hands. “Are you a supernatural being, and the sight of a monkey can
make you forget yourself and your promises? Is this your love and
affection for me, which a purple monkey can steal away? O Mulligan!
Mulligan! leave off looking at that jumping-jack and remember your
duty! Come into my arms!”
“I wish that confounded hypnotism had never been invented!” I cried;
but for all that I was not able to break the spell. The princess kept
on crying bitterly, and begging me to desist. I heard her speak, but
what she said had no effect upon me. What did I care for a princess,
while I enjoyed the sight of that dear jumping-jack? I knew that if I
did not control myself I would have to remain in this situation and
be tortured to death at the appointed hour; but what was that to me?
I cared for nothing else but for the sight of that monkey in whom all
my affections were centred. I thought of the princess with entire
indifference. Oh, how I loved that jumping-jack! It was as dear to me
as if it had been my own self. I could not think of anything but of
that jumping-jack, and I involuntarily hummed the song in which my
situation was so well portrayed by the words of a well-known poet:--
“Willie had a purple monkey
Climbing on a yellow stick.”
It never occurred to me to lick off the paint. I knew nothing more. I
was asleep, with the jumping-jack in my arms.
[Illustration: HYPNOTIZED BY A MONKEY]
IV.
AMONG THE GNOMES.
While I was sleeping I experienced a horrible dream. The jumping-jack
before me assumed the features of a baboon, having a great resemblance
to Professor Cracker, and besides this there were two grotesque
figures standing at the foot of the pole. One was wooden nut-cracker
with goggle eyes, a long nose and protruding chin, the very image of
Jeremiah Stiffbone; and the other a curiously shaped whisky-jug of
stoneware, having the form and features of Mr Scalawag; and while the
monkey was moving up and down on the pole, the nut-cracker and the
whisky-jug danced, and all three sang the following song:
Huzza and hey-day! Up and down we go;
There being nothing that we do not know.
We prove that black is white and white is black,
And all the world admires the jumping-jack.
And as we jump go jumping all the rest;
Who jumps the highest knows his business best.
Forward and backward on the beaten track:
There’s nothing greater than a jumping-jack.
And to our stick we cling from first to last;
Who asks for more is only a fantast.
Thus up and down we go, upward and back:
This is the glory of a jumping-jack.
After they finished singing, the nut-cracker sniffed the air with his
nose and turned his goggle eyes in the direction where I was hidden,
after which his jaws began to move, and he said:
“I am smelling human flesh. There is some one present.”
To this the whisky-jug replied, while grinning from ear to ear:
“Who knows but it may be Mr Schneider, or his ghost.”
“Mr Schneider has no ghost,” said the baboon. “If we were to find one,
we would have to destroy it immediately, to save the reputation of
science.”
“I am quite sure that something of that kind is hidden somewhere,”
replied the nut-cracker, and turning to the baboon, he asked: “Do you
see anything?”
“Seeing is deceptive,” answered the baboon, “but we will see whether we
cannot reason it out. Wait till I come down.”
So saying, the monkey stopped his motions, and to my horror I saw him
unfastening his hands from the crossbar. Climbing down the yellow
stick, he joined the whisky-jug and the nut-cracker, and all three
searched the place and almost stumbled over me, but they did not see
me.
“There is nothing,” said the baboon. “However, there can be no doubt
that Schneider is dead, and the only thing to be regretted about it is
that he did not die in the interest of science. If we had known that
he was going to die anyhow, we might have subjected him to certain
experiments.”
Strange to say, during this dream I had no thought of being a Mulligan;
but my individuality was changed back to Mr Schneider. When I awoke
Schneider was gone, and I was once more Mulligan.
“_De mortuis nil nisi bene!_” drawled out the nut-cracker. “But if
Schneider had died in the interest of science, it would have been the
first useful thing he ever did.” So saying, the nut-cracker clapped his
jaws.
