 CHAPTER IX. They were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot, and very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bullfights they were, too, but just a little wearysome to the practical mind. However, I was generally on hand for two reasons. A man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked, especially as a statesman. And both as businessmen and statesmen, I wanted to study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improvement on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did in my administration, and it was on the very first day of it, too, was to start a patent office, for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways, or back-ways. Things ran along a tournament nearly every week, and now and then the boys used to want me to take a hand—I mean, Sir Lancelot and the rest—but I said I would buy and buy, no hurry yet, and too much government machinery to oil up and set to rights and started going. We had one tournament which was continued from day to day during more than a week, and as many as five hundred nights took part in it from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They came on horseback from everywhere, from the very ends of the country, and even from beyond the sea, and many brought ladies, and all brought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy and gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals. It was fight or look on, all day and every day, and sing, gamble, dance, carouse, half the night, every night. They had a most noble good time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful ladies shining in their barbaric splendors would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists, with a lance-shaft the thickness of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view. Only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could lay two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere, and she was afraid the public hadn't found it out. The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but I didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's cripples. They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me, and broke the saw-buck too, but I let it pass, and as for my axe, well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axe to a surgeon I would pick my century. I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed an intelligent priest from my department of public morals and agriculture, and ordered him to report it, for it was my purpose, by and by, when I should have gotten the people along far enough, to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country is a patent office. Then work up your school system, and after that out with your paper. A newspaper has its faults and plenty of them, but no matter. It's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't you forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation without it. There isn't any way. So I wanted to sample things, and be finding out what sort of reporter material I might be able to rake together out of the sixth century, when I should come to need it. Well, the priest did very well considering. He got in all the details, and that is a good thing in a local item. You see, he had kept books for the undertaker department of his church when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details. The more details, the more swag. Bearers, mutes, candles, prayers. Everything counts. And if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough, you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a night that was likely to advertise. No, I mean a night that had influence. And he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty, and worked miracles. Of course, this novice's report lacked a whoop and crash and lurid description, and therefore wanted the true ring. But its antique wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure for its more important lax. Here is an extract from it. Then Sir Brian Delay Isles and Grumor Grumerson, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Agloval and Sir Tor. And Sir Tor smote down, Sir Grumor Grumerson, to the earth. Then came Sir Carados of the Dolores Tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and there encountered with them Sir Percival de Galas, and Sir Lamarac de Galas, that were two brethren, and there encountered Sir Percival with Sir Carados, and either break their spears unto their hands, and then Sir Turquine with Sir Lamarac, and either of them smote down other horse and all to the earth, and either part he's rescued other and horse them again, and Sir Arnold and Sir Gautair, knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Blandilus and Sir Kay, and these four knights encountered mightily, and break their spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel, and there Sir Pertolope, the green knight, smote down Sir Lionel, brother to Sir Lancelot. All this was marked by noble heralds, who bear him best, and their names. Then Sir Bleobarus break his spear upon Sir Gareth, but of that stroke Sir Bleobarus fell to the earth. When Sir Galahotun saw that, he bade Sir Gareth keep him, and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galahod got a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinodun and his brother Lacote mail-tail, and Sir Sagromor Ladizeris and Sir Dodonus Lissavage, and all these he bear down with one spear. When King Azwisants of Ireland saw Sir Gareth fair so, he marveled what he might be, that one time seemed green, and another time, at his again coming, he seemed blue, and thus at every course that he rode to and from he changed his color, so that there might neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him. Then Sir Agwisants, the king of Ireland, encountered with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from his horse, saddle and all, and then King Caradose of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man, and in the same wise he served King Uriens of the land of Gore, and then there came in Sir Bagdemagus, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the earth, and Bagdemagus' son Maligmanus break a spear upon Sir Gareth mightily and nightly, and then Sir Galaholt, the noble prince, cried on high, Night with the many colors, well hast thou justed! Now make thee ready, that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him, and he got a great spear, and so they encountered together, and there the prince break his spear, but Sir Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that night with the many colors is a good night, wherefore the King called unto him Sir Lancelot, and prayed him to encounter with that night. Sir, said Lancelot, I may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and when a good night doth so well upon some day it is no good night's part to let him of his worship, and, namely, when he seeth a night hath done so great labour, for per-adventure, said Sir Lancelot, his quarrel is here this day, and per-adventure he is best beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see well he paineth himself, and enforceeth him to do great deeds, and therefore, said Sir Lancelot, as for me this day he shall have the honour, though it lay in my power to put him from it, I would not. There was an unpleasant little episode that day which, for reasons of state, I struck out of my priest's report. You will have noticed that Gary was doing some great fighting in the engagement. When I say Gary, I mean Sir Gareth. Gary was my private pet name for him. It suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and that was the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spoken aloud to any one, much less to him. Being a noble, he would not have endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to proceed. I sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister. While Sir Dinadun was waiting for his turn to enter the lists, he came in there and sat down and began to talk, for he was always making up to me, because I was a stranger, and he liked to have a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that stage of where, where the teller has to do the laughing himself while the other person looks sick. I had always responded to his efforts, as well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him, too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest, and had most hated and most loathed all my life, he had at least spared at me. It was one which I had heard attributed to every humorous person who had ever stood on American soil from Columbus down to Artemis Ward. It was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience with the killingest jokes for an hour, and never got a laugh. And then, when he was leaving, some gray simpletons rung him gratefully by the hand, and said it had been the funniest thing they had ever heard, and it was all they could do to keep from laughing right out in meeting. That anecdote never saw the day that it was worth the telling, and yet I had sat under the telling of it hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and cried and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope to know what my feelings were to hear this armor-plated ass start in on it again in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of history, while even Lactantheus might be referred to as the late Lactantheus, and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred years yet. Just as he finished, the call-boy came, so hawing like a demon he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of loose castings, and I knew nothing more. It was some minutes before I came too, and then I opened my eyes just in time to see Sir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I unconsciously out with the prayer, I hope to gracious he's killed. But by ill luck, before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashed into Sir Sagramor the Desirous, and sent him thundering over his horse's cropper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and thought I meant it for him. Well, whenever one of those people got a thing in his head, there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved my breath and offered no explanations. As soon as Sir Sagramor got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future, place of settlement, the lists where the offence had been given. I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flyer at the Holy Grail now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in the long absence snooping around in the most conscientious way, though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was, and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or would have known what to do with it if he had run across it. You see, it was just the Northwest passage of that day, as you may say. That was all. Every year expeditions went out Holy Grailing, and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for them. There was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actually wanted me to put in. Well, I should smile. End of chapter 9 This is chapter 10. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information. Or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain Chapter 10 Beginnings of Civilization The round table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was a good deal discussed for such things interested the boys. The King thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures, so that I might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet Sir Sagromore when the several years should have rolled away. I excused myself for the present. I said it would take me three or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly. Then I should be ready. All the chances were that at the end of that time Sir Sagromore would still be out grailing, so no valuable time would be lost by the postponement. I should then have been in office six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinery would be so well developed that I could take a holiday without its working any harm. I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished. In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all sorts of industries underway. Nuclei of future vast factories, the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find, and I kept agents out raking the country for more all the time. I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts—experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit, for I was afraid of the church. I had started a teacher factory and a lot of Sunday schools the first thing, as a result I now had an admirable system of graded schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety of Protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing condition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted to—there was perfect freedom in that matter—but I confined public religious teaching to the churches and the Sunday schools, permitting nothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law of human nature. Spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as our physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with a religious garment whose colour and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it. And, besides, I was afraid of a united church. It makes a mighty power. The mighty is conceivable. And then, when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them. They had formerly been worked as savages, always worked mines, holes grubbed in the earth, and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by hand at the rate of a ton a day, but I had begun to put the mining on a scientific basis as early as I could. Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramore's challenge struck me. Four years rolled by, and then, well, you would never imagine it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same, namely the despot, the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But, as a perishable, perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor. An earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible. My work showed what a despot could do with the resources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I had the civilization of the nineteenth-century booming under its very nose. It was fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a gigantic and unassailable fact, and to be heard from, yet, if I lived and had luck. There it was, a sure fact, and as substantial a fact, as any serene volcano standing innocent with its smokeless summit in the blue sky, and giving no sign of the rising hell in its bowels. My schools and churches were children four years before, they were grown up now. My shops of that day were vast factories now, where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now, where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stood with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and flood the midnight world with light at any moment. But I was not going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy. The people could not have stood it, and more over I should have had the established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute. No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this and that, and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on my light one candle-powered a time, and meant to continue to do so. I had scattered some branch school secretly about the kingdom, and they were doing very well. I meant to work this racket more and more as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me. One of my deepest secrets was my West Point, my military academy. I kept that most jealously out of sight, and I did the same with my naval academy, which I had established at a remote seaport. Both were prospering to my satisfaction. Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand. He was a darling. He was equal to anything. There wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line. Nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in my civilisation nurseries. He took to it like a duck. There was an editor concealed in him, sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way. He talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing steadily. It was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavour. We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph and a telephone—our first venture in this line. These wires were for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires—we were afraid to put up poles—for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good enough in both instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention, which was perfect. My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence and leaving experts in charge. Nobody could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up for the present. It would be poor wisdom to antagonize the church. As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been when I arrived in it to all intents and purposes. I had made changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus far I had not even meddled with taxation outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had systematized those, and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equibly distributed than before that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general. Personally, I struck an interruption now, but I did not mind it. It could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. The king had reminded me several times of late that the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had about run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honour of breaking a lance with Sir Sagromore, who was still outgrailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year now. So you see, I was expecting this interruption. It did not take me by surprise. CHAPTER XI. There never was such a country for wandering liars, and they were of both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving, and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting help to get her out of some faraway castle where she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now, you would think that the first thing the king would do, after listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials. Yes, and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and common sense a thing as that. No, everybody swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not around, one of these people came along. It was a she-one this time, and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses. They had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six years. The masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye, the eye in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit, sort of fruit not mentioned, their usual slovenliness in statistics. Would you believe it? The king and the whole round table were in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every night of the table jumped for the chance and begged for it. But to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked for it at all. By an effort I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news. But he he could not contain his. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude in a steady discharge, delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness. On my side I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surface for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I said I was glad, and in a way it was true. I was as glad as a person is when he is scalped. Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be done. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff. I must get at the wheat in this case. So I sent for the girl, and she came. She was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest. But if signs went for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. I said, My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars? She said she hadn't. Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask to make sure. It's the way I've been Now, you mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you, we must go a little slow. You may be all right, of course, and we'll hope that you are, but to take it for granted isn't business. You understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions. Just answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. Where do you live when you are at home? In the land of motor, fair sir. Land of motor. I don't remember hearing of it before. Parents living? As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, since it is many years that I have lain shot up in the castle. Your name, please. I height the demoiselle Alissande de Cartelois, and it pleases you. Do you know anybody here who can identify you? That we're not likely, fair Lord, I being come hither now for the first time. Have you brought any letters, any documents, any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful? Of a shirt he know, and wherefore should I? Have I not a tongue, and cannot I say all that myself? But you're saying it, you know, and somebody else is saying it is different. Different? How might that be? I fear me, I do not understand. Don't understand? Land of—why, you see—you see—my great Scott, can't you understand a little thing like that? Can't you understand the difference between your—why—why do you look so innocent and idiotic? I? In truth I know not, but in it were the will of God. Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind my seeming excited, I'm not. Let us change the subject. Now as to this castle, with forty-five princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it, tell me, where is this harem? Harem? The castle, you understand. Where is the castle? Oh, as to that it is great and strong, and well be seen, and lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues. How many? Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell they are so many, and do so lap the one upon the other, and, being made all in the same image and tinked with the same color, one may not know the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them, except they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that, being not within man's capacity. For ye will note, hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance. Whereabouts does the castle lie? What's the direction from here? Ah, please you, sir, it hath no direction from here, but reason that the road lieth not straight, but turneth ever more, wherefore the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under the one sky, and anon under another. Where so, if ye be minded that it is in the east, and when, to the word, ye shall observe that the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space of half a circle, and this marvel happening again, and yet again, and still again, it will grieve you that you hath thought by vanities of the mind to thwart, and bring to not the will of him that giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth him, and if it pleaseth him not, will the rather that he even all castles and all directions thereon to vanish out of the earth, leaving the places wherein they tarry desolate and vacant, so warning his creatures that where he will he will, and where he will not he oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest, never mind about the direction. Hang the direction, I beg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons. I am not well today. Pay no attention when I soliloquise. It is an old habit, an old bad habit, and hard to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating food that was raised forever and ever before he was born. Good land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring-chicken's thirteen hundred years old. But come, never mind about that. Let's, um, have you got such a thing as a map of that region about you, now a good map, is it, per adventure, that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers have brought from over the great seas which being boiled in oil and an onion and salt added thereto doth what, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know what a map is? There they are, never mind. Don't explain, I hate explanations. They fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Run along, dear, a good day. Show her the way, Clarence. Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. It may be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluiced it out with a hydraulic, nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting even. It was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfect ass, and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if she had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up the whole party, and think of the simple ways of this court. This wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king and his palace than she would have had to get into the poor house in my day in country. In fact, he was glad to see her, glad to hear her tale. With that adventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner. Just as I was ending up these reflections, Clarence came back. I remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl, hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find the castle. The youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself what I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for. Why, great guns, I said! Don't I want to find the castle? And how else would I go about it? La, sweet your worship! One may lightly answer that, I wean. She will go with thee. They always do. She will ride with thee. Ride with me, nonsense. But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee. Thou shalt see. What? She browsed around the hills and scour the woods with me, alone, and I as good as engaged to be married. Why, it's scandalous! Think how it would look! My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy was eager to know all about this tender matter. I swore him to secrecy and then whispered her name, Puss Flanagan. He looked disappointed, and said he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was for the little court here to give her a rank. He asked me where she lived. In East Hart—I came to myself and stopped a little confused, and then I said, Never mind now, I'll tell you some time. And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day? It was but a little thing to promise, thirteen hundred years or so, and he's so eager, so I said yes. But I sighed, I couldn't help it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But that is the way we are made. We don't reason where we feel we just feel. My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they were good children, but just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants and how to scoop them in, and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to need salves or instructions or charms against enchantments, and least of all arms and armor on a foray of any kind, even against fire-spouting dragons and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these commonplace ogres of the back settlements. I was to have an early breakfast and start at dawn, for that was the usual way, but I had the demons own time with my armor, and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold iron. Then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail. These are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile like a peck of wet fishnet. It is very heavy, and is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night's shirt, yet plenty used it for that, tax collectors and reformers, and one horse-kings with a defective title, and those sorts of people. Then you put on your shoes, flat-boats roofed over with interleaving bands of steel, and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs and your creases on your thighs. Then come your back plate and your breast plate, and you begin to feel crowded. Then you hitch onto the breastplate the half-petty coat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down in front, but is scalloped out behind so you can sit down, and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coals scuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on. Next you belt on your sword. Then you put your stove pipe joints onto your arms, your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back of your neck. And there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mold. This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking. There is so little of the meat, even when you get down to it by comparison with a shell. The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as not I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked, and tall, and broad, and grand. He had on his head a conical steel cask that only came down to his ears, and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his upper lip and protected his nose. And all the rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chain-mail, trousers and all. But pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which of course was of chain-mail, as I said, and hung straight from his shoulders to his ankles, and from his middle to the bottom, both before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the skirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfit for it too. I would have given a good deal for that all-stair, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sun was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off, and wish me luck, so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on your horse yourself. No, if you try it, he would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carry a sun-struck man to the drugstore, and put you on, and help get you to rights, and fix your feet in the house. And all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else, like somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they stood up the mast they called a spear in its socket by my left foot, and I gripped it with my hand. Lastly they hung my shield around my neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor and get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be, and a maid of honour gave me the stirrup cup her own self. There was nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on. And so we started, and everybody gave us a good-bye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets, and everybody we met going down the hill and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby little boys on the outskirts. They said, Oh, what a guy! And Hove clawed at us. In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect anything. They don't care for anything or anybody. They say, Go up, bald head, to the prophet going his unoffending way in the gray of antiquity. They sass me in the holy gloom of the Middle Ages, and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan's administration. I remember, because I was there and helped. The prophet had his bears and settled with his boys, and I wanted to get down and settle with mine. But it wouldn't answer, because I couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without a derrick. CHAPTER XII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, CHAPTER XII. SLOW TORTURE. Straight off we were in the country. It was most lovely and pleasant in those silven solitudes in the early cool morning in the first freshness of autumn. From hill-tops we saw fair green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge, lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade. And beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching away and billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew was a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew, and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound of footfall. We dreamed along through glades in a mist of green light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets went frisking and gossiping over its reefs, and making a sort of whispering music comfortable to hear. And at times we left the world behind, and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried by, and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place where the noise was, and where only the earliest birds were turning out and getting to business with a song here, and a quarrel yonder, and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on a tree-trunk, away somewhere in the impenetrable remoteness of the woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare. About a third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into the glare it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so after sun-up. It wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It was beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a very long pull after that without any shade. Now it is curious how progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get a start. Things which I didn't mind at all at first I began to mind now, and more and more too all the time. The first ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care. I got along and said never mind it isn't any matter, and dropped it out of my mind. But now it was different. I wanted it all the time. It was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest. I couldn't get it out of my mind. And so at last I lost my temper and said, Hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it! You see, I had my handkerchief in my helmet, and some other things, but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there, and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularly convenient there, and so now the thought of its being there so handy and close by, and yet not get atable, made it all the worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get is the thing that you want, mainly. Everyone has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from everything else, took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet. And mile after mile there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief. And it was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little thing on paper, but it was not a little thing at all. It was the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of course these iron dudes at the round table would think it was scandalous and maybe raise show about it. But as for me, give me comfort first and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and then we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds, and get into my nose, and make me sneeze and cry, and of course I said things I often to have said. I don't deny that. I am not better than others. We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not even an ogre. And in the mood I was in then, it was well for the ogre, that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights would have thought of nothing but getting his armor, but so I got his bandanna he could keep his hardware for all of me. Meantime it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see, the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more all the time. Well, when you are hot that way every little thing irritates you. When I trotted I rattled like a crate of dishes, and that annoyed me. And moreover I couldn't seem to stand that shield slatting and banging now about my breast, now around my back. And if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screeched in that weary some way that a wheel barrow does, and as we didn't create any breeze at that gate, I was like to get fried in that stove. And besides, the quieter you went, the heavier the iron settled down on you, and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh every minute. And you had to be always changing hands and passing your spear over to the other foot. It got so irksome for one hand to hold it long at a time. Well, you know, when you perspire that way in rivers, there comes a time when you, when you, well, when you itch, you are inside your hands are outside. So there you are. Nothing but iron between. It is not a light thing that it sound as it may. First it is one place, then another, then some more. And it goes on spreading and spreading, and at last the territory is all occupied and nobody can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. And when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I couldn't get the visor up, and I could only shake my head, which was baking hot by this time, and the fly, well, you know how a fly acts when he has got a certainty. He only minded the shaking enough to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz, and buzz all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting in a way that a person already so distressed as I was simply could not stand. So I gave in, and got Alessandra to unship the helmet and relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of it and fetched it full of water, and I drank, and then stood up, and she poured the rest down inside the armour. One cannot think how refreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was well soaked and thoroughly comfortable. It was good to have a rest and peace. But nothing is quite perfect in this life at any time. I had made a pipe a while back, and also some pretty fair tobacco. Not the real thing, but what some of the Indians use, the inside bark of the willow dried. These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again. But no matches. Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was born in upon my understanding that we were weather-bound. An armed novice cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was not enough, not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until somebody should come along. Waiting in silence would have been agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, and wanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think how it was that rational, or even half-rational men, could ever have learnt to wear armour, considering its inconveniences, and how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations when it was plain that what I had suffered today they had had to suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out, and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out. But thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn't think where Sandy was. She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a comfort, but you can't cork that kind. They would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think something would surely happen to her works by and by, but no, they never got out of order. She never had to slack up for words. She could grind and pump and churn and buzz by the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was just nothing but wind. She never had any ideas any more than a fog has. She was a perfect blather-skite. I mean, for jaw, jaw, jaw! Talk, talk, talk! Jabber, jabber, jabber! But just as good as she could be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning on account of having that hornet's nest of other troubles, but more than once in the afternoon I had to say, Take rest, child! The way you are using up all the domestic air the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's a low enough treasury without that! CHAPTER XIII Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can be contented. Only a little while back, when I was riding and suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have seemed where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then. Yet already I was getting dissatisfied. Partly because I could not light my pipe, or, although I had long ago started a match factory, I had forgotten to bring matches with me, and partly because we had nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlike improvidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trusted to chance for his food on a journey and would have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There was probably not a night of all the round table combination who would not rather have died than have been caught carrying such a thing as that on his flag-staff, and yet there could not be anything more sensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act and had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them. Night approached and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast. We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. But I was obliged to remain in my armor because I could not get it off by myself and yet could not allow Alessandro to help because it would have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would not have amounted to that in reality because I had clothes on underneath, but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten rid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to stripping off that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should have been embarrassed. But the storm came a change of weather, and the stronger the wind blew, and the wild of the rain lashed around, the colder and colder it got. Pretty soon various kinds of bugs and ants and worms and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside my armor to get warm. And while some of them