 Chapter 10
Days and days went by now, and no Satan. It was dull
without him. But the astrologer, who had returned from his excursion to the
moon, went about the village, braving public opinion, and getting a stone in the
middle of his back now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to throw
it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working well for
Marget. That Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped going to her
house after a visit or two had hurt her pride, and she had set herself the task
of banishing him from her heart. Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation
brought to her from time to time by old Ursula had touched her with remorse,
jealousy of Satan being the cause of it; and so now, these two matters working
upon her together, she was getting a good profit out of the combination -- her
interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily
warming. All that was needed to complete her conversion was that Wilhelm should
brace up and do something that should cause favorable talk and incline the
public toward him again.
The opportunity came now. Marget sent and asked him to
defend her uncle in the approaching trial, and he was greatly pleased, and
stopped drinking and began his preparations with diligence. With more diligence
than hope, in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many interviews in
his office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our testimony pretty thoroughly,
thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest was poor,
of course.
If Satan would only come! That was my constant thought. He
could invent some way to win the case; for he had said it would be won, so he
necessarily knew how it could be done. But the days dragged on, and still he did
not come. Of course I did not doubt that it would be won, and that Father Peter
would be happy for the rest of his life, since Satan had said so; yet I knew I
should be much more comfortable if he would come and tell us how to manage it.
It was getting high time for Father Peter to have a saving change toward
happiness, for by general report he was worn out with his imprisonment and the
ignominy that was burdening him, and was like to die of his miseries unless he
got relief soon.
At last the trial came on, and the people gathered from
all around to witness it; among them many strangers from considerable distances.
Yes, everybody was there except the accused. He was too feeble in body for the
strain. But Marget was present, and keeping up her hope and her spirit the best
she could. The money was present, too. It was emptied on the table, and was
handled and caressed and examined by such as were privileged.
The astrologer was put in the witness-box. He had on his
best hat and robe for the occasion.
QUESTION. You claim that this money is yours?
ANSWER. I do.
Q. How did you come by it?
A. I found the bag in the road when I was returning from a
journey.
Q. When?
A. More than two years ago.
Q. What did you do with it?
A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret place in my
observatory, intending to find the owner if I could.
Q. You endeavored to find him?
A. I made diligent inquiry during several months, but
nothing came of it.
Q. And then?
A. I thought it not worth while to look further, and was
minded to use the money in finishing the wing of the foundling-asylum connected
with the priory and nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted it
to see if any of it was missing. And then --
Q. Why do you stop? Proceed.
A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I had
finished and was restoring the bag to its place, I looked up and there stood
Father Peter behind me.
Several murmured, "That looks bad," but others answered,
"Ah, but he is such a liar!"
Q. That made you uneasy?
A. No; I thought nothing of it at the time, for Father
Peter often came to me unannounced to ask for a little help in his need.
Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle falsely and
impudently charged with begging, especially from one he had always denounced as
a fraud, and was going to speak, but remembered herself in time and held her
peace.
Q. Proceed.
A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the money to the
foundling-asylum, but elected to wait yet another year and continue my
inquiries. When I heard of Father Peter's find I was glad, and no suspicion
entered my mind; when I came home a day or two later and discovered that my own
money was gone I still did not suspect until three circumstances connected with
Father Peter's good fortune struck me as being singular coincidences.
Q. Pray name them.
A. Father Peter had found his money in a path -- I had
found mine in a road. Father Peter's find consisted exclusively of gold ducats
-- mine also. Father Peter found elevenn hundred and seven ducats -- I exactly
the same.
This closed his evidence, and certainly it made a strong
impression on the house; one could see that.
Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions, then called us
boys, and we told our tale. It made the people laugh, and we were ashamed. We
were feeling pretty badly, anyhow, because Wilhelm was hopeless, and showed it.
He was doing as well as he could, poor young fellow, but nothing was in his
favor, and such sympathy as there was was now plainly not with his client. It
might be difficult for court and people to believe the astrologer's story,
considering his character, but it was almost impossible to believe Father
Peter's. We were already feeling badly enough, but when the astrologer's lawyer
said he believed he would not ask us any questions -- for our story was a little
delicate and it would be cruel for him to put any strain upon it -- everybody
tittered, and it was almost more than we could bear. Then he made a sarcastic
little speech, and got so much fun out of our tale, and it seemed so ridiculous
and childish and every way impossible and foolish, that it made everybody laugh
till the tears came; and at last Marget could not keep up her courage any
longer, but broke down and cried, and I was so sorry for her.
