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 arose 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 recognize a lord chancellor in his nightshirt? 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 down hill 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 profess 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 downward, with open mouth slowly descended upon him. Horror
froze the sermon-pump. He stared upward 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
washtub, 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 among 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, who 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 bodyguard 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.
Every one 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 toward 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
housebreaking, 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 henceforth 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.