge of them except theoretically—that
is to say, intellectually.
And of course that is no good.
One can never get any but a loose and ignorant
notion of such things except by experience.
We tried our best to make him comprehend the
awful thing that had been done and how we
were compromised by it, but he couldn't seem
to get hold of it.
He said he did not think it important where
Fischer went to; in heaven he would not be
missed, there were “plenty there.”
We tried to make him see that he was missing
the point entirely; that Fischer, and not
other people, was the proper one to decide
about the importance of it; but it all went
for nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer—there
were plenty more Fischers.
The next minute Fischer went by on the other
side of the way, and it made us sick and faint
to see him, remembering the doom that was
upon him, and we the cause of it.
And how unconscious he was that anything had
happened to him!
You could see by his elastic step and his
alert manner that he was well satisfied with
himself for doing that hard turn for poor
Frau Brandt.
He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly.
And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt
followed after, in charge of the officers
and wearing jingling chains.
A mob was in her wake, jeering and shouting,
“Blasphemer and heretic!” and some among
them were neighbors and friends of her happier
days.
Some were trying to strike her, and the officers
were not taking as much trouble as they might
to keep them from it.
“Oh, stop them, Satan!”
It was out before we remembered that he could
not interrupt them for a moment without changing
their whole after-lives.
He puffed a little puff toward them with his
lips and they began to reel and stagger and
grab at the empty air; then they broke apart
and fled in every direction, shrieking, as
if in intolerable pain.
He had crushed a rib of each of them with
that little puff.
We could not help asking if their life-chart
was changed.
“Yes, entirely.
Some have gained years, some have lost them.
Some few will profit in various ways by the
change, but only that few.”
We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's
luck to any of them.
We did not wish to know.
We fully believed in Satan's desire to do
us kindnesses, but we were losing confidence
in his judgment.
It was at this time that our growing anxiety
to have him look over our life-charts and
suggest improvements began to fade out and
give place to other interests.
For a day or two the whole village was a chattering
turmoil over Frau Brandt's case and over the
mysterious calamity that had overtaken the
mob, and at her trial the place was crowded.
She was easily convicted of her blasphemies,
for she uttered those terrible words again
and said she would not take them back.
When warned that she was imperiling her life,
she said they could take it in welcome, she
did not want it, she would rather live with
the professional devils in perdition than
with these imitators in the village.
They accused her of breaking all those ribs
by witchcraft, and asked her if she was not
a witch?
She answered scornfully:
“No.
If I had that power would any of you holy
hypocrites be alive five minutes?
No; I would strike you all dead.
Pronounce your sentence and let me go; I am
tired of your society.”
So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated
and cut off from the joys of heaven and doomed
to the fires of hell; then she was clothed
in a coarse robe and delivered to the secular
arm, and conducted to the market-place, the
bell solemnly tolling the while.
We saw her chained to the stake, and saw the
first film of blue smoke rise on the still
air.
Then her hard face softened, and she looked
upon the packed crowd in front of her and
said, with gentleness:
“We played together once, in long-agone
days when we were innocent little creatures.
For the sake of that, I forgive you.”
We went away then, and did not see the fires
consume her, but we heard the shrieks, although
we put our fingers in our ears.
When they ceased we knew she was in heaven,
notwithstanding the excommunication; and we
were glad of her death and not sorry that
we had brought it about.
One day, a little while after this, Satan
appeared again.
We were always watching out for him, for life
was never very stagnant when he was by.
He came upon us at that place in the woods
where we had first met him.
Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we
asked him to do a show for us.
“Very well,” he said; “would you like
to see a history of the progress of the human
race?—its development of that product which
it calls civilization?”
We said we should.
So, with a thought, he turned the place into
the Garden of Eden, and we saw Abel praying
by his altar; then Cain came walking toward
him with his club, and did not seem to see
us, and would have stepped on my foot if I
had not drawn it in.
He spoke to his brother in a language which
we did not understand; then he grew violent
and threatening, and we knew what was going
to happen, and turned away our heads for the
moment; but we heard the crash of the blows
and heard the shrieks and the groans; then
there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in
his blood and gasping out his life, and Cain
standing over him and looking down at him,
vengeful and unrepentant.
Then the vision vanished, and was followed
by a long series of unknown wars, murders,
and massacres.
Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing
around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains
in the distance showing veiled and dim through
the rain.
Satan said:
“The progress of your race was not satisfactory.
It is to have another chance now.”
The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome
with wine.
Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and “the
attempt to discover two or three respectable
persons there,” as Satan described it.
Next, Lot and his daughters in the cave.
Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the
victors massacre the survivors and their cattle,
and save the young girls alive and distribute
them around.
Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the
tent and drive the nail into the temple of
her sleeping guest; and we were so close that
when the blood gushed out it trickled in a
little, red stream to our feet, and we could
have stained our hands in it if we had wanted
to.
Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman
wars, hideous drenchings of the earth with
blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans
toward the Carthaginians, and the sickening
spectacle of the massacre of those brave people.
Also we saw Caesar invade Britain—“not
that those barbarians had done him any harm,
but because he wanted their land, and desired
to confer the blessings of civilization upon
their widows and orphans,” as Satan explained.
Next, Christianity was born.
Then ages of Europe passed in review before
us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization
march hand in hand through those ages, “leaving
famine and death and desolation in their wake,
and other signs of the progress of the human
race,” as Satan observed.
And always we had wars, and more wars, and
still other wars—all over Europe, all over
the world.
“Sometimes in the private interest of royal
families,” Satan said, “sometimes to crush
a weak nation; but never a war started by
the aggressor for any clean purpose—there
is no such war in the history of the race.”
“Now,” said Satan, “you have seen your
progress down to the present, and you must
confess that it is wonderful—in its way.
We must now exhibit the future.”
He showed us slaughters more terrible in their
destruction of life, more devastating in their
engines of war, than any we had seen.
“You perceive,” he said, “that you have
made continual progress.
Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews
did their murders with javelins and swords;
the Greeks and Romans added protective armor
and the fine arts of military organization
and generalship; the Christian has added guns
and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he
will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness
of his weapons of slaughter that all men will
confess that without Christian civilization
war must have remained a poor and trifling
thing to the end of time.”
Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling
way, and make fun of the human race, although
he knew that what he had been saying shamed
us and wounded us.
No one but an angel could have acted so; but
suffering is nothing to them; they do not
know what it is, except by hearsay.
More than once Seppi and I had tried in a
humble and diffident way to convert him, and
as he had remained silent we had taken his
silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily,
then, this talk of his was a disappointment
to us, for it showed that we had made no deep
impression upon him.
The thought made us sad, and we knew then
how the missionary must feel when he has been
cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted.
We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that
this was not the time to continue our work.
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish;
then he said: “It is a remarkable progress.
In five or six thousand years five or six
high civilizations have risen, flourished,
commanded the wonder of the world, then faded
out and disappeared; and not one of them except
the latest ever invented any sweeping and
adequate way to kill people.
They all did their best—to kill being the
chiefest ambition of the human race and the
earliest incident in its history—but only
the Christian civilization has scored a triumph
to be proud of.
Two or three centuries from now it will be
recognized that all the competent killers
are Christians; then the pagan world will
go to school to the Christian—not to acquire
his religion, but his guns.
The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to
kill missionaries and converts with.”
By this time his theater was at work again,
and before our eyes nation after nation drifted
by, during two or three centuries, a mighty
procession, an endless procession, raging,
struggling, wallowing through seas of blood,
smothered in battle-smoke through which the
flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon
darted; and always we heard the thunder of
the guns and the cries of the dying.
“And what does it amount to?” said Satan,
with his evil chuckle.
“Nothing at all.
You gain nothing; you always come out where
you went in.
For a million years the race has gone on monotonously
propagating itself and monotonously reperforming
this dull nonsense—to what end?
No wisdom can guess!
Who gets a profit out of it?
Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs
and nobilities who despise you; would feel
defiled if you touched them; would shut the
door in your face if you proposed to call;
whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and
are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence
is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid
to resent it; who are mendicants supported
by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs
of benefactor toward beggar; who address you
in the language of master to slave, and are
answered in the language of slave to master;
who are worshiped by you with your mouth,
while in your heart—if you have one—you
despise yourselves for it.
The first man was a hypocrite and a coward,
qualities which have not yet failed in his
line; it is the foundation upon which all
civilizations have been built.
Drink to their perpetuation!
Drink to their augmentation!
Drink to—” Then he saw by our faces how
much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence
short and stopped chuckling, and his manner
changed.
He said, gently: “No, we will drink one
another's health, and let civilization go.
The wine which has flown to our hands out
of space by desire is earthly, and good enough
for that other toast; but throw away the glasses;
we will drink this one in wine which has not
visited this world before.”
We obeyed, and reached up and received the
new cups as they descended.
They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but
they were not made of any material that we
were acquainted with.
They seemed to be in motion, they seemed to
be alive; and certainly the colors in them
were in motion.
They were very brilliant and sparkling, and
of every tint, and they were never still,
but flowed to and fro in rich tides which
met and broke and flashed out dainty explosions
of enchanting color.
I think it was most like opals washing about
in waves and flashing out their splendid fires.
But there is nothing to compare the wine with.
We drank it, and felt a strange and witching
ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us,
and Seppi's eyes filled and he said worshipingly:
“We shall be there some day, and then—”
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think
he hoped Satan would say, “Yes, you will
be there some day,” but Satan seemed to
be thinking about something else, and said
nothing.
This made me feel ghastly, for I knew he had
heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped
him.
