The WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS, a work which, if it had proceeded from any

other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and

learning, was printed in 1609.

In the mean time the NOVUM ORGANUM was slowly proceeding. Several

distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of that

extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of his

genius.

Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the COGITATA ET VISA, one of the

most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular

volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and

plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it

could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice

conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy contemplations

of the means to procure it."

In 1612 a new edition of the ESSAYS appeared, with additions surpassing

the original collection both in bulk and quality.

Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most

arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty

powers could have achieved, "the reducing and recompiling," to use his

own phrase, "of the laws of England."

To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney-General and

Solicitor-General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for

hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just

described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.

The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of

his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the

regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use

the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, "on such study as was not worthy such a

student."

He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England under

the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History, a

Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to his

Essays. He published the inestimable TREATISE DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM.

Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and

quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:

The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor

bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST JEST-BOOK IN THE WORLD is that which

he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on which

illness had rendered him incapable of serious study.

Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon

Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he was

competent to write the Plays and Poems:

With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of

comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human

being.

The ESSAYS contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no

peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque,

could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the

whole world of knowledge.

His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to

Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread

it, and the armies of the powerful Sultans might repose beneath its

shade.

The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the

mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.

In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord

Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he

adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric.

The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit, so

powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to

tyrannize over the whole man.

There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old

dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a

pathetic instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but

the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.

No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated.

It stopped at the first check from good sense.

In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid

things as strange as any that are described in the ARABIAN TALES . . .

amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more

wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than

the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of

Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet in

his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild--nothing but what sober

reason sanctioned.

Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the NOVUM ORGANUM. . .

. Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only

to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a

revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices,

introduced so many new opinions.

But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which,

without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the

past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years,

all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of

the coming age.

He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it

portable.

His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in

literature.

It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and

each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed

in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any

other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a

mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could

not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have

written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written

this:

The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare

To digg the dust encloased heare:

Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones

And curst be he yt moves my bones.

When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he

ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake

forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor

prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never

notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer

of it in a pie.

XI

Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write

Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so

soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly

seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think

so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No,

no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been

trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be

possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely,

dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance

which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.

I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our

notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and

prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the

glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of

the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of

cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is

base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and

political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares

and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second

hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are

made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't

change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been

taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from

examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can

persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals,

conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and

associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash.

Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with

jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to

disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it.

We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately

afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort

that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass.

I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this

side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief

in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to

disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several

thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid

intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken

several thousand years to convince the same fine race--including every

splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as Satan; it has

taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's

program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to

persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to

bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will

still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes

down from his perch.

We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and

we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those

Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but

there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think of

them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of

chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know

by our reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that

our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the

Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust,

the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the

putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly

down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still

look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep,

deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.

XII

Irreverence

One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what shall

I call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way

they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature

and my dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them

by names of limited reverence--names merely descriptive, never unkind,

never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If THEY would do like

this, they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then--to

proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in these

Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores,

these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these

buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is

detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us.

I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing

is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I

cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent,

except towards the things which were sacred to other people. Am I in the

right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no,

look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the

definition:

IRREVERENCE. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God and

sacred things.

What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is

lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other gods,

and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within

them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000

Hindus or their equivalents back of him.

The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could

restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for OUR Deity and our sacred

things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by the

simple process of spelling HIS deities with capitals the Hindu

confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making

it clearly compulsory upon us to revere HIS gods and HIS sacred things,

and nobody's else. We can't say a word, for he had our own dictionary at

his back, and its decision is final.

This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred

to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2.

whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody

else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably,

whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence by everybody else.

Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and

bandoleers and buccaneers are ALSO trying to crowd in and share the

benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare and

hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If

you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will

presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the ONLY

ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent

toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it

happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless,

and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and

dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business

is it what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right

to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?"

We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the

word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is

to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its

present limits--that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu

sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough,

just as it is.

It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so

because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly,

charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of

self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things

about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant

Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which

Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas

Paine and charge HIM with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because

it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of

mentality to find out what Irreverence really IS.

It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating

the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn

from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no

more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings.

There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare

controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole

matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer,

because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me

with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an

Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-

Prophet-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods found

effective in extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of holy

memory, I shall know how to quiet them.

XIII

Isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated

Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the

first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and

you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the

particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except

one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of

them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the

celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians,

comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists,

historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen,

generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates,

conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers,

explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers,

naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists,

philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers,

painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists,

patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars,

highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons--you can get the

life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just ONE--the most extraordinary

and the most celebrated of them all--Shakespeare!

You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the

rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the

life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed

fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic

life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the most

colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you

can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing

worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even

remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly

commonplace person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader

in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any

consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold in

his grave. We can go to the records and find out the life-history of

every renowned RACE-HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There

are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of

guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that is

worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly

sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There is no

way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been

discovered of getting around its formidable significance.

Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use the

term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived, and

none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays enjoyed

high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity the

world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the

author, and not merely a NOM DE PLUME for another man to hide behind. If

he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and more

solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his good name,

and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will moulder

away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the last

sun goes down.

Mark Twain.

P.S. MARCH 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this

Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare

controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the

Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity

during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not

only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born,

where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried.

I argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers

would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his

death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact

connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been

famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my

native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously

strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and

ingenious and plausible Stratfordolator to get around or explain away.

Today a Hannibal COURIER-POST of recent date has reached me, with an

article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated

person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty

years. I will make an extract from it:

Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude

is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and

as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a

few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the

residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him famous.

His name is associated with every old building that is torn down to make

way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing city, and

with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any possibility

have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into his

stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark Twain Cave, are

now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any opportunity to do

him honor as he had honored her.

So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school with Mark or

were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored with large

audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and condescended to

tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very

extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen to have

been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Becky and Mrs. Clemens,

they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he lived here and

that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all

bad, after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing out the

bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark

Twain" story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his present

fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing

in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold

second and third hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three

years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a fair target, and

let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are

some of his "works" that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as long as

graybeards gather about the fires and begin with, "I've heard father

tell," or possibly, "Once when I." The Mrs. Clemens referred to is my

mother--WAS my mother.

And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper, of date twenty days

ago:

Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock

Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased

was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn," one of the famous characters in Mark

Twain's TOM SAWYER. She had been a member of the Dickason family--the

housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years, and was a highly respected

lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as well

cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near

relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist Church and a Christian

woman.

I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was

graven there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was

at that time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where

she stood, and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her

bare head, her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was

crying. What it was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the

tears that preserved the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child,

I can say that for her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she

forget me, in the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in

Stratford in Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For

he was never famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in

Stratford, and there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he

had been dead a week.

"Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very

intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of

grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.

Isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer

should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a

hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in

the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the

village where he had lived the half of his lifetime?

End of Project Gutenberg's What Is Man?, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

by Mark Twain

Contents:

The Mysterious Stranger

A Fable

Hunting The Deceitful Turkey

The Mcwilliamses And The Burglar Alarm

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

Chapter 1

It was in 1590--winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep;

it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so

forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said

that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in

Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so

taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was

only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.

Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in

the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in

peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from

the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams, and was infinitely

content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted

with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats;

behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from

the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of

towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the

left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding

gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice

overlooked the river, and between it and the hills just spoken of lay a

far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards

and shade trees.

The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a

prince, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for

occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in

five years. When they came it was as if the lord of the world had

arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when

they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which

follows an orgy.

Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with

schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the

Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these

matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to.

Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them

discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would

not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of

them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much

considered.

There may have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, but

there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful

respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He

was the only Christian I have ever known of whom that could be truly

said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they

thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he

could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter

disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but

Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every name he

could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and

often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the

people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing

that something fearful might happen.

Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and

defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He

never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was

speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that

occasion he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at

him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where

it struck and broke.

But it was Father Peter, the other priest, that we all loved best and

were sorriest for. Some people charged him with talking around in

conversation that God was all goodness and would find a way to save all

his poor human children. It was a horrible thing to say, but there was

never any absolute proof that Father Peter said it; and it was out of

character for him to say it, too, for he was always good and gentle and

truthful. He wasn't charged with saying it in the pulpit, where all the

congregation could hear and testify, but only outside, in talk; and it is

easy for enemies to manufacture that. Father Peter had an enemy and a

very powerful one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled old tower up the

valley, and put in his nights studying the stars. Every one knew he

could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there

was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere. But he could also

read any man's life through the stars in a big book he had, and find lost

property, and every one in the village except Father Peter stood in awe

of him. Even Father Adolf, who had defied the Devil, had a wholesome

respect for the astrologer when he came through our village wearing his

tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe with stars on it, carrying

his big book, and a staff which was known to have magic power. The

bishop himself sometimes listened to the astrologer, it was said, for,

besides studying the stars and prophesying, the astrologer made a great

show of piety, which would impress the bishop, of course.

But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer. He denounced him

openly as a charlatan--a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or

powers beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior human being, which

naturally made the astrologer hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It

was the astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the story about

Father Peter's shocking remark and carried it to the bishop. It was said

that Father Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget

denied it and implored the bishop to believe her and spare her old uncle

from poverty and disgrace. But the bishop wouldn't listen. He suspended

Father Peter indefinitely, though he wouldn't go so far as to

excommunicate him on the evidence of only one witness; and now Father

Peter had been out a couple of years, and our other priest, Father Adolf,

had his flock.

