 CHAPTER VII. Margit announced a party and invited forty people. The date for it was seven days away. This was a fine opportunity. Margit's house stood by itself, and it could be easily watched. All the week it was watched, night and day. Margit'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 Margit 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 finally, 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 for ever. 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. Margit 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 Margit urged him to stay, and he thanked her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing him to the girls and to Midling 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. He has a rich uncle down there, and so on. He made his way at once. Everybody was anxious to know him and talk with him. Everybody noticed how cool and fresh it was all of a sudden and wondered at it, for they could see that the sun was beating down the same as before outside and the sky was clear of clouds, but no one guessed the reason, of course. The astrologer had drunk his second beaker. He poured out a third. He set the bottle down and by accident overturned it. He seized it before much was spilled and held it up to the light, saying, What a pity. It is royal wine. Then his face lighted with joy or triumph or something, and he said, Quick, bring a bowl. It was brought, a four-quart one. He took up that two-pint bottle and began to pour. Went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing into the white bowl, and rising higher and higher up its sides, everybody staring and holding their breath, and presently the bowl was full to the brim. Look at the bottle, he said, holding it up. It is full yet. I glanced at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up, flushed and excited, crossed himself and began to thunder in his great voice. This house is bewitched and accursed. People began to cry and shriek and crowd toward the door. I summoned this detected household too. 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, and then the astrologer put up his hand, and apparently in his own voice said, Wait, remain where you are. All stopped where they stood. Bring a funnel. Ursula brought it trembling and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle, and took up the great bowl and began to pour the wine back. The people gazing and dazed with astonishment, for they knew the bottle was already full before he began. He emptied the whole of the bowl into the bottle, then smiled out over the room, chuckled and said indifferently, It is nothing. Anybody can do it. With my powers I can even do much more. A frightened cry burst out everywhere. Oh my God, he is possessed! And there was a tumultuous rush for the door, which swiftly emptied the house of all who did not belong in it except us boys and Midling. 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. Margaret was pale and crying. Midling looked kind of petrified. Ursula the same, but Godfreet 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 strange 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 endorsement 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 when 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 wither, 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 tightrope and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see a clumsy and ignorant violet 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 through twenty-seven. The people murmured for the astrologer was old and always before had been halting of movement, and at times even lame, but he was nimble enough now and went on with his antics in the liveliest manner. Finally he sprang lightly down and walked away and passed up the road and around the corner and disappeared. Then that great pale silent solid crowd drew a deep breath and looked into one another's faces as if they said, was it real? Did you see it or was it only I and was I dreaming? Then they broke into a low murmur of talking and fell apart in couples and moved toward their homes, still talking in that odd 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 the sort of chill and muttered those words over. It has failed. God has forsaken us. It is true, said Seppie Wolmeyer's father. There is nowhere to look for help. The people will realize this, said Nicholas's father, the judge, and despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have indeed fallen upon evil times, he sighed. And Wolmeyer 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, und Gott willn. 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 Margaret'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 Margaret's it was like a funeral. She and Wilhelm sat together on the sofa, but said nothing, not even holding hands. Both were steeped in gloom, and Margaret'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 whiny 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 Margaret's depression, and brought her spirits and her interests broad awake. She had not heard anyone 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 Margaret was charmed again, and again Wilhelm was not as pleased as he ought to have been, and this time Margaret 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 Spurling, 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's shoulder, and banishes old shop-worn weariness from mind and body both. We talked together, and I had the idea of trying to reform Satan and persuade him to lead a better life. I told him about all those things he had been doing, and begged him to be more considerate and stop making people unhappy. I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but that he ought to stop and consider the possible consequences of a thing, before launching it in that impulsive and random way of his. Then he would not make so much trouble. He was not hurt by this plain speech. He only looked amused and surprised, and said, What? I do random things. Indeed, I never do. I stop and consider possible consequences. Where is the need? I know what the consequences are going to be, always. Oh, Satan, then how could you do these things? Well, I will tell you, and you must understand, if you can, you belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering machine, and a happiness machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously with a fine and delicate precision on the give and take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department, the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain, maybe a dozen. In most cases, the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case, the unhappiness predominates always, never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are such that his misery machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person, life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's happiness, a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don't you know that? It happens every now and then. I will give you a case or two presently. Now the people of your village are nothing to me. You know that, don't you? I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I said I had suspected it. Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable. They have no intellect, no intellect, nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see and understand. Men have nothing in common with me. There is no point of contact. They have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertnances 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 of 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 three score years to accumulate are mine. He can forget, and he does forget, but I retain. Now then I perceive by your thoughts that you are understanding me fairly well. Let us proceed. Circumstances might so fall out that the elephant could like the spider, supposing he can see it, but he could not love it. His love is for his own kind, for his equals. An angel's love is sublime, adorable, divine, beyond the imagination of man, infinitely beyond it, but it is limited to his own august order. If it fell upon one of your race for only an instant, it would consume its object to ashes. No, we cannot love men, but we can be harmlessly indifferent to them. We can also like them sometimes. I like you and the boys. I like Father Peter, and for your sakes I am doing all these things for the villagers. He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and he explained his position. I have wrought well for the villagers, though it does not look like it on the surface. Your race never know good fortune from ill. They are always mistaking the one for the other. It is because they cannot see into the future. What I am doing for the villagers will bear good fruit someday. 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 nonetheless 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 till 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? For ordain 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 billions 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 had 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 Brent? 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 it's idle too, just as she is now. I shall change her future. Make it better, I asked. Yes. And I will change the future of Nicholas. 