Марк Твен
The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance
“Very well,” he said; “would you like to see a history of the progress of the human race? – its development of that product which it calls civilization?”
We said we should.
So, with a thought, he turned the place into the Garden of Eden, and we saw Abel praying by his altar; then Cain came walking toward him with his club, and did not seem to see us, and would have stepped on my foot if I had not drawn it in. He spoke to his brother in a language which we did not understand; then he grew violent and threatening, and we knew what was going to happen, and turned away our heads for the moment; but we heard the crash of the blows and heard the shrieks and the groans; then there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in his blood and gasping out his life, and Cain standing over him and looking down at him, vengeful and unrepentant.
Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long series of unknown wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the distance showing veiled and dim through the rain. Satan said:
“The progress of your race was not satisfactory. It is to have another chance now.”
The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome with wine.
Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and “the attempt to discover two or three respectable persons there,” as Satan described it. Next, Lot and his daughters in the cave.
Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the victims massacre the survivors and their cattle, and save the young girls alive and distribute them around.
Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent and drive the nail into the temple of her sleeping guest; and we were so close that when the blood gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our feet, and we could have stained our hands in it if we had wanted to.
Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings of the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those brave people. Also we saw Cæsar invade Britain – “not that those barbarians had done him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to confer the blessings of civilization upon their widows and orphans,” as Satan explained.
Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review before us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through those ages, “leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and other signs of the progress of the human race,” as Satan observed.
And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars – all over Europe, all over the world. “Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,” Satan said, “sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose – there is no such war in the history of the race.”
“Now,” said Satan, “you have seen your progress down to the present, and you must confess that it is wonderful – in its way. We must now exhibit the future.”
He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
“You perceive,” he said, “that you have made continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.”
Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay.
More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the time to continue our work.
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: “It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best – to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history – but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian – not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.”
By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying.
“And what does it amount to?” said Satan, with his evil chuckle. “Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense – to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart – if you have one – you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to – ” Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his manner changed. He said, gently: “No, we will drink one another’s health, and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands out of space by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast; but throw away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not visited this world before.”
We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as they descended. They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion, they seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion. They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were never still, but flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and flashed out dainty explosions of enchanting color. I think it was most like opals washing about in waves and flashing out their splendid fires. But there is nothing to compare the wine with. We drank it, and felt a strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us, and Seppi’s eyes filled and he said, worshipingly:
“We shall be there some day, and then – ”
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan would say, “Yes, you will be there some day,” but Satan seemed to be thinking about something else, and said nothing. This made me feel ghastly, for I knew he had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi looked distressed, and did not finish his remark. The goblets rose and clove their way into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and disappeared. Why didn’t they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his?
CHAPTER IX
IT was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter’s household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.
They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing.
All that were near by turned upon him, astonished and not pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways and his supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all over the town and turned many privately against him. The big blacksmith called attention to him now, raising his voice so that all should hear, and said:
“What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to the company why you threw no stone.”
“Are you sure I did not throw a stone?”
“Yes. You needn’t try to get out of it; I had my eye on you.”
“And I – I noticed you!” shouted two others.
“Three witnesses,” said Satan: “Mueller, the blacksmith; Klein, the butcher’s man; Pfeiffer, the weaver’s journeyman. Three very ordinary liars. Are there any more?”
“Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind about what you consider us – three’s enough to settle your matter for you. You’ll prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you.”
“That’s so!” shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they could to the center of interest.
“And first you will answer that other question,” cried the blacksmith, pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and hero of the occasion. “What are you laughing at?”
Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: “To see three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were so near death themselves.”
You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their breath, under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said:
“Pooh! What do you know about it?”
“I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read the hands of you three – and some others – when you lifted them to stone the woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to live – and yonder is the clock!”
It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blanched, and turned mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with spirit:
“It is not long to wait for prediction number one. If it fails, young master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you that.”
No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness which was impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone the blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped his hand upon his heart, saying, “Give me breath! Give me room!” and began to sink down. The crowd surged back, no one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering to the ground and was dead. The people stared at him, then at Satan, then at one another; and their lips moved, but no words came. Then Satan said:
“Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let them speak.”
It struck a kind of panic into them, and, although no one answered him, many began to violently accuse one another, saying, “You said he didn’t throw,” and getting for reply, “It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!” And so in a moment they were in a raging and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging one another; and in the midst was the only indifferent one – the dead lady hanging from her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.
So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but was saying to myself, “He told them he was laughing at them, but it was a lie – he was laughing at me.”
That made him laugh again, and he said, “Yes, I was laughing at you, because, in fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted at the act – but I was laughing at the others, too.”
“Why?”
“Because their case was yours.”
“How is that?”
“Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone than you had.”
“Satan!”
“Oh, it’s true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise – perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it – and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end.
“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race – the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”
I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.
“Still, it is true, lamb,” said Satan. “Look at you in war – what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!”
“In war? How?”
“There has never been a just one, never an honorable one – on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful – as usual – will shout for the war. The pulpit will – warily and cautiously – object – at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers – as earlier – but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation – pulpit and all – will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
CHAPTER X
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 win, 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 suspicions 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 eleven 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 eye 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?”