Poor Seppi looked distressed, and did not
finish his remark.
The goblets rose and clove their way into
the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and
disappeared.
Why didn't they stay?
It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me.
Should I ever see mine again?
Would Seppi ever see his?
Chapter 9
It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over
time and distance.
For him they did not exist.
He called them human inventions, and said
they were artificialities.
We often went to the most distant parts of
the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months,
and yet were gone only a fraction of a second,
as a rule.
You could prove it by the clock.
One day when our people were in such awful
distress because the witch commission were
afraid to proceed against the astrologer and
Father Peter's household, or against any,
indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they
lost patience and took to witch-hunting on
their own score, and began to chase a born
lady who was known to have the habit of curing
people by devilish arts, such as bathing them,
washing them, and nourishing them instead
of bleeding them and purging them through
the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the
proper way.
She came flying down, with the howling and
cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge
in houses, but the doors were shut in her
face.
They chased her more than half an hour, we
following to see it, and at last she was exhausted
and fell, and they caught her.
They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope
over the limb, and began to make a noose in
it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying
and begging, and her young daughter looking
on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.
They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone
at her, although in my heart I was sorry for
her; but all were throwing stones and each
was watching his neighbor, and if I had not
done as the others did it would have been
noticed and spoken of.
Satan burst out laughing.
All that were near by turned upon him, astonished
and not pleased.
It was an ill time to laugh, for his free
and scoffing ways and his supernatural music
had brought him under suspicion all over the
town and turned many privately against him.
The big blacksmith called attention to him
now, raising his voice so that all should
hear, and said:
“What are you laughing at?
Answer!
Moreover, please explain to the company why
you threw no stone.”
“Are you sure I did not throw a stone?”
“Yes.
You needn't try to get out of it; I had my
eye on you.”
“And I—I noticed you!” shouted two others.
“Three witnesses,” said Satan: “Mueller,
the blacksmith; Klein, the butcher's man;
Pfeiffer, the weaver's journeyman.
Three very ordinary liars.
Are there any more?”
“Never mind whether there are others or
not, and never mind about what you consider
us—three's enough to settle your matter
for you.
You'll prove that you threw a stone, or it
shall go hard with you.”
“That's so!” shouted the crowd, and surged
up as closely as they could to the center
of interest.
“And first you will answer that other question,”
cried the blacksmith, pleased with himself
for being mouthpiece to the public and hero
of the occasion.
“What are you laughing at?”
Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: “To
see three cowards stoning a dying lady when
they were so near death themselves.”
You could see the superstitious crowd shrink
and catch their breath, under the sudden shock.
The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said:
“Pooh!
What do you know about it?”
“I?
Everything.
By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I
read the hands of you three—and some others—when
you lifted them to stone the woman.
One of you will die to-morrow week; another
of you will die to-night; the third has but
five minutes to live—and yonder is the clock!”
It made a sensation.
The faces of the crowd blanched, and turned
mechanically toward the clock.
The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten
with an illness, but the blacksmith braced
up and said, with spirit:
“It is not long to wait for prediction number
one.
If it fails, young master, you will not live
a whole minute after, I promise you that.”
No one said anything; all watched the clock
in a deep stillness which was impressive.
When four and a half minutes were gone the
blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped
his hands upon his heart, saying, “Give
me breath!
Give me room!” and began to sink down.
The crowd surged back, no one offering to
support him, and he fell lumbering to the
ground and was dead.
The people stared at him, then at Satan, then
at one another; and their lips moved, but
no words came.
Then Satan said:
“Three saw that I threw no stone.
Perhaps there are others; let them speak.”
It struck a kind of panic into them, and,
although no one answered him, many began to
violently accuse one another, saying, “You
said he didn't throw,” and getting for reply,
“It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!”
And so in a moment they were in a raging and
noisy turmoil, and beating and banging one
another; and in the midst was the only indifferent
one—the dead lady hanging from her rope,
her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.
So we walked away, and I was not at ease,
but was saying to myself, “He told them
he was laughing at them, but it was a lie—he
was laughing at me.”
That made him laugh again, and he said, “Yes,
I was laughing at you, because, in fear of
what others might report about you, you stoned
the woman when your heart revolted at the
act—but I was laughing at the others, too.”
“Why?”
“Because their case was yours.”
“How is that?”
“Well, there were sixty-eight people there,
and sixty-two of them had no more desire to
throw a stone than you had.”
“Satan!”
“Oh, it's true.
I know your race.
It is made up of sheep.
It is governed by minorities, seldom or never
by majorities.
It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs
and follows the handful that makes the most
noise.
Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes
wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.
The vast majority of the race, whether savage
or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and
shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence
of the aggressive and pitiless minority they
don't dare to assert themselves.
Think of it!
One kind-hearted creature spies upon another,
and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities
which revolt both of them.
Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine
out of a hundred of your race were strongly
against the killing of witches when that foolishness
was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics
in the long ago.
And I know that even to-day, after ages of
transmitted prejudice and silly teaching,
only one person in twenty puts any real heart
into the harrying of a witch.
And yet apparently everybody hates witches
and wants them killed.
Some day a handful will rise up on the other
side and make the most noise—perhaps even
a single daring man with a big voice and a
determined front will do it—and in a week
all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and
witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions
are all based upon that large defect in your
race—the individual's distrust of his neighbor,
and his desire, for safety's or comfort's
sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye.
These institutions will always remain, and
always flourish, and always oppress you, affront
you, and degrade you, because you will always
be and remain slaves of minorities.
There was never a country where the majority
of the people were in their secret hearts
loyal to any of these institutions.”
I did not like to hear our race called sheep,
and said I did not think they were.
“Still, it is true, lamb,” said Satan.
“Look at you in war—what mutton you are,
and how ridiculous!”
“In war?
How?”
“There has never been a just one, never
an honorable one—on the part of the instigator
of the war.
I can see a million years ahead, and this
rule will never change in so many as half
a dozen instances.
The loud little handful—as usual—will
shout for the war.
The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object—at
first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation
will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out
why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly
and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable,
and there is no necessity for it.”
Then the handful will shout louder.
A few fair men on the other side will argue
and reason against the war with speech and
pen, and at first will have a hearing and
be applauded; but it will not last long; those
others will outshout them, and presently the
anti-war audiences will thin out and lose
popularity.
Before long you will see this curious thing:
the speakers stoned from the platform, and
free speech strangled by hordes of furious
men who in their secret hearts are still at
one with those stoned speakers—as earlier—but
do not dare to say so.
And now the whole nation—pulpit and all—will
take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse,
and mob any honest man who ventures to open
his mouth; and presently such mouths will
cease to open.
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies,
putting the blame upon the nation that is
attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently
study them, and refuse to examine any refutations
of them; and thus he will by and by convince
himself that the war is just, and will thank
God for the better sleep he enjoys after this
process of grotesque self-deception.”
Chapter 10
Days and days went by now, and no Satan.
It was dull without him.
But the astrologer, who had returned from
his excursion to the moon, went about the
village, braving public opinion, and getting
a stone in the middle of his back now and
then when some witch-hater got a safe chance
to throw it and dodge out of sight.
Meantime two influences had been working well
for Marget.
That Satan, who was quite indifferent to her,
had stopped going to her house after a visit
or two had hurt her pride, and she had set
herself the task of banishing him from her
heart.
Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation
brought to her from time to time by old Ursula
had touched her with remorse, jealousy of
Satan being the cause of it; and so now, these
two matters working upon her together, she
was getting a good profit out of the combination—her
interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her
interest in Wilhelm as steadily warming.
All that was needed to complete her conversion
was that Wilhelm should brace up and do something
that should cause favorable talk and incline
the public toward him again.
The opportunity came now.
Marget sent and asked him to defend her uncle
in the approaching trial, and he was greatly
pleased, and stopped drinking and began his
preparations with diligence.
With more diligence than hope, in fact, for
it was not a promising case.
He had many interviews in his office with
Seppi and me, and threshed out our testimony
pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable
grains among the chaff, but the harvest was
poor, of course.
If Satan would only come!
That was my constant thought.
He could invent some way to win the case;
for he had said it would be won, so he necessarily
knew how it could be done.
But the days dragged on, and still he did
not come.
Of course I did not doubt that it would be
won, and that Father Peter would be happy
for the rest of his life, since Satan had
said so; yet I knew I should be much more
comfortable if he would come and tell us how
to manage it.
It was getting high time for Father Peter
to have a saving change toward happiness,
for by general report he was worn out with
his imprisonment and the ignominy that was
burdening him, and was like to die of his
miseries unless he got relief soon.
At last the trial came on, and the people
gathered from all around to witness it; among
them many strangers from considerable distances.
Yes, everybody was there except the accused.
He was too feeble in body for the strain.
But Marget was present, and keeping up her
hope and her spirit the best she could.
The money was present, too.
It was emptied on the table, and was handled
and caressed and examined by such as were
privileged.
The astrologer was put in the witness-box.
He had on his best hat and robe for the occasion.
QUESTION.
You claim that this money is yours?
ANSWER.
I do.
Q. How did you come by it?
A. I found the bag in the road when I was
returning from a journey.
Q. When?
A. More than two years ago.
Q. What did you do with it?
A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret
place in my observatory, intending to find
the owner if I could.
Q. You endeavored to find him?
A. I made diligent inquiry during several
months, but nothing came of it.
Q. And then?
A. I thought it not worth while to look further,
and was minded to use the money in finishing
the wing of the foundling-asylum connected
with the priory and nunnery.
So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted
it to see if any of it was missing.
