 The Countess of Escarbañas by Moller, translated into English prose by Charles Heron Wall. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Being by Bologna Times, the Countess of Escarbañas by Moller, persons represented, the Count, son to the Countess, the Viscount, in love with Julia, Mr. de Baudier, councillor, in love with the Countess, Mr. Harpen, receiver of taxes, also in love with the Countess, Mr. Bonbonnet, tutor to the Count, Gino, servant to Mr. de Baudier, Créquet, servant to the Countess, the Countess of Escarbañas, Julia, in love with the Viscount, André, maid to the Countess. The scene is at Agolomé, the Countess of Escarbañas. Scene one, Julia, the Viscount. What? You were here already? Yes, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Cliente. It is not right for a lover to be the last to come to the rendezvous. I should have been here long ago, if there were no important people in the world. I was stopped on my way by an old borer of rank, who asked me news of the court merely to be able himself to detail to me the most absurd things that can well be imagined about it. You know that those great newsmongers are the curse of provincial towns, and that they have no greater anxiety than to spread everywhere abroad all the tittle-tattle they pick up. This one showed me, to begin with, two large sheets of paper full to the very brim with the greatest imaginable amount of rubbish, which, he says, comes from the safest quarters. Then, as if it were a wonderful thing, he read full length, and with great mystery, all the stupid jokes in the Dutch Gazette which he takes for gospel. He thinks that France is being brought to ruin by the pen of that writer, whose fine wit, according to him, is sufficient to defeat armies. After that, he raved about the ministry, spoke all its faults, and I thought he would never have done. If one is to believe him, he knows the secrets of the cabinet better than those who compose it. The policy of the State is an open book to him, and no step is taken without his seeing through it. He shows you the secret machinations of all that takes place, whether the wisdom of our neighbor's tins, and controls, and his will and pleasure, all the affairs of Europe. His knowledge of what goes on extends as far as Africa and Asia, and he is informed of all that, is discussed in the Privy Council of Priester John. You make the best excuse you can, and so arrange it that it may pass off well and be easily received. I assure you, dear Julia, that this is the real reason of my being late. But if I wanted to say anything gallant, I could tell you that the rendezvous to which you bring me here might well excuse the sluggishness of which you complain. To compel me to pay my addresses to the lady of this house is certainly reason enough for me to fear being here the first. I ought not to have to bear the misery of it, except when she whom it amuses is present. I avoid finding myself alone with that ridiculous countess with whom you shackle me. In short, as I come only for your sake, I have every reason to stay away until you are here. Oh! you will never lack the power of giving a bright color to your faults. However, if you had come half an hour sooner, we should have enjoyed those few moments. For when I came I found that the countess was out, and I have no doubt that she has gone all over the town to claim for herself the honor of the comedy you gave me under her name. But pray, when will you put an end to this, and make me buy less dearly the happiness of seeing you? When our parents agree, which I scarcely dare hope for, you know as well as I do that the dissensions which exist between our two families deprive us of the possibility of seeing each other anywhere else, and that neither my brothers nor my father are likely to approve of our engagement. Yes, but why not profit better by the opportunity which their enmity gives us, and why oblige me to waste, under a ridiculous deception, the moments I pass near you? It is better to hide our love, and besides to tell you the truth, this deception you speak of is, to me, a very amusing comedy, and I hardly think that the one you give me to-day will amuse me as much. Our countess of Escarbañas, with her perpetual infatuation for quality, is as good a person as can be put on the stage. The short journey she has made to Paris has brought her back to Angolome more crazy than ever. The air of the court has given a new charm to her extravagance, and her folly grows and increases every day. Yes, but you do not take into consideration that what amuses you drives me to despair, and that one cannot dissimulate long when one is under the sway of love as true as that which I feel for you. It is cruel to think, dear Julia, that this amusement of yours should deprive me of the few moments during which I could speak to you of my love, and last night I wrote on the subject some verses that I cannot help repeating to you. So true is it that the mania of reciting one's verses is inseparable from the title of a poet. I rest too long thou keepst untortures wrack, one who obeys thy laws, yet whispering chides, in that thou bits me boast a joy I lack, and hush the sorrow that my bosom hides. Must thy dear eyes, to which I yield my arms, from my sad sighs draw wanton pleasure still, is not enough to suffer for thy charms, that I must grave at thy capricious will. This double martyrdom, a pain of words, too keen to bear at once thy deeds, thy words, work on my wasting heart a cruel doom. Love bids it burn, constraint its life doth chill, if pity, softened, not thy wayward will. Love, feigned, and real, will lead me to the tomb. I see that you make yourself out much more ill-used than you need, but it is the way with you poets to tell falsehoods in cold blood, and to pretend that those you love are much more cruel than they are, in order to make them correspond to the fancies you may take into your heads. Yet I should like you, if you will, to give me those verses in writing. No, it is enough that I have repeated them to you, and I ought to stop there. A man may be foolish enough to make verses, but that is different from giving them to others. It is in vain for you to affect a false modesty. Your wit is well known, and I do not see why you should hide what you write. Ah, we must tread here with the greatest circumspection. It is a dangerous thing to set up for a wit. There is inherent to it a certain touch of absurdity, which is catching, and we should be warned by the example of some of our friends. Nonsense, Cliente, I see that, in spite of all you say, you are longing to give me your verses, and I feel sure that you would be very unhappy if I pretended not to care for them. I unhappy? Oh, dear no, I am not so much of a poet for you to think that I—but here is the Countess of Escarbañas. I'll go by this door, and so is not to meet her, and we'll see that everything is got ready for the play I have promised you. Scene two The Countess, Julia, André and Créquet in the background. What madden, are you alone? Oh, what a shame! All alone! That's why people had told me that the Viscount was here. It is true that he came, but it was sufficient for him to know that you were not at home. He would not stop after that. What? Did he see you? Yes. And did he not stop to talk with you? Madam, he wished to show you how very much he is struck by your charms. Still, I shall call him to account for that. However much anyone may be in love with me, I wish them to pay to our sex the homage that is due to it. I am not one of those unjust women who approve of the rudeness their lovers display towards other fair ones. You must in no way be surprised at his conduct. The love he has for you shows itself in all his actions and prevents him from caring for anybody but you. I know that I can give rise to a strong passion. I have for that enough of beauty, youth and rank, thank heaven, but it is no reason why those who love me should not keep within the bounds of propriety towards others. Seeing Cracke, what are you doing there, little page? Is there not an ante-room for you to be in until you are called? It is a strange thing that in the provinces we cannot meet with a servant who knows his place. To whom do you think I am speaking? Why do you not move? Will you go outside, little naïve, that you are? Scene three. The Countess. Julia. Andre. Come hither, girl. What do you wish me to do, ma'am? To take off my head-dress gently you awkward girl. How roughly you touch my head with your heavy hands. I do it as gently as I can, ma'am. No doubt, but what you call gently is a very rough treatment for my head. You have almost put my neck out of joint. Now take also this muff and go and put it with the rest into the closet. Don't leave anything about. Where is she going to now? What is the stupid girl doing? I am going to take this into the closet, as you told me, ma'am. Ah, heavens! To Julia. Pray, excuse her rudeness, madam. I told you, my closet, great ass, this is a place where I keep my dresses. Please, ma'am, is a cupboard called a closet at court? Yes, dunce, it is thus that a place where clothes are kept is cold. I will remember it, ma'am, as well as the word furniture warehouse for your attic. Scene four. The Countess, Julia. What trouble it gives me to have to teach such simpletons! I think I am very fortunate to be under your discipline, madam. She is my nurse's daughter, whom I have made, ladies' made. The post is quite new to her, as yet. She teaches a generous soul, madam, and it is glorious thus to form people. Come, some seats, I say, here, little page, little page, little page, boy! Truly this is too bad not to have a page to give us chairs. My maids, my page, my page, my maids, oh, somebody, I really think that they must be all dead, and that we shall have to find seats for ourselves. Scene five. The Countess, Julia, Andre. What is it you want, ma'am? You do make people scream after you use servants. I was putting your muff and headdress away in the closet, I mean. Call in that rascal of a page. I say, Cricay, cease that Cricay of yours, stupid, and call out page. Page, then, and not Cricay, come and speak to the missus. I think he must be deaf, Cricay. Page, page! Scene six. The Countess, Julia, Andre, Cricay. What is it you want? Where were you, you rascal? In the street, ma'am. Why in the street? You told me to go outside. You are a rude little fellow, and you ought to know that outside among people of quality means the anti-room. Andre, mind you ask my equary to flog this little rogue. He is an incorrigible little wretch. Whom do you mean by your equary, ma'am? Is it Mr. Charles you call by that name? Be silent and pertinent, girl. You can hardly open your mouth without making some rude remark. Quick, some seats! Would you like two wax candles in my silver candlesticks? It is getting late. What is it now? Why do you look so scared? Ma'am? Well, ma'am, what is the matter? It is that—what? I have no wax candles, but only dips. The simpleton! And where are the wax candles I bought a few days ago? I have seen none since I have been here. Get out of my presence, rude girl! I