behaved well enough and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority were of a restless, uncomfortable sort and never stayed still, but went on prowling and hunting, for they did not know what, especially the ants, which went tickling along in worrisome procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are a kind of creatures which I never wished to sleep with again. It would be my advice to person situated in this way to not roll or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want to turn out and see what is going on. And this makes things worse than they were before, and, of course, makes you objugate harder too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash around he would die, so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other. There is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does, when he is taking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armor after this trip. All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers. That same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my tired head. How do people stand this miserable armor? How have they managed to stand at all these generations? And how can they sleep at night for dreading the tortures of next day? When the morning came at last I was in a bad enough plight, seedy, drowsy, fagged from want of sleep, weary from thrashing around, famished from long fasting, pining for a bath and to get rid of the animals, and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared with the nobly-born, the titled aristocrat, the demoiselle Alissande de la carte Roise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel. She had slept like the dead. And as for a bath, probably neither she nor any other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not missing it. Measured by modern standards they were merely modified savages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to get to breakfast, and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them, and also how to freight up against the probable fasts before starting, after the style of the Indian and the Anaconda, as like as not sandy, was loaded for a three-day stretch. We were off before sunrise, sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me, and when I proposed to breakfast with them they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that, at first, they were not able to believe that I was an earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip, and withdrew to one side. She said, in their hearing, that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle, a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree, small, independent farmers, artisans, etc., which is to say they were the nation, the actual nation. They were about all of it that was useful or worth saving or really respect worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance this gilded minority, instead of being in the tale of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying at the other end of it, had elected itself to be the nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth, and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God, and so not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor, transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet. The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly American ear. They were free men, but they could not leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his permission. They could not prepare their own bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery and pay roundly for the same. They could not sell a piece of their own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering him in cash for the privilege. They had to harvest his grain for him gratis and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their own crop to destruction by the threatened storm. They had to let him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain around the trees. They had to smother their anger when his hunting-parties galloped through their fields, laying waste the result of their patient toil. They were not allowed to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dove-coat settled on their crops, they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be. When the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it. First the church carted off its fat tent, then the king's commissioner took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty in-road upon the remainder. After which the skinned free man had liberty to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble. There were taxes and taxes and taxes, and more taxes and taxes again, and yet other taxes upon this free and independent pauper, but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the wasteful nobility or the all devouring church. If the baron would sleep unvext, the free man must sit up all night after his day's work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet. If the free man's daughter—but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is unprintable. And finally, if the free man, grown desperate with his tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle church condemned him to eternal fire. The gentle law buried him at midnight at the crossroads with a stake through his back, and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors. And here were these free men assembled in the early morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three days each, gratis, every head of a family and every son of a family three days each, gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever-memorable and blessed revolution which swept a thousand years of such villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood. One, a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hog's head of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two rains of terror, if we would but remember it and consider it, the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood, the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years, the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions. But our shutters are all for the horrors of the minor terror, the momentary terror, so to speak, whereas what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with life-long death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real terror, that unspeakably bitter and awful terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. These poor ostensible free men who were sharing their breakfast and their talk with me were as full of humble reverence for their king and church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire. There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed who, with a free vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families, including the voters, and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank and closed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's families, including his own. They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know, that they had never thought about it before, and it had never occurred to them that a nation could be so situated that every man could have a say in the government. I said I had seen one, and that it would last until it had an established church. Again they were all unhit, at first, but presently one man looked up and asked me to state that proposition again, and state it slowly, so it could soak into his understanding. I did it, and after a little he had the idea, and he brought his fist down and said he didn't believe a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down in the mud and dirt in any such way, and that to steal from a nation its will and preference must be a crime, and the first of all crimes. I said to myself, this one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove myself its loyalist citizen by making a wholesome change in its system of government. You see, my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing. It is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to. Institutions are extraneous. They are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags, that is a loyalty of unreason. It is pure animal. It belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy. Let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose constitution declares that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit, and that they have, at all times, an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient. Under that gospel the citizen who thinks he sees that the Commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal. He is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay does not excuse him. It is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does. And now here I was in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it would have made the whole six shudder as one man. It would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. So to speak I was to become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side of my nature would have been to resign the boss ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution. But I knew that the Jack Cade or the Watt Tyler who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left, even if I do say it myself. Therefore the deal which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the Cade Tyler sort, so I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had finished I got him to lend me a little ink from his veins, and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark put him in the man-factory and gave it to him and said, Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of Amias Le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand. He is a priest then, said the man, and some of the enthusiasm went out of his face. How a priest! Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my man-factory? Didn't I tell you that you couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was your own free property? Married is so, and for that I was glad. Wherefore it liked me not, and breded me a cold doubt to hear of this priest being there. But he isn't a priest, I tell you. The man looked far from satisfied. He said, He is not a priest, and yet can read. He is not a priest, and yet can read, yes, and write, too, for that matter. I taught him myself. The man's face cleared, and it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that factory. I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that heart. Why, I will be your slave, your—no, you won't. You won't be anybody's slave. Take your family and go along. Your lord, the bishop, will confiscate your small property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter 14. DEFEND THE LORD. I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfast a dozen persons for that money. But I was feeling good by this time, and I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway. And then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where these pennies being made of iron and not stinted in weight my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days, it is true. But one reason for it was that I hadn't got the proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet after so long a sojourn in Britain, hadn't got along to where I was able to absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing. Just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from Camelot could have been delayed a very few days, I could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased me—and them too, not less—I had adopted the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars, and also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this new blood freshen up its life. The farmers were bound to throw in something to sort of offset my liberality, whether I would or no, so I let them give me a flint and steel, and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none but my enemies, and I promised with my hand on my heart that if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass before me, they should see that only those who remained behind would be struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness. There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough to remain behind to see what would happen. I lost some time now, for these big children, their fears gone, became so ravaged with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks, but I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive, for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wanted to the new thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was a gain. But above all other benefits accruing I had learned something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come along now. We tarried with a holy hermit that night, and my opportunity came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing a vast meadow by way of shortcut, and I was musing absently, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted a remark which she had begun that morning, with a cry, "'Defend thee, Lord! Paral of life is toward!' and she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood. I looked up and saw far off in the shade of a tree half a dozen armed knights and their squires, and straightway there was bustle among them and tightening of saddle girths for them out. My pipe was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too. None of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about, one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came in a body. They came with a whir and a rush. They came like a volley from a battery. Came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight, for a man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen the wave go to pieces and scatter. This was a finer sight than the other one. But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed and fear came. I judged, I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant, and was going to be eloquent, but I stopped her, and told her my magic had miscarried somehow or other, and she must mount, with all dispatch, and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my enchantment had disabled those knights. They were not riding on because they couldn't. Wait! They would drop out of their saddles presently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could not deceive such trusting simplicity. So I said it was a mistake, that when my fireworks killed at all they killed instantly. No, the men would not die. There was something wrong about my apparatus. I couldn't tell what. But we must hurry and get away, for those people would attack us again in a minute. Sandy laughed and said, Look a day, sir. They be not of that breed. Sir Lancelot will give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail them again and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer and destroy them. And so likewise will Sir Pelinor, and Sir Aglival, and Sir Caradose, and may have others. But there be none else that will venture it. Let the idle say what the idle will. And la, as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill, but yet desire more? Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave? Nobody's hindering. Good lad, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, I'm sure. Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dream not of it. No, not they. They wait to yield them. Come, really, is that sooth, as ye people say? If they want to, why don't they? It would like them much, but any what how dragons are esteemed, ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come. Well, then, I suppose, I go to them instead, and, ah, wit ye well, they would not abide your coming. I will go. And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid. I would have considered this a doubtful errand myself. I presently saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was a relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings. I mean, in the conversation. Otherwise the interview wouldn't have been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business well, in fact admirably. She said that when she told those people I was the boss, it hit them where they lived. Smote them sore with fear and dread was her word. And then they were ready to put up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appear at Arthur's court within two days, and yield them, with horse, and harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command. How much better she managed that thing than I should have done it myself. She was a daisy. And so I'm proprietor of some knights, said I, as we wrote off. Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assets of that sort? I shan't know what to do with them, unless I raffle them off. How many of them are there, Sandy? Seven, please, you sir, and their squires? It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out? Where do they hang out? Yes, where do they live? I understood they not. That will I tell, iftsoons. Then she said musingly and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue, hang they out, hang they out. Where hang? Where do they hang out? Right so. Where do they hang out? Of a truth, the phrase hath affair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded with all—I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idleness, whereby I may, per adventure, learn it. Where do they hang out? Even so, already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and for as much as—don't forget the cowboys, Sandy. Cowboys? Yes, the knights, you know. You were going to tell me about them, a while back, you remember? Figuratively speaking, game's called. Game? Yes, yes, yes, go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your statistics. And don't burn so much kindling getting your fires started. Tell me about the knights. I will well, and lightly will begin, so they too departed, and rode into a great forest, and great scot! You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works a-going. It was my own fault. She would be thirty days getting down to those facts, and she generally began without a preface and finished without a result. If you interrupted her, she would either go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words, and go back and say the sentence over again. So interruptions only did harm. And yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty frequently, too, in order to save my life. A person would die if he let her monotony drip on him right along all day. Great scot! I said in my distress. She went right back, and began over again. So they too departed, and rode into a great forest, and— Which, too? Sir Gawain and Sir Uain. And so they came to an abbey of monks, and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their masses in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great forest. Then was Sir Gawain, where, in a valley by a turret, of twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and the damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawain where, how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the damsels came by it, they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon the shield. Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy, I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see those creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that. The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and I mean your best, too—society's very choicest brands. The humblest hello-girl, along ten thousand miles of wire, could teach gentleness, patience, modesty, manners to the highest duchess in Arthur's land. Hello, girl? Yes, but don't you ask me to explain. It's a new kind of girl. They don't have them here. One often speaks sharply to them when they are not the least in fault. And he can't get over feeling sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years. It's such shabby, mean conduct, and so unprovoked. The fact is, no gentleman ever does it, though. I—well, I, myself, if I've got to confess, and prevent her, she—never mind her. Never mind her. I tell you, I couldn't ever explain her so you would understand. Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawain and Sir Gawain went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you. There is a knight in this county that owneth this white shield. And he is a passing good man of his hands. But he hateeth all ladies and gentle women, and therefore we do all this despite to the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawain, it beceemeth evil a good night to despise all ladies and gentle women, and, per adventure, though he hate you, he has some cause, and, per adventure, he loveth in some other places, ladies and gentle women, and be loved again, and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of— Man of prowess, yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy. Man of brains, that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers, John Heenan, John L. Sullivan, pity but you could be here. You would have your legs under the round table, and, Sir, in front of your names within the twenty-four hours, and you could bring about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses of the court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just a sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert to the buck, with the biggest strings of scalps at his belt. And he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir K. Wayne. Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhouse, the king's son of Ireland. Son of the king of Ireland, you mean. The other form doesn't mean anything. And look out and hold on tight now. We must jump this gully. There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in the circus. He is born before his time. I know him well, said Sir K. Wayne. He is a passing good night, as any is, on live. On live. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that you are a shade to archaic. But it isn't any matter. For I saw him once proved at a just, where many nights were gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, said Sir K. Wayne, damsels, me thinketh ye are to blame, for it is to suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom, and then may those nights match him on horseback, and that is more your worship than thus. For I will abide no longer to see a night shield dishonored. And therewith Sir K. Wayne and Sir K. Wayne departed a little from them, and then, where they were, where Sir Marhouse came riding on a great horse straight toward them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhouse, they fled into the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell, by the way. Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield and said on high, Sir Marhouse, defend thee! And so they ran together that the night break his spear on Marhouse, and Sir Marhouse smote him so hard that he break his neck and the horse's back. Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things. It ruined so many horses. That saw the other night of the turret and dressed him toward Marhouse, and they went so eagerly together that the night of the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead. Another horse gone. I tell you, it is a custom that ought to be broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud and support it. So these knights came together with great random— I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter. But I didn't say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case. That Sir Uain smote Sir Marhouse that his spear breasted in pieces on the shield, and Sir Marhouse smote him so sore that horse and man he bear to the earth, and hurt Sir Uain on the left side. The truth is, Alessande, these archaics are a little too simple. The vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions suffer in the matter of variety. They run too much to level Saharas, a fact, and not enough to picturesque detail. This throws about them a certain air of the monotonous. In fact, the fights are all alike. A couple of people come together with great random—random is a good word—and so is exegesis, for that matter, and so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct, and a hundred others, but land! The body ought to discriminate. They come together with great random, and a spear is brassed, and one party break his shield, and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horsetail, and break his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in and brassed his spear, and the other man brassed his shield, and down he goes, horse and man, over his horsetail, and break his neck, and then there's another elected, and another, and another, and still another, till the material is all used up, and when you come to figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who whipped, and as a picture of living, raging, roaring battle, show why it's pale and noiseless, just ghosts scuffling in a fog. Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle, the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, towns burned down, no insurance, boy brassed a window, firemen break his neck. Why, that ain't a picture. It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb Sandy, didn't turn a feather. Her steam soared steadily up again, the minute I took off the lid. Then Sir Marhas turned his horse and rode toward Gawain with his spear, and when Sir Gawain saw that he dressed his shield, and they adventured their spears, and they came together with all the might of their horses, that either knight smote others so hard in the midst of their shields. But Sir Gawain's spear break, I knew it would, but Sir Marhas's spear held, and therewith Sir Gawain and his horse rushed down to the earth, just so, and break his back. And lightly Sir Gawain rose upon his feet, and pulled out his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhas on foot, and therewith either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their helms, and their haubirks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawain, fro at past nine o'clock, waxed by the space of three hours ever stronger and stronger, and thrice his might was increased. All this spied, Sir Marhas, and had great wonder how his might increased, and so they wounded other passing sore. And then, when it was come noon, the pelting singsong of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds of my boyhood days. Knee-ew, Haven, ten minutes for refreshments, can druckle strike the dongbell two minutes before the train leaves. Passengers for the shoreline, please take seats in the rear kayak, this kayak don't go no further. Apples, oranges, bananas, sandwiches, popcorn, and waxed past noon and drew toward the evening song. Sir Gawain's strength feebled and waxed passing faint. That unethus he might doer any longer, and Sir Marhas was then bigger and bigger, which strained his armor, of course, and yet little would one of these people mind a small thing like that. And so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhas, I have well felt that year, a passing good night, and a marvellous man of might as ever if I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawain, gentle Knight, ye say the word that I should say, and therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren. But I lost the thread there and dozed off to slumber, thinking about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength, strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome iron, and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang each other for six hours on a stretch, should not have been born at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take a jackass, for instance. A jackass has that kind of strength and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because he is a jackass. But a nobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place, and yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done, and you never know what is going to come of it. When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that I had lost another chapter, and that Alessand had wandered a long way off with her people. And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones, and thereby they saw a fair stream of water. Above thereby was the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting thereby. In this country, said Sir Marhouse, came never night since it was christened. But he found strange adventures. This is not good for, Alessand. Sir Marhouse, the king's son of Ireland, talks like all the rest. You ought to give him a brogue, or at least a characteristic expletive. By this means one would recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named. It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should make him say, In this country, Bejabbers, came never night since it was christened, and he found strange adventures, Bejabbers. You see how much better that sounds. Came never night but he found strange adventures, Bejabbers. Of a truth it doth indeed, dear Lord, albeit his passing hard to say, though per adventure that will not tarry but better speed with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and she was three-score winter of age or more. The damsel was, even so, dear Lord, and her hair was white under the garland. Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like is not, the loose fit kind that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat and fall out when you laugh. The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen years of age, billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded out of my hearing. Fifteen! Break, my heart! Oh, my lost darling! Just her age, who was so gentle and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back over wide seas of memory to a vague, dim time, a happy time, so many, many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer mornings out of the sweet dreams of her and say, Hello, central! Just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a, Hello, hank! That was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear. She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it. I could not follow Alessan's further explanation of who our captured knights were now. I mean, in case she should ever get to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts were far away and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale, caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east, the other south to seek adventures, and meet again and lie after a year and day. Year and day, and without baggage. It was of a peace with the general simplicity of the country. The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when Alessan had begun to tell me who the cowboys were, so she had made pretty good progress with it for her. She would arrive some time or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried. We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground. A