And then—
Q. Why do you stop?
Proceed.
A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just
as I had finished and was restoring the bag
to its place, I looked up and there stood
Father Peter behind me.
Several murmured, “That looks bad,” but
others answered, “Ah, but he is such a liar!”
Q. That made you uneasy?
A. No; I thought nothing of it at the time,
for Father Peter often came to me unannounced
to ask for a little help in his need.
Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle
falsely and impudently charged with begging,
especially from one he had always denounced
as a fraud, and was going to speak, but remembered
herself in time and held her peace.
Q. Proceed.
A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the
money to the foundling-asylum, but elected
to wait yet another year and continue my inquiries.
When I heard of Father Peter's find I was
glad, and no suspicion entered my mind; when
I came home a day or two later and discovered
that my own money was gone I still did not
suspect until three circumstances connected
with Father Peter's good fortune struck me
as being singular coincidences.
Q. Pray name them.
A. Father Peter had found his money in a path—I
had found mine in a road.
Father Peter's find consisted exclusively
of gold ducats—mine also.
Father Peter found eleven hundred and seven
ducats—I exactly the same.
This closed his evidence, and certainly it
made a strong impression on the house; one
could see that.
Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions,
then called us boys, and we told our tale.
It made the people laugh, and we were ashamed.
We were feeling pretty badly, anyhow, because
Wilhelm was hopeless, and showed it.
He was doing as well as he could, poor young
fellow, but nothing was in his favor, and
such sympathy as there was was now plainly
not with his client.
It might be difficult for court and people
to believe the astrologer's story, considering
his character, but it was almost impossible
to believe Father Peter's.
We were already feeling badly enough, but
when the astrologer's lawyer said he believed
he would not ask us any questions—for our
story was a little delicate and it would be
cruel for him to put any strain upon it—everybody
tittered, and it was almost more than we could
bear.
Then he made a sarcastic little speech, and
got so much fun out of our tale, and it seemed
so ridiculous and childish and every way impossible
and foolish, that it made everybody laugh
till the tears came; and at last Marget could
not keep up her courage any longer, but broke
down and cried, and I was so sorry for her.
Now I noticed something that braced me up.
It was Satan standing alongside of Wilhelm!
And there was such a contrast!—Satan looked
so confident, had such a spirit in his eyes
and face, and Wilhelm looked so depressed
and despondent.
We two were comfortable now, and judged that
he would testify and persuade the bench and
the people that black was white and white
black, or any other color he wanted it.
We glanced around to see what the strangers
in the house thought of him, for he was beautiful,
you know—stunning, in fact—but no one
was noticing him; so we knew by that that
he was invisible.
The lawyer was saying his last words; and
while he was saying them Satan began to melt
into Wilhelm.
He melted into him and disappeared; and then
there was a change, when his spirit began
to look out of Wilhelm's eyes.
That lawyer finished quite seriously, and
with dignity.
He pointed to the money, and said:
“The love of it is the root of all evil.
There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly
red with the shame of its latest victory—the
dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor
juvenile helpers in crime.
If it could but speak, let us hope that it
would be constrained to confess that of all
its conquests this was the basest and the
most pathetic.”
He sat down.
Wilhelm rose and said:
“From the testimony of the accuser I gather
that he found this money in a road more than
two years ago.
Correct me, sir, if I misunderstood you.”
The astrologer said his understanding of it
was correct.
“And the money so found was never out of
his hands thenceforth up to a certain definite
date—the last day of last year.
Correct me, sir, if I am wrong.”
The astrologer nodded his head.
Wilhelm turned to the bench and said:
“If I prove that this money here was not
that money, then it is not his?”
“Certainly not; but this is irregular.
If you had such a witness it was your duty
to give proper notice of it and have him here
to—” He broke off and began to consult
with the other judges.
Meantime that other lawyer got up excited
and began to protest against allowing new
witnesses to be brought into the case at this
late stage.
The judges decided that his contention was
just and must be allowed.
“But this is not a new witness,” said
Wilhelm.
“It has already been partly examined.
I speak of the coin.”
“The coin?
What can the coin say?”
“It can say it is not the coin that the
astrologer once possessed.
It can say it was not in existence last December.
By its date it can say this.”
And it was so!
There was the greatest excitement in the court
while that lawyer and the judges were reaching
for coins and examining them and exclaiming.
And everybody was full of admiration of Wilhelm's
brightness in happening to think of that neat
idea.
At last order was called and the court said:
“All of the coins but four are of the date
of the present year.
The court tenders its sincere sympathy to
the accused, and its deep regret that he,
an innocent man, through an unfortunate mistake,
has suffered the undeserved humiliation of
imprisonment and trial.
The case is dismissed.”
So the money could speak, after all, though
that lawyer thought it couldn't.