will send you back to your home again. Bring me a glass of water. Scene seven. The Countess and Julia, making much ceremony before they sit down. Ma'am? Ma'am? Ah, ma'am! Ah, ma'am? Ma'am, I beg of you! Ma'am? I beg of you! Oh, ma'am! Oh, ma'am? Pray, ma'am! Pray, ma'am? Now, really, ma'am? Now, really, ma'am? I am in my own house, ma'am. We are agreed as to that. Do you take me for a provincial, ma'am? Oh, heaven forbid, ma'am! Scene eight. The Countess. Julia. Andre. Who brings in a glass of water. Créquet. Get along with you, you hussy. I drink with a salve. I tell you, you must go and fetch me a salve. Créquet. What's a salve? A salve? Yes. I don't know. Will you move or will you not? We don't either of us know what a salve is. Know, then, that it is a plate on which you put the glass. Scene nine. The Countess. Julia. Long live Paris. It is only there that one is well waited upon. There a glance is enough. Scene ten. The Countess. Julia. Andre. Who brings a glass of water with a plate on the top of it. Créquet. Is that what I asked you for, dunderhead? It is under that you must put the plate. That is easy to do. She breaks the glass and trying to put her down the plate. You stupid girl. You shall really pay for the glass. You shall. I promise you. Very well, ma'am. I will pay you for it. But did you ever see such an awkward, loutish girl? Such a— And I say, ma'am, if I am to pay for the glass, I won't be scolded into the bargain. Get out of my sight! Scene eleven. The Countess. Julia. Really, madam, small towns are strange places. In them there is no respect of persons, and I have just been making a few calls at houses where they drove me almost to despair. So little regard did they pay to my rank. Where could you expect them to have learned manners? They have never been to Paris. Still they might learn if they would only listen to one. But what I think too bad is that they will persist in saying that they know as much as I do—I—who have spent two months in Paris and have seen the whole court. What absurd people! They are unbearable in the impertinent equality with which they treat people, for in short there ought to be a certain subordination in things. And what puts me out of all patience is that a town upstart, whether with two days' gentility to boast of or with two hundred years, should have impudence enough to say that he is as much of a gentleman as my late husband, who lived in the country, kept a pack of hounds, and took the title of count in all the deeds that he signed. They know better how to live in Paris, in those large hotels you must remember with such pleasure. That hotel of Moshe, madam, that hotel of Lyon, that hotel of Holland, what charming places to live in. It is true that those places are very different from what we have here. You see there people of quality who do not hesitate to show you all the respect and consideration which you look for. One is not under the obligation of rising from one seat, and if one wants to see a review or the great ballet of Psyche, your wishes are at once attended to. I should think, madam, that during your stay in Paris you made many a conquest among the people of quality. You can readily believe, madam, that of all the famous court gallants not one failed to come to my door, and pay his respects to me. I keep in my casket some of the letters sent to me, and can prove by them what offers I have refused. There is no need for me to tell you their names. You know what is meant by court gallants. I wonder, madam, how, after all those great names, which I can easily guess, you can descend to Mr. Thibaudier, a counsellor, and Mr. Harpin, a collector of taxes. The fall is great, I must say, for your Viscount, although nothing but a country Viscount, is still a Viscount, and can take a journey to Paris if he has not been there already. But a counsellor and a tax-gatherer are but poor lovers for a great countess like you. They are men whom one treats kindly in the country, in order to make use of when the need arises. They serve to fill up the gaps of gallantry, and to swell the ranks of one's lovers. It is a good thing not to leave a lover, the sole master of one's heart, lest for want of rivals his love go to sleep through overconfidence. I confess, madam, that no one can help profiting wonderfully by all you say. Your conversation is a school to which I do not fail to come every day in order to learn something new. Scene 12 The Countess Julia Andre Créquet Créquet to the Countess Here is your know, Mr Thibaudier's man, who wants to see you, man. Ah, you little wretch, this is another of your stupidities. A well-bred lackey would have spoken in a whisper to the gentlewoman in attendance. The latter would have come to her mistress and have whispered in her ear. Here is the footman of Mr So-and-So, who wants to speak with you, madam. To which the mistress would have answered, show him in. Scene 13 The Countess Julia Andre Créquet Genant Come along in, Genant. Another blunder! What do you want, Paige? What have you there? It is Mr Thibaudier, ma'am, who wishes you good morning, and before he comes sends you some pears out of his garden with his small note. Scene 14 The Countess Créquet Genant The Countess giving some money to Genant, here, my boy, here is something for your trouble. Oh, no, thank you, ma'am. Take it, I say. My master told me not to take anything from you, ma'am. Never mind, take it all the same. Excuse me, ma'am, Créquet speaks. Take it, Genant, if you don't want it, you can give it to me. Tell your master that I thank him. Créquet, to Genant, who is going, give it to me, Genant. Yes, you catch me. It was I who made you take it. I should have taken it without your help. What pleases me in this Mr Thibaudier is that he knows how to behave with people of quality, and that he is very respectful. Scene 15 The Countess Julia Créquet I come to tell you, ma'am, that the theatricals will soon be ready, and that we can go into the hall in a quarter of an hour. Mind, I will have no crowd after me. To Créquet, tell the port not to let anybody come in. If so, ma'am, I give up our theatricals. I could take no interest in them, unless the spectators are numerous. Give me, if you want to enjoy it thoroughly, tell your people to let the whole town in. Page, a seat! To the Viscount, after he has seated. You have come just in time to accept a self-sacrifice I am willing to make to you. Look, I have here a note from Mr Thibaudier, who sends me some pairs. I give you leave to read it aloud. I have not opened it yet. Viscount, after he has read the note to himself. This note is written in the most fashionable style, ma'am, and is worthy of all your attention. Reads it aloud. Ma'am, I could not have made you the present I send you if my garden did not bring me more fruit than my love. You see clearly by this that nothing has taken place between us. The pairs are not quite ripe yet, but they will all the better match the hardness of your heart, the continued disdain of which promises me nothing soft and sweet. Allow me, ma'am, without risking in enumeration of your charms, which would be endless, to conclude with begging you to consider that I am as good a Christian as the pairs which I send you, for I render good for evil. Which is to say, to explain myself more plainly, that I present you with good Christian pairs, in return for the choked pairs which your cruelty makes me swallow every day. Your unworthy slave, Thibaudier. Ma'am, this letter is worth keeping. There may be a few words in it that are not of the academy, but I observe it in a certain respect which pleases me greatly. You are right, ma'am, and even if the Viscount were to take it amiss, I should love a man who would write so to me. Scene 16. Mr. Thibaudier, the Viscount, the Countess, Julia Crickay. Come here, Mr. Thibaudier, do not be afraid of coming in. Your note was well received, and so were your pairs, and there is a lady here who takes your part against your rival. I am much obliged to her, ma'am, and if ever she has a lawsuit in our court, she may be sure that I shall not forget the honour she does me in making herself the advocate of my flame near your beauty. You have no need of an advocate, sir, and your cause has justice on its side. This nevertheless, ma'am, the right has need of help, and I have reason to apprehend the being supplanted by such a rival and the beguiling of the lady by the rank of the Viscount. I had hopes before your note came, sir, but now I confess fears from my love. Here are likewise a few little couplets which I have composed to your honour and glory, ma'am. Ah! I had no idea that Mr. Thibaudier was a poet. These few little couplets will be my ruin. He means two strophes. To croquet. Page! Give a seat to Mr. Thibaudier. Mr. Thibaudier, sit down there and read your strophes to us. A person of quality is my fair dame. She has got beauty, fierce is my flame, yet I must blame her pride and cruelty. I am lost after that. The first line is excellent. A person of quality. I think it is a little too long, but a liberty may be taken to express a noble thought. Let us have the other. I know not, if you doubt, that my love be sincere, yet this I know that my heart every moment longs to leave its sorry apartment to visit yours, with fond respect and fear, after all this having my love in hand, and my honour a superfine brand. You ought, in turn, I say, contend to be a countess gay, to cast that Tigris skin away which hides your charms both night and day. I am undone by Mr. Thibaudier. Do not make fun of it, for the verses are good, although they are country verses. Madam, make fun of it, though he is my rival, I think his verse is admirable. I do not call them, like you, two stroves merely, but two epigrams, as good as any of marshals. What? Does marshall make verses? I thought he only made gloves. It is not that marshall, madam, but an author who lived thirty or forty years ago. Mr. Thibaudier has read the authors, as you see, but, madam, we shall see if my comedy, with its interludes and dances, will counteract in your mind the progress which the two stroves have made. My son must be one of the spectators, for he came this morning from my country seat with his tutor whom I see here. Mr. Thibaudier, Mr. Bobenet, Cricke, Mr. Bobenet, I say, Mr. Bobenet, come forward. I give the good evening to all these honorable company. What does the madam, the countess of Escarparinas, want of her humble servant, Bobenet? At what time, Mr. Bobenet, did you leave Escarparinas with the count, my son? I think order to nine, my lady, according to your orders. How are my two other sons, the Marquis and the Commander? They are, heaven bethakt, in perfect health. Where is the count? In your beautiful room with the recess in it, madam. What is he doing, Mr. Bobenet? He is composing an essay upon one of the epistles of Cicero, which I had just given him as a subject. Call him in, Mr. Bobenet. Be it according to your command, madam. CNAID, the countess, Julia, the viscount, Mr. Thibaudier. That Mr. Bobenet, madam, looks very wise, and I think that he is a man of esprit. CNAID, the countess, Julia, the