The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew
everything, and he forgot nothing. What another must study, he learned
at a glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he made things live
before you when he told about them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam
created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple
down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life
in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and
he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and
looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was
no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those
visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men
shrieking and supplicating in anguish--why, we could hardly bear it, but
he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an
artificial fire.
And always when he was talking about men and women here on the earth and
their doings--even their grandest and sublimest--we were secretly
ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they and their doings were of
paltry poor consequence; often you would think he was talking about
flies, if you didn't know. Once he even said, in so many words, that our
people down here were quite interesting to him, notwithstanding they were
so dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and
rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around. He said it
in a quite matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as a person
might talk about bricks or manure or any other thing that was of no
consequence and hadn't feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in
my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.
"Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good
manners; manners are a fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?"
Any one would have been obliged to like it. It was lovely to look at, it
was so shapely and fine, and so cunningly perfect in all its particulars,
even to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan said we must put
the artillery in place now, and station the halberdiers and display the
cavalry. Our men and horses were a spectacle to see, they were so little
like what they were intended for; for, of course, we had no art in making
such things. Satan said they were the worst he had seen; and when he
touched them and made them alive, it was just ridiculous the way they
acted, on account of their legs not being of uniform lengths. They
reeled and sprawled around as if they were drunk, and endangered
everybody's lives around them, and finally fell over and lay helpless and
kicking. It made us all laugh, though it was a shameful thing to see.
The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a salute, but they were so
crooked and so badly made that they all burst when they went off, and
killed some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan said we would
have a storm now, and an earthquake, if we liked, but we must stand off a
piece, out of danger. We wanted to call the people away, too, but he
said never mind them; they were of no consequence, and we could make
more, some time or other, if we needed them.
A small storm-cloud began to settle down black over the castle, and the
miniature lightning and thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver,
and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall, and all the people
flocked into the castle for shelter. The cloud settled down blacker and
blacker, and one could see the castle only dimly through it; the
lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced the castle and set it
on fire, and the flames shone out red and fierce through the cloud, and
the people came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back,
paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in the
midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the
magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle's
wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight, and
closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred
poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not keep from
crying.
"Don't cry," Satan said; "they were of no value."
"But they are gone to hell!"
"Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more."
It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he was wholly without
feeling, and could not understand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and
as gay as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish massacre. And he
was bent on making us feel as he did, and of course his magic
accomplished his desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever he
pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing on that grave, and he
was playing to us on a strange, sweet instrument which he took out of his
pocket; and the music--but there is no music like that, unless perhaps in
heaven, and that was where he brought it from, he said. It made one mad,
for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that
went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was
worship. He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the bliss of
paradise was in it.
Presently he said he must go away on an errand. But we could not bear
the thought of it, and clung to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and
that pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not go yet, but would
wait a little while and we would sit down and talk a few minutes longer;
and he told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to be known by it
to us alone, but he had chosen another one to be called by in the
presence of others; just a common one, such as people have--Philip Traum.
It sounded so odd and mean for such a being! But it was his decision,
and we said nothing; his decision was sufficient.
We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts began to run on the
pleasure it would be to tell them when I got home, but he noticed those
thoughts, and said:
"No, all these matters are a secret among us four. I do not mind your
trying to tell them, if you like, but I will protect your tongues, and
nothing of the secret will escape from them."
It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be helped, and it cost us a sigh
or two. We talked pleasantly along, and he was always reading our
thoughts and responding to them, and it seemed to me that this was the
most wonderful of all the things he did, but he interrupted my musings
and said:
"No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not wonderful for me. I am
not limited like you. I am not subject to human conditions. I can
measure and understand your human weaknesses, for I have studied them;
but I have none of them. My flesh is not real, although it would seem
firm to your touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit. Father Peter
is coming." We looked around, but did not see any one. "He is not in
sight yet, but you will see him presently."
"Do you know him, Satan?"
"No."
"Won't you talk with him when he comes? He is not ignorant and dull,
like us, and he would so like to talk with you. Will you?"
"Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on my errand after a little.
There he is now; you can see him. Sit still, and don't say anything."
We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching through the chestnuts. We
three were sitting together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of us in
the path. Father Peter came slowly along with his head down, thinking,
and stopped within a couple of yards of us and took off his hat and got
out his silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face and looking
as if he were going to speak to us, but he didn't. Presently he
muttered, "I can't think what brought me here; it seems as if I were in
my study a minute ago--but I suppose I have been dreaming along for an
hour and have come all this stretch without noticing; for I am not myself
in these troubled days." Then he went mumbling along to himself and
walked straight through Satan, just as if nothing were there. It made us
catch our breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out, the way you
nearly always do when a startling thing happens, but something
mysteriously restrained us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast.
Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and Satan said:
"It is as I told you--I am only a spirit."
"Yes, one perceives it now," said Nikolaus, "but we are not spirits. It
is plain he did not see you, but were we invisible, too? He looked at
us, but he didn't seem to see us."
"No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished it so."
It seemed almost too good to be true, that we were actually seeing these
romantic and wonderful things, and that it was not a dream. And there he
sat, looking just like anybody--so natural and simple and charming, and
chatting along again the same as ever, and--well, words cannot make you
understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and an ecstasy is a thing
that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell
about music so that another person can get the feeling of it. He was
back in the old ages once more now, and making them live before us. He
had seen so much, so much! It was just a wonder to look at him and try
to think how it must seem to have such experience behind one.
