The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander

by Frank Richard Stockton

  IV

  "I think thee was in great danger," continued Mrs. Crowder, "in thatSamson business. It makes me shudder to think, even now, of what mighthave happened to thee."

  "There was not much danger," said he; "for all I had to do was towithdraw, and there was an end to the matter. I have often and often beenin greater danger than that. For instance, I was in the army of Xerxes,compelled to enter it simply because I happened to be in Persia.My sympathies were entirely with the