viscount, the count, Mr. Bobenet, Mr. Thibaudier. Come, my lord, show what progress you make under the good precepts that are given you. Bow to the honourable company. Come, count. Salute this lady. Bow low to the viscount. Salute the councillor. I am delighted, madam, that you should grant me the favour of embracing his lordship, and cannot love the trunk without loving the branches. Could this gracious, Mr. Thibaudier, what a comparison to use! Really, madam, his lordship, the count, has perfect manners. This is the young gentleman who is thriving well. Who could have believed that your ladyship had so big a child? Alas, when he was born I was so young that I still played with dolls. He is your brother, and not your son. Be careful of his education, Mr. Bobenet. I shall never, madam, neglect anything towards the cultivation of the young plant, which your goodness has entrusted to my care, and I will try to inculcate in him the seeds of all the virtues. Mr. Bobenet, just make him recite some choice piece from what you teach him. Well, your lordship, repeat the lesson of yesterday morning. Omne, viru, sole, quad, convinit, esto, viril, omne, viric. Fai, Mr. Bobenet, what silly stuff is that you teach him. It is Latin, madam, and the first rule of Jean de Baudier. Truly, that Jean de Baudier is an impudent fellow, and I beg you to teach my son more honest Latin than this in future. If you allow him to say it or through, madam, the glass will explain the meaning. There is no need. It explains itself sufficiently. Scene 20, the Countess, Julia, the Viscount, Mr. de Baudier, the Count, Mr. Bobenet, Mr. de Baudier, they act to send me to tell you that they are ready. Let us take our seats. Mr. de Baudier, take this lady under your care. Croquet places all the chairs on one side of the stage, the Countess, Julia, and the Viscount, sit down, and Mr. de Baudier sits down at the Countess' feet. It is important for you to observe that this comedy was made only to unite the different pieces of music and dancing which composed the entertainment, and that— Oh, never mind. Let us see it. We have enough good sense to understand things. Begin then at once, and see that no troublesome intruder comes to disturb our pleasure. The violins begin an overture. Scene 21, the Countess, Julia, the Viscount, the Count, Mr. Harpen, Mr. de Baudier, Mr. Bobenet, Croquet. By George, this is fine. I rejoice to see what I see. How? Mr. Receiver, what do you mean by this behavior? Is it right to come and interrupt a comedy in that fashion? By Jove, madam, I am delighted at this adventure. And it shows me what I ought to think of you, and what I ought to believe of the assurances you gave me of this gift of your heart, and likewise all your oaths of fidelity. But, really, one should not come thus in the middle of a play and disturb an actor speaking. Ha! Zounds! The real comedy here is the one you are playing, and I care little if I disturb you. Really? You do not know what you are saying? Yes, damn it. I know perfectly well. And— Mr. Bobenet, frightened, takes up the count and runs away. Croquet follows him. Fire, sir, how wrong it is to swear in that fashion. Ah, his death! Is there anything bad here? It is not my swearing, but your actions. It would be much better for you to swear by heaven and hell than to do what you do with the vacant. I don't know, sir, of what you have to complain, and if— I have nothing to say to you, sir. You do right to push your fortune. That is quite natural. I see nothing strange in it, and I beg your pardon for interrupting your play, but neither can you find it strange that I complain of her proceedings, and we both have a right to do what we are doing. I have nothing to say to that, and I do not know what cause of complaint you have against her ladyship, the countess of Escarpagnia. When one suffers from jealousy, one does not give way to such outburst, but one comes peaceably to complain to the person beloved. I complain peaceably. Yes, one does not come and shout on the stage that what should be said in private. I came purposely to complain on the stage's death. It is the place that suits me best, and I should be glad if this were a real theatre so that I might expose you more publicly. Is there need for such an uproar, because if I count gives a play in my honour, just look at Mr. Thibaudier, who loves me. He acts more respectfully than you do. Mr. Thibaudier does as he pleases. I don't know how far Mr. Thibaudier has got with you, but Mr. Thibaudier is no example for me. I don't like to pay the piper for other people to dance. But, Mr. Receiver, you don't consider what you are saying. Women of rank are not treated thus, and those who hear you might believe that something strange has taken place between us. Confound it all, madam. Let us cast aside all this foolery. What do you mean by foolery? I mean that I do not think it's strange that you should yield to the Viscount's merit. You are not the first woman in the world who plays such a part, and who has a receiver of taxes of whom the love and purse are betrayed for the first newcomer who takes her fancy. But do not think it extraordinary that I do not care to be the dupe of an infidelity so common to go kits of the period, and that I come before a good company to say that I break with you, and that I, the receiver of taxes, will no more be taxed on your account. It is really wonderful how angry lovers have become the fashion. We didn't see nothing else any more. Come, come, Mr. Receiver. Cast aside your anger, and come and take a seat to see the play. I sit down, sesteth not I. Look for a fool at your feet, my Lady Countess. I give you up to my lord, the Viscount, and it is to him that I will send the letters I have received from you. My scene is ended. My part is played. Good night to all. We shall meet somewhere else, and I will show you that I am a man of the sword as well as of the pin. Right, my good debaulet. Such insolence confounds me. The jealous, madame, are like those who lose their cause. They have left to say anything. Let us listen to the play now. Sir, here is a note which I have been asked to give to you immediately. As you may have some measures to take, I send you notice at once that the quarrel between your family and that of Julius has just been settled, and that the condition of this agreement is your marriage with Julia. Good night to Julia. Truly, madam, our part is also played. The Viscount, the Countess, and Mr. Thibaultier arise. Oh, client, what happiness is this? Our love could scarcely help for such a happy end. What is it you mean? It means, madam, that I marry Julia, and if you will believe me in order to make the play complete at all points, you will marry Mr. Thibaultier and give André to his footmen, whom he will make his valet de charme. What? You deceive, that's a person of my rank! No offence to you, madam, but plays require such things. Yes, Mr. Thibaultier, I will marry you to vex everybody. You do me too much honour, madame. Allow us, madame, in spite of a vexation, to see the end of the play. End of The Countess of Escarpagnia by Mollier. Translation by Charles Herron Wall. So that he could see it in the mirror. He said, this doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before. The animals out in the woods heard of this through the house cat, who was greatly admired by them because he was so learned, and so refined and civilised, and so polite and high-bred, and could tell them so much, which they didn't know before, and were so certain about afterwards. They were much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they asked questions, so as to get a full understanding of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat explained. It is a flat thing, he said, wonderfully flat, marvellously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant, and oh, so beautiful! That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they said they would give the world to see it. And then the bear asked, what is it that makes it so beautiful? It is the look of it, said the cat. This filled them with admiration and uncertainty, and they were more excited than ever. And then the cow asked, what is a mirror? It is a hole in the wall, said the cat. You look at it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy. The ass had not said anything as yet. He now began to throw doubts. He said there had never been anything as beautiful as this before, and probably wasn't now. He said that when it took a whole basketful of sesquipedalian adjectives to whoop up a thing of beauty, it was time for suspicion. It was easy to see that these doubts were having an effect upon the animals, so the cat went off offended. The subject was dropped for a couple of days, but in the meantime curiosity was taking a fresh start, and there was a revival of interest perceptible. Then the animals assailed the ass for spoiling what could possibly have been a pleasure for them, on a mere suspicion that the picture was not beautiful, without any evidence that such a thing was the case? The ass was not troubled. He was calm, and said there was one way to find out who was in the right, himself or the cat. He would go and look at that hole, and come back and tell what he found there. The animals felt relieved and grateful, and asked him to go at once, which he did. But when he did not know where he ought to stand, and so through error he stood between the picture and the mirror, the result was that the picture had no chance, and didn't show up. And he returned home and said, The cat lied. There was nothing in that hole but an ass. There wasn't a sign of a flat thing visible. It was a handsome ass and friendly, but just an ass. Nothing more. The elephant asked, Did you see it good and clear? Were you close to it? I saw it good and clear, oh hathy king of beasts. I was so close that I touched noses with it. Hmm, this is very strange, said the elephant. The cat was always truthful before, as far as we could make out. Let another witness try. Go, Baloo, look in the hole and come back and report. So the bear went. When he came back he said, Both the cat and the ass have lied. There is nothing in the hole but a bear. Great was the surprise and puzzlement of the animals. Each was now anxious to make the test himself and get at the straight truth. The elephant sent them one at a time. First the cow. She found nothing in the hole but a cow. The tiger found nothing in it but a tiger. The lion found nothing in it but a lion. The leopard found nothing in it but a leopard. The camel found a camel and nothing more. Then hathy was wroth and said he would have the truth if he had to go and fetch it himself. And when he returned he abused his whole subjectory for liars and was in an unappeasable fury with the moral and mental blindness of the cat. He said that anybody but a nearsighted fool could see that there was nothing in the hole but an elephant. Moral by the cat. You may find in a text whatever you bring if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears but they will be there. End of A Fable by Mark Twain. This recording is in the public