But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the creature of a day, and
such a short and paltry day, too. And he didn't say anything to raise up
your drooping pride--no, not a word. He always spoke of men in the same
old indifferent way--just as one speaks of bricks and manure-piles and
such things; you could see that they were of no consequence to him, one
way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt us, you could see that; just as
we don't mean to insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's emotions
are nothing to us; it never occurs to us to think whether it has any or
not.
Once when he was bunching the most illustrious kings and conquerors and
poets and prophets and pirates and beggars together--just a brick-pile--I
was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked him why he made so
much difference between men and himself. He had to struggle with that a
moment; he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such a strange
question. Then he said:
"The difference between man and me? The difference between a mortal and
an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse
that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the difference between
Caesar and this?"
I said, "One cannot compare things which by their nature and by the
interval between them are not comparable."
"You have answered your own question," he said. "I will expand it. Man
is made of dirt--I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum
of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow;
he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the
Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the
Moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by
itself."
He stopped there, as if that settled the matter. I was sorry, for at
that time I had but a dim idea of what the Moral Sense was. I merely
knew that we were proud of having it, and when he talked like that about
it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl feels who thinks her dearest
finery is being admired and then overhears strangers making fun of it.
For a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was depressed. Then
Satan began to chat again, and soon he was sparkling along in such a
cheerful and vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He told some
very cunning things that put us in a gale of laughter; and when he was
telling about the time that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails
and set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson sitting on the
fence slapping his thighs and laughing, with the tears running down his
cheeks, and lost his balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that
picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a most lovely and jolly
time. By and by he said:
"I am going on my errand now."
"Don't!" we all said. "Don't go; stay with us. You won't come back."
"Yes, I will; I give you my word."
"When? To-night? Say when."
"It won't be long. You will see."
"We like you."
"And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you something fine to see.
Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let
you see me do it."
He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He thinned away and thinned
away until he was a soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You
could see the bushes through him as clearly as you see things through a
soap-bubble, and all over him played and flashed the delicate iridescent
colors of the bubble, and along with them was that thing shaped like a
window-sash which you always see on the globe of the bubble. You have
seen a bubble strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or three
times before it bursts. He did that. He sprang--touched the grass--
bounded--floated along--touched again--and so on, and presently exploded
--puff! and in his place was vacancy.
It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We did not say anything,
but sat wondering and dreaming and blinking; and finally Seppi roused up
and said, mournfully sighing:
"I suppose none of it has happened."
Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.
I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the same cold fear that
was in my own mind. Then we saw poor old Father Peter wandering along
back, with his head bent down, searching the ground. When he was pretty
close to us he looked up and saw us, and said, "How long have you been
here, boys?"
"A little while, Father."
"Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can help me. Did you come up
by the path?"
"Yes, Father."
"That is good. I came the same way. I have lost my wallet. There
wasn't much in it, but a very little is much to me, for it was all I had.
I suppose you haven't seen anything of it?"
"No, Father, but we will help you hunt."
"It is what I was going to ask you. Why, here it is!"
We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right where Satan stood when he
began to melt--if he did melt and it wasn't a delusion. Father Peter
picked it up and looked very much surprised.
"It is mine," he said, "but not the contents. This is fat; mine was
flat; mine was light; this is heavy." He opened it; it was stuffed as
full as it could hold with gold coins. He let us gaze our fill; and of
course we did gaze, for we had never seen so much money at one time
before. All our mouths came open to say "Satan did it!" but nothing came
out. There it was, you see--we couldn't tell what Satan didn't want
told; he had said so himself.
"Boys, did you do this?"
It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too, as soon as he thought what
a foolish question it was.
"Who has been here?"
Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so for a moment, because we
couldn't say "Nobody," for it wouldn't be true, and the right word didn't
seem to come; then I thought of the right one, and said it:
"Not a human being."
"That is so," said the others, and let their mouths go shut.
"It is not so," said Father Peter, and looked at us very severely. "I
came by here a while ago, and there was no one here, but that is nothing;
some one has been here since. I don't mean to say that the person didn't
pass here before you came, and I don't mean to say you saw him, but some
one did pass, that I know. On your honor--you saw no one?"
"Not a human being."
"That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the truth."
He began to count the money on the path, we on our knees eagerly helping
to stack it in little piles.
"It's eleven hundred ducats odd!" he said. "Oh dear! if it were only
mine--and I need it so!" and his voice broke and his lips quivered.
"It is yours, sir!" we all cried out at once, "every heller!"
"No--it isn't mine. Only four ducats are mine; the rest...!" He fell to
dreaming, poor old soul, and caressing some of the coins in his hands,
and forgot where he was, sitting there on his heels with his old gray
head bare; it was pitiful to see. "No," he said, waking up, "it isn't
mine. I can't account for it. I think some enemy... it must be a
trap."
Nikolaus said: "Father Peter, with the exception of the astrologer you
haven't a real enemy in the village--nor Marget, either. And not even a
half-enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you a
mean turn. I'll ask you if that's so or not?"
He couldn't get around that argument, and it cheered him up. "But it
isn't mine, you see--it isn't mine, in any case."
He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn't be sorry, but
glad, if anybody would contradict him.
"It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it. Aren't we, boys?"
"Yes, we are--and we'll stand by it, too."
"Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me; you do, indeed. If I had
only a hundred-odd ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and
we've no home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow. And that four
ducats is all we've got in the--"
"It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take it--we are bail that
it's all right. Aren't we, Theodor? Aren't we, Seppi?"
We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the shabby old
wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would use two hundred
of it, for his house was good enough security for that, and would put the
rest at interest till the rightful owner came for it; and on our side we
must sign a paper showing how he got the money--a paper to show to the
villagers as proof that he had not got out of his troubles dishonestly.