The whisky-jug blinked with his little eyes and added, “He meant well,
but----”
I knew what he was going to say, and this made me very angry. I
therefore jumped at him and gave him a box on the ear; but my fist
went quite through his head, and it had no other effect upon him
than stopping his sentence. He did not seem to notice it; but I now
knew that I had died and become a spirit. I also saw that I could
take possession of people and use their organs of speech, and as the
nut-cracker was nearest to me, I went inside of him and caused him to
exclaim:--
“I will show you whether or not I am a well-meaning fool! Confound
you and your science! I have been among the gnomes and know that they
exist! but you are the blind fools who cannot see anything because you
are too stupid to open your eyes.”
“Brother Stiffbone has become insane,” said the baboon; “let us tie him
before he does us any injury.”
Thereupon the baboon and the whisky-jug went for me while I was in the
nut-cracker’s body, and I went in that shape for them. I snapped at
the baboon’s ear and gave him a black eye, and I tore out a handful of
hair from the head of the whisky-jug, who in his turn broke my--that
is to say, the nut-cracker’s nose. At last they got the best of me;
because the wooden limbs of the nut-cracker were so stiff and I could
not move them quickly enough. We fell down, and the baboon was kneeling
upon my breast when I awoke.
Once more I was Mr Mulligan. I opened my eyes and found myself in inky
darkness. The first thing I did was to feel my nose to see whether it
was broken. The nose was all right, and its solidity convinced me that
I was no ghost, and my adventure with the nut-cracker’s body, however
real it seemed, had been only a dream. I groped about for the purpose
of finding the jumping-jack, but it was gone; neither did I regret its
absence, for with the sight of it all my affection for it had departed,
and I could not understand how I could have been so foolish as to
permit myself to be attracted by it. My desire for the purple monkey
had left me; but my love for the princess returned. I yearned for her
presence and called her name; but no answer came; there was nothing
around me but darkness and solitude.
Ever since that event I have often asked myself, Why do we hate to be
for a long time alone? The only answer I could find is, that when we
are alone with ourselves, the company of our self is not sufficiently
satisfactory and agreeable to us. Perhaps we do not sufficiently know
that self to fully enjoy its presence. Perhaps we do not know that self
at all, and then of course we are in company with something we do not
know, which means in company with nothing, and to enjoy the presence of
nothing is to have no enjoyment at all.
I confess that I never realised my own nothingness so much as on that
occasion. The old doubts returned again. I did not know whether I was
living or whether something which imagined itself to be “I” seemed to
live, and if that which only seemed to be myself was to be vivisected,
why should I trouble myself about it, as the vivisection of something
unknown to me did not concern me at all, unless I voluntarily chose to
take any interest in it? But how could I think of making any choice
at all if that “I” was something unknown? I instinctively refused to
recognise as myself that personality which was governed by the spell of
a jumping-jack, and I spoke to myself as if I were another person.
“Well, Mulligan!” I said, “how could you be such an idiot as to submit
yourself to the power of a baboon! Really, I doubt whether you are a
man. Pshaw! the gnomes are right. You are a monkey yourself, and even
inferior to a monkey, because the baboon was your master. A nice lord
of creation you are, being controlled by the creation of your own
foolish fancy. A lord of creation, indeed! One who cannot even resist
the attraction of a jumping-jack!”
Thus I went on moralising, and wondered what my real Ego was, and
whether it had anything at all to do with what seemed to be myself.
I wished to know whether I--that is to say, my real self--was; for
what purpose I was in the world, and where I had been before I entered
the world, and what that was which caused me to be born, and whether
I would be born again after I--that is to say, my body--had been
dissected. Alas, for all these questions Cracker’s science had no
answer to give, and I envied the gnomes who had the ability to dissolve
and condense into bodies at will.
The darkness was very oppressive, and I wished that I could be
self-luminous like a gnome, and not be dependent upon an external
light for the purpose of seeing. I wondered whether, perhaps, after
the dissection of my body, my spirit would have a light of its own,
or whether Bimbam was right when he pronounced the suggestive word,
“Empty!” Then something, of which I do not know what it was, made me
think that the worst thing anybody could possibly do was to doubt or
deny the presence of a spiritual light within himself, and while I
studied as to what may be that which made me think so, I came to the
conclusion that it was my own spirit reminding me of its presence, and
this was a more convincing proof to me that I actually had a spirit
than all the arguments offered to the contrary by Professor Cracker and
his ilk.