Those had been hard years for the old priest and Marget. They had been

favorites, but of course that changed when they came under the shadow of

the bishop's frown. Many of their friends fell away entirely, and the

rest became cool and distant. Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when

the trouble came, and she had the best head in the village, and the most

in it. She taught the harp, and earned all her clothes and pocket money

by her own industry. But her scholars fell off one by one now; she was

forgotten when there were dances and parties among the youth of the

village; the young fellows stopped coming to the house, all except

Wilhelm Meidling--and he could have been spared; she and her uncle were

sad and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace, and the sunshine was gone

out of their lives. Matters went worse and worse, all through the two

years. Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder and harder to get.

And now, at last, the very end was come. Solomon Isaacs had lent all the

money he was willing to put on the house, and gave notice that to-morrow

he would foreclose.

Chapter 2

Three of us boys were always together, and had been so from the cradle,

being fond of one another from the beginning, and this affection deepened

as the years went on--Nikolaus Bauman, son of the principal judge of the

local court; Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn, the

"Golden Stag," which had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching down to

the riverside, and pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third--Theodor

Fischer, son of the church organist, who was also leader of the village

musicians, teacher of the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune,

sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected by all. We

knew the hills and the woods as well as the birds knew them; for we were

always roaming them when we had leisure--at least, when we were not

swimming or boating or fishing, or playing on the ice or sliding down

hill.

And we had the run of the castle park, and very few had that. It was

because we were pets of the oldest servingman in the castle--Felix

Brandt; and often we went there, nights, to hear him talk about old times

and strange things, and to smoke with him (he taught us that) and to

drink coffee; for he had served in the wars, and was at the siege of

Vienna; and there, when the Turks were defeated and driven away, among

the captured things were bags of coffee, and the Turkish prisoners

explained the character of it and how to make a pleasant drink out of it,

and now he always kept coffee by him, to drink himself and also to

astonish the ignorant with. When it stormed he kept us all night; and

while it thundered and lightened outside he told us about ghosts and

horrors of every kind, and of battles and murders and mutilations, and

such things, and made it pleasant and cozy inside; and he told these

things from his own experience largely. He had seen many ghosts in his

time, and witches and enchanters, and once he was lost in a fierce storm

at midnight in the mountains, and by the glare of the lightning had seen

the Wild Huntsman rage on the blast with his specter dogs chasing after

him through the driving cloud-rack. Also he had seen an incubus once,

and several times he had seen the great bat that sucks the blood from the

necks of people while they are asleep, fanning them softly with its wings

and so keeping them drowsy till they die.

He encouraged us not to fear supernatural things, such as ghosts, and

said they did no harm, but only wandered about because they were lonely

and distressed and wanted kindly notice and compassion; and in time we

learned not to be afraid, and even went down with him in the night to the

haunted chamber in the dungeons of the castle. The ghost appeared only

once, and it went by very dim to the sight and floated noiseless through

the air, and then disappeared; and we scarcely trembled, he had taught us

so well. He said it came up sometimes in the night and woke him by

passing its clammy hand over his face, but it did him no hurt; it only

wanted sympathy and notice. But the strangest thing was that he had seen

angels--actual angels out of heaven--and had talked with them. They had

no wings, and wore clothes, and talked and looked and acted just like any

natural person, and you would never know them for angels except for the

wonderful things they did which a mortal could not do, and the way they

suddenly disappeared while you were talking with them, which was also a

thing which no mortal could do. And he said they were pleasant and

cheerful, not gloomy and melancholy, like ghosts.

It was after that kind of a talk one May night that we got up next

morning and had a good breakfast with him and then went down and crossed

the bridge and went away up into the hills on the left to a woody

hill-top which was a favorite place of ours, and there we stretched out

on the grass in the shade to rest and smoke and talk over these strange

things, for they were in our minds yet, and impressing us. But we

couldn't smoke, because we had been heedless and left our flint and steel

behind.

Soon there came a youth strolling toward us through the trees, and he sat

down and began to talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew us. But we

did not answer him, for he was a stranger and we were not used to

strangers and were shy of them. He had new and good clothes on, and was

handsome and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was easy and

graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy and awkward and diffident, like

other boys. We wanted to be friendly with him, but didn't know how to

begin. Then I thought of the pipe, and wondered if it would be taken as

kindly meant if I offered it to him. But I remembered that we had no

fire, so I was sorry and disappointed. But he looked up bright and

pleased, and said:

"Fire? Oh, that is easy; I will furnish it."

I was so astonished I couldn't speak; for I had not said anything. He

took the pipe and blew his breath on it, and the tobacco glowed red, and

spirals of blue smoke rose up. We jumped up and were going to run, for

that was natural; and we did run a few steps, although he was yearningly

pleading for us to stay, and giving us his word that he would not do us

any harm, but only wanted to be friends with us and have company. So we

stopped and stood, and wanted to go back, being full of curiosity and

wonder, but afraid to venture. He went on coaxing, in his soft,

persuasive way; and when we saw that the pipe did not blow up and nothing

happened, our confidence returned by little and little, and presently our

curiosity got to be stronger than our fear, and we ventured back--but

slowly, and ready to fly at any alarm.

He was bent on putting us at ease, and he had the right art; one could

not remain doubtful and timorous where a person was so earnest and simple

and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no, he won us over, and

it was not long before we were content and comfortable and chatty, and

glad we had found this new friend. When the feeling of constraint was

all gone we asked him how he had learned to do that strange thing, and he

said he hadn't learned it at all; it came natural to him--like other

things--other curious things.

"What ones?"

"Oh, a number; I don't know how many."

"Will you let us see you do them?"

"Do--please!" the others said.

"You won't run away again?"

"No--indeed we won't. Please do. Won't you?"

"Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn't forget your promise, you know."

We said we wouldn't, and he went to a puddle and came back with water in

a cup which he had made out of a leaf, and blew upon it and threw it out,

and it was a lump of ice the shape of the cup. We were astonished and

charmed, but not afraid any more; we were very glad to be there, and

asked him to go on and do some more things. And he did. He said he

would give us any kind of fruit we liked, whether it was in season or

not. We all spoke at once;

"Orange!"

"Apple!"

"Grapes!"

"They are in your pockets," he said, and it was true. And they were of

the best, too, and we ate them and wished we had more, though none of us

said so.

"You will find them where those came from," he said, "and everything else

your appetites call for; and you need not name the thing you wish; as

long as I am with you, you have only to wish and find."

And he said true. There was never anything so wonderful and so

interesting. Bread, cakes, sweets, nuts--whatever one wanted, it was

there. He ate nothing himself, but sat and chatted, and did one curious

thing after another to amuse us. He made a tiny toy squirrel out of

clay, and it ran up a tree and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at

us. Then he made a dog that was not much larger than a mouse, and it

treed the squirrel and danced about the tree, excited and barking, and

was as alive as any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from tree

to tree and followed it up until both were out of sight in the forest.

He made birds out of clay and set them free, and they flew away, singing.

At last I made bold to ask him to tell us who he was.

"An angel," he said, quite simply, and set another bird free and clapped

his hands and made it fly away.

A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him say that, and we were afraid

again; but he said we need not be troubled, there was no occasion for us

to be afraid of an angel, and he liked us, anyway. He went on chatting

as simply and unaffectedly as ever; and while he talked he made a crowd

of little men and women the size of your finger, and they went diligently

to work and cleared and leveled off a space a couple of yards square in

the grass and began to build a cunning little castle in it, the women

mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings in pails on their

heads, just as our work-women have always done, and the men laying the

courses of masonry--five hundred of these toy people swarming briskly

about and working diligently and wiping the sweat off their faces as

natural as life. In the absorbing interest of watching those five

hundred little people make the castle grow step by step and course by

course, and take shape and symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed

away and we were quite comfortable and at home again. We asked if we

might make some people, and he said yes, and told Seppi to make some

cannon for the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some halberdiers, with

breastplates and greaves and helmets, and I was to make some cavalry,

with horses, and in allotting these tasks he called us by our names, but

did not say how he knew them. Then Seppi asked him what his own name

was, and he said, tranquilly, "Satan," and held out a chip and caught a

little woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back

where she belonged, and said, "She is an idiot to step backward like that

and not notice what she is about."

It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our work dropped out of our

hands and broke to pieces--a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan

laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said, "Nothing, only it seemed

a strange name for an angel." He asked why.

"Because it's--it's--well, it's his name, you know."

"Yes--he is my uncle."

He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our

hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers

and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, "Don't

you remember?--he was an angel himself, once."

"Yes--it's true," said Seppi; "I didn't think of that."

"Before the Fall he was blameless."

"Yes," said Nikolaus, "he was without sin."

"It is a good family--ours," said Satan; "there is not a better. He is

the only member of it that has ever sinned."

I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was.

You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you

are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is

just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze,

and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be

anywhere but there, not for the world. I was bursting to ask one

question--I had it on my tongue's end and could hardly hold it back--but

I was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness. Satan set an ox down

that he had been making, and smiled up at me and said:

"It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should forgive it if it was. Have I

seen him? Millions of times. From the time that I was a little child a

thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels of

our blood and lineage--to use a human phrase--yes, from that time until

the Fall, eight thousand years, measured as you count time."

"Eight--thousand!"

"Yes." He turned to Seppi, and went on as if answering something that was

in Seppi's mind: "Why, naturally I look like a boy, for that is what I

am. With us what you call time is a spacious thing; it takes a long

stretch of it to grow an angel to full age." There was a question in my

mind, and he turned to me and answered it, "I am sixteen thousand years

old--counting as you count." Then he turned to Nikolaus and said: "No,

the Fall did not affect me nor the rest of the relationship. It was only

he that I was named for who ate of the fruit of the tree and then

beguiled the man and the woman with it. We others are still ignorant of

sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall

abide in that estate always. We--" Two of the little workmen were

quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and

swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked

themselves together in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his

hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away,

wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking

where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any

disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is."

