THE PREACHER.
Various reports went undulating through the city as to the nature of
what had taken place in the palace. The people gathered, and stared at
the house, eyeing it as if it had sprung up in the night. But it looked
sedate enough, remaining closed and silent, like a house that was dead.
They saw no one come out or go in. Smoke rose from a chimney or two;
there was hardly another sign of life. It was not for some little time
generally understood that the highest officers of the crown as well as
the lowest menials of the palace had been dismissed in disgrace: for who
was to recognise a lord chancellor in his night-shirt? and what lord
chancellor would, so attired in the street, proclaim his rank and office
aloud? Before it was day most of the courtiers crept down to the river,
hired boats, and betook themselves to their homes or their friends in
the country. It was assumed in the city that the domestics had been
discharged upon a sudden discovery of general and unpardonable
peculation; for, almost everybody being guilty of it himself, petty
dishonesty was the crime most easily credited and least easily passed
over in Gwyntystorm.
Now that same day was Religion day, and not a few of the clergy, always
glad to seize on any passing event to give interest to the dull and
monotonic grind of their intellectual machines, made this remarkable one
the ground of discourse to their congregations. More especially than the
rest, the first priest of the great temple where was the royal pew,
judged himself, from his relation to the palace, called upon to "improve
the occasion,"--for they talked ever about improvement at Gwyntystorm,
all the time they were going downhill with a rush.
The book which had, of late years, come to be considered the most
sacred, was called The Book of Nations, and consisted of proverbs, and
history traced through custom: from it the first priest chose his text;
and his text was, _Honesty is the best Policy_. He was considered a very
eloquent man, but I can offer only a few of the larger bones of his
sermon. The main proof of the verity of their religion, he said, was,
that things always went well with those who professed it; and its first
fundamental principle, grounded in inborn invariable instinct, was,
that every One should take care of that One. This was the first duty of
Man. If every one would but obey this law, number one, then would every
one be perfectly cared for--one being always equal to one. But the
faculty of care was in excess of need, and all that overflowed, and
would otherwise run to waste, ought to be gently turned in the direction
of one's neighbour, seeing that this also wrought for the fulfilling of
the law, inasmuch as the reaction of excess so directed was upon the
director of the same, to the comfort, that is, and well-being of the
original self. To be just and friendly was to build the warmest and
safest of all nests, and to be kind and loving was to line it with the
softest of all furs and feathers, for the one precious, comfort-loving
self there to lie, revelling in downiest bliss. One of the laws
therefore most binding upon men because of its relation to the first and
greatest of all duties, was embodied in the Proverb he had just read;
and what stronger proof of its wisdom and truth could they desire than
the sudden and complete vengeance which had fallen upon those worse than
ordinary sinners who had offended against the king's majesty by
forgetting that _Honesty is the best Policy_?
At this point of the discourse the head of the legserpent rose from the
floor of the temple, towering above the pulpit, above the priest, then
curving downwards, with open mouth slowly descended upon him. Horror
froze the sermon-pump. He stared upwards aghast. The great teeth of the
animal closed upon a mouthful of the sacred vestments, and slowly he
lifted the preacher from the pulpit, like a handful of linen from a
wash-tub, and, on his four solemn stumps, bore him out of the temple,
dangling aloft from his jaws. At the back of it he dropped him into the
dust-hole amongst the remnants of a library whose age had destroyed its
value in the eyes of the chapter. They found him burrowing in it, a
lunatic henceforth--whose madness presented the peculiar feature, that
in its paroxysms he jabbered sense.
Bone-freezing horror pervaded Gwyntystorm. If their best and wisest were
treated with such contempt, what might not the rest of them look for?
Alas for their city! their grandly respectable city! their loftily
reasonable city! Where it was all to end, the Convenient alone could
tell!
But something must be done. Hastily assembling, the priests chose a new
first priest, and in full conclave unanimously declared and accepted,
that the king in his retirement had, through the practice of the
blackest magic, turned the palace into a nest of demons in the midst of
them. A grand exorcism was therefore indispensable.
In the meantime the fact came out that the greater part of the courtiers
had been dismissed as well as the servants, and this fact swelled the
hope of the Party of Decency, as they called themselves. Upon it they
proceeded to act, and strengthened themselves on all sides.
The action of the king's body-guard remained for a time uncertain. But
when at length its officers were satisfied that both the master of the
horse and their colonel were missing, they placed themselves under the
orders of the first priest.
Everyone dated the culmination of the evil from the visit of the miner
and his mongrel; and the butchers vowed, if they could but get hold of
them again, they would roast both of them alive. At once they formed
themselves into a regiment, and put their dogs in training for attack.
Incessant was the talk, innumerable were the suggestions, and great was
the deliberation. The general consent, however, was that as soon as the
priests should have expelled the demons, they would depose the king,
and, attired in all his regal insignia, shut him in a cage for public
show; then choose governors, with the lord chancellor at their head,
whose first duty should be to remit every possible tax; and the
magistrates, by the mouth of the city marshal, required all able-bodied
citizens, in order to do their part towards the carrying out of these
and a multitude of other reforms, to be ready to take arms at the first
summons.
Things needful were prepared as speedily as possible, and a mighty
ceremony, in the temple, in the market-place, and in front of the
palace, was performed for the expulsion of the demons. This over, the
leaders retired to arrange an attack upon the palace.
But that night events occurred which, proving the failure of their
first, induced the abandonment of their second intent. Certain of the
prowling order of the community, whose numbers had of late been steadily
on the increase, reported frightful things. Demons of indescribable
ugliness had been espied careering through the midnight streets and
courts. A citizen--some said in the very act of house-breaking, but no
one cared to look into trifles at such a crisis--had been seized from
behind, he could not see by what, and soused in the river. A well-known
receiver of stolen goods had had his shop broken open, and when he came
down in the morning had found everything in ruin on the pavement. The
wooden image of justice over the door of the city marshal had had the
arm that held the sword _bitten_ off. The gluttonous magistrate had been
pulled from his bed in the dark, by beings of which he could see nothing
but the flaming eyes, and treated to a bath of the turtle soup that had
been left simmering by the side of the kitchen fire. Having poured it
over him, they put him again into his bed, where he soon learned how a
mummy must feel in its cerements. Worst of all, in the market-place was
fixed up a paper, with the king's own signature, to the effect that
whoever henceforth should show inhospitality to strangers, and should be
convicted of the same, should be instantly expelled the city; while a
second, in the butchers' quarter, ordained that any dog which
henceforward should attack a stranger should be immediately destroyed.
It was plain, said the butchers, that the clergy were of no use; _they_
could not exorcise demons! That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old
fellow in rags and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they hounded
their dogs upon him, and had it not been that the door of Derba's
cottage was standing open, and was near enough for him to dart in and
shut it ere they reached him, he would have been torn in pieces.
And thus things went on for some days.