With this conviction a great deal of calmness and satisfaction came
over me. At the same time the darkness grew less in intensity; a
silvery mist, tinged with blue, arose like the dawn that precedes the
rising sun; the light grew stronger and condensed in a luminous ball,
and the next instant the princess stood before me.
“Dearest Adalga!” I said, “where have you been so long, and why did you
leave me alone in this horrible darkness?”
To this the princess answered, “Truth never departs, but error always
attracts us. Never for an instant have I deserted you; I was with you
and around you all the time, but you kept your eyes closed and refused
to see.”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “I strained my eyes to look through the
darkness, but there was nothing.”
“You strained your eyes,” answered the princess, “for the purpose of
seeing my form, which was not formed, and which could not be seen; but
you made no effort to see that which is without form, but which may be
seen with the inner eye. Know, my beloved, that when you see my form
you do not see me, and when you do not see my form you may see me in
truth.”
“This,” I said, “is contrary to all the doctrines of our science, which
teaches that we can see nothing whatever unless it has a shape of some
kind.”
“The eye of science sees only the outward form,” answered Adalga; “but
the eye of wisdom sees the reality itself.”
“I understand,” I replied. “I have learned a lesson, and henceforth the
delusion caused by forms shall have no more power over me. But tell
me, dear, is the hour of vivisection approaching? Is there no way for
escape?”
“Alas, no!” sighed the princess. “There is a jumping-jack at every
door.”
A thrill of horror swept through me when I heard these words, and made
me tremble. A moment before I had called myself a fool for being afraid
of a jumping-jack, and now at the very mention of such a toy the old
terror came back. I knew that I could not escape, because I would not
dare to face a jumping-jack again. I would be sure to succumb to its
influence.
“But,” continued Adalga, “why should you be afraid of being dissected?
Can you not create for yourself a new body again?”
“Nonsense!” I cried. “I am not a creator.”
“But, sure enough,” answered the princess, “you have a creative spirit
in you. Oh, my dear Mulligan, why will you remain incognito among us?
Why do you continue to be dark? Why will you disguise yourself before
me? Is it that I am not worthy to behold your true light, or that
my eyes would be dazzled by its splendour? Lord of my heart, unveil
yourself to me! Show yourself to me in your own essence!”
“Dearest princess!” I replied, “I do not know what you are talking
about. I am not luminous, and I never saw a luminous man. In our
country nobody has a light of his own.”
“Alas!” said the princess, “what a fearful fate it must be to have no
light, and to live in a country of perpetual darkness.”
To this I replied--
“This is not so. Nobody in our country needs a light of his own,
because we have one great luminary, called the sun, right over our
head, and the light of that sun illuminates our world.”
“And can everybody see that sun?” asked the princess.
“Of course,” I said. “Everybody, unless he is as blind as a bat.”
When I had spoken these words, the princess threw her arms around my
neck, and whispered to me--
“Dearest Mulligan! I have a favour to ask you. Please fetch me the sun!”
“This is quite impossible,” I said, “for although we all live in the
light of the sun, nevertheless we cannot approach the sun, nor put him
into our pockets.”
But the princess was not satisfied with that answer. “Surely,” she
exclaimed, “you told me that the sun was right above your heads.
You ought not to refuse me the first kindness I ever asked of you. I
implore you to bring me the sun. I will not be contented unless I have
it.”
I became alarmed. “This is a foolish request, madame,” I said. “If
somebody, or anybody, could claim the sun as his own, and carry it
away, there would be little chance for anyone else to enjoy it. The
Government would monopolise it, and put a tax upon the use of his
light; the doctors would dissect him to see of what material he is
made; and there are lots of amorous fools who would not hesitate a
moment to make him explode, merely for the purpose of amusing their
sweethearts.”
But it was of no use to argue such a thing with a being unacquainted
with the first rules of logic, and the princess went on with tears and
sobs to beg me to fetch her the sun. I tried my best to explain to her
the absurdity of the request, but she would not listen; and, weeping
bitterly, she cried--
“O Mulligan, you do not love me! Is this your gratitude for bestowing
my affection upon you?”
I felt very miserable, and began to look upon myself as the most
ungrateful wretch, and to appease her I promised that I would try to do
all I could.
At this moment a blast of trumpets and the tinkling of bells announced
the arrival of the king. He was accompanied by the queen and her suite,
and with them came all the nobility, the ministers, officers, and also
the whole of the medical faculty, together with the head executioner
and his assistants. The queen was a little fat woman, and rather
homely. Upon her head shone a great emerald, throwing a soft green
light around her. She was accompanied by her maids of honour, all of
whom appeared in a green colour.
I made my bow to the queen, who, after looking at me through the
spiritoscope, turned to the king and said--
“Is this the green hobgoblin who has the impudence of claiming that he
is a man-spirit?”
“Yes,” answered the king; “only, as you will observe, he is not green,
but red.”
“Your majesty is pleased to jest,” replied the queen. “Everybody sees
that he is green.”
“He is red,” said the king sternly, being evidently annoyed by her
contradiction.
“Let him be red then, if you must have it so,” answered the queen,
while her voice indicated vexation; “but he is green for all that.”
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Bimbam I., growing still more red. “I
never saw a woman in my life that did not love to contradict. I say he
is red, and I will leave it to Cravatu to decide.”
Cravatu stepped forward, letting his yellow light fall directly upon
me, and after scanning me very carefully, he said: “I beg pardon, your
majesties, but the hobgoblin is of a bright yellow colour.”
“Are you all making sport of me?” cried the king in a rage; and turning
to the princess, he asked: “What does Adalga say?”
“He appears to me in a silvery light shaded with blue,” answered the
princess; “but according to his own statement he does not shine at all.”
The gnomes looked at each other in amazement, and Cravatu said--
“He is a wizard who appears to everyone in another light.”
But the princess continued--
“Although he does not shine, he has a much greater light than we all,
for it shines upon everything. He calls it a sun, and he has promised
to fetch it to me.”
Therefore the king ordered that I should immediately show him the
sun, and when I succeeded in making him understand that it could not
be removed from its place in the universe, and that the only way of
convincing oneself of its existence was to step within the sphere of
its light, the king ordered Cravatu to select immediately a committee
of three of the most clever gnomes for the purpose of going to the
country of dreams and to hunt for the sun.
Accordingly three gnomes of rank were selected. They were of a white
colour, and the light that radiated from them was so brilliant that
it dazzled one’s eyes to look at it. They immediately assumed their
spherical shapes and floated away; but the king ordered that my
execution should be stayed until after their discovery of the sun.
When I heard these words I felt much relieved in my mind, for I had now
some hope of escape.
“May your majesty persevere in that resolution!” I said to the king.
“For these three messengers will never discover the sun. They have too
splendid lights of their own to be able to see beyond it. They will be
dazzled and blinded by their own radiance, and not look for the light
of the sun.”
Upon hearing these words everybody seemed highly astonished. The gnomes
looked at each other in surprise, and whispered: “He is a prophet! He
can foretell future events! This is quite supernatural!”
“It does not require any supernatural power,” I said, “to be able
to foretell that a thing cannot take place, on account of its being
impossible. Everybody knows that a certain amount of darkness is
required for the purpose of enabling one to perceive light. Those who
are full of their own light cannot see the light of another, just as
those who love to hear only themselves talking will not listen to what
another one says.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the king, and Cravatu whispered to him: “He is
one of those who see what is not.”
But I continued saying: “If your majesty wishes to obtain information
regarding the existence of truth, I would advise you to send a
committee of such as are less conceited and capable of seeing beyond
the wall which their egoism has built around them.”
I was still speaking when the three gnomes returned, and they reported
unanimously that they had been to dreamland, and that they had seen no
other light but their own, and that it was an absurdity to believe in
the existence of a universal sun; for if there were such a light it
could not have escaped their notice, and, moreover, the presence of
such a light would make everybody look of the same colour, so that not
one person could be distinguished from another.
Thereupon all the dark gnomes, such as had as little light and
intelligence as possible, were gathered, and out of them the king
selected three almost entirely dark dwarfs. They were surely the most
sorry-looking imbeciles which it has ever been my misfortune to behold.
Big-headed, hydrocephalic, with shrunken brains, they were the very
personification of abject stupidity; they seemed to have not more
understanding than an oyster, although their power of seeing appeared
good enough. These were appointed as a committee to seek for the sun,
and it was ordered that they should be conducted to the frontier of
the outer world, there to be left to their own fate and to begin their
researches. This was accordingly done: the three idiots were taken
away, and I pitied them, for I doubted whether they would ever have
sense enough to find their way back.
“I am curious to hear the report of this committee,” remarked the
queen, “perhaps it would have been still better to blindfold them.”
To this I replied--
“I fear that your majesty will be disappointed; for, even if the dwarfs
perceive the sun, they will be incapable to understand what they see,
or to describe it.”
“Hear! hear!” exclaimed the king, and all the gnomes began to regard
me with awe and respect; but Cravatu said--
“Really there is more behind this person than we suspected. He is one
of those who sees that which cannot be.”
Thereupon the king conferred upon me the office of head fortune-teller
to the court, and I was treated with great respect. The whole behaviour
of the gnomes changed; the queen smiled at me, and invited me to the
palace; but the princess was delighted, and as she took my arm, she
said to me with a triumphant smile: “I knew that you were more than a
spook after all.”
[Illustration: THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUN]
V.
AMONG THE GNOMES
(_continued_).
We arrived at the king’s palace, a description of which will
undoubtedly interest the reader, and I only regret my inability to do
full justice to this subject.
The palace consisted of an extensive building of white alabaster upon
a rose-coloured marble foundation, and with a gilded dome-shaped roof
over the main portion of the building, while the adjoining parts were
shaped in various ways. The whole represented a mixture of Grecian
and Moorish styles; there was a high portal whose columns were of
white marble with veins of gold. Entering through the main door we
came into a spacious courtyard, filled with works of art, representing
antediluvian monstrosities of the various ages of the world. There
we saw the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Megatherium, and similar
animals unknown in history; enormous snakes, turtles, and crocodiles,
in what is supposed to have been their original size and shape, and
besides these there were represented such failures of nature as may
have existed in the earliest time of the world’s history--women with
fish-tails, human bodies with animal heads, and animal bodies with
human heads or limbs, fauns, mermaids, satyrs, centaurs, flying
snakes, dragons, etc. Curiously enough, the gnomes claimed that these
were the representations of their ancestors, and they paid great
respect to them. This courtyard extended all around the palace,
surrounding it like a ring.
From this court we entered into an entrance hall built of yellow
stone, at the door of which were standing two gigantic umbrella-shaped
mushrooms of scarlet colour with white filaments, resembling the finest
kind of lace.
This hall was exquisitely furnished and ornamented with various
mushrooms, all of an edible kind, affording at once comfort and
food; for while resting upon a lounge or sitting at a table, if one
wanted to eat, all he had to do was to eat a piece of the furniture.
There was the Agaricus deliciosus, procerus, campestris, prunulus,
Boletus edulis, Polyporus confluens, Hydrum repandum and imbriatum,
the Clavaria Botrytis, Morchella esculenta, Helvella crispa, Bovista
nigrescens, and many others, whose names I have forgotten, and still
others which even Professor Cracker has not yet classified. They
were serving either as tables, couches, or chairs; and there was not
a single toadstool or poisonous fungus among them. There were no
chandeliers, lamps, or candlesticks of any kind, for the gnomes lived
in a natural manner and needed no artificial lights. Each gnome was
himself a light more or less luminous according to the degree of his
or her intelligence. But to me, having no light of my own and no power
to illuminate anything, it was a source of continual annoyance that
I always needed the company of some gnome to keep me enlightened, as
otherwise I would have been left in utter darkness and nothingness.
Moreover, the light in which a thing appeared to me always depended on
the colour of the light of this or that gnome who happened to be in my
presence, which caused me to experience a continual change of opinions
regarding the qualities of the objects I saw.