It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances, but we barely noticed

that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had

committed--for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without

palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way. It

made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so

beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to

have him do this cruel thing--ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such

pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened,

telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the

big worlds of our solar systems and of other solar systems far away in

the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that

inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite

of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes, for the wives of the

little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were

crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest was kneeling

there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds and

crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered,

with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down--a

scene which Satan paid no attention to until the small noise of the

weeping and praying began to annoy him, then he reached out and took the

heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all

those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on

talking just the same.

An angel, and kill a priest! An angel who did not know how to do wrong,

and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women

who had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed,

and to think that none of those poor creatures was prepared except the

priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or seen a church. And we

were witnesses; we had seen these murders done and it was our duty to

tell, and let the law take its course.

But he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us

again with that fatal music of his voice. He made us forget everything;

we could only listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves, to do with

us as he would. He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of

looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that

thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand.

Chapter 3

The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew

everything, and he forgot nothing. What another must study, he learned

at a glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he made things live

before you when he told about them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam

created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple

down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life

in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and

he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and

looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was

no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those

visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men

shrieking and supplicating in anguish--why, we could hardly bear it, but

he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an

artificial fire.

And always when he was talking about men and women here on the earth and

their doings--even their grandest and sublimest--we were secretly

ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they and their doings were of

paltry poor consequence; often you would think he was talking about

flies, if you didn't know. Once he even said, in so many words, that our

people down here were quite interesting to him, notwithstanding they were

so dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and

rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around. He said it

in a quite matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as a person

might talk about bricks or manure or any other thing that was of no

consequence and hadn't feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in

my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.

"Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good

manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?"

Any one would have been obliged to like it. It was lovely to look at, it

was so shapely and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all its particulars,

even to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan said we must put

the artillery in place now, and station the halberdiers and display the

cavalry. Our men and horses were a spectacle to see, they were so little

like what they were intended for; for, of course, we had no art in making

such things. Satan said they were the worst he had seen; and when he

touched them and made them alive, it was just ridiculous the way they

acted, on account of their legs not being of uniform lengths. They

reeled and sprawled around as if they were drunk, and endangered

everybody's lives around them, and finally fell over and lay helpless and

kicking. It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful thing to see.

The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a salute, but they were so

crooked and so badly made that they all burst when they went off, and

killed some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan said we would

have a storm now, and an earthquake, if we liked, but we must stand off a

piece, out of danger. We wanted to call the people away, too, but he

said never mind them; they were of no consequence, and we could make

more, some time or other, if we needed them.

A small storm-cloud began to settle down black over the castle, and the

miniature lightning and thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver,

and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall, and all the people

flocked into the castle for shelter. The cloud settled down blacker and

blacker, and one could see the castle only dimly through it; the

lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced the castle and set it

on fire, and the flames shone out red and fierce through the cloud, and

the people came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back,

paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in the

midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the

magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle's

wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight, and

closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred

poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not keep from

crying.

"Don't cry," Satan said; "they were of no value."

"But they are gone to hell!"

"Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more."

It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he was wholly without

feeling, and could not understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and

as gay as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish massacre. And he

was bent on making us feel as he did, and of course his magic

accomplished his desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever he

pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing on that grave, and he

was playing to us on a strange, sweet instrument which he took out of his

pocket; and the music--but there is no music like that, unless perhaps in

heaven, and that was where he brought it from, he said. It made one mad,

for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that

went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was

worship. He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the bliss of

paradise was in it.

Presently he said he must go away on an errand. But we could not bear

the thought of it, and clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and

that pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not go yet, but would

wait a little while and we would sit down and talk a few minutes longer;

and he told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to be known by it

to us alone, but he had chosen another one to be called by in the

presence of others; just a common one, such as people have--Philip Traum.

It sounded so odd and mean for such a being! But it was his decision,

and we said nothing; his decision was sufficient.

We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts began to run on the

pleasure it would be to tell them when I got home, but he noticed those

thoughts, and said:

"No, all these matters are a secret among us four. I do not mind your

trying to tell them, if you like, but I will protect your tongues, and

nothing of the secret will escape from them."

It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be helped, and it cost us a sigh

or two. We talked pleasantly along, and he was always reading our

thoughts and responding to them, and it seemed to me that this was the

most wonderful of all the things he did, but he interrupted my musings

and said:

"No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not wonderful for me. I am

not limited like you. I am not subject to human conditions. I can

measure and understand your human weaknesses, for I have studied them;

but I have none of them. My flesh is not real, although it would seem

firm to your touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit. Father Peter

is coming." We looked around, but did not see any one. "He is not in

sight yet, but you will see him presently."

"Do you know him, Satan?"

"No."

"Won't you talk with him when he comes? He is not ignorant and dull,

like us, and he would so like to talk with you. Will you?"

"Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on my errand after a little.

There he is now; you can see him. Sit still, and don't say anything."

We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching through the chestnuts. We

three were sitting together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of us in

the path. Father Peter came slowly along with his head down, thinking,

and stopped within a couple of yards of us and took off his hat and got

out his silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face and looking

as if he were going to speak to us, but he didn't. Presently he

muttered, "I can't think what brought me here; it seems as if I were in

my study a minute ago--but I suppose I have been dreaming along for an

hour and have come all this stretch without noticing; for I am not myself

in these troubled days." Then he went mumbling along to himself and

walked straight through Satan, just as if nothing were there. It made us

catch our breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out, the way you

nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something

mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast.

Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said:

"It is as I told you--I am only a spirit."

"Yes, one perceives it now," said Nikolaus, "but we are not spirits. It

is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at

us, but he didn't seem to see us."

"No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so."

It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these

romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he

sat, looking just like anybody--so natural and simple and charming, and

chatting along again the same as ever, and--well, words cannot make you

understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing

that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell

about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was

back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He

had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try

to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one.

But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and

such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up

your drooping pride--no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same

old indifferent way--just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and

such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one

way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as

we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions

are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or

not.

Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and

poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together--just a brick-pile--I

was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so

much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a

moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such a strange

question. Then he said:

"The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and

an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse

that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the difference between

Caesar and this?"

I said, "One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the

interval between them are not comparable."

"You have answered your own question," he said. "I will expand it. Man

is made of dirt--I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum

of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow;

he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the

Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the

Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by

itself."

He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at

that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely

knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about

it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest

finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it.

For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then

Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a

cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some

very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was

telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails

and set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting on the

fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his

cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that

picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly

time. By and by he said:

"I am going on my errand now."

"Don't!" we all said. "Don't go; stay with us. You won't come back."

"Yes, I will; I give you my word."

"When? To-night? Say when."

"It won't be long. You will see."

"We like you."

"And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine to see.

Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let

you see me do it."

He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and thinned

away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You

could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see things through a

soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed the delicate iridescent

colors of the bubble, and along with them was that thing shaped like a

window-sash which you always see on the globe of the bubble. You have

seen a bubble strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or three

times before it bursts. He did that. He sprang--touched the grass

--bounded--floated along--touched again--and so on, and presently

exploded--puff! and in his place was vacancy.

It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We did not say anything,

but sat wondering and dreaming and blinking; and finally Seppi roused up

and said, mournfully sighing:

"I suppose none of it has happened."

Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.

I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the same cold fear that

was in my own mind. Then we saw poor old Father Peter wandering along

back, with his head bent down, searching the ground. When he was pretty

close to us he looked up and saw us, and said, "How long have you been

here, boys?"

"A little while, Father."

"Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can help me. Did you come up

by the path?"

"Yes, Father."

"That is good. I came the same way. I have lost my wallet. There

wasn't much in it, but a very little is much to me, for it was all I had.

I suppose you haven't seen anything of it?"

"No, Father, but we will help you hunt."

"It is what I was going to ask you. Why, here it is!"

We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right where Satan stood when he

began to melt--if he did melt and it wasn't a delusion. Father Peter

picked it up and looked very much surprised.

"It is mine," he said, "but not the contents. This is fat; mine was

flat; mine was light; this is heavy." He opened it; it was stuffed as

full as it could hold with gold coins. He let us gaze our fill; and of

course we did gaze, for we had never seen so much money at one time

before. All our mouths came open to say "Satan did it!" but nothing came

out. There it was, you see--we couldn't tell what Satan didn't want

told; he had said so himself.

"Boys, did you do this?"

It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he thought what

a foolish question it was.

"Who has been here?"

Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so for a moment, because we

couldn't say "Nobody," for it wouldn't be true, and the right word didn't

seem to come; then I thought of the right one, and said it:

"Not a human being."

"That is so," said the others, and let their mouths go shut.

"It is not so," said Father Peter, and looked at us very severely. "I

came by here a while ago, and there was no one here, but that is nothing;

some one has been here since. I don't mean to say that the person didn't

pass here before you came, and I don't mean to say you saw him, but some

one did pass, that I know. On your honor--you saw no one?"

"Not a human being."

"That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the truth."

He began to count the money on the path, we on our knees eagerly helping

to stack it in little piles.

"It's eleven hundred ducats odd!" he said. "Oh dear! if it were only

mine--and I need it so!" and his voice broke and his lips quivered.

"It is yours, sir!" we all cried out at once, "every heller!"

"No--it isn't mine. Only four ducats are mine; the rest...!" He fell to

dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing some of the coins in his hands,

and forgot where he was, sitting there on his heels with his old gray

head bare; it was pitiful to see. "No," he said, waking up, "it isn't

mine. I can't account for it. I think some enemy... it must be a

trap."

Nikolaus said: "Father Peter, with the exception of the astrologer you

haven't a real enemy in the village--nor Marget, either. And not even a

half-enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you a

mean turn. I'll ask you if that's so or not?"

He couldn't get around that argument, and it cheered him up. "But it

isn't mine, you see--it isn't mine, in any case."

He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn't be sorry, but

glad, if anybody would contradict him.

"It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it. Aren't we, boys?"

"Yes, we are--and we'll stand by it, too."

"Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me; you do, indeed. If I had

only a hundred-odd ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and

we've no home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow. And that four

ducats is all we've got in the--"

"It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take it--we are bail that

it's all right. Aren't we, Theodor? Aren't we, Seppi?"

We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the shabby old

wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would use two hundred

of it, for his house was good enough security for that, and would put the

rest at interest till the rightful owner came for it; and on our side we

must sign a paper showing how he got the money--a paper to show to the

villagers as proof that he had not got out of his troubles dishonestly.

Chapter 4

It made immense talk next day, when Father Peter paid Solomon Isaacs in

gold and left the rest of the money with him at interest. Also, there

was a pleasant change; many people called at the house to congratulate

him, and a number of cool old friends became kind and friendly again;

and, to top all, Marget was invited to a party.

And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the whole circumstance just

as it happened, and said he could not account for it, only it was the

plain hand of Providence, so far as he could see.

One or two shook their heads and said privately it looked more like the

hand of Satan; and really that seemed a surprisingly good guess for

ignorant people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around and tried to

coax us boys to come out and "tell the truth;" and promised they wouldn't

ever tell, but only wanted to know for their own satisfaction, because

the whole thing was so curious. They even wanted to buy the secret, and

pay money for it; and if we could have invented something that would

answer--but we couldn't; we hadn't the ingenuity, so we had to let the

chance go by, and it was a pity.

We carried that secret around without any trouble, but the other one, the

big one, the splendid one, burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to

get out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people with it. But we

had to keep it in; in fact, it kept itself in. Satan said it would, and

it did. We went off every day and got to ourselves in the woods so that

we could talk about Satan, and really that was the only subject we

thought of or cared anything about; and day and night we watched for him

and hoped he would come, and we got more and more impatient all the time.

We hadn't any interest in the other boys any more, and wouldn't take part

in their games and enterprises. They seemed so tame, after Satan; and

their doings so trifling and commonplace after his adventures in

antiquity and the constellations, and his miracles and meltings and

explosions, and all that.

During the first day we were in a state of anxiety on account of one

thing, and we kept going to Father Peter's house on one pretext or

another to keep track of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it

would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money. If it did--But it

didn't. At the end of the day no complaint had been made about it, so

after that we were satisfied that it was real gold, and dropped the

anxiety out of our minds.

There was a question which we wanted to ask Father Peter, and finally we

went there the second evening, a little diffidently, after drawing

straws, and I asked it as casually as I could, though it did not sound as

casual as I wanted, because I didn't know how:

"What is the Moral Sense, sir?"

He looked down, surprised, over his great spectacles, and said, "Why, it

is the faculty which enables us to distinguish good from evil."

It threw some light, but not a glare, and I was a little disappointed,

also to some degree embarrassed. He was waiting for me to go on, so, in

default of anything else to say, I asked, "Is it valuable?"

"Valuable? Heavens! lad, it is the one thing that lifts man above the

beasts that perish and makes him heir to immortality!"

This did not remind me of anything further to say, so I got out, with the

other boys, and we went away with that indefinite sense you have often

had of being filled but not fatted. They wanted me to explain, but I was

tired.

We passed out through the parlor, and there was Marget at the spinnet

teaching Marie Lueger. So one of the deserting pupils was back; and an

influential one, too; the others would follow. Marget jumped up and ran

and thanked us again, with tears in her eyes--this was the third time

--for saving her and her uncle from being turned into the street, and we

told her again we hadn't done it; but that was her way, she never could

be grateful enough for anything a person did for her; so we let her have

her say. And as we passed through the garden, there was Wilhelm Meidling

sitting there waiting, for it was getting toward the edge of the evening,

and he would be asking Marget to take a walk along the river with him

when she was done with the lesson. He was a young lawyer, and succeeding

fairly well and working his way along, little by little. He was very

fond of Marget, and she of him. He had not deserted along with the

others, but had stood his ground all through. His faithfulness was not

lost on Marget and her uncle. He hadn't so very much talent, but he was

handsome and good, and these are a kind of talents themselves and help

along. He asked us how the lesson was getting along, and we told him it

was about done. And maybe it was so; we didn't know anything about it,

but we judged it would please him, and it did, and didn't cost us

anything.

Chapter 5

On the fourth day comes the astrologer from his crumbling old tower up

the valley, where he had heard the news, I reckon. He had a private talk

with us, and we told him what we could, for we were mightily in dread of

him. He sat there studying and studying awhile to himself; then he

asked:

"How many ducats did you say?"

"Eleven hundred and seven, sir."

Then he said, as if he were talking to himself: "It is ver-y singular.

Yes... very strange. A curious coincidence." Then he began to ask

questions, and went over the whole ground from the beginning, we

answering. By and by he said: "Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a

large sum."

"Seven," said Seppi, correcting him.

"Oh, seven, was it? Of course a ducat more or less isn't of consequence,

but you said eleven hundred and six before."

It would not have been safe for us to say he was mistaken, but we knew he

was. Nikolaus said, "We ask pardon for the mistake, but we meant to say

seven."

"Oh, it is no matter, lad; it was merely that I noticed the discrepancy.

It is several days, and you cannot be expected to remember precisely.

One is apt to be inexact when there is no particular circumstance to

impress the count upon the memory."

"But there was one, sir," said Seppi, eagerly.

"What was it, my son?" asked the astrologer, indifferently.

"First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in turn, and all made it

the same--eleven hundred and six. But I had slipped one out, for fun,

when the count began, and now I slipped it back and said, 'I think there

is a mistake--there are eleven hundred and seven; let us count again.'

We did, and of course I was right. They were astonished; then I told how

it came about."

The astrologer asked us if this was so, and we said it was.

"That settles it," he said. "I know the thief now. Lads, the money was

stolen."

Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled, and wondering what he

could mean. In about an hour we found out; for by that time it was all

over the village that Father Peter had been arrested for stealing a great

sum of money from the astrologer. Everybody's tongue was loose and

going. Many said it was not in Father Peter's character and must be a

mistake; but the others shook their heads and said misery and want could

drive a suffering man to almost anything. About one detail there were no

differences; all agreed that Father Peter's account of how the money came

into his hands was just about unbelievable--it had such an impossible

look. They said it might have come into the astrologer's hands in some

such way, but into Father Peter's, never! Our characters began to suffer

now. We were Father Peter's only witnesses; how much did he probably pay

us to back up his fantastic tale? People talked that kind of talk to us

pretty freely and frankly, and were full of scoffings when we begged them

to believe really we had told only the truth. Our parents were harder on

us than any one else. Our fathers said we were disgracing our families,

and they commanded us to purge ourselves of our lie, and there was no

limit to their anger when we continued to say we had spoken true. Our

mothers cried over us and begged us to give back our bribe and get back

our honest names and save our families from shame, and come out and

honorably confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed that we

tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all--but no, it wouldn't come

out. We were hoping and longing all the time that Satan would come and

help us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of him.

Within an hour after the astrologer's talk with us, Father Peter was in

prison and the money sealed up and in the hands of the officers of the

law. The money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs said he had not touched

it since he had counted it; his oath was taken that it was the same

money, and that the amount was eleven hundred and seven ducats. Father

Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical court, but our other priest,

Father Adolf, said an ecclesiastical court hadn't jurisdiction over a

suspended priest. The bishop upheld him. That settled it; the case

would go to trial in the civil court. The court would not sit for some

time to come. Wilhelm Meidling would be Father Peter's lawyer and do the

best he could, of course, but he told us privately that a weak case on

his side and all the power and prejudice on the other made the outlook

bad.

So Marget's new happiness died a quick death. No friends came to condole

with her, and none were expected; an unsigned note withdrew her

invitation to the party. There would be no scholars to take lessons.

How could she support herself? She could remain in the house, for the

mortgage was paid off, though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs

had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present. Old Ursula, who was

cook, chambermaid, housekeeper, laundress, and everything else for Father

Peter, and had been Marget's nurse in earlier years, said God would

provide. But she said that from habit, for she was a good Christian.

She meant to help in the providing, to make sure, if she could find a

way.

We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show friendliness for her, but

our parents were afraid of offending the community and wouldn't let us.

The astrologer was going around inflaming everybody against Father Peter,

and saying he was an abandoned thief and had stolen eleven hundred and

seven gold ducats from him. He said he knew he was a thief from that

fact, for it was exactly the sum he had lost and which Father Peter

pretended he had "found."

In the afternoon of the fourth day after the catastrophe old Ursula

appeared at our house and asked for some washing to do, and begged my

mother to keep this secret, to save Marget's pride, who would stop this

project if she found it out, yet Marget had not enough to eat and was

growing weak. Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed it; and she

ate of the food that was offered her like a starving person, but could

not be persuaded to carry any home, for Marget would not eat charity

food. She took some clothes down to the stream to wash them, but we saw

from the window that handling the bat was too much for her strength; so

she was called back and a trifle of money offered her, which she was

afraid to take lest Marget should suspect; then she took it, saying she

would explain that she found it in the road. To keep it from being a lie

and damning her soul, she got me to drop it while she watched; then she

went along by there and found it, and exclaimed with surprise and joy,

and picked it up and went her way. Like the rest of the village, she

could tell every-day lies fast enough and without taking any precautions

against fire and brimstone on their account; but this was a new kind of

lie, and it had a dangerous look because she hadn't had any practice in

it. After a week's practice it wouldn't have given her any trouble. It

is the way we are made.

I was in trouble, for how would Marget live? Ursula could not find a

coin in the road every day--perhaps not even a second one. And I was

ashamed, too, for not having been near Marget, and she so in need of

friends; but that was my parents' fault, not mine, and I couldn't help

it.

I was walking along the path, feeling very down-hearted, when a most

cheery and tingling freshening-up sensation went rippling through me, and

I was too glad for any words, for I knew by that sign that Satan was by.

I had noticed it before. Next moment he was alongside of me and I was

telling him all my trouble and what had been happening to Marget and her

uncle. While we were talking we turned a curve and saw old Ursula

resting in the shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in her

lap and was petting it. I asked her where she got it, and she said it

came out of the woods and followed her; and she said it probably hadn't

any mother or any friends and she was going to take it home and take care

of it. Satan said:

"I understand you are very poor. Why do you want to add another mouth to

feed? Why don't you give it to some rich person?"

Ursula bridled at this and said: "Perhaps you would like to have it. You

must be rich, with your fine clothes and quality airs." Then she sniffed

and said: "Give it to the rich--the idea! The rich don't care for

anybody but themselves; it's only the poor that have feeling for the

poor, and help them. The poor and God. God will provide for this

kitten."

"What makes you think so?"

Ursula's eyes snapped with anger. "Because I know it!" she said. "Not a

sparrow falls to the ground without His seeing it."

"But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing it fall?"

Old Ursula's jaws worked, but she could not get any word out for the

moment, she was so horrified. When she got her tongue, she stormed out,

"Go about your business, you puppy, or I will take a stick to you!"

I could not speak, I was so scared. I knew that with his notions about

the human race Satan would consider it a matter of no consequence to

strike her dead, there being "plenty more"; but my tongue stood still, I

could give her no warning. But nothing happened; Satan remained

tranquil--tranquil and indifferent. I suppose he could not be insulted

by Ursula any more than the king could be insulted by a tumble-bug. The

old woman jumped to her feet when she made her remark, and did it as

briskly as a young girl. It had been many years since she had done the

like of that. That was Satan's influence; he was a fresh breeze to the

weak and the sick, wherever he came. His presence affected even the lean

kitten, and it skipped to the ground and began to chase a leaf. This

surprised Ursula, and she stood looking at the creature and nodding her

head wonderingly, her anger quite forgotten.

"What's come over it?" she said. "Awhile ago it could hardly walk."

"You have not seen a kitten of that breed before," said Satan.

Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with the mocking stranger, and

she gave him an ungentle look and retorted: "Who asked you to come here

and pester me, I'd like to know? And what do you know about what I've

seen and what I haven't seen?"

"You haven't seen a kitten with the hair-spines on its tongue pointing to

the front, have you?"

"No--nor you, either."

"Well, examine this one and see."

Ursula was become pretty spry, but the kitten was spryer, and she could

not catch it, and had to give it up. Then Satan said:

"Give it a name, and maybe it will come."

Ursula tried several names, but the kitten was not interested.

"Call it Agnes. Try that."

The creature answered to the name and came. Ursula examined its tongue.

"Upon my word, it's true!" she said. "I have not seen this kind of a cat

before. Is it yours?"

"No."

"Then how did you know its name so pat?"

"Because all cats of that breed are named Agnes; they will not answer to

any other."

Ursula was impressed. "It is the most wonderful thing!" Then a shadow of

trouble came into her face, for her superstitions were aroused, and she

reluctantly put the creature down, saying: "I suppose I must let it go; I

am not afraid--no, not exactly that, though the priest--well, I've heard

people--indeed, many people... And, besides, it is quite well now and

can take care of itself." She sighed, and turned to go, murmuring: "It

is such a pretty one, too, and would be such company--and the house is so

sad and lonesome these troubled days... Miss Marget so mournful and just

a shadow, and the old master shut up in jail."

"It seems a pity not to keep it," said Satan.

Ursula turned quickly--just as if she were hoping some one would

encourage her.

"Why?" she asked, wistfully.

"Because this breed brings luck."

"Does it? Is it true? Young man, do you know it to be true? How does

it bring luck?"

"Well, it brings money, anyway."

Ursula looked disappointed. "Money? A cat bring money? The idea! You

could never sell it here; people do not buy cats here; one can't even

give them away." She turned to go.

"I don't mean sell it. I mean have an income from it. This kind is

called the Lucky Cat. Its owner finds four silver groschen in his pocket

every morning."

I saw the indignation rising in the old woman's face. She was insulted.

This boy was making fun of her. That was her thought. She thrust her

hands into her pockets and straightened up to give him a piece of her

mind. Her temper was all up, and hot. Her mouth came open and let out

three words of a bitter sentence,... then it fell silent, and the anger

in her face turned to surprise or wonder or fear, or something, and she

slowly brought out her hands from her pockets and opened them and held

them so. In one was my piece of money, in the other lay four silver

groschen. She gazed a little while, perhaps to see if the groschen would

vanish away; then she said, fervently:

"It's true--it's true--and I'm ashamed and beg forgiveness, O dear master

and benefactor!" And she ran to Satan and kissed his hand, over and over

again, according to the Austrian custom.

In her heart she probably believed it was a witch-cat and an agent of the

Devil; but no matter, it was all the more certain to be able to keep its

contract and furnish a daily good living for the family, for in matters

of finance even the piousest of our peasants would have more confidence

in an arrangement with the Devil than with an archangel. Ursula started

homeward, with Agnes in her arms, and I said I wished I had her privilege

of seeing Marget.

Then I caught my breath, for we were there. There in the parlor, and

Marget standing looking at us, astonished. She was feeble and pale, but

I knew that those conditions would not last in Satan's atmosphere, and it

turned out so. I introduced Satan--that is, Philip Traum--and we sat

down and talked. There was no constraint. We were simple folk, in our

village, and when a stranger was a pleasant person we were soon friends.

Marget wondered how we got in without her hearing us. Traum said the

door was open, and we walked in and waited until she should turn around

and greet us. This was not true; no door was open; we entered through

the walls or the roof or down the chimney, or somehow; but no matter,

what Satan wished a person to believe, the person was sure to believe,

and so Marget was quite satisfied with that explanation. And then the

main part of her mind was on Traum, anyway; she couldn't keep her eyes

off him, he was so beautiful. That gratified me, and made me proud. I

hoped he would show off some, but he didn't. He seemed only interested

in being friendly and telling lies. He said he was an orphan. That made

Marget pity him. The water came into her eyes. He said he had never

known his mamma; she passed away while he was a young thing; and said his

papa was in shattered health, and had no property to speak of--in fact,

none of any earthly value--but he had an uncle in business down in the

tropics, and he was very well off and had a monopoly, and it was from

this uncle that he drew his support. The very mention of a kind uncle

was enough to remind Marget of her own, and her eyes filled again. She

said she hoped their two uncles would meet, some day. It made me

shudder. Philip said he hoped so, too; and that made me shudder again.

"Maybe they will," said Marget. "Does your uncle travel much?"

"Oh yes, he goes all about; he has business everywhere."

And so they went on chatting, and poor Marget forgot her sorrow for one

little while, anyway. It was probably the only really bright and cheery

hour she had known lately. I saw she liked Philip, and I knew she would.

And when he told her he was studying for the ministry I could see that

she liked him better than ever. And then, when he promised to get her

admitted to the jail so that she could see her uncle, that was the

capstone. He said he would give the guards a little present, and she

must always go in the evening after dark, and say nothing, "but just show

this paper and pass in, and show it again when you come out"--and he

scribbled some queer marks on the paper and gave it to her, and she was

ever so thankful, and right away was in a fever for the sun to go down;

for in that old, cruel time prisoners were not allowed to see their

friends, and sometimes they spent years in the jails without ever seeing

a friendly face. I judged that the marks on the paper were an

enchantment, and that the guards would not know what they were doing, nor

have any memory of it afterward; and that was indeed the way of it.

Ursula put her head in at the door now and said:

"Supper's ready, miss." Then she saw us and looked frightened, and

motioned me to come to her, which I did, and she asked if we had told

about the cat. I said no, and she was relieved, and said please don't;

for if Miss Marget knew, she would think it was an unholy cat and would

send for a priest and have its gifts all purified out of it, and then

there wouldn't be any more dividends. So I said we wouldn't tell, and

she was satisfied. Then I was beginning to say good-by to Marget, but

Satan interrupted and said, ever so politely--well, I don't remember just

the words, but anyway he as good as invited himself to supper, and me,

too. Of course Marget was miserably embarrassed, for she had no reason

to suppose there would be half enough for a sick bird. Ursula heard him,

and she came straight into the room, not a bit pleased. At first she was

astonished to see Marget looking so fresh and rosy, and said so; then she

spoke up in her native tongue, which was Bohemian, and said--as I learned

afterward--"Send him away, Miss Marget; there's not victuals enough."

Before Marget could speak, Satan had the word, and was talking back to

Ursula in her own language--which was a surprise to her, and for her

mistress, too. He said, "Didn't I see you down the road awhile ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, that pleases me; I see you remember me." He stepped to her and

whispered: "I told you it is a Lucky Cat. Don't be troubled; it will

provide."

That sponged the slate of Ursula's feelings clean of its anxieties, and a

deep, financial joy shone in her eyes. The cat's value was augmenting.

It was getting full time for Marget to take some sort of notice of

Satan's invitation, and she did it in the best way, the honest way that

was natural to her. She said she had little to offer, but that we were

welcome if we would share it with her.

We had supper in the kitchen, and Ursula waited at table. A small fish

was in the frying-pan, crisp and brown and tempting, and one could see

that Marget was not expecting such respectable food as this. Ursula

brought it, and Marget divided it between Satan and me, declining to take

any of it herself; and was beginning to say she did not care for fish

to-day, but she did not finish the remark. It was because she noticed

that another fish had appeared in the pan. She looked surprised, but did

not say anything. She probably meant to inquire of Ursula about this

later. There were other surprises: flesh and game and wines and fruits

--things which had been strangers in that house lately; but Marget made

no exclamations, and now even looked unsurprised, which was Satan's

influence, of course. Satan talked right along, and was entertaining,

and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and although he told a

good many lies, it was no harm in him, for he was only an angel and did

not know any better. They do not know right from wrong; I knew this,

because I remembered what he had said about it. He got on the good side

of Ursula. He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speaking just

loud enough for Ursula to hear. He said she was a fine woman, and he

hoped some day to bring her and his uncle together. Very soon Ursula was

mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing out

her gown and prinking at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time

pretending she was not hearing what Satan was saying. I was ashamed, for

it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial.

Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and to have a clever woman

presiding over the festivities would double the attractions of the place.

"But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?" asked Marget.

"Yes," said Satan indifferently; "some even call him a Prince, out of

compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything,

rank nothing."

My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes came along and licked it; by

this act a secret was revealed. I started to say, "It is all a mistake;

this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles on her tongue point

inward, not outward." But the words did not come, because they couldn't.

Satan smiled upon me, and I understood.

When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and

hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home. I was

thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail

was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were in the

jail. We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was there,

and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or two hanging

on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and dreadful. There

were people there--and executioners--but as they took no notice of us, it

meant that we were invisible. A young man lay bound, and Satan said he

was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners were about to

inquire into it. They asked the man to confess to the charge, and he

said he could not, for it was not true. Then they drove splinter after

splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the pain. Satan was not

disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of there.

I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived me, and we walked toward

my home. I said it was a brutal thing.

"No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a

misuse of that word; they have not deserved it," and he went on talking

like that. "It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming

virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals,

which alone possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the

monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he

does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as

wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it

--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A

sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with

liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he

get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he

prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral

Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature

that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the

bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you

feeling better? Let me show you something."

Chapter 6

In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great

factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were

toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in

rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved, and

weak and drowsy. Satan said:

"It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy;

but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is

only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger. The work-hours

are fourteen per day, winter and summer--from six in the morning till

eight at night--little children and all. And they walk to and from the

pigsties which they inhabit--four miles each way, through mud and slush,

rain, snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out. They get four

hours of sleep. They kennel together, three families in a room, in

unimaginable filth and stench; and disease comes, and they die off like

flies. Have they committed a crime, these mangy things? No. What have

they done, that they are punished so? Nothing at all, except getting

themselves born into your foolish race. You have seen how they treat a

misdoer there in the jail; now you see how they treat the innocent and

the worthy. Is your race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents

better off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial

compared with theirs. They broke him on the wheel and smashed him to

rags and pulp after we left, and he is dead now, and free of your

precious race; but these poor slaves here--why, they have been dying for

years, and some of them will not escape from life for years to come. It

is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference

between right and wrong--you perceive the result. They think themselves

better than dogs. Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning race! And

paltry--oh, unspeakably!"

Then he dropped all seriousness and just overstrained himself making fun

of us, and deriding our pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes, our

imperishable fames, our mighty kings, our ancient aristocracies, our

venerable history--and laughed and laughed till it was enough to make a

person sick to hear him; and finally he sobered a little and said, "But,

after all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a sort of pathos about it

when one remembers how few are your days, how childish your pomps, and

what shadows you are!"

Presently all things vanished suddenly from my sight, and I knew what it

meant. The next moment we were walking along in our village; and down

toward the river I saw the twinkling lights of the Golden Stag. Then in

the dark I heard a joyful cry:

"He's come again!"

It was Seppi Wohlmeyer. He had felt his blood leap and his spirits rise

in a way that could mean only one thing, and he knew Satan was near,

although it was too dark to see him. He came to us, and we walked along

together, and Seppi poured out his gladness like water. It was as if he

were a lover and had found his sweetheart who had been lost. Seppi was a

smart and animated boy, and had enthusiasm and expression, and was a

contrast to Nikolaus and me. He was full of the last new mystery, now

--the disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village loafer. People were

beginning to be curious about it, he said. He did not say anxious

--curious was the right word, and strong enough. No one had seen Hans

for a couple of days.

"Not since he did that brutal thing, you know," he said.

"What brutal thing?" It was Satan that asked.

"Well, he is always clubbing his dog, which is a good dog, and his only

friend, and is faithful, and loves him, and does no one any harm; and two

days ago he was at it again, just for nothing--just for pleasure--and the

dog was howling and begging, and Theodor and I begged, too, but he

threatened us, and struck the dog again with all his might and knocked

one of his eyes out, and he said to us, 'There, I hope you are satisfied

now; that's what you have got for him by your damned meddling'--and he

laughed, the heartless brute." Seppi's voice trembled with pity and

anger. I guessed what Satan would say, and he said it.

"There is that misused word again--that shabby slander. Brutes do not

act like that, but only men."

"Well, it was inhuman, anyway."

"No, it wasn't, Seppi; it was human--quite distinctly human. It is not

pleasant to hear you libel the higher animals by attributing to them

dispositions which they are free from, and which are found nowhere but in

the human heart. None of the higher animals is tainted with the disease

called the Moral Sense. Purify your language, Seppi; drop those lying

phrases out of it."

He spoke pretty sternly--for him--and I was sorry I hadn't warned Seppi

to be more particular about the word he used. I knew how he was feeling.

He would not want to offend Satan; he would rather offend all his kin.

There was an uncomfortable silence, but relief soon came, for that poor

dog came along now, with his eye hanging down, and went straight to

Satan, and began to moan and mutter brokenly, and Satan began to answer

in the same way, and it was plain that they were talking together in the

dog language. We all sat down in the grass, in the moonlight, for the

clouds were breaking away now, and Satan took the dog's head in his lap

and put the eye back in its place, and the dog was comfortable, and he

wagged his tail and licked Satan's hand, and looked thankful and said the

same; I knew he was saying it, though I did not understand the words.

Then the two talked together a bit, and Satan said:

"He says his master was drunk."

"Yes, he was," said we.

"And an hour later he fell over the precipice there beyond the Cliff

Pasture."

"We know the place; it is three miles from here."

"And the dog has been often to the village, begging people to go there,

but he was only driven away and not listened to."

We remembered it, but hadn't understood what he wanted.

"He only wanted help for the man who had misused him, and he thought only

of that, and has had no food nor sought any. He has watched by his

master two nights. What do you think of your race? Is heaven reserved

for it, and this dog ruled out, as your teachers tell you? Can your race

add anything to this dog's stock of morals and magnanimities?" He spoke

to the creature, who jumped up, eager and happy, and apparently ready for

orders and impatient to execute them. "Get some men; go with the dog--he

will show you that carrion; and take a priest along to arrange about

insurance, for death is near."

With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow and disappointment. We got

the men and Father Adolf, and we saw the man die. Nobody cared but the

dog; he mourned and grieved, and licked the dead face, and could not be

comforted. We buried him where he was, and without a coffin, for he had

no money, and no friend but the dog. If we had been an hour earlier the

priest would have been in time to send that poor creature to heaven, but

now he was gone down into the awful fires, to burn forever. It seemed

such a pity that in a world where so many people have difficulty to put

in their time, one little hour could not have been spared for this poor

creature who needed it so much, and to whom it would have made the

difference between eternal joy and eternal pain. It gave an appalling

idea of the value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste one again

without remorse and terror. Seppi was depressed and grieved, and said it

must be so much better to be a dog and not run such awful risks. We took

this one home with us and kept him for our own. Seppi had a very good

thought as we were walking along, and it cheered us up and made us feel

much better. He said the dog had forgiven the man that had wronged him

so, and maybe God would accept that absolution.

There was a very dull week, now, for Satan did not come, nothing much was

going on, and we boys could not venture to go and see Marget, because the

nights were moonlit and our parents might find us out if we tried. But

we came across Ursula a couple of times taking a walk in the meadows

beyond the river to air the cat, and we learned from her that things were

going well. She had natty new clothes on and bore a prosperous look.

The four groschen a day were arriving without a break, but were not being

spent for food and wine and such things--the cat attended to all that.

Marget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation fairly well, all

things considered, and was cheerful, by help of Wilhelm Meidling. She

spent an hour or two every night in the jail with her uncle, and had

fattened him up with the cat's contributions. But she was curious to

know more about Philip Traum, and hoped I would bring him again. Ursula

was curious about him herself, and asked a good many questions about his

uncle. It made the boys laugh, for I had told them the nonsense Satan

had been stuffing her with. She got no satisfaction out of us, our

tongues being tied.

Ursula gave us a small item of information: money being plenty now, she

had taken on a servant to help about the house and run errands. She

tried to tell it in a commonplace, matter-of-course way, but she was so

set up by it and so vain of it that her pride in it leaked out pretty

plainly. It was beautiful to see her veiled delight in this grandeur,

poor old thing, but when we heard the name of the servant we wondered if

she had been altogether wise; for although we were young, and often

thoughtless, we had fairly good perception on some matters. This boy was

Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with no harm in him and nothing

against him personally; still, he was under a cloud, and properly so, for

it had not been six months since a social blight had mildewed the family

--his grandmother had been burned as a witch. When that kind of a malady

is in the blood it does not always come out with just one burning. Just

now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget to be having dealings with

a member of such a family, for the witch-terror had risen higher during

the past year than it had ever reached in the memory of the oldest

villagers. The mere mention of a witch was almost enough to frighten us

out of our wits. This was natural enough, because of late years there

were more kinds of witches than there used to be; in old times it had

been only old women, but of late years they were of all ages--even

children of eight and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn out

to be a familiar of the Devil--age and sex hadn't anything to do with it.

In our little region we had tried to extirpate the witches, but the more

of them we burned the more of the breed rose up in their places.

Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that

the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were

greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil's marks. The girl was

scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas;

but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there. All the

girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the

rest less so. A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for

their mothers and would not confess. Then they were shut up, each by

herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and

nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were

dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would

not take the food. Then one of them confessed, and said they had often

ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a

bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused

with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had

conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and

blasphemed God. That is what she said--not in narrative form, for she

was not able to remember any of the details without having them called to

her mind one after the other; but the commission did that, for they knew

just what questions to ask, they being all written down for the use of

witch-commissioners two centuries before. They asked, "Did you do so and

so?" and she always said yes, and looked weary and tired, and took no

interest in it. And so when the other ten heard that this one confessed,

they confessed, too, and answered yes to the questions. Then they were

burned at the stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody

went from all the countryside to see it. I went, too; but when I saw

that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with, and looked

so pitiful there chained to the stake, and her mother crying over her and

devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and saying, "Oh,

my God! Oh, my God!" it was too dreadful, and I went away.

It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's grandmother was burned. It

was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person's

head and neck with her fingers--as she said--but really by the Devil's

help, as everybody knew. They were going to examine her, but she stopped

them, and confessed straight off that her power was from the Devil. So

they appointed to burn her next morning, early, in our market-square.

The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it.

She was there next--brought by the constables, who left her and went to

fetch another witch. Her family did not come with her. They might be

reviled, maybe stoned, if the people were excited. I came, and gave her

an apple. She was squatting at the fire, warming herself and waiting;

and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold. A stranger came

next. He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her gently,

and, seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry for her. And

he asked if what she confessed was true, and she said no. He looked

surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her:

"Then why did you confess?"

"I am old and very poor," she said, "and I work for my living. There was

no way but to confess. If I hadn't they might have set me free. That

would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being

a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would

set the dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The fire is best;

it is soon over. You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you."

She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the

snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making it

white and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying

and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face. There was a

laugh at that.

I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but it

did not affect him. He only said it was the human race, and what the

human race did was of no consequence. And he said he had seen it made;

and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud--part of it was, anyway.

I knew what he meant by that--the Moral Sense. He saw the thought in my

head, and it tickled him and made him laugh. Then he called a bullock

out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said:

"There--he wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright and

loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them

which had never happened. And neither would he break the hearts of

innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among

their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony. For

he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and

knows no wrong, and never does it."

Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he

always chose when the human race was brought to his attention. He always

turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it.

Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for Ursula

to be hiring a member of the Narr family. We were right. When the

people found it out they were naturally indignant. And, moreover, since

Marget and Ursula hadn't enough to eat themselves, where was the money

coming from to feed another mouth? That is what they wanted to know; and

in order to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek

his society and have sociable conversations with him. He was pleased

--not thinking any harm and not seeing the trap--and so he talked

innocently along, and was no discreeter than a cow.

"Money!" he said; "they've got plenty of it. They pay me two groschen a

week, besides my keep. And they live on the fat of the land, I can tell

you; the prince himself can't beat their table."

This astonishing statement was conveyed by the astrologer to Father Adolf

on a Sunday morning when he was returning from mass. He was deeply

moved, and said:

"This must be looked into."

He said there must be witchcraft at the bottom of it, and told the

villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and

unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep

their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The

villagers were at first a bit reluctant to enter such a dreadful place,

but the priest said they would be under his protection while there, and

no harm could come to them, particularly if they carried a trifle of holy

water along and kept their beads and crosses handy. This satisfied them

and made them willing to go; envy and malice made the baser sort even

eager to go.

And so poor Marget began to have company again, and was as pleased as a

cat. She was like 'most anybody else--just human, and happy in her

prosperities and not averse from showing them off a little; and she was

humanly grateful to have the warm shoulder turned to her and he smiled

upon by her friends and the village again; for of all the hard things to

bear, to be cut by your neighbors and left in contemptuous solitude is

maybe the hardest.

The bars were down, and we could all go there now, and we did--our

parents and all--day after day. The cat began to strain herself. She

provided the top of everything for those companies, and in abundance

--among them many a dish and many a wine which they had not tasted before

and which they had not even heard of except at second-hand from the

prince's servants. And the tableware was much above ordinary, too.

Marget was troubled at times, and pursued Ursula with questions to an

uncomfortable degree; but Ursula stood her ground and stuck to it that it

was Providence, and said no word about the cat. Marget knew that nothing

was impossible to Providence, but she could not help having doubts that

this effort was from there, though she was afraid to say so, lest

disaster come of it. Witchcraft occurred to her, but she put the thought

aside, for this was before Gottfried joined the household, and she knew

Ursula was pious and a bitter hater of witches. By the time Gottfried

arrived Providence was established, unshakably intrenched, and getting

all the gratitude. The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly

improving in style and prodigality by experience.

In any community, big or little, there is always a fair proportion of

people who are not malicious or unkind by nature, and who never do

unkind things except when they are overmastered by fear, or when their

self-interest is greatly in danger, or some such matter as that.

Eseldorf had its proportion of such people, and ordinarily their good and

gentle influence was felt, but these were not ordinary times--on account

of the witch-dread--and so we did not seem to have any gentle and

compassionate hearts left, to speak of. Every person was frightened at

the unaccountable state of things at Marget's house, not doubting that

witchcraft was at the bottom of it, and fright frenzied their reason.

Naturally there were some who pitied Marget and Ursula for the danger

that was gathering about them, but naturally they did not say so; it

would not have been safe. So the others had it all their own way, and

there was none to advise the ignorant girl and the foolish woman and warn

them to modify their doings. We boys wanted to warn them, but we backed

down when it came to the pinch, being afraid. We found that we were not

manly enough nor brave enough to do a generous action when there was a

chance that it could get us into trouble. Neither of us confessed this

poor spirit to the others, but did as other people would have done

--dropped the subject and talked about something else. And I knew we all

felt mean, eating and drinking Marget's fine things along with those

companies of spies, and petting her and complimenting her with the rest,

and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy she was, and never

saying a word to put her on her guard. And, indeed, she was happy, and

as proud as a princess, and so grateful to have friends again. And all

the time these people were watching with all their eyes and reporting all

they saw to Father Adolf.

But he couldn't make head or tail of the situation. There must be an

enchanter somewhere on the premises, but who was it? Marget was not seen

to do any jugglery, nor was Ursula, nor yet Gottfried; and still the

wines and dainties never ran short, and a guest could not call for a

thing and not get it. To produce these effects was usual enough with

witches and enchanters--that part of it was not new; but to do it without

any incantations, or even any rumblings or earthquakes or lightnings or

apparitions--that was new, novel, wholly irregular. There was nothing in

the books like this. Enchanted things were always unreal. Gold turned

to dirt in an unenchanted atmosphere, food withered away and vanished.

But this test failed in the present case. The spies brought samples:

Father Adolf prayed over them, exorcised them, but it did no good; they

remained sound and real, they yielded to natural decay only, and took the

usual time to do it.

Father Adolf was not merely puzzled, he was also exasperated; for these

evidences very nearly convinced him--privately--that there was no

witchcraft in the matter. It did not wholly convince him, for this could

be a new kind of witchcraft. There was a way to find out as to this: if

this prodigal abundance of provender was not brought in from the outside,

but produced on the premises, there was witchcraft, sure.

Chapter 7

Marget announced a party, and invited forty people; the date for it was

seven days away. This was a fine opportunity. Marget's house stood by

itself, and it could be easily watched. All the week it was watched

night and day. Marget's household went out and in as usual, but they

carried nothing in their hands, and neither they nor others brought

anything to the house. This was ascertained. Evidently rations for

forty people were not being fetched. If they were furnished any

sustenance it would have to be made on the premises. It was true that

Marget went out with a basket every evening, but the spies ascertained

that she always brought it back empty.

The guests arrived at noon and filled the place. Father Adolf followed;

also, after a little, the astrologer, without invitation. The spies had

informed him that neither at the back nor the front had any parcels been

brought in. He entered, and found the eating and drinking going on

finely, and everything progressing in a lively and festive way. He

glanced around and perceived that many of the cooked delicacies and all

of the native and foreign fruits were of a perishable character, and he

also recognized that these were fresh and perfect. No apparitions, no

incantations, no thunder. That settled it. This was witchcraft. And

not only that, but of a new kind--a kind never dreamed of before. It was

a prodigious power, an illustrious power; he resolved to discover its

secret. The announcement of it would resound throughout the world,

penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all the nations with amazement

--and carry his name with it, and make him renowned forever. It was a

wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck; the glory of it made

him dizzy.

All the house made room for him; Marget politely seated him; Ursula

ordered Gottfried to bring a special table for him. Then she decked it

and furnished it, and asked for his orders.

"Bring me what you will," he said.

The two servants brought supplies from the pantry, together with white

wine and red--a bottle of each. The astrologer, who very likely had

never seen such delicacies before, poured out a beaker of red wine, drank

it off, poured another, then began to eat with a grand appetite.

I was not expecting Satan, for it was more than a week since I had seen

or heard of him, but now he came in--I knew it by the feel, though people

were in the way and I could not see him. I heard him apologizing for

intruding; and he was going away, but Marget urged him to stay, and he

thanked her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing him to the

girls, and to Meidling, and to some of the elders; and there was quite a

rustle of whispers: "It's the young stranger we hear so much about and

can't get sight of, he is away so much." "Dear, dear, but he is

beautiful--what is his name?" "Philip Traum." "Ah, it fits him!" (You

see, "Traum" is German for "Dream.") "What does he do?" "Studying for the

ministry, they say." "His face is his fortune--he'll be a cardinal some

day." "Where is his home?" "Away down somewhere in the tropics, they

say--has a rich uncle down there." And so on. He made his way at once;

everybody was anxious to know him and talk with him. Everybody noticed

how cool and fresh it was, all of a sudden, and wondered at it, for they

could see that the sun was beating down the same as before, outside, and

the sky was clear of clouds, but no one guessed the reason, of course.

The astrologer had drunk his second beaker; he poured out a third. He

set the bottle down, and by accident overturned it. He seized it before

much was spilled, and held it up to the light, saying, "What a pity--it

is royal wine." Then his face lighted with joy or triumph, or something,

and he said, "Quick! Bring a bowl."

It was brought--a four-quart one. He took up that two-pint bottle and

began to pour; went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing into

the white bowl and rising higher and higher up its sides, everybody

staring and holding their breath--and presently the bowl was full to the

brim.

"Look at the bottle," he said, holding it up; "it is full yet!" I glanced

at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up,

flushed and excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his great

voice, "This house is bewitched and accursed!" People began to cry and

shriek and crowd toward the door. "I summon this detected household

to--"

His words were cut off short. His face became red, then purple, but he

could not utter another sound. Then I saw Satan, a transparent film,

melt into the astrologer's body; then the astrologer put up his hand, and

apparently in his own voice said, "Wait--remain where you are." All

stopped where they stood. "Bring a funnel!" Ursula brought it,

trembling and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle and took up the great

bowl and began to pour the wine back, the people gazing and dazed with

astonishment, for they knew the bottle was already full before he began.

He emptied the whole of the bowl into the bottle, then smiled out over

the room, chuckled, and said, indifferently: "It is nothing--anybody can

do it! With my powers I can even do much more."

A frightened cry burst out everywhere. "Oh, my God, he is possessed!"

and there was a tumultuous rush for the door which swiftly emptied the

house of all who did not belong in it except us boys and Meidling.

We boys knew the secret, and would have told it if we could, but we

couldn't. We were very thankful to Satan for furnishing that good help

at the needful time.

Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked kind of petrified; Ursula

the same; but Gottfried was the worst--he couldn't stand, he was so weak

and scared. For he was of a witch family, you know, and it would be bad

for him to be suspected. Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and

unaware, and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be petted, but Ursula

was afraid of her and shrank away from her, but pretending she was not

meaning any incivility, for she knew very well it wouldn't answer to have

strained relations with that kind of a cat. But we boys took Agnes and

petted her, for Satan would not have befriended her if he had not had a

good opinion of her, and that was indorsement enough for us. He seemed

to trust anything that hadn't the Moral Sense.

Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered in every direction and

fled in a pitiable state of terror; and such a tumult as they made with

their running and sobbing and shrieking and shouting that soon all the

village came flocking from their houses to see what had happened, and

they thronged the street and shouldered and jostled one another in

excitement and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and they fell

apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane

the astrologer came striding and mumbling, and where he passed the lanes

surged back in packed masses, and fell silent with awe, and their eyes

stared and their breasts heaved, and several women fainted; and when he

was gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance,

talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the facts.

Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with improvements

--improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a barrel, and

made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last.

When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a

juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the

air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd

and said: "This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see

an expert perform."

So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them whirling

in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then another and

another, and soon--no one seeing whence he got them--adding, adding,

adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so swiftly

that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands; and

such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the air. The

spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was a shining

and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms and told the

balls to go on spinning without his help--and they did it. After a

couple of minutes he said, "There, that will do," and the oval broke and

came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled every

whither. And wherever one of them came the people fell back in dread,

and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the

people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw the

tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see

a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they should

see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air and

lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of it

back and forth on one foot, with his hands clasped over his eyes; and

next he began to throw somersaults, both backward and forward, and threw

twenty-seven.

The people murmured, for the astrologer was old, and always before had

been halting of movement and at times even lame, but he was nimble enough

now and went on with his antics in the liveliest manner. Finally he

sprang lightly down and walked away, and passed up the road and around

the corner and disappeared. Then that great, pale, silent, solid crowd

drew a deep breath and looked into one another's faces as if they said:

"Was it real? Did you see it, or was it only I--and was I dreaming?"

Then they broke into a low murmur of talking, and fell apart in couples,

and moved toward their homes, still talking in that awed way, with faces

close together and laying a hand on an arm and making other such gestures

as people make when they have been deeply impressed by something.

We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened, catching all we could

of what they said; and when they sat down in our house and continued

their talk they still had us for company. They were in a sad mood, for

it was certain, they said, that disaster for the village must follow this

awful visitation of witches and devils. Then my father remembered that

Father Adolf had been struck dumb at the moment of his denunciation.

"They have not ventured to lay their hands upon an anointed servant of

God before," he said; "and how they could have dared it this time I

cannot make out, for he wore his crucifix. Isn't it so?"

"Yes," said the others, "we saw it."

"It is serious, friends, it is very serious. Always before, we had a

protection. It has failed."

The others shook, as with a sort of chill, and muttered those words over

--"It has failed." "God has forsaken us."

"It is true," said Seppi Wohlmeyer's father; "there is nowhere to look

for help."

"The people will realize this," said Nikolaus's father, the judge, "and

despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have indeed

fallen upon evil times."

He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled voice: "The report of it all

will go about the country, and our village will be shunned as being under

the displeasure of God. The Golden Stag will know hard times."

"True, neighbor," said my father; "all of us will suffer--all in repute,

many in estate. And, good God!--"

"What is it?"

"That can come--to finish us!"

"Name it--um Gottes Willen!"

"The Interdict!"

It smote like a thunderclap, and they were like to swoon with the terror

of it. Then the dread of this calamity roused their energies, and they

stopped brooding and began to consider ways to avert it. They discussed

this, that, and the other way, and talked till the afternoon was far

spent, then confessed that at present they could arrive at no decision.

So they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed hearts which were filled with

bodings.

While they were saying their parting words I slipped out and set my

course for Marget's house to see what was happening there. I met many

people, but none of them greeted me. It ought to have been surprising,

but it was not, for they were so distraught with fear and dread that they

were not in their right minds, I think; they were white and haggard, and

walked like persons in a dream, their eyes open but seeing nothing, their

lips moving but uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping and unclasping

their hands without knowing it.

At Marget's it was like a funeral. She and Wilhelm sat together on the

sofa, but said nothing, and not even holding hands. Both were steeped in

gloom, and Marget's eyes were red from the crying she had been doing.

She said:

"I have been begging him to go, and come no more, and so save himself

alive. I cannot bear to be his murderer. This house is bewitched, and

no inmate will escape the fire. But he will not go, and he will be lost

with the rest."

Wilhelm said he would not go; if there was danger for her, his place was

by her, and there he would remain. Then she began to cry again, and it

was all so mournful that I wished I had stayed away. There was a knock,

now, and Satan came in, fresh and cheery and beautiful, and brought that

winy atmosphere of his and changed the whole thing. He never said a word

about what had been happening, nor about the awful fears which were

freezing the blood in the hearts of the community, but began to talk and

rattle on about all manner of gay and pleasant things; and next about

music--an artful stroke which cleared away the remnant of Marget's

depression and brought her spirits and her interests broad awake. She

had not heard any one talk so well and so knowingly on that subject

before, and she was so uplifted by it and so charmed that what she was

feeling lit up her face and came out in her words; and Wilhelm noticed it

and did not look as pleased as he ought to have done. And next Satan

branched off into poetry, and recited some, and did it well, and Marget

was charmed again; and again Wilhelm was not as pleased as he ought to

have been, and this time Marget noticed it and was remorseful.

I fell asleep to pleasant music that night--the patter of rain upon the

panes and the dull growling of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan

came and roused me and said: "Come with me. Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere--so it is with you."

Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he said, "This is China."

That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of drunk with vanity and

gladness to think I had come so far--so much, much farther than anybody

else in our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such a great

opinion of his travels. We buzzed around over that empire for more than

half an hour, and saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles

we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible to think. For

instance--However, I may go into that by and by, and also why Satan chose

China for this excursion instead of another place; it would interrupt my

tale to do it now. Finally we stopped flitting and lit.

We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape of mountain-range and

gorge and valley and plain and river, with cities and villages slumbering

in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the farther verge. It was

a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful to the eye and restful to the

spirit. If we could only make a change like that whenever we wanted to,

the world would be easier to live in than it is, for change of scene

shifts the mind's burdens to the other shoulder and banishes old,

shop-worn wearinesses from mind and body both.