Now I noticed something that braced me up. It was Satan
standing alongside of Wilhelm! And there was such a contrast! -- Satan looked so
confident, had such a spirit in his eyes and face, and Wilhelm looked so
depressed and despondent. We two were comfortable now, and judged that he would
testify and persuade the bench and the people that black was white and white
black, or any other color he wanted it. We glanced around to see what the
strangers in the house thought of him, for he was beautiful, you know --
stunning, in fact -- but no one was noticing him; so we knew by that that he was
invisible.
The lawyer was saying his last words; and while he was
saying them Satan began to melt into Wilhelm. He melted into him and
disappeared; and then there was a change, when his spirit began to look out of
Wilhelm's eyes.
That lawyer finished quite seriously, and with dignity. He
pointed to the money, and said:
"The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies,
the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory -- the
dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it
could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all
its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic."
He sat down. Wilhelm rose and said:
"From the testimony of the accuser I gather that he found
this money in a road more than two years ago. Correct me, sir, if I
misunderstood you."
The astrologer said his understanding of it was correct.
"And the money so found was never out of his hands
thenceforth up to a certain definite date -- the last day of last year. Correct
me, sir, if I am wrong."
The astrologer nodded his head. Wilhelm turned to the
bench and said:
"If I prove that this money here was not that money, then
it is not his?"
"Certainly not; but this is irregular. If you had such a
witness it was your duty to give proper notice of it and have him here to -- "
He broke off and began to consult with the other judges. Meantime that other
lawyer got up excited and began to protest against allowing new witnesses to be
brought into the case at this late stage.
The judges decided that his contention was just and must
be allowed.
"But this is not a new witness," said Wilhelm. "It has
already been partly examined. I speak of the coin."
"The coin? What can the coin say?"
"It can say it is not the coin that the astrologer once
possessed. It can say it was not in existence last December. By its date it can
say this."
And it was so! There was the greatest excitement in the
court while that lawyer and the judges were reaching for coins and examining
them and exclaiming. And everybody was full of admiration of Wilhelm's
brightness in happening to think of that neat idea. At last order was called and
the court said:
"All of the coins but four are of the date of the present
year. The court tenders its sincere sympathy to the accused, and its deep regret
that he, an innocent man, through an unfortunate mistake, has suffered the
undeserved humiliation of imprisonment and trial. The case is dismissed."
So the money could speak, after all, though that lawyer
thought it couldn't. The court rose, and almost everybody came forward to shake
hands with Marget and congratulate her, and then to shake with Wilhelm and
praise him; and Satan had stepped out of Wilhelm and was standing around looking
on full of interest, and people walking through him every which way, not knowing
he was there. And Wilhelm could not explain why he only thought of the date on
the coins at the last moment, instead of earlier; he said it just occurred to
him, all of a sudden, like an inspiration, and he brought it right out without
any hesitation, for, although he didn't examine the coins, he seemed, somehow,
to know it was true. That was honest of him, and like him; another would have
pretended he had thought of it earlier, and was keeping it back for a surprise.
He had dulled down a little now; not much, but still you
could notice that he hadn't that luminous look in his eyes that he had while
Satan was in him. He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when Marget came
and praised him and thanked him and couldn't keep him from seeing how proud she
was of him. The astrologer went off dissatisfied and cursing, and Solomon Isaacs
gathered up the money and carried it away. It was Father Peter's for good and
all, now.
Satan was gone. I judged that he had spirited himself away
to the jail to tell the prisoner the news; and in this I was right. Marget and
the rest of us hurried thither at our best speed, in a great state of rejoicing.
Well, what Satan had done was this: he had appeared before
that poor prisoner, exclaiming, "The trial is over, and you stand forever
disgraced as a thief -- by verdict of the court!"
The shock unseated the old man's reason. When we arrived,
ten minutes later, he was parading pompously up and down and delivering commands
to this and that and the other constable or jailer, and calling them Grand
Chamberlain, and Prince This and Prince That, and Admiral of the Fleet, Field
Marshal in Command, and all such fustian, and was as happy as a bird. He thought
he was Emperor!