huge, strong, venerable structure whose gray towers and battlements were charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the one we were after. But Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it. She said she had passed it without calling, when she went down to Camelot. Morgan Lafay If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed. That is, measured by modern standards of veracity. Yet, measured by the standards of their own time and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple. You discounted a statement ninety-seven percent. The rest was fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remained that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing the doorbell, I mean hailing the warders, it was the sensible thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle. As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also, a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this sign on his tabard. That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation in the first place. It was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of night air entry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had started a number of these people out, the bravest nights I could get, each sandwiched between bulletin boards bearing one device or another, and I judged that by and by, when they got to be numerous enough, they would begin to look ridiculous, and then even the steel-clad ass that hadn't any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion. Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the church, I mean, would be a step toward that. Next, education. Next, freedom. And then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any established church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my own former day, in remote centuries, not yet stirring in the womb of time, there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country, a free country with the Corporation Act and the tests still enforcing it. Timbers propped against men's liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an established anachronism with. My missionaries were taught to spell out the guilt signs on their tabards. The showy gilding was a neat idea. I could have got the king to wear a bulletin board for the sake of that barbaric splendor. They were to spell out these signs, and then explained to the lords and ladies what soap was. And if the lords and ladies were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionaries' next move was to get the family together and try it on himself. He was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could convince the nobility that soap was harmless. If any final doubt remained, he must catch a hermit. The woods were full of them. Saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be. They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that failed to convince the duke, give him up. Let him alone. Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road, they washed him. And when he got well, they swore him to go and get a bulletin board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. As a consequence, the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two hands. But before I had left home, I was already employing fifteen, and running night and day. And the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around, and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer. And Sir Lancelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse up there than anywhere else. But he said he wanted plenty of air, and he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house, he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies present too, but much these people ever cared for that. They could swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory was going. This missionary knight's name was Lacote Maltaille, and he said that his castle was the abode of Morgan Le Fay, sister of King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about as big as the District of Columbia. You could stand in the middle of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. Kings and kingdoms were as thick in Britain as they had been in Little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport. Lacote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst failure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake. Yet he had tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit. But the hermit died. This was indeed a bad failure, for this animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan, this poor Sir Lacote Maltaille, and sorrowed passing sore. And so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him. Wherefore I said, Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have brains, you and I, and for such as have brains there are no defeats, but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster into an advertisement. An advertisement for our soap, and the biggest one to draw that was ever thought of. An advertisement that will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhorn victory. We will put on your bulletin board, patronized by the elect. How does that strike you? Verily it is wonderfully be thought. Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little one-line ad, it's a corker. So the poor coal-porters' grief vanished away. He was a brave fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledissant, who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a different way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he bade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it. Sandy and I discussed his story as we rode along, and she said that Lakot's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that trip. For the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day, and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the conqueror, but Maledissant didn't do it, and also persisted afterward in sticking to him after all his defeats. But said I, suppose the victor should decline to accept his spoil. She said that that wouldn't answer, he must. He couldn't decline, it wouldn't be regular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too burdensome some time, I would let a knight defeat me on the chance that she would desert to him. In due time we were challenged by the warders from the castle walls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant to tell about that visit, but it was not a disappointment, for I knew Mrs. Le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant. She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with cold malice. All her history was black with crime, and among her crimes murder was common. I was most curious to see her, as curious as I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise, she was beautiful. Black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive. Age had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its gloomy freshness. She could have passed for old Urien's granddaughter. She could have been mistaken for a sister to her own son. As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates, we were ordered into her presence. King Urien's was there, a kind-faced old man with a subdued look, and also the son, Sir Uain Leblanchamaynes, in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the tradition that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on account of his trip with Sir Gawain and Sir Marhouse, which Sandy had been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here. She was head chief of this household, and that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousness, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute or something talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, closed like the rainbow, and as easy an undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden slalver, and kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. She slipped a dirk into him, in as matter of fact a way as another person would have harpooned a rat. Poor child! He slumped to the floor, twisted his silk and limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the old king was rung and involuntary—oh, of compassion! The look he got made him cut it suddenly short, and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Eway, not a sign from his mother, went to the anti-room and called some servants, and meanwhile Madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk. I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made no box in handling the body and getting it out. When they came with fresh clean towels she sent back for the other kind, and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that Lakot Maltail had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak. Morgan Le Fay rippled along as musically as ever, marvelous woman, and what a glance she had! When it fell in reproof upon those servants they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the lightning flashes out of her cloud. I could have got the habit myself. It was the same with that poor old Brare Ureens. He was always on the ragged edge of apprehension. She could not even turn toward him, but he winced. In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up like storm. She called for her guards and said, Hail me these violets to the dungeons! That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation. Nothing occurred to me to say or do, but not so with Sandy. As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with a tranquilous confidence and said, God's wounds! Does thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It is the boss! Now, what a happy idea that was, and so simple. Yet it would never have occurred to me. I was born modest, not all over but in spots. And this was one of the spots. The effect upon Madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and blandishments. But nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said, La, but do list thine handmaid, as if one gifted with powers like to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who has vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot, a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long been childishly curious to see. The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission.