Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my travels and
excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling
contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the traveler," as he called himself,
and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and was
the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the world's
wonders. At another time that would have kept me awake, but it did not
affect me now. No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts ran
upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and
frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer
days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought we
were in school. And now he was going out of this young life, and the
summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play
as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more. To-
morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been, and it
would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and frivolous
things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and dull eyes,
and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he would not
suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days would be
wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and nearer, his
fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but Seppi and me.
Twelve days--only twelve days. It was awful to think of. I noticed that
in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar names, Nick and
Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and reverently, as one
speaks of the dead. Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship
came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed that they were
mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and
reproached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just as it is when we
remember our unkindnesses to friends who have passed beyond the veil, and
we wish we could have them back again, if only for a moment, so that we
could go on our knees to them and say, "Have pity, and forgive."
Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of nearly two
miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for reward,
and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment
and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not thinking
of treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following me
and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the core, which was
all that was left; and I laughed. Then he turned away, crying, and said
he had meant to give it to his little sister. That smote me, for she was
slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would have been a proud moment
for him, to see her joy and surprise and have her caresses. But I was
ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said something rude and mean, to
pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in words, but there was a
wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his home which rose
before me many times in after years, in the night, and reproached me and
made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then it
disappeared; but it was back now, and not dim.
Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my ink and spoiled four
copy-books, and was in danger of severe punishment; but I put it upon
him, and he got the whipping.
And only last year I had cheated him in a trade, giving him a large fish-
hook which was partly broken through for three small sound ones. The
first fish he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I was blamable,
and he refused to take back one of the small hooks which my conscience
forced me to offer him, but said, "A trade is a trade; the hook was bad,
but that was not your fault."
No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs upbraided me and
tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs
have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he was
to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves,
the rain still pattering upon the panes.
In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him. It was down by the
river. His lips moved, but he did not say anything, he only looked dazed
and stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood like that a few
moments, the tears welling into his eyes, then he turned away and I
locked my arm in his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking. We
crossed the bridge and wandered through the meadows and up among the
hills and the woods, and at last the talk came and flowed freely, and it
was all about Nikolaus and was a recalling of the life we had lived with
him. And every now and then Seppi said, as if to himself:
"Twelve days!--less than twelve days."
We said we must be with him all the time; we must have all of him we
could; the days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It
would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it,
but that was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we
turned a curve and came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily:
"Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?"
We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion; he was willing to talk for
us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits about it.
Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to
take him a journey, and Satan had promised. It was to be a far journey,
and wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us, too,
but he said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now. Satan
would come for him on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the
hours, he was so impatient.
That was the fatal day. We were already counting the hours, too.
We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had been our
favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about
the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not
shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely
gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and
we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and
saying, "Wait, let me do that for you," and that pleased him, too. I
gave him seven fish-hooks--all I had--and made him take them; and Seppi
gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and yellow--
atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I learned later,
and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now. These things touched
him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so; and his pride
in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were so undeserving
of them. When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he had never
had such a happy day.
As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, "We always prized him, but never
so much as now, when we are going to lose him."
Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with Nikolaus; and
also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other duties,
and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some threats of
punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and a shudder,
saying, as the days flew along, "Only ten days left;" "only nine days
left;" "only eight;" "only seven." Always it was narrowing. Always
Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not. He
wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but
it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart
in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some obstruction
or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh. He tried to find
out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our trouble or
make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to
deceive him and appease him.
But the most distressing thing of all was that he was always making
plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it
made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way to
conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but
three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it-
-a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we first
met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for that
was his funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only have
brought a "Why?" which we could not answer. He wanted us to help him
invite his guests, and we did it--one can refuse nothing to a dying
friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting them to his
funeral.
It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime stretching back
between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me, and
beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred
dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious.
We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away,
and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser feels
who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is
helpless to prevent it.
When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too long; Seppi and I
were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so it
was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near awhile,
listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him
the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only
a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had
caused. And sorry for the father, too; our thought being, "If he only
knew--if he only knew!"
In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed place, so we
went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said:
"His father is out of all patience with these goings-on, and will not
have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to be
found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two.
His father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before,
and many's the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time he
appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience myself."
"I wish you had saved him just this one time," I said, my voice trembling
a little; "it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it some day."
She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly toward me. She
turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and said,
"What do you mean by that?"
I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to say; so it was awkward,
for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:
"Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the very reason we
were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to
him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he
was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none
of us noticed how late it was getting."
"Did he say that? Did he?" and she put her apron to her eyes.
"You can ask Theodor--he will tell you the same."
"It is a dear, good lad, my Nick," she said. "I am sorry I let him get
whipped; I will never do it again. To think--all the time I was sitting
here last night, fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and praising
me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then we shouldn't ever go wrong;
but we are only poor, dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes. I
shan't ever think of last night without a pang."
She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody could open a mouth, in
these wretched days, without saying something that made us shiver. They
were "groping around," and did not know what true, sorrowfully true
things they were saying by accident.
Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us.
"I am sorry," she answered, "but he can't. To punish him further, his
father doesn't allow him to go out of the house to-day."
We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi's eyes. We thought, "If he
cannot leave the house, he cannot be drowned." Seppi asked, to make
sure:
"Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?"
"All day. It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful day, and he is so
unused to being shut up. But he is busy planning his party, and maybe
that is company for him. I do hope he isn't too lonesome."
Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him to ask if we might go up
and help him pass his time.
"And welcome!" she said, right heartily. "Now I call that real
friendship, when you might be abroad in the fields and the woods, having
a happy time. You are good boys, I'll allow that, though you don't
always find satisfactory ways of improving it. Take these cakes--for
yourselves--and give him this one, from his mother."
The first thing we noticed when we entered Nikolaus's room was the time--
a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to
live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us
a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party
and had not been lonesome.
"Sit down," he said, "and look at what I've been doing. And I've
finished a kite that you will say is a beauty. It's drying, in the
kitchen; I'll fetch it."
He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful trifles of various
kinds, to go as prizes in the games, and they were marshaled with fine
and showy effect upon the table. He said:
"Examine them at your leisure while I get mother to touch up the kite
with her iron if it isn't dry enough yet."
Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs, whistling.
We did not look at the things; we couldn't take any interest in anything
but the clock. We sat staring at it in silence, listening to the
ticking, and every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded recognition--one
minute fewer to cover in the race for life or for death. Finally Seppi
drew a deep breath and said:
"Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and he will pass the death-
point. Theodor, he is going to be saved! He's going to--"
"Hush! I'm on needles. Watch the clock and keep still."
Five minutes more. We were panting with the strain and the excitement.
Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair.
"Saved!" And we jumped up and faced the door.
The old mother entered, bringing the kite. "Isn't it a beauty?" she
said. "And, dear me, how he has slaved over it--ever since daylight, I
think, and only finished it awhile before you came." She stood it
against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. "He drew the
pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't
so very good, I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge--any one can
recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me to bring it up.... Dear
me! it's seven minutes past ten, and I--"
"But where is he?"
"He? Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a minute."
"Gone out?"
"Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's mother came in and said
the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I
told Nikolaus to never mind about his father's orders--go and look her
up.... Why, how white you two do look! I do believe you are sick. Sit
down; I'll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a
little heavy, but I thought--"
She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once to
the back window and looked toward the river. There was a great crowd at
the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point
from every direction.
"Oh, it is all over--poor Nikolaus! Why, oh, why did she let him get out
of the house!"
"Come away," said Seppi, half sobbing, "come quick--we can't bear to meet
her; in five minutes she will know."
But we were not to escape. She came upon us at the foot of the stairs,
with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and take
the medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy her;
so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving us the
unwholesome cake.
Presently the thing happened which we were dreading. There was a sound
of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with
heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.
"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put
her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.
"Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed,
and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am
rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his
own mother, to be his friend."
And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and
tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not be
comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be
alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.
It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything
they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your first
act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own
motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break a
link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and
plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying
loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and
pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted
with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and
lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and
resentful, and she said:
"For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments and warnings
that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and day and
night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying
Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm--and here is
His answer!"
Why, He had saved it from harm--but she did not know.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood awhile gazing
down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her hands;
then she spoke again in that bitter tone: "But in His hard heart is no
compassion. I will never pray again."
She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away, the crowd
falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they
had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know
good fortune from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other.
Many a time since I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of
sick persons, but I have never done it.
Both funerals took place at the same time in our little church next day.
Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was there, too;
which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the funerals
had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and a
collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only
two-thirds of the required money was gathered, and the parents were going
to try to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately
that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed in order that
Nikolaus's parents and their friends might be saved from worry and
distress. We thought it very good of him, but he said money did not cost
him anything.
At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was seized for debt by a
carpenter to whom the mother owed fifty groschen for work done the year
before. She had never been able to pay this, and was not able now. The
carpenter took the corpse home and kept it four days in his cellar, the
mother weeping and imploring about his house all the time; then he buried
it in his brother's cattle-yard, without religious ceremonies. It drove
the mother wild with grief and shame, and she forsook her work and went
daily about the town, cursing the carpenter and blaspheming the laws of
the emperor and the church, and it was pitiful to see. Seppi asked Satan
to interfere, but he said the carpenter and the rest were members of the
human race and were acting quite neatly for that species of animal. He
would interfere if he found a horse acting in such a way, and we must
inform him when we came across that kind of horse doing that kind of
human thing, so that he could stop it. We believed this was sarcasm, for
of course there wasn't any such horse.
But after a few days we found that we could not abide that poor woman's
distress, so we begged Satan to examine her several possible careers, and
see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a new one. He said the
longest of her careers as they now stood gave her forty-two years to
live, and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged with
grief and hunger and cold and pain. The only improvement he could make
would be to enable her to skip a certain three minutes from now; and he
asked us if he should do it. This was such a short time to decide in
that we went to pieces with nervous excitement, and before we could pull
ourselves together and ask for particulars he said the time would be up
in a few more seconds; so then we gasped out, "Do it!"
"It is done," he said; "she was going around a corner; I have turned her
back; it has changed her career."
"Then what will happen, Satan?"
"It is happening now. She is having words with Fischer, the weaver. In
his anger Fischer will straightway do what he would not have done but for
this accident. He was present when she stood over her child's body and
uttered those blasphemies."
"What will he do?"
"He is doing it now--betraying her. In three days she will go to the
stake."
We could not speak; we were frozen with horror, for if we had not meddled
with her career she would have been spared this awful fate. Satan
noticed these thoughts, and said:
"What you are thinking is strictly human-like--that is to say, foolish.
The woman is advantaged. Die when she might, she would go to heaven. By
this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more of heaven than she is
entitled to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery here."
A moment before we were bitterly making up our minds that we would ask no
more favors of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not seem to know any
way to do a person a kindness but by killing him; but the whole aspect of
the case was changed now, and we were glad of what we had done and full
of happiness in the thought of it.
After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer, and asked,
timidly, "Does this episode change Fischer's life-scheme, Satan?"
"Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If he had not met Frau
Brandt awhile ago he would die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now
he will live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and comfortable
life of it, as human lives go."
We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done for Fischer, and were
expecting Satan to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed no sign
and this made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but he didn't; so,
to assuage our solicitude we had to ask him if there was any defect in
Fischer's good luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then said,
with some hesitation:
"Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under his several former
possible life-careers he was going to heaven."
We were aghast. "Oh, Satan! and under this one--"
"There, don't be so distressed. You were sincerely trying to do him a
kindness; let that comfort you."
"Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You ought to have told us what
we were doing, then we wouldn't have acted so."
But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain or a sorrow,
and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He had no
knowledge of them except theoretically--that is to say, intellectually.
And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and
ignorant notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best
to make him comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we were
compromised by it, but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said he
did not think it important where Fischer went to; in heaven he would not
be missed, there were "plenty there." We tried to make him see that he
was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not other people, was
the proper one to decide about the importance of it; but it all went for
nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer--there were plenty more
Fischers.
The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it made
us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon him, and
we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything had
happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert manner
that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for poor
Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder expectantly. And,
sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the
officers and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her wake, jeering and
shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic!" and some among them were neighbors
and friends of her happier days. Some were trying to strike her, and the
officers were not taking as much trouble as they might to keep them from
it.
"Oh, stop them, Satan!" It was out before we remembered that he could not
interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole after-lives. He
puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they began to reel and
stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke apart and fled in
every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain. He had crushed a
rib of each of them with that little puff. We could not help asking if
their life-chart was changed.
"Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost them. Some few
will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few."
We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's luck to any of them. We
did not wish to know. We fully believed in Satan's desire to do us
kindnesses, but we were losing confidence in his judgment. It was at
this time that our growing anxiety to have him look over our life-charts
and suggest improvements began to fade out and give place to other
interests.
For a day or two the whole village was a chattering turmoil over Frau
Brandt's case and over the mysterious calamity that had overtaken the
mob, and at her trial the place was crowded. She was easily convicted of
her blasphemies, for she uttered those terrible words again and said she
would not take them back. When warned that she was imperiling her life,
she said they could take it in welcome, she did not want it, she would
rather live with the professional devils in perdition than with these
imitators in the village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs by
witchcraft, and asked her if she was not a witch? She answered
scornfully:
"No. If I had that power would any of you holy hypocrites be alive five
minutes? No; I would strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence and
let me go; I am tired of your society."
So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and cut off from the
joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed in a
coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the
market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to
the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air.
Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in
front of her and said, with gentleness:
"We played together once, in long-agone days when we were innocent little
creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you."
We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her, but we heard
the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased
we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication; and we
were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about.
One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again. We were always
watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he was by.
He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him.
Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we asked him to do a show for
us.
"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 victors 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 Caesar 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?