domain. The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut by Mark Twain. I was feeling blithe, almost jacunned. I put a match to my cigar and just then the morning's mail was handed in. The first superscription I glanced at was in a handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through and through me. It was Aunt Mary's and she was the person I loved and honored most in all the world outside of my own household. She had been my boyhood's idol. Maturity which is fatal to so many enchantments had not been able to dislodge her from her pedestal. No, it had only justified her right to be there and placed her dethronement permanently among the impossibilities. To show how strong her influence over me was, I will observe that long after everybody else's do-stop-smoking had ceased to affect me in the slightest degree, Aunt Mary could still stir my torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she touched upon the matter. But all things have their limit in this world. A happy day came at last when even Aunt Mary's words could no longer move me. I was not merely glad to see that day arrive. I was more than glad. I was grateful, for when its sun had set, the one alloy that was able to mar my enjoyment of my aunt's society was gone. The remainder of her stay with us that winter was in every way a delight. Of course she pleaded with me just as earnestly as ever after that blessed day to quit my pernicious habit, but to no purpose whatever. The moment she opened the subject, I at once became calmly, peacefully, contentedly indifferent. Absolutely adamantly indifferent. Consequently the closing weeks of that memorable visit melted away as pleasantly as a dream. They were so freighted for me with tranquil satisfaction I could not have enjoyed my pet vice more if my gentle tormentor had been a smoker herself and an advocate of the practice. Well, the sight of her handwriting reminded me that I was getting very hungry to see her again. I easily guessed what I should find in the letter. I opened it. Good. Just as I expected, she was coming, coming this very day too, and by the morning train I might expect her any moment. I said to myself, I am thoroughly happy and content now. If my most pitiless enemy could appear before me at this moment I would freely write any wrong I may have done. Straight away the door opened and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old. Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape and so, while one could not, put his finger upon any particular part and say, this is a conspicuous deformity. The spectator perceived that this little person was a deformity as a whole. A vague, general, evenly blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the face and the sharp little eyes and also alertness and malice. And yet this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and ill-defined resemblance to me. It was duly perceptible in the mean form, the countenance, and even the clothes, gestures, manners, and attitudes of the creature. He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a burlesque upon me, a caricature of me, in little. One thing about him struck me forcibly and most unpleasantly. He was covered all over with a fuzzy, greenish mold such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. The sight of it was nauseating. He stepped along with a chipper air and flung himself into a doll's chair in a very free and easy way without waiting to be asked. He tossed his hat into the wastebasket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl from the tobacco box at his side and said to me in a tone of perk command, give me a match. I blushed to the roots of my hair, partly with indignation, but mainly because it somehow seemed to me that this whole performance was very like an exaggeration of conduct which I myself had sometimes been guilty of in my intercourse with familiar friends. But never, never with strangers I observed to myself. I wanted to kick the pygmy into the fire, but some incomprehensible sense of being legally and legitimately under his authority forced me to obey his order. He applied the match to the pipe, took a contemplative whiff or two and remarked in an irritatingly familiar way. Seems to me it's devilish odd weather for this time of year. I flushed again and in anger and humiliation as before, for the language was hardly an exaggeration of some that I have uttered in my day and moreover was delivered in a tone of voice and with an exasperating drawl that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of my style. Now, there is nothing I am quite so sensitive about as a mocking imitation of my drawing infirmity of speech. I spoke up sharply and said, Look here, you miserable ash-cat. You will have to give a little more attention to your manners or I will throw you out of the window. The mannequin smiled, a smile of malicious content and security, puffed a whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me and said with a still more elaborate drawl, Come, go gently now. Don't put on too many airs with your batters. This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me too for a moment. The pygmy contemplated me a while with his weasel eyes and then said in a peculiarly sneering way, You turned a tramp away from your door this morning. I said crustily, Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't. How do you know? Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know. Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door. What of it? Oh, nothing. Nothing in particular. Only, you lied to him. I didn't. That is, I, yes, but you did. You, you, you lied to him. I felt a guilty pang. In truth I had felt it forty times before that tramp had traveled a block from my door. But still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered. So I said, This is baseless impertinence, I said to the tramp. There, wait. You were about to tell a lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook was gone downtown and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door and plenty of provisions behind her. This astonishing accuracy silenced me and it filled me with wondering speculations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information. Of course he could have called the conversation from the tramp, but by what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook? Now the dwarf spoke again. It was rather pitiful, rather small in you to refuse to read that poor young woman's manuscript the other day and give her an opinion as to its literary value. And she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now, wasn't it? I felt like a cur and I had felt so every time the thing had recurred to my mind. I may as well confess I flushed hotly and said, Look here! Have you nothing better to do than prowl around prying into other people's business? Did that girl tell you that? Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is you did that contemptible thing and you felt ashamed of it afterwards. Aha! You feel ashamed of it now. This was a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded. I told that girl in the kindest gentlest way that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its inflection upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision anyway. Yes, you said all that, so you did. You juggling small-sulled shuffler. And yet, when a happy hopefulness faded out of that poor girl's face, when you saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the scrawl she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at, so ashamed of her daring now, so proud of it before. When you saw the gladness go out of her eyes and the tears come there, when she crept away so humbly, who had come so, ah, peace, peace, peace, blister your merciless tongue. Haven't all these thoughts tortured me enough without your coming here to fetch them back again? Remorse, remorse, it seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out of me. And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy and contempt and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again. Every sentence was an accusation and every accusation a truth. Every clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision. Every slow-dropping word burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed. He reminded me of how I had disloyaly allowed old friends to be traduced in my hearing and been too craven to utter a word in their defense. He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done, of many which I had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons, of some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept from the performance by fear of consequence only. With exquisite cruelty he recalled to my mind item by item wrongs and unkindnesses I had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead. Who died thinking of those injuries maybe and grieving over them, he added by way of poison to the stab. For instance, said he, and take the case of your younger brother when you two were boys together many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not able to shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong and abuse if he might only be with you, patient under these injuries, so long as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you have of him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you. You pledged your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should come to him. And then giggling and choking over the rare fun of the joke, you led him to a brook thinly glazed with ice and pushed him in. And how you did laugh. Man, you will never forget the gentle, reproachful look he gave you as he struggled sheath. If you live a thousand years. Oh, you see it now. You see it now. Beast, I have seen it a million times and I shall see it a million more. And may you rot away piecemeal and suffer till doomsday what I suffer now for bringing it back to me again. The dwarf chuckled contentedly and went on with his accusing history of my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state and suffered in silence under the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me a sudden rouse. Two months ago on a Tuesday you woke up away in the night and felt a thinking with shame about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours toward a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains in the winter of 1800 and, stop a moment devil, stop! Do you mean to tell me that even my very thoughts are not hidden from you? It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the thoughts I have just mentioned? If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again. Look here, friend, look me in the eye. Who are you? Well, who do you think? I think you are Satan himself. I think you are the devil. No. No. Then who can you be? Would you really like to know? Indeed I would. Well, I am your conscience. In an instant I was ablaze of joy and exaltation. I sprang at the creature, roaring, Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times that you were tangible and I could get my hands