I was born of poor because honest parents, and until I was twenty-three
years old never knew the possibilities of happiness latent in another
person's coin. At that time Providence threw me into a deep sleep and
revealed to me in a dream the folly of labor. "Behold," said a vision of
a holy hermit, "the poverty and squalor of your lot and listen to the
teachings of nature. You rise in the morning from your pallet of straw
and go forth to your daily labor in the fields. The flowers nod their
heads in friendly salutation as you pass. The lark greets you with a
burst of song. The early sun sheds his temperate beams upon you, and
from the dewy grass you inhale an atmosphere cool and grateful to your
lungs. All nature seems to salute you with the joy of a generous servant
welcoming a faithful master. You are in harmony with her gentlest mood
and your soul sings within you. You begin your daily task at the plow,
hopeful that the noonday will fulfill the promise of the morn, maturing
the charms of the landscape and confirming its benediction upon your
spirit. You follow the plow until fatigue invokes repose, and seating
yourself upon the earth at the end of your furrow you expect to enjoy in
fulness the delights of which you did but taste.
"Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky and his beams are become a
torrent. The flowers have closed their petals, confining their perfume
and denying their colors to the eye. Coolness no longer exhales from the
grass: the dew has vanished and the dry surface of the fields repeats
the fierce heat of the sky. No longer the birds of heaven salute you
with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from the edge of the
copse. Unhappy man! all the gentle and healing ministrations of nature
are denied you in punishment of your sin. You have broken the First
Commandment of the Natural Decalogue: you have labored!"
Awakening from my dream, I collected my few belongings, bade adieu to my
erring parents and departed out of that land, pausing at the grave of my
grandfather, who had been a priest, to take an oath that never again,
Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest penny.
How long I traveled I know not, but I came at last to a great city by
the sea, where I set up as a physician. The name of that place I do not
now remember, for such were my activity and renown in my new profession
that the Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opinion, altered it, and
thenceforth the place was known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
needless to say that I had no knowledge of medicine, but by securing the
service of an eminent forger I obtained a diploma purporting to have
been granted by the Royal Quackery of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos,
which, framed in immortelles and suspended by a bit of _crêpe_ to a
willow in front of my office, attracted the ailing in great numbers. In
connection with my dispensary I conducted one of the largest undertaking
establishments ever known, and as soon as my means permitted, purchased
a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very
profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and
on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was
patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I
was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to
send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a
receiver of stolen goods--an act which I confess was saved from the
reproach of filial gratitude only by my exaction of all the profits.
But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoidable only by practice of the
sternest indigence: human foresight cannot provide against the envy of
the gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of
prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces
which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and
finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that
patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe.
Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to
their friends; wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous to come by
their own; superfluous children of penitent parents and dependent
parents of frugal children; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry and
husbands of wives without standing in the courts of divorce--these and
all conceivable classes of the surplus population were conducted to my
dispensary in the City of the Gone Away. They came in incalculable
multitudes.
Government agents brought me caravans of orphans, paupers, lunatics and
all who had become a public charge. My skill in curing orphanism and
pauperism was particularly acknowledged by a grateful parliament.
Naturally, all this promoted the public prosperity, for although I got
the greater part of the money that strangers expended in the city, the
rest went into the channels of trade, and I was myself a liberal
investor, purchaser and employer, and a patron of the arts and sciences.
The City of the Gone Away grew so rapidly that in a few years it had
inclosed my cemetery, despite its own constant growth. In that fact lay
the lion that rent me.
The Aldermen declared my cemetery a public evil and decided to take it
from me, remove the bodies to another place and make a park of it. I was
to be paid for it and could easily bribe the appraisers to fix a high
price, but for a reason which will appear the decision gave me little
joy. It was in vain that I protested against the sacrilege of disturbing
the holy dead, although this was a powerful appeal, for in that land the
dead are held in religious veneration. Temples are built in their honor
and a separate priesthood maintained at the public expense, whose only
duty is performance of memorial services of the most solemn and touching
kind. On four days in the year there is a Festival of the Good, as it is
called, when all the people lay by their work or business and, headed by
the priests, march in procession through the cemeteries, adorning the
graves and praying in the temples. However bad a man's life may be, it
is believed that when dead he enters into a state of eternal and
inexpressible happiness. To signify a doubt of this is an offense
punishable by death. To deny burial to the dead, or to exhume a buried
body, except under sanction of law by special dispensation and with
solemn ceremony, is a crime having no stated penalty because no one has
ever had the hardihood to commit it.
All these considerations were in my favor, yet so well assured were the
people and their civic officers that my cemetery was injurious to the
public health that it was condemned and appraised, and with terror in my
heart I received three times its value and began to settle up my affairs
with all speed.
A week later was the day appointed for the formal inauguration of the
ceremony of removing the bodies. The day was fine and the entire
population of the city and surrounding country was present at the
imposing religious rites. These were directed by the mortuary priesthood
in full canonicals. There was propitiatory sacrifice in the Temples of
the Once, followed by a processional pageant of great splendor, ending
at the cemetery. The Great Mayor in his robe of state led the
procession. He was armed with a golden spade and followed by one hundred
male and female singers, clad all in white and chanting the Hymn to the
Gone Away. Behind these came the minor priesthood of the temples, all
the civic authorities, habited in their official apparel, each carrying
a living pig as an offering to the gods of the dead. Of the many
divisions of the line, the last was formed by the populace, with
uncovered heads, sifting dust into their hair in token of humility. In
front of the mortuary chapel in the midst of the necropolis, the Supreme
Priest stood in gorgeous vestments, supported on each hand by a line of
bishops and other high dignitaries of his prelacy, all frowning with the
utmost austerity. As the Great Mayor paused in the Presence, the minor
clergy, the civic authorities, the choir and populace closed in and
encompassed the spot. The Great Mayor, laying his golden spade at the
feet of the Supreme Priest, knelt in silence.
"Why comest thou here, presumptuous mortal?" said the Supreme Priest in
clear, deliberate tones. "Is it thy unhallowed purpose with this
implement to uncover the mysteries of death and break the repose of the
Good?"
The Great Mayor, still kneeling, drew from his robe a document with
portentous seals: "Behold, O ineffable, thy servant, having warrant of
his people, entreateth at thy holy hands the custody of the Good, to the
end and purpose that they lie in fitter earth, by consecration duly
prepared against their coming."
With that he placed in the sacerdotal hands the order of the Council of
Aldermen decreeing the removal. Merely touching the parchment, the
Supreme Priest passed it to the Head Necropolitan at his side, and
raising his hands relaxed the severity of his countenance and exclaimed:
"The gods comply."
Down the line of prelates on either side, his gesture, look and words
were successively repeated. The Great Mayor rose to his feet, the choir
began a solemn chant and, opportunely, a funeral car drawn by ten white
horses with black plumes rolled in at the gate and made its way through
the parting crowd to the grave selected for the occasion--that of a high
official whom I had treated for chronic incumbency. The Great Mayor
touched the grave with his golden spade (which he then presented to the
Supreme Priest) and two stalwart diggers with iron ones set vigorously
to work.
At that moment I was observed to leave the cemetery and the country; for
a report of the rest of the proceedings I am indebted to my sainted
father, who related it in a letter to me, written in jail the night
before he had the irreparable misfortune to take the kink out of a rope.
As the workmen proceeded with their excavation, four bishops stationed
themselves at the corners of the grave and in the profound silence of
the multitude, broken otherwise only by the harsh grinding sound of
spades, repeated continuously, one after another, the solemn invocations
and responses from the Ritual of the Disturbed, imploring the blessed
brother to forgive. But the blessed brother was not there. Full fathom
two they mined for him in vain, then gave it up. The priests were
visibly disconcerted, the populace was aghast, for that grave was
indubitably vacant.
After a brief consultation with the Supreme Priest, the Great Mayor
ordered the workmen to open another grave. The ritual was omitted this
time until the coffin should be uncovered. There was no coffin, no body.
The cemetery was now a scene of the wildest confusion and dismay. The
people shouted and ran hither and thither, gesticulating, clamoring, all
talking at once, none listening. Some ran for spades, fire-shovels,
hoes, sticks, anything. Some brought carpenters' adzes, even chisels
from the marble works, and with these inadequate aids set to work upon
the first graves they came to. Others fell upon the mounds with their
bare hands, scraping away the earth as eagerly as dogs digging for
marmots. Before nightfall the surface of the greater part of the
cemetery had been upturned; every grave had been explored to the bottom
and thousands of men were tearing away at the interspaces with as
furious a frenzy as exhaustion would permit. As night came on torches
were lighted, and in the sinister glare these frantic mortals, looking
like a legion of fiends performing some unholy rite, pursued their
disappointing work until they had devastated the entire area. But not a
body did they find--not even a coffin.
The explanation is exceedingly simple. An important part of my income
had been derived from the sale of _cadavres_ to medical colleges, which
never before had been so well supplied, and which, in added recognition
of my services to science, had all bestowed upon me diplomas, degrees
and fellowships without number. But their demand for _cadavres_ was
unequal to my supply: by even the most prodigal extravagances they could
not consume the one-half of the products of my skill as a physician. As
to the rest, I had owned and operated the most extensive and thoroughly
appointed soapworks in all the country. The excellence of my "Toilet
Homoline" was attested by certificates from scores of the saintliest
theologians, and I had one in autograph from Badelina Fatti the most
famous living soaprano.