 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 be 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.
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
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