on your throat once. Oh, but I will wreak a deadly vengeance on— Folly! Lightning does not move more quickly than my conscience did. He darted aloft so suddenly that in the moment my fingers clutched the empty air he was already perched on the top of the high bookcase with his thumb at his nose in token with his thumb at his nose in token. I flung the poker at him and missed. I fired the boot jack. In a blind rage I flew from place to place and snatched and hurled any missile that came handy. The storm of books, ink stands, and chunks of coal gloomed the air and beat about the mannequin's perch relentlessly. But all to no purpose, the nimble figure dodged every shot and not only that, but burst into a cackle of sarcastic and triumphant laughter as I sat down exhausted. While I puffed and snatched, exhausted. While I puffed and gasped with fatigue and excitement, my conscience talked to this effect. My good slave! You are curiously witless. No. I mean characteristically so. In truth you are always consistent, always yourself, always an ass. Otherwise it must have occurred to you that if you attempted this murder with a sad heart and a heavy conscience I would droop under the burdening in influence instantly. Fool! I should have weighed a ton and could not have budged from the floor, but instead you are so cheerfully anxious to kill me that your conscience is as light as a feather. Hence I am away, up here, out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary sort of fool, but you. Puh! I would have given anything then to be heavy-hearted so that I could get this person down from there and take his life. But I could no more be heavy-hearted over such a desire than I could have for its accomplishment. So I could only look longingly up at my master and rave at the ill luck that denied me a heavy conscience, the one and only time that I had ever wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I got amusing over the hour's strange adventure, and of course my human curiosity began to work. I set myself to framing in my mind some questions for this fiend to answer. Just then one of my boys entered, leaving the door open behind him and exclaimed, My! What's been going on here? The bookcase is all one riddle of I sprang up in consternation and shouted, Out of this! Hurry! Jump! Fly! Shut the door! Quick or my conscience will get away! The door slammed, too, and I locked it. I glanced up and was grateful to the bottom of my heart to see that my owner was still my prisoner. I said, Hang you. I might have lost you. Children are the heedless list of creatures, but look here, friend. The boy did not seem to notice you at all. How is that? For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but you. I made a mental note of that piece of information with a good deal of satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now if I got a chance, and no one would know it. But this very reflection made me so light-hearted that my conscience could hardly keep his seat but was like to float aloft toward the ceiling of a balloon. I said presently, calm my conscience. Let us be friendly. Let us fly a flag of truce awhile. I am suffering to ask you some questions. Very well. Begin. Well, then, in the first place, why were you never visible to me before? Because you never asked to see me before, that is, you never asked in the right spirit and the proper form before. You were just in the right spirit when, when you called for your most pitiless enemy, I was that person by a very large majority, though you did not suspect it. Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and blood? No, it only made me visible to you. I am unsubstantial, just as other spirits are. This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving. If he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him? But I dissembled and said persuasively, a conscience. It isn't sociable of you to keep at such a distance. Come down and take another smoke. This was answered with a look that was full of derision and with this observation added. Come where you can get at me and kill me. The invitation is declined with thanks. All right, I said to myself, so it seems a spirit can be killed after all. There will be one spirit lacking in this world presently or I don't know. Then I said aloud, friend. There, wait a bit. I am not your friend. I am your enemy. I am not your equal. I am your master. Call me lord, if you please. You are too familiar. I don't like such titles. I am willing to call you sir, that is as far as we will have no argument about this. Just obey. That is all. Go on with your chatter. Very well, my lord. Since nothing but my lord will suit you, I was going to ask you how long you will be visible to me. Always. I broke out with strong indignation. This is simply an outrage. That is what I think of it. You have dogged and dogged and dogged me all the days of my life invisible. That was misery enough. Now to have such a looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow while the rest of my days is an intolerable prospect. My lord, make the most of it. My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was when you made me visible. It gives me an inconceivable advantage. Now I can look you straight in the eye and call you names and leer at you, cheer at you, sneer at you. And you know what eloquence there is in visible gesture and expression, more especially when the effect is heightened by audible speech. I shall always address you hence in sniveling drawl, baby. I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord said, Come, come, remember the flag of truce. Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil, and you try it too for a novelty. The idea of a civil conscience. It is a good joke, an excellent joke. All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, blinding, excruable savages. Yes, and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other. Destruction catch the lot of them, I say. I would trade mine for the smallpox and seven kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance. Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can't haul a man over the coals once for an offense, and then let him alone? Why is it that it wants to over and ever about the same old thing? There is no sense in that, and no reason in it. I think a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the very dirt itself. Well, we like it. That's suffices. Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a man? That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this reply. No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because it is our trade. The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely disinterested agents. We are appointed by authority and haven't anything to say in the matter. We obey orders and leave the consequences where they belong. But I am willing to admit this much. We do crowd the orders of trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time. We enjoy it. We are instructed to remind a man a few times of an error, of a sensitive nature. Oh, but do we haze him? I have consciences to come all the way from China and Russia to see a person of that kind put through his paces on a special occasion. Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally crippled a mulatto baby. The news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit another sin if the consciences didn't flock from all over the earth to enjoy the fun and eat hours without eating or sleeping, and then blew his brains out. The child was perfectly well again in three weeks. Well, you are a precious crew, not to put it too strong. I think I begin to see now why you have always been a trifle inconsistent with me. In your anxiety to get all the juice you can out of a sin, you make a man repent in it three or four different ways. For instance, you found fault yesterday that I told to tramp the square truth, to wit that it being regarded as bad citizenship to encourage vagrancy, I would give him nothing. What did you do then? Why, you made me say to myself, ah, it would have been so much kinder and more blameless to ease him off with a little white lie and send him away feeling that if he could not have bread the gentle treatment was at least something to be done. But I had fed a tramp and fed him freely supposing it a virtuous act. Straight off you said, oh false citizen to have fed a tramp, and I suffered as usual. I gave a tramp work, you objected to it, after the contract was made of course you never speak up beforehand. Next I refused a tramp work, you objected to that. Next I proposed to kill a tramp at any time. I sent the next tramp away with my benediction. And I wish you may live as long as I do if you didn't make me smart all night again because I didn't kill him. Is there any way of satisfying that malignant invention which is called a conscience? Ha! This is luxury. Go on. But come now, answer me that question. Is there any way? Well, none that I propose I don't care what act you may turn your hand to. I can straight away whisper a word in your ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my business and my joy to make you repent of everything you do. If you have fooled away any opportunities it was not intentional. I beg to assure you it was not intentional. Don't worry, you haven't missed a trick that I know of. I never did a thing in all my life virtuous or otherwise that I didn't repent of in twenty-four hours. Last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon. My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty dollars. I repented of that and reduced it a hundred. Repented of that and reduced it another hundred. Repented of that and reduced it another hundred. Repented of that and reduced the remaining fifty to twenty-five. Repented of that and came down to fifteen. Repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a half. When the plate came around at last I repented once more and contributed ten cents. Well, when I got home I did wish to goodness I had that ten cents back again. You never did let me get through a charity sermon without having something to sweat about. Oh, and I never shall. I never shall. You can always depend on me. I think so. Many and many's the restless night I've wanted to take you by the neck if I could only get hold of you now. Yes, no doubt, but I am not an ass. I am only the saddle of an ass. But go on, go on. You entertain me more than I like to confess. I am glad of that. You will not mind my lying a little to keep in practice. Look here. Not to be too personal. I think you are about the shabbiest and most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other people for I should die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed monkey of a conscience as you are. Now, if you were five or six feet high and oh, come, who is to blame? I don't know. Why, you are nobody else. Confound you I wasn't consulted about your personal appearance. I don't care. You had a good deal to do with it nevertheless. When you were eight or nine years old I was seven feet high and as pretty as a picture. I wish you had died young. So, you have grown the wrong way, have you? Some of us grow one way and some the other. You had a large conscience once. If you have a small conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it. However, both of us are to blame. You and I. You see, you used to be conscientious about a great many things. Morbidly so, I may say. It was a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well, I took a great interest in my work and I so enjoyed the anguish which certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with that I kept pelting you until I rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of course, I began to lose ground then and shrivel a little. Diminish in stature, get moldy and grow deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly you fastened on to those particular sins till it last the place on my person that represents those vices became as callous as shark skin. Take smoking for instance. I played that card a little too long and I lost. When people plead with you at this late date to quit that vice, that old callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all over like a shirt of mail. It exerts a mysterious smothering effect and presently I, your faithful hater, your devoted conscience go sound asleep. Sound? It is no name for it. I couldn't hear it thunder at such a time. You have some few other vices, perhaps 80 or maybe 90 that affect me in much the same way. This is flattering. You must be asleep a good part of your time. Yes, of late years I should be asleep all the time but for the help I get. Who helps you? Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience I am acquainted with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my friend to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his own and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal consolation. My field of usefulness is tramps and budding authorises and that line of goods now. But don't you worry. I'll hurry you on theirs while they last. Just you put your trust in me. I think I can but if you had only been good enough to mention these facts some thirty years ago I should have turned my particular attention to sin and I think that by this time I should have a style of conscience I am pining for. If I only had you shrunk down to a homeopathic pill and could get my hands on you would I put you in a glass case for a keepsake? No, sir. I would give you to a yellow dog. That is where you ought to be. You and all your tribe. You are not fit to be in society in my opinion. Now another question. I am here and would they be visible to me? Certainly not. I suppose I ought to have known that without asking but no matter you can describe them. Tell me about my neighbor Thompson's conscience please. Very well I know him intimately have known him many years. I knew him when he was eleven feet high and a faultless figure but he is very pasty and tough and miss sleeps in a cigar box. Likely enough there are a few smaller meaner men in this region than Hugh Thompson. Do you know Robinson's conscience? Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet high. Used to be a blonde is now a brunette but still shapely and comely. Well Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom Smith's conscience? I have known him from childhood. He was thirteen inches high and rather sluggish when he was thirty-seven feet at that age. He is thirty-seven feet high now and the stateliest figure in America. His legs are still wracked with growing pains but he has a good time nevertheless. Never sleeps. He is the most active and energetic member of the New England Conscience Club. He is president of it. Night and day you can find him pegging away at Smith. Panting with him imagine that the most innocent little thing he does is an odious sin and then he sets to work and almost tortures the soul out of him about it. Smith is the noblest man in all this section and the purest and yet is always breaking his heart because he cannot be good. Only a conscience could find pleasure in heaping agony upon a spirit like that. Do you know the conscience of that publisher who once stole some sketches of mine for a series of his and then left me to pay the law expenses I had to incur in order to choke him off? Yes. He has a wide fame. He was exhibited a month ago with some other antiquities for the benefit of a recent member of the cabinet's conscience that was starving in exile. He came by pretending to be the conscience of an editor and got in for half-price by representing myself to be the conscience of a clergyman. However, the publisher's conscience which was to have been the main feature of the entertainment was a failure as an exhibition. He was there but what of that? The management had provided a microscope with a magnifying power of only 30,000 diameters and so stair. I opened the door and my Aunt Mary burst into the room. It was a joyful meeting and a cheery bombardment of questions and answers concerning family matters ensued. By and by my aunt said, but I am going to abuse you a little now. You promised me the day I saw you last that you would look after the needs of the poor family around the corner as faithfully as I had done it myself. I had thought of that family a second time and now such a splintering pang of guilt shot through me. I glanced up at my conscience. Plainly my heavy heart was affecting him. His body was drooping forward. He seemed about to fall from the bookcase. My aunt continued, and think how you have neglected my poor protege at the alms house. You dear hard-hearted promise breaker. As sharper and stronger, my conscience began to sway heavily back and forth. And when my aunt after a little pause said in a grieved tone, since you never once went to see her, maybe it will not distress you now to know that the poor child died months ago utterly friendless and forsaken. My conscience could no longer bear up under the weight of my sufferings, but tumbled headlong from his high perch and struck frantic efforts to get up. In a fever of expectancy I sprang to the door, locked it, placed my back against it, and bent a watchful gaze upon my struggling master. Already my fingers were itching to begin their murderous work. Oh, what can be the matter, exclaimed my aunt, shrinking from me and following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in short, quick not look so. You you appall me. What can the matter be? What is it you see? Why do you stare so? Why do you work your fingers like that? Peace, woman. I said in a horse whisper, look elsewhere. Pay no attention to me. It is nothing. Nothing. I am often this way. It will pass in a moment. It comes from smoking too much. My breath I was so wrought up. My aunt wrung her hands and said, oh, I knew how it would be. I knew it would come to this at last. Oh, I implore you to crush out that fatal habit while it may yet be time. You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer. My struggling conscience showed signs of weariness. Oh, promise me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco. My conscience began to reel drowsily and grope with his enchanting spectacle. I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you, your reason is discerning you. There is madness in your eye. It flames with frenzy. Oh, hear me, hear me and be saved. See, I plead with you on very knees. As she sank before me, my conscience reeled again and then dropped languidly to the floor, blinking toward me a last supplication for mercy with heavy eyes. Oh, promise or you are lost. Promise and be redeemed. Promise. I can live. With a long drawn sigh my conquered conscience closed his eyes and fell fast asleep. With an exultant shout I sprang past my aunt and in an instant I had my lifelong foe by the throat. After so many years of wanting and longing he was mine at last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the fragments to bits. I cast the bleeding rubbish into the fire and drew into my nostrils the grateful incense of my burnt offering. Forever my conscience was dead. I was a free man. I turned upon my poor aunt who was almost petrified with terror and shouted out of this with your paupers, your charities, your reforms, your pestilent morals. You behold before you a man whose life conflict is done, whose soul is at peace, a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead to suffering, dead to remorse, a man without a conscience. In my joy I spare you and never feel a pang. Fly. She fled. Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss. Unalloyed bliss. Nothing in all the world could persuade me to have a conscience again. I settled all my old outstanding scores and began the world anew. I killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks, all of them on account of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling that interrupted my view. I lived one though not thoroughbred. I believe I have also committed scores of crimes of various kinds and have enjoyed my work exceedingly, whereas it would formerly have broken my heart and turned my hair gray, I have no doubt. In conclusion I wish to state by way of advertisement that medical colleges desiring assorted tramps for scientific purposes either by the gross by chord measurement or per ton will do well to examine the lot in my life. I have no doubt that medical colleges are all selected and prepared by myself and can be had at a low rate because I wish to clear out my stock and get ready for the spring trade. End of the facts concerning the recent carnival of crime in Connecticut by Mark Twain. The Feast by Max Beerbaum This is a LibriVox recording. The hut in which slept the white man was on a clearing between the forest and the river. Silence. The silence murmurs and unquiet of a tropical night brooded over the hut that baked through by the sun sweated a vapor beneath the cynical light of the stars. Mahamo lay rigid and watchful at the hut's mouth. In his upturned eyes and along the polished raiding an illusion of themselves who are illusions. The roofs of the congested trees writhing in some kind of agony private and eternal made tenebrous and shifty silhouettes against the sky like shapes cut out of black paper by maniac who pushes them with his thumb this way and that irritably on a concave surface of blue steel. Resin oozed unseen from the upper branches to the trunks of venomous, frantic and faint. Down below by force of habit the lush herbage went through the farce of growth that farce old and screaming whose trite end is decomposition. Within the hut the form of the white man corpulent and pale was covered with a mosquito net that was itself illusory like everything else only more so. Flying squadrons of mosquitoes inside its meshes flickered and darted over him working hard cohorts of yellow ants disputed him against cohorts of purple ants the two kinds slaying one another in thousands. The battle was undecided when suddenly with no such warning as it gives in some parts of the world the sun blazed up over the horizon turning night into day and the insects vanished back into their camps. The white man ground his knuckles