Marget flung herself on his breast and cried, and indeed
everybody was moved almost to heartbreak. He recognized Marget, but could not
understand why she should cry. He patted her on the shoulder and said:
"Don't do it, dear; remember, there are witnesses, and it
is not becoming in the Crown Princess. Tell me your trouble -- it shall be
mended; there is nothing the Emperor cannot do." Then he looked around and saw
old Ursula with her apron to her eyes. He was puzzled at that, and said, "And
what is the matter with you?"
Through her sobs she got out words explaining that she was
distressed to see him -- "so." He reflected over that a moment, then muttered,
as if to himself: "A singular old thing, the Dowager Duchess -- means well, but
is always snuffling and never able to tell what it is about. It is because she
doesn't know." His eyes fell on Wilhelm. "Prince of India," he said, "I divine
that it is you that the Crown Princess is concerned about. Her tears shall be
dried; I will no longer stand between you; she shall share your throne; and
between you you shall inherit mine. There, little lady, have I done well? You
can smile now -- isn't it so?"
He petted Marget and kissed her, and was so contented with
himself and with everybody that he could not do enough for us all, but began to
give away kingdoms and such things right and left, and the least that any of us
got was a principality. And so at last, being persuaded to go home, he marched
in imposing state; and when the crowds along the way saw how it gratified him to
be hurrahed at, they humored him to the top of his desire, and he responded with
condescending bows and gracious smiles, and often stretched out a hand and said,
"Bless you, my people!"
As pitiful a sight as ever I saw. And Marget, and old
Ursula crying all the way.
On my road home I came upon Satan, and reproached him with
deceiving me with that lie. He was not embarrassed, but said, quite simply and
composedly:
"Ah, you mistake; it was the truth. I said he would be
happy the rest of his days, and he will, for he will always think he is the
Emperor, and his pride in it and his joy in it will endure to the end. He is
now, and will remain, the one utterly happy person in this empire."
"But the method of it, Satan, the method! Couldn't you
have done it without depriving him of his reason?"
It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that accomplished it.
"What an ass you are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as
not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination?
No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful
thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that
imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the
sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have
been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery
thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a
silver-gilt fiction; you see the result -- and you criticize! I said I would
make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by the
only means possible to his race -- and you are not satisfied!" He heaved a
discouraged sigh, and said, "It seems to me that this race is hard to please."
There it was, you see. He didn't seem to know any way to
do a person a favor except by killing him or making a lunatic out of him. I
apologized, as well as I could; but privately I did not think much of his
processes -- at that time.
Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived a life of
continuous and uninterrupted self-deception. It duped itself from cradle to
grave with shams and delusions which it mistook for realities, and this made its
entire life a sham. Of the score of fine qualities which it imagined it had and
was vain of, it really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold, and was
only brass. One day when he was in this vein he mentioned a detail -- the sense
of humor. I cheered up then, and took issue. I said we possessed it.
"There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready to claim
what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of brass filings for a ton of
gold-dust. You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of
you possess that. This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and
trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities,
evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which exist
in the world are sealed from their dull vision. Will a day come when the race
will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and by
laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably
one really effective weapon -- laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication,
persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- weaken
it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms
at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. You are always
fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you
leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense
and the courage."
We were traveling at the time and stopped at a little city
in India and looked on while a juggler did his tricks before a group of natives.
They were wonderful, but I knew Satan could beat that game, and I begged him to
show off a little, and he said he would. He changed himself into a native in
turban and breech-cloth, and very considerately conferred on me a temporary
knowledge of the language.
The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth in a
small flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot; after a minute the rag began to
rise; in ten minutes it had risen a foot; then the rag was removed and a little
tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit. We ate the fruit, and it
was good. But Satan said:
"Why do you cover the pot? Can't you grow the tree in the
sunlight?"
"No," said the juggler; "no one can do that."
"You are only an apprentice; you don't know your trade.
Give me the seed. I will show you." He took the seed and said, "What shall I
raise from it?"
"It is a cherry seed; of course you will raise a cherry."
"Oh no; that is a trifle; any novice can do that. Shall I
raise an orange-tree from it?"
"Oh yes!" and the juggler laughed.
"And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as
oranges?"
"If God wills!" and they all laughed.
Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful of dust on
it, and said, "Rise!"
A tiny stem shot up and began to grow, and grew so fast
that in five minutes it was a great tree, and we were sitting in the shade of
it. There was a murmur of wonder, then all looked up and saw a strange and
pretty sight, for the branches were heavy with fruits of many kinds and colors
-- oranges, grapes, bananas, peaches, ccherries, apricots, and so on. Baskets
were brought, and the unlading of the tree began; and the people crowded around
Satan and kissed his hand, and praised him, calling him the prince of jugglers.
The news went about the town, and everybody came running to see the wonder --
and they remembered to bring baskets, too. But the tree was equal to the
occasion; it put out new fruits as fast as any were removed; baskets were filled
by the score and by the hundred, but always the supply remained undiminished. At
last a foreigner in white linen and sun-helmet arrived, and exclaimed, angrily:
"Away from here! Clear out, you dogs; the tree is on my
lands and is my property."
The natives put down their baskets and made humble
obeisance. Satan made humble obeisance, too, with his fingers to his forehead,
in the native way, and said:
"Please let them have their pleasure for an hour, sir --
only that, and no longer. Afterward you may forbid them; and you will still have
more fruit than you and the state together can consume in a year."
This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried out, "Who
are you, you vagabond, to tell your betters what they may do and what they
mayn't!" and he struck Satan with his cane and followed this error with a kick.
The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves withered
and fell. The foreigner gazed at the bare limbs with the look of one who is
surprised, and not gratified. Satan said:
"Take good care of the tree, for its health and yours are
bound together. It will never bear again, but if you tend it well it will live
long. Water its roots once in each hour every night -- and do it yourself; it
must not be done by proxy, and to do it in daylight will not answer. If you fail
only once in any night, the tree will die, and you likewise. Do not go home to
your own country any more -- you would not reach there; make no business or
pleasure engagements which require you to go outside your gate at night -- you
cannot afford the risk; do not rent or sell this place -- it would be
injudicious."
The foreigner was proud and wouldn't beg, but I thought he
looked as if he would like to. While he stood gazing at Satan we vanished away
and landed in Ceylon.
I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn't been his
customary self and killed him or made him a lunatic. It would have been a mercy.
Satan overheard the thought, and said:
"I would have done it but for his wife, who has not
offended me. She is coming to him presently from their native land, Portugal.
She is well, but has not long to live, and has been yearning to see him and
persuade him to go back with her next year. She will die without knowing he
can't leave that place."
"He won't tell her?"
"He? He will not trust that secret with any one; he will
reflect that it could be revealed in sleep, in the hearing of some Portuguese
guest's servant some time or other."
"Did none of those natives understand what you said to
him?"
"None of them understood, but he will always be afraid
that some of them did. That fear will be torture to him, for he has been a harsh
master to them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping his tree down. That
will make his days uncomfortable -- I have already arranged for his nights."
It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take such a
malicious satisfaction in his plans for this foreigner.
"Does he believe what you told him, Satan?"
"He thought he didn't, but our vanishing helped. The tree,
where there had been no tree before -- that helped. The insane and uncanny
variety of fruits -- the sudden withering -- all these things are helps. Let him
think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the tree.
But between this and night he will begin his changed career with a very natural
precaution -- for him."
"What is that?"
"He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree's devil. You
are such a humorous race -- and don't suspect it."
"Will he tell the priest?"
"No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created it, and
that he wants the juggler's devil driven out of it, so that it will thrive and
be fruitful again. The priest's incantations will fail; then the Portuguese will
give up that scheme and get his watering-pot ready."
"But the priest will burn the tree. I know it; he will not
allow it to remain."
"Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too.
But in India the people are civilized, and these things will not happen. The man
will drive the priest away and take care of the tree."
I reflected a little, then said, "Satan, you have given
him a hard life, I think."
"Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a holiday."
We flitted from place to place around the world as we had
done before, Satan showing me a hundred wonders, most of them reflecting in some
way the weakness and triviality of our race. He did this now every few days --
not out of malice -- I am sure of that -- it only seemed to amuse and interest
him, just as a naturalist might be amused and interested by a collection of ants.
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