The court rose, and almost everybody came
forward to shake hands with Marget and congratulate
her, and then to shake with Wilhelm and praise
him; and Satan had stepped out of Wilhelm
and was standing around looking on full of
interest, and people walking through him every
which way, not knowing he was there.
And Wilhelm could not explain why he only
thought of the date on the coins at the last
moment, instead of earlier; he said it just
occurred to him, all of a sudden, like an
inspiration, and he brought it right out without
any hesitation, for, although he didn't examine
the coins, he seemed, somehow, to know it
was true.
That was honest of him, and like him; another
would have pretended he had thought of it
earlier, and was keeping it back for a surprise.
He had dulled down a little now; not much,
but still you could notice that he hadn't
that luminous look in his eyes that he had
while Satan was in him.
He nearly got it back, though, for a moment
when Marget came and praised him and thanked
him and couldn't keep him from seeing how
proud she was of him.
The astrologer went off dissatisfied and cursing,
and Solomon Isaacs gathered up the money and
carried it away.
It was Father Peter's for good and all, now.
Satan was gone.
I judged that he had spirited himself away
to the jail to tell the prisoner the news;
and in this I was right.
Marget and the rest of us hurried thither
at our best speed, in a great state of rejoicing.
Well, what Satan had done was this: he had
appeared before that poor prisoner, exclaiming,
“The trial is over, and you stand forever
disgraced as a thief—by verdict of the court!”
The shock unseated the old man's reason.
When we arrived, ten minutes later, he was
parading pompously up and down and delivering
commands to this and that and the other constable
or jailer, and calling them Grand chamberlain,
and Prince This and Prince That, and Admiral
of the Fleet, Field Marshal in Command, and
all such fustian, and was as happy as a bird.
He thought he was Emperor!
Marget flung herself on his breast and cried,
and indeed everybody was moved almost to heartbreak.
He recognized Marget, but could not understand
why she should cry.
He patted her on the shoulder and said:
“Don't do it, dear; remember, there are
witnesses, and it is not becoming in the Crown
Princess.
Tell me your trouble—it shall be mended;
there is nothing the Emperor cannot do.”
Then he looked around and saw old Ursula with
her apron to her eyes.
He was puzzled at that, and said, “And what
is the matter with you?”
Through her sobs she got out words explaining
that she was distressed to see him—“so.”
He reflected over that a moment, then muttered,
as if to himself: “A singular old thing,
the Dowager Duchess—means well, but is always
snuffling and never able to tell what it is
about.
It is because she doesn't know.”
His eyes fell on Wilhelm.
“Prince of India,” he said, “I divine
that it is you that the Crown Princess is
concerned about.
Her tears shall be dried; I will no longer
stand between you; she shall share your throne;
and between you you shall inherit mine.
There, little lady, have I done well?
You can smile now—isn't it so?”
He petted Marget and kissed her, and was so
contented with himself and with everybody
that he could not do enough for us all, but
began to give away kingdoms and such things
right and left, and the least that any of
us got was a principality.
And so at last, being persuaded to go home,
he marched in imposing state; and when the
crowds along the way saw how it gratified
him to be hurrahed at, they humored him to
the top of his desire, and he responded with
condescending bows and gracious smiles, and
often stretched out a hand and said, “Bless
you, my people!”
As pitiful a sight as ever I saw.
And Marget, and old Ursula crying all the
way.
On my road home I came upon Satan, and reproached
him with deceiving me with that lie.
He was not embarrassed, but said, quite simply
and composedly:
“Ah, you mistake; it was the truth.
I said he would be happy the rest of his days,
and he will, for he will always think he is
the Emperor, and his pride in it and his joy
in it will endure to the end.
He is now, and will remain, the one utterly
happy person in this empire.”
“But the method of it, Satan, the method!
Couldn't you have done it without depriving
him of his reason?”
It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that
accomplished it.
“What an ass you are!” he said.
“Are you so unobservant as not to have found
out that sanity and happiness are an impossible
combination?
No sane man can be happy, for to him life
is real, and he sees what a fearful thing
it is.
Only the mad can be happy, and not many of
those.
The few that imagine themselves kings or gods
are happy, the rest are no happier than the
sane.
Of course, no man is entirely in his right
mind at any time, but I have been referring
to the extreme cases.
I have taken from this man that trumpery thing
which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced
his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you
see the result—and you criticize!
I said I would make him permanently happy,
and I have done it.
I have made him happy by the only means possible
to his race—and you are not satisfied!”
He heaved a discouraged sigh, and said, “It
seems to me that this race is hard to please.”
There it was, you see.
He didn't seem to know any way to do a person
a favor except by killing him or making a
lunatic out of him.
I apologized, as well as I could; but privately
I did not think much of his processes—at
that time.
Satan was accustomed to say that our race
lived a life of continuous and uninterrupted
self-deception.
It duped itself from cradle to grave with
shams and delusions which it mistook for realities,
and this made its entire life a sham.
Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined
it had and was vain of, it really possessed
hardly one.
It regarded itself as gold, and was only brass.
One day when he was in this vein he mentioned
a detail—the sense of humor.
I cheered up then, and took issue.
I said we possessed it.
“There spoke the race!” he said; “always
ready to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake
its ounce of brass filings for a ton of gold-dust.
You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing
more; a multitude of you possess that.
This multitude see the comic side of a thousand
low-grade and trivial things—broad incongruities,
mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities, evokers
of the horse-laugh.
The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which
exist in the world are sealed from their dull
vision.
Will a day come when the race will detect
the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh
at them—and by laughing at them destroy
them?
For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably
one really effective weapon—laughter.
Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these
can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a
little—weaken it a little, century by century;
but only laughter can blow it to rags and
atoms at a blast.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can
stand.
You are always fussing and fighting with your
other weapons.
Do you ever use that one?
No; you leave it lying rusting.
As a race, do you ever use it at all?
No; you lack sense and the courage.”
We were traveling at the time and stopped
at a little city in India and looked on while
a juggler did his tricks before a group of
natives.
They were wonderful, but I knew Satan could
beat that game, and I begged him to show off
a little, and he said he would.
He changed himself into a native in turban
and breech-cloth, and very considerately conferred
on me a temporary knowledge of the language.
The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with
earth in a small flower-pot, then put a rag
over the pot; after a minute the rag began
to rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot;
then the rag was removed and a little tree
was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe
fruit.
We ate the fruit, and it was good.
But Satan said:
“Why do you cover the pot?
Can't you grow the tree in the sunlight?”
“No,” said the juggler; “no one can
do that.”
“You are only an apprentice; you don't know
your trade.
Give me the seed.
I will show you.”
He took the seed and said, “What shall I
raise from it?”
“It is a cherry seed; of course you will
raise a cherry.”
“Oh no; that is a trifle; any novice can
do that.
Shall I raise an orange-tree from it?”
“Oh yes!” and the juggler laughed.
“And shall I make it bear other fruits as
well as oranges?”
“If God wills!” and they all laughed.
Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful
of dust on it, and said, “Rise!”
A tiny stem shot up and began to grow, and
grew so fast that in five minutes it was a
great tree, and we were sitting in the shade
of it.
There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked
up and saw a strange and pretty sight, for
the branches were heavy with fruits of many
kinds and colors—oranges, grapes, bananas,
peaches, cherries, apricots, and so on.
Baskets were brought, and the unlading of
the tree began; and the people crowded around
Satan and kissed his hand, and praised him,
calling him the prince of jugglers.
The news went about the town, and everybody
came running to see the wonder—and they
remembered to bring baskets, too.
But the tree was equal to the occasion; it
put out new fruits as fast as any were removed;
baskets were filled by the score and by the
hundred, but always the supply remained undiminished.
At last a foreigner in white linen and sun-helmet
arrived, and exclaimed, angrily:
“Away from here!
Clear out, you dogs; the tree is on my lands
and is my property.”
The natives put down their baskets and made
humble obeisance.
Satan made humble obeisance, too, with his
fingers to his forehead, in the native way,
and said:
“Please let them have their pleasure for
an hour, sir—only that, and no longer.
Afterward you may forbid them; and you will
still have more fruit than you and the state
together can consume in a year.”
This made the foreigner very angry, and he
cried out, “Who are you, you vagabond, to
tell your betters what they may do and what
they mayn't!” and he struck Satan with his
cane and followed this error with a kick.
The fruits rotted on the branches, and the
leaves withered and fell.
The foreigner gazed at the bare limbs with
the look of one who is surprised, and not
gratified.
Satan said:
“Take good care of the tree, for its health
and yours are bound together.
It will never bear again, but if you tend
it well it will live long.
Water its roots once in each hour every night—and
do it yourself; it must not be done by proxy,
and to do it in daylight will not answer.
If you fail only once in any night, the tree
will die, and you likewise.
Do not go home to your own country any more—you
would not reach there; make no business or
pleasure engagements which require you to
go outside your gate at night—you cannot
afford the risk; do not rent or sell this
place—it would be injudicious.”
The foreigner was proud and wouldn't beg,
but I thought he looked as if he would like
to.
While he stood gazing at Satan we vanished
away and landed in Ceylon.
I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn't
been his customary self and killed him or
made him a lunatic.
It would have been a mercy.
Satan overheard the thought, and said:
“I would have done it but for his wife,
who has not offended me.
She is coming to him presently from their
native land, Portugal.
She is well, but has not long to live, and
has been yearning to see him and persuade
him to go back with her next year.
She will die without knowing he can't leave
that place.”
“He won't tell her?”
“He?
He will not trust that secret with any one;
he will reflect that it could be revealed
in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese
guest's servant some time or other.”