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 it already made a renowned general of him, an 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 sarcasm, 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, Nicholas will wake out of his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should turn over and go to sleep again, but I have appointed that he shall get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth, nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the old chain. He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments, then said, Nicholas 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, Nicholas 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! Dear Satan! I cried with tears rising in my eyes. Save them! Don't let it happen. I can't bear to lose Nicholas. 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 Nicholas's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I had not done this, Nicholas would save Lisa. Then he would catch cold from his drenching. One of your race's fantastic and desolating scarlet fevers would follow with pathetic after-effects. For forty-six years he would lie in his bed, a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life back? Oh, no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity, leave it as it is. It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and done him so good a service. He had a billion possible careers, but not one of them was worth living. They were charged full with miseries and disasters. But for my intervention he would do his brave deed twelve days from now. A deed begun and ended in six minutes, and yet 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 a while ago when I said that sometimes an act which brings the actor an hour's happiness and self-satisfaction is paid for, or punished, by years of suffering. I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would save her from. He answered the thought. From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then from nineteen years pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the hands of the executioner, twelve days hence she will die. Her mother would save her life if she could. Am I not kinder than her mother? Yes, oh, indeed yes, and wiser. Father Peter's case is coming on presently. He will be acquitted through unassailable proofs of his innocence. Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it? Indeed, I know it. His good name will be restored, and the rest of his life will be happy. I can believe it. To restore his good name will have that effect. His happiness will not proceed from that cause. I shall change his life that day for his good. He will never know his good name has been restored. In my mind, and modestly, I asked for particulars, but Satan paid no attention to my thought. Next my mind wandered to the astrologer, and I wondered where he might be. In the moon, said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believe 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 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 million miles from here, and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come. But I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time, so minute that it cannot be measured by a watch. I have but to think the journey, and it is accomplished. I held out my hand and said, The light lies upon it. Think it into a glass of wine, Satan. He did. I drank the wine. Break the glass, he said. I broke it. There you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls were magic stuff, and as perishable as smoke, they were afraid to touch them. You are a curious lot, your race. But come along, I have business. I will put you to bed, said and done. Then he was gone, but his voice came back to me through the rain and darkness, saying, Yes, tell Cepi, but no other. It was the answer to my thought. CHAPTER 8. SLEEP would not come It was not because I was proud of my travels, and excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling contemptuous of Bartels Spirling, the traveller, as he called himself, and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once, and was the only Esseldorf 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 Nicholas. My thoughts ran upon him only, and the good days we had seen together had 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. 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. Tomorrow 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 Seppy 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-winds. 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 up-braided me and tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs have been done to the living. Nicholas 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 pains. In the morning I sought out Sepe 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 Nicholas, and was a recalling of the life we had lived with him, and every now and then Sepe said, as if to himself, twelve days, less than twelve days. We said we must be with him all the time, we must have all of him we could. The days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it, but that was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we turned a curve and came upon Nicholas face to face. He shouted gaily, hi-hi! What's 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 Nicholas 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 thirteenth, and Nicholas was already counting the hours he was so impatient. That was the fateful 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 Nicholas. We others could not shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nicholas 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 practiced upon him formally, as I learned later, and probably no longer remembered by Nicholas 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 homewards, 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 Nicholas, and also added to it time which we and he stole from our 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 Nicholas 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 thirteenth. 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 boy's and girl's frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we first met Satan, and this was to occur on the fourteenth. 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 today 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 comrade ship 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 Nicholas, so it was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near a while, 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 Nicholas 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 all out of 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 is 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 wandering 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 Nicholas 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 Theodore, 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. Oh dear, dear, if we could only know, then we shouldn't ever go wrong. But we are only poor dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes. I shan't ever think of last night without a pang. She was like all the rest. It seemed as if nobody could open a mouth in these wretched days without saying something that made us shiver. They were groping around and did not know what true, sorrowfully true, things they were saying by accident. Seppi asked if Nicholas 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 today. 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 the 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 will 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 Nicholas's room was the time. A quarter to ten. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to live. I felt a contraction at my heart. Nicholas jumped up and gave us a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his planning for his party, and had not been lonesome. Sit down, he said, and look at what I've been doing, and I 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 downstairs 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, Cepi drew a deep breath and said, two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more, and he will pass the death-point. Theodore, 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 a while before you came. She stood it against the wall and stepped back to take a view of it. He drew the pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't so very good, I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge. Anyone 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 downstairs, little Lisa's mother came in and said the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy, I told Nicholas to never mind about his father's orders. Go and look her up. Why, how white you two do look. I do believe you are sick. Sit down. I'll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a little heavy, but I thought— She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once to the back window and looked toward the river. There was a great crowd at the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point from every direction. Oh, it is all over. Poor