THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
BY: MARK TWAIN
CHAPTER I
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 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 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 alone; 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 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, a 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 II
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 hey 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 unembarrased, 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?n
"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 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 like 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 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 ravels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big
worlds of our solar systems 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 III
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 feeling, and could not
understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and asgay 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 of 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 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
whichyou 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 it's 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 IV
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 V
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-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 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 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 downhearted, 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 posses 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 VI
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 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 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 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 country-side 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 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 not 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 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 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 grochen 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 todirt 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 VII
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 ss 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 bow1 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 apparent 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 I was 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 donearly 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 is 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 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 to 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 so good a service.
He had a billion possible careers, but not one of them 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, 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 seemed 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 mil lion 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 alone; 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 VIII
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 w 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 sha'n'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 think they are very good. The church isn't so very good, I'll have to admit, 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
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 crows 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 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 thin 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-gone 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, notwith-
standing 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 dying in
his blood and gasping out his life, and Gin 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 organiza tion and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gun' powder; a few
centuries from now he will have so greatly im' proved 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 reper forming this dull nonsense-to what end? No wisdom can guess!
Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurp ing 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 perpet- ual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are
men- dicants 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 sentenceshort 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 IX
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 here 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
willsee 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 X
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
Ursual 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 poorprisoner, 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 asgold, 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 flowerpot, 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 XI
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.
BY: MARK TWAIN
CHAPTER I
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 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 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 alone; 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 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, a 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 II
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 hey 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 unembarrased, 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?n
"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 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 like 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 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 ravels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big
worlds of our solar systems 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 III
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 feeling, and could not
understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and asgay 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 of 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 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
whichyou 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 it's 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 IV
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 V
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-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 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 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 downhearted, 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 posses 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 VI
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 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 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 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 country-side 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 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 not 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 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 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 grochen 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 todirt 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 VII
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 ss 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 bow1 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 apparent 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 I was 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 donearly 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 is 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 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 to 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 so good a service.
He had a billion possible careers, but not one of them 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, 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 seemed 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 mil lion 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 alone; 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 VIII
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 w 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 sha'n'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 think they are very good. The church isn't so very good, I'll have to admit, 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
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 crows 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 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 thin 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-gone 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, notwith-
standing 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 dying in
his blood and gasping out his life, and Gin 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 organiza tion and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gun' powder; a few
centuries from now he will have so greatly im' proved 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 reper forming this dull nonsense-to what end? No wisdom can guess!
Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurp ing 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 perpet- ual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are
men- dicants 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 sentenceshort 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 IX
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 here 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
willsee 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 X
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
Ursual 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 poorprisoner, 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 asgold, 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 flowerpot, 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 XI
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.