“Did none of those natives understand what
you said to him?”
“None of them understood, but he will always
be afraid that some of them did.
That fear will be torture to him, for he has
been a harsh master to them.
In his dreams he will imagine them chopping
his tree down.
That will make his days uncomfortable—I
have already arranged for his nights.”
It grieved me, though not sharply, to see
him take such a malicious satisfaction in
his plans for this foreigner.
“Does he believe what you told him, Satan?”
“He thought he didn't, but our vanishing
helped.
The tree, where there had been no tree before—that
helped.
The insane and uncanny variety of fruits—the
sudden withering—all these things are helps.
Let him think as he may, reason as he may,
one thing is certain, he will water the tree.
But between this and night he will begin his
changed career with a very natural precaution—for
him.”
“What is that?”
“He will fetch a priest to cast out the
tree's devil.
You are such a humorous race—and don't suspect
it.”
“Will he tell the priest?”
“No.
He will say a juggler from Bombay created
it, and that he wants the juggler's devil
driven out of it, so that it will thrive and
be fruitful again.
The priest's incantations will fail; then
the Portuguese will give up that scheme and
get his watering-pot ready.”
“But the priest will burn the tree.
I know it; he will not allow it to remain.”
“Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn
the man, too.
But in India the people are civilized, and
these things will not happen.
The man will drive the priest away and take
care of the tree.”
I reflected a little, then said, “Satan,
you have given him a hard life, I think.”
“Comparatively.
It must not be mistaken for a holiday.”
We flitted from place to place around the
world as we had done before, Satan showing
me a hundred wonders, most of them reflecting
in some way the weakness and triviality of
our race.
He did this now every few days—not out of
malice—I am sure of that—it only seemed
to amuse and interest him, just as a naturalist
might be amused and interested by a collection
of ants.
Chapter 11
For as much as a year Satan continued these
visits, but at last he came less often, and
then for a long time he did not come at all.
This always made me lonely and melancholy.
I felt that he was losing interest in our
tiny world and might at any time abandon his
visits entirely.
When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed,
but only for a little while.
He had come to say good-by, he told me, and
for the last time.
He had investigations and undertakings in
other corners of the universe, he said, that
would keep him busy for a longer period than
I could wait for his return.
“And you are going away, and will not come
back any more?”
“Yes,” he said.
“We have comraded long together, and it
has been pleasant—pleasant for both; but
I must go now, and we shall not see each other
any more.”
“In this life, Satan, but in another?
We shall meet in another, surely?”
Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made
the strange answer, “There is no other.”
A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from
his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed
and hopeful feeling that the incredible words
might be true—even must be true.
“Have you never suspected this, Theodor?”
“No.
How could I?
But if it can only be true—”
“It is true.”
A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast,
but a doubt checked it before it could issue
in words, and I said, “But—but—we have
seen that future life—seen it in its actuality,
and so—”
“It was a vision—it had no existence.”
I could hardly breathe for the great hope
that was struggling in me.
“A vision?—a vi—”
“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.”
It was electrical.
By God!
I had had that very thought a thousand times
in my musings!
“Nothing exists; all is a dream.
God—man—the world—the sun, the moon,
the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream;
they have no existence.
Nothing exists save empty space—and you!”
“I!”
“And you are not you—you have no body,
no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.
I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your
dream, creature of your imagination.
In a moment you will have realized this, then
you will banish me from your visions and I
shall dissolve into the nothingness out of
which you made me....
“I am perishing already—I am failing—I
am passing away.
In a little while you will be alone in shoreless
space, to wander its limitless solitudes without
friend or comrade forever—for you will remain
a thought, the only existent thought, and
by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible.
But I, your poor servant, have revealed you
to yourself and set you free.
Dream other dreams, and better!
“Strange! that you should not have suspected
years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for
you have existed, companionless, through all
the eternities.
Strange, indeed, that you should not have
suspected that your universe and its contents
were only dreams, visions, fiction!
Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically
insane—like all dreams: a God who could
make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred
to make bad ones; who could have made every
one of them happy, yet never made a single
happy one; who made them prize their bitter
life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave
his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet
required his other children to earn it; who
gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed
his other children with biting miseries and
maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice
and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented
hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness
multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented
hell; who mouths morals to other people and
has none himself; who frowns upon crimes,
yet commits them all; who created man without
invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility
for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably
placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness,
invites this poor, abused slave to worship
him!...
“You perceive, now, that these things are
all impossible except in a dream.
You perceive that they are pure and puerile
insanities, the silly creations of an imagination
that is not conscious of its freaks—in a
word, that they are a dream, and you the maker
of it.
The dream-marks are all present; you should
have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed
to you; there is no God, no universe, no human
race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell.
It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish
dream.
Nothing exists but you.
And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought,
a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering
forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew,
and realized, that all he had said was true.