Nicholas. Why, oh, why did she let him get out of the house? Come away, said Seppy, 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 corduoles 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! The poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees and put her arms around 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 Brunt 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 towards the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and resentful, and she said, for nearly two weeks I have had dreams and peace-sentiments 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 a while 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. Nicholas 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 Nicholas'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 had owed fifty grosson 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. He 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 Fisher, the weaver. In his anger Fisher will straight away 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 favours 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 Fisher, and asked timidly, Does this episode change Fisher's life-scheme, Satan? Change it? Why, certainly. And radically, if he had not met Frau Brandt a while 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 Fisher, 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 Fisher'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 real 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 Fisher 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 Fisher 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 Fisher. There were plenty more Fishers. The next minute Fisher 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, Blasthemer and Heretic! And some among them were neighbors and friends of her happier days. Some were trying to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they might to keep them from it. Oh, stop them, Satan! It was out before we remembered that he could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole afterlives. 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 Fisher'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 Brunt'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 marketplace, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in front of her and said with gentleness, We played together once in long agon days when we were innocent little creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you. We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her. But we heard the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased, we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication, and we were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about. One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again. We were always watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he was by. He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him. Being boys, we wanted to be entertained. We asked him to do a show for us. Very well, he said. Would you like to see a history of the progress of the human race? It's development of that product which it calls civilization. We said we should. So with the 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. We heard the crash of the blows, and heard the shrieks and the groans. Then there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in his blood, and gasping out his life, and Cain standing over him and looking down at him, vengeful and unrepentant. Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long series of unknown wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the flood, and the arc tossing around in the stormy waters with losty 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 Gael, 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 desire 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 family, 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 murder with javelins and swords. The Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship. The Christian has added guns and gunpowder. A few centuries from now, he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time. Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so, but suffering is nothing to them. They do not know what it is except by hearsay. More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a sort of encouragement. Necessarily then this talk of his was a disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves knowing that this was not the time to continue our work. Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish. Then he said it is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared, and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history. But only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians. Then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian, not to acquire his religion but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with. By this time his theater was at work again and before our eyes, nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries a mighty procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted, and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying. And what does it amount to? said Satan with his evil chuckle. Nothing at all. You gain nothing. You always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously re-performing this dull nonsense. To what end? No wisdom can guess. Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you, would feel defiled if you touch them, would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call, whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it but proud, whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it, who are mendicants supported by your arms yet assumed towards you the heirs 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 worshipped 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 this line. It is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation. Drink to their augmentation. Drink to! Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his manner changed. He said gently, No. We will drink one another's health, and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands out of space by desire is earthly and good enough for that other toast. But throw away the glasses. We will drink this one in wine which has not visited this world before. We obeyed and reached up and received the new cups as they descended. They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion. They seemed to be alive, and certainly the colors in them were in motion. They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tent, 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 sun-dogs and disappeared. Why didn't they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his? Chapter 9 of The Mysterious Stranger This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain Chapter 9 It was wonderful the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch-commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or against any indeed but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them, instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell. And they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her mean time, 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 nearby 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 noticed you shouted to 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 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, who, 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 tomorrow week, another of you will die tonight. 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 a 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 hand 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 a 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, the 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 was 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 was 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 today, 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 which hunting will come to a sudden end. Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race. The individuals distrust of his neighbor and his desire for safety's or comfort's sake to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain and always flourish and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions. I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were. Still it is true, Lamb, said Satan. Look at you in war, what mutton you are, and how ridiculous! In war? How? There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful as usual will shout for the war. The pulpit will, warily and cautiously, object at first. The great big dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say earnestly and indignantly it is unjust and dishonorable and there is no necessity for it. Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long. Those others will out shout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing, the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers as earlier, but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation pulpit and all will take up the war cry and shout itself hoarse and mob any 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. April 2008.