into the corners of his eyes emitting that snore final and quarrelous of a middle-aged brusket flaccid he plucked aside the neck and peered around. The bails of cotton cloth the beads the brass wire the bottles of rum had not been spirited away in the night. So far so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now at liberty to care for his own interest. He regarded himself passing his hands over his skin. Hi, Mahamo he shouted. I've been eaten up. The islander with one of his motions sprang from the ground through the mouth of the hut. Then after a glance he threw high his hands and thanks to such good and evil spirits as had charge of his concerns. In a tone half of reproach half of apology he murmured you white men sometimes say strange things that deceive the heart. Reach me that ammonia bottle do you hear? answered the white man. This is a pretty place you've brought me to. He took a draft. Christmas day. But I suppose it seems all right to you you funny black-a-moor to be here on Christmas day. We are here on the day appointed Mr. Williams. It is a feast day of your people. Mr. Williams had lain back with closed eyes on his mat. Nostalgia was doing duty to him for imagination. He was wafted to a bedroom in Marlborn where in honor of the day the church bells from below a savor of a special cookery. Yes, he said, it is a feast day of my people. Of mine also said the islander humbly. Is it though? But they'll do business first. They must first do that. And they'll bring their ivory with them. Every man will bring ivory answered the islander with a smile gleaming and wide. How soon will they be on their way? While I hope they'll hurry, the sooner we're off this cursed island of yours the better. Take all those things out, Mr. Williams added, pointing to the merchandise, and arrange them neatly, mind you. In certain circumstances it is right that a man be humored in trifles. Mahamo, having born out the merchandise, arranged it very neatly. While Mr. Williams made his warfare implacably and daily, the force from its inmost depth sent forth perpetually its legions of shadows that fell dead in the instant of exposure to the enemy, whose rays heroic and absurd its outpost annihilated. There came from those illuminable depths the equitable rumor of myriads of winged things and crawling things newly roused to the task Mr. Williams issuing from the hut heard it, stood gaping towards it. Is that them? he asked. That is they, the Allender murmured, moving away towards the edge of the forest. Sounds of chanting were now audible accompaniment to the drum. What's that they're singing? asked Mr. Williams. They sing of their business, said Mahamo. Oh, Mr. Williams was slightly singing. It has been stated that Mr. Williams was not imaginative, but a few years of life and climate's alien intemperate had disordered his nerves. There was that in the rhythm of the hem which made bristle his flesh. Suddenly when they were very near, the voices ceased, leaving a legacy of silence more sinister than themselves. And now the black spaces between the trees were it was a view they sang, said Mahamo. Look here, cried Mr. Williams, in his voice of a man not to be trifled with. Look here, if you've he was silenced by the sight of what seemed to be a young sapling sprung up from the ground within a yard of him. A young sapling tremulous with a root of steel. Then a thread-like shadow skimmed the air and another spear came impinging the spear. In their flash through him, even in the thick of the spears, the thought that he would be a grave lost to his employers. This, for Mr. Williams was not less than the goods of a kind easily replaced, was an illusion. It was the last of Mr. Williams' illusions. End of The Feast by Max California and the Old Southwest by Catherine Berry Jetson. The story of how Old Man Above created the world by Shastick and natives in Northern California. Long, long ago, when the world was so new that even the stars were dark, it was very, very flat. Sharreia, Old Man Above, could not see through the dark to the new flat Earth. Neither could he step down to it because it was a large stone. He bored a hole in the sky. Then through the hole, he pushed down masses of ice and snow until a great pyramid rose from the plane. Old Man Above climbed down through the hole he had made in the sky, stepping from cloud to cloud until he could put his foot on top, the mass of ice and snow. Then with one long step, the sun shone through the hole in the sky and began to melt the ice and snow. It made holes in the ice and snow. When it was soft, Sharreia bored with his finger into the Earth, here and there and planted their first trees. Streams from the melting snow watered the new trees and made them grow. Then he gathered the leaves which fell from the trees and blew them away. He took a stick and broke it into pieces. Out of the small end he made fishes and placed them into the mountain streams. Out of the middle of the stick he made all the animals except the grizzly bear. From the big end of the stick came the grizzly bear who was made master of all. Grizzly was large and strong and cunning. So strong was grizzly that the old man above feared the creature he had made. Therefore so he might be safe, Sharreia hollowed out the pyramid of ice and snow as a tipi. There he lived for thousands of snows. The Indians knew he lived there because they could see the smoke curling from the smoke hole of his tipi. When the pale face came the smoke hole. White men call the tipi Mount Shasta. End of the story how old man above created the worlds in the Shastaka natives in Northern California. Miss and Legends of California and the Old Southwest by Katherine Barry Judson. Read by Gemma Benton. In a far off world by Olive Shreiner this is a LibriVox dot org recording by Sean Michael Hogan in a far off world by Olive Shreiner. There is a world in one of the far off stars and things do not happen here as they happen there. In that world were a man and a woman. They had one work and they walked together side by side on many days and were friends and that is a thing that was something in that star world that there is not here. There was a thick wood where the trees grew closest and the stems were interlocked and the summer sun never shone there stood a shrine. In the day all was quiet but at night when the stars shone or the moon glinted on the tree tops and all was quiet below. If one crept here quite alone and knelt on the altar and uncovering one's breast so wounded it that the blood fell down on the altar steps then whatever he who knelt there wished for was granted him and all this happens as I said because it is a far off world and things often happen there as they do not happen here. Now the man and woman walked together and the woman wished well as glinted and the waves of the sea were silvery the woman walked alone to the forest it was dark there the moonlight fell only and little flecks on the dead leaves under her feet and the branches were not a tight overhead farther in it got darker not even a fleck of moonlight shone then she came to the shrine she knelt down before it and prayed there came no answer with a breath with a sharp two edged stone that lay there she wounded it the drops dripped slowly down onto the stone and a voice cried what do you seek she answered there is a man I hold him nearer than anything I would give him the best of all blessings the voice said what is it the girl said I know not but that which is most good for him to have the voice said your prayer is answered he shall have it then she stood up she covered her breast and held the garment tight upon it with her hand and ran out of the forest and the dead leaves fluttered under her feet out in the moonlight the soft air was blowing and the sand glittered on the beach she ran along the smooth shore then suddenly she stood still out across the water there was something moving she faded her eyes and looked it was a boat it was sliding swiftly over the moonlight water out to sea one stood upright in it the face the moonlight did not show but the figure she knew it was passing swiftly it seemed as if no one propelled it the moonlight shimmered to not let her see clearly and the boat was far from shore but it seemed almost as if there was another figure sitting in the stern faster and faster away away she ran along the shore she came no nearer it the garment she had held closed fluttered open she stretched out her arms and the moonlight shone on her long loose hair then a voice beside her whispered what is it she cried with my blood I bought the best of all gifts for him I have come to bring it him he's going from me the voice whispered softly she cried what is it the voice answered it is that he might leave you the girl stood still far out at sea the boat was lost to sight beyond the moonlight sheen the voice spoke softly are thou contented she said I am contented at her feet the waves broke in long ripples softly on the shore end of in a far off world recording by Sean Michael Hogan St. John's Ifenland Canada Jills Cat by E.F. Benson this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Bologna Times Jills Cat by E.F. Benson where Jills Cat came from I have no idea she just came I first set eyes on her one night returning from dinner I found her coiled up in an armchair in the drawing room very fast asleep so with a certain amount of mild though I think justifiable indignation I thereupon opened the door of the room and the door into the garden and advanced upon her clapping my hands and emitting loud and terrible noises in order to drive her out but she merely stretched one paw with extreme laziness looked at me with a half yellow eye as if to say that noise is in deplorably bad taste but I suppose you don't know any better and went to sleep again this would not do it all and though I was sorry to have to do it thus violating the ancient and sacred rites of sanctuary still it was impossible for me to give a home to any cat who might happen to come along so I took her up with both hands as Monsieur Pierre Lotte so justly advises intending to put her bodily out into the garden and shut the door but the moment I touched her she set up a loud teakettle purr and still more than half asleep licked with a rough pink tongue the hand that was near her head now of all the curious qualities which cats possess that of confidence in strangers is one of the rarest and to the stranger who knows anything about them certainly the most disarming most cats would have scurried angrily from the room at the rude noises I had made and woke up all green distressfulness on being touched not so, Jill's cat she just said are you still there? how nice let's go to sleep again at once so I told myself without really believing it that I would definitely drive her away in the morning and left her in possession of her chair but all my instincts told me that she had come to stay and I know that if a cat really makes up its mind to do anything that thing unless you kill it it will do now most cats are absolutely without tact they are obstinate easily bored showing their boredom in a manner which it is impossible to mistake and have the rooted conviction that the whole round world exists in order to amuse and interest them but Jill's cat, so I firmly believe had the tact of all the other cats ever created which accounts for their having none for when the housemaid came into the room next morning to dust Jill's cat gridded her at once as an old and valued friend and went to meet her with little cries of welcome making a poker of her tale the housemaid, in consequence thawed by these well-bred manners took her down into the kitchen to give her a saucer of milk before ejecting her Jill's cat was hungry and with the dainty eagerness of her rays began to lick up her breakfast but halfway through she suddenly froze into stone but for the end of a twitching tale and regarded with the eye of a huntress the wainscotting opposite next moment a mouse was pinned by those velvet paws and in less than another moment there was no mouse at all the tale she did not care about and deposited it as a small token of homage and affection at the feet of the cook then this piece of diplomacy successfully carried through she finished her milk the walls of Jericho, so to speak tottering to their fall at her assault but had Jill's cat known there was a far more critical and hazardous passage still before her for the house was ruled not by me nor by the housemaid nor even by the cook that dispenser of succulents and joy but by Jill and Jill, being young, was capricious and being far more highly born than any of us was proud being also a fox terrier she liked biting she had slept at usual that night on various parts of my bed and me, and came down with me in the morning I had forgotten for the moment all about the cat and entered the dining room for breakfast with Jill circling round me and making short runs at my boots which she had lately taken into her head were enemies of some kind and dangerous to hearth and home there, on the hearth rug neatly arranged round one hind leg stuck up in the middle of her like a flagstaff, sat the cat diligently employed on affairs of the toilette the scurry of her entrance disturbed her evolutions and looking round with a calm and trustful eye she saw Jill probably Jill had never seen a cat before and I had one moment of horrified suspense as to whether the cat would go for Jill or Jill for the cat as the flying of fur or hair seemed eminent and inevitable but Jill's cat was equal more than equal to the occasion and never have I seen the right thing so quickly conceived or so instantaneously performed with one stealthy movement she was underneath a corner of the tablecloth which hung down to the ground and a paw was put gingerly out with little dabs and jerks to entice Jill to begin to play at once now how should that cat have known that a hand concealed under a rug or the corner of a curtain and making known its presence by concealed movements was a thing irresistible to Jill but she did know it and before I could snatch Jill up to avert the impending catastrophe no catastrophe impended any longer and the two were engaged in a gorgeous game of hide and seek behind curtains, table legs vendors, the daily telegraph and chairs where ever in fact there was a possibility of making mysterious and secret stirrings so destiny shapes our ends from that moment the stranger of the night before had entered on a new existence and became Jill's cat in a manner of speaking she had also become Jill's governess for Jill being young was flirtatiously inclined and through the railings of the front garden which gave on to the road behaved in a very vulgar barmaid sort of fashion and drew in I am sorry to use such an expression but I know of none other that fits the case the young gentleman of the neighborhood the railings were too narrow to admit of Jill's squeezing her plump little body through she tried once and stuck and roused the entire parish by the shrillness of her lamentations and she had to content herself with putting her head through and kissing practically any gentleman who came to present himself but Jill's cat a model of respectability instantly stopped these very unladylike proceedings for whenever she observed Jill trotting off particularly to mere error to talk to her friends she would follow and from the vantage ground of the gatepost turned herself into a perfect fury of vindictive rage and by her spitting and swearing distract the gentleman from their love giving them war instead our particular terrier who was a common loafer at Jill's bar was the object of her special versions and the language she thought fit to employ to him was really responsible, I fancy for the blistering of the paint on the gate Jill's cat had a perfect mania for work and her work consisted in catching anything that was alive within three days of her arrival I am convinced there was no mouse left in the house and having cleared the place of them she turned her attention to birds butterflies and snails the work among the birds I regretted but it was quite impossible to stop it since it seemed in grand in her nature that no living thing except ourselves had any right to enter the house or garden it took her some time to discover that snails were alive but that fact once clearly grasped they took their place among the trophies of the chase which were duly presented on the return of the huntress to Jill the cook or me this generosity had its drawbacks for Jill was like other children very fond of collections and was in the habit of concealing small objects of various kinds in the folds of the blanket in her basket thus one day I found there two dead and unfledged birds a snail and a portion of what had once been a white butterfly her work together with various sudden excursions to the garden railing to swear at the dogs of the neighborhood used to take Jill's cat's morning that over she cleaned herself for it was clearly a waste of time to do so until the house work was done and played with Jill till dinner then came the desolating moment of the day for Jill went for her walk and her cat constantly at the window waiting for her return the moment she entered the gate she rushed to meet her and indulge in an extravagant displays of affection evening came and they slept together in Jill's basket after wild romp in which they kicked each other in the face by way of showing their deep and unalterable regard a year passed thus and then occurred an event of time completely puzzled Jill's cat for Jill became the mother of four puppies and in a moment turned from being a rather flighty young woman into a perfect demon of rage and suspicion if anyone approached them even when she was given her food it had to be placed at some distance from her box where she lay with chattering snarling mouth ready to defend her own against any who came near but Jill's cat did not know this and coming into the outhouse where Jill lay after her work was done on the morning the puppies were born ready to play she had to fly for her life and seek refuge on the top of the garden wall where she crouched trembling with fright and indignation and deeply hurt at this outrageous reception never had such a thing occurred it was a bolt from the blue the bottom had fallen out of her universe and she lifted up her voice and how for the anguish of her heart and Jill quivering with rage snarled at her from below for the time Jill's whole nature was changed there were no more excursions to the garden gate to kiss indiscriminate gentlemen she had neither time nor inclination to play with her cat and she was convinced that the world was banded together to work the destruction of her puppies but this fierce access of protective maternity on her part lasted not more than a few days and one afternoon she left the hay-packed box where the puppies lay and trotted across the lawn to where I sat at some little distance off with her cat the latter remembering Jill's unprovoked assault sprang up the trunk of a tree as she approached glared distressfully through the leaves while Jill wind and whimpered below and put herself into engaging postures of play on the grass then step by step still cautiously her cat descended to the lowest branch of the tree and after a long pause there forgot and forgave and took a flying leap at her friend next moment they were kicking each other in the face in the old manner and flying agitated excursions through the flower beds but soon Jill's maternal heart yearned again for the muzzling noses and she ran back to the woodshed then ensued a thrilling piece of animal psychology very slowly the cat followed and at length peeped cautiously in from inside there was dead silence Jill was evidently pondering whether her friend could be trusted then after a pause I heard a little friendly note of welcome and her cat entered so I followed and looked in Jill was lying inside her box the four puppies cuddled up against her and her cat was sitting by it looking with wide and wondering eyes at the phenomenon then she raised one paw gently and delicately and with it just touched the puppies then advancing another step she looked them very gently with the top of a pink tongue and Jill said woof! wasn't it clever of me to have got them and we were all very happy that marriage after all had not cause any separation between old friends so the mysterious bond of sympathy and affection between the two only deepened instead of being broken and Jill's cat became a sort of ant to the puppies true there was one moment of unfounded suspicion on Jill's part when two of the four puppies unaccountably vanished and she was inclined to set it down to her cat but this past she welcomed her friend as joint educator of the young and even allowed the best beloved to go staggering excursions first about the woodshed and later over the whole round of the garden under the protection of his aunt by degrees too the fascination of biting and kicking one's aunt in the face became apparent and I have often seen the whole four of them mingled in one inextricable and struggling mass of paws and open mouths the road just outside the gate was a long straight level much haunted by motor cars it was here that the end came to that strange animal friendship for one day Jill was run over and killed just outside the house the small slain body was brought in and while the grave was being dug in the garden Jill lay on the grass quite still and as she lay there her cat came out of the house and went up to her her work being over engaged and desirous of relaxation but Jill did not seem inclined to play and her cat strolled off again then she returned and sat down by her looking at her and again tried to attract her attention touched her on the nose with her paw and made a faint of running away then as this did not answer she stole off into the bushes and came back carrying a snail in her mouth and was laid by her giving a little cry of appeal but the grave was ready now and they took Jill up and laid her in it and filled in the earth that night I was strolling about the garden and saw something white under the tree where Jill had been buried it was Jill's cat sitting on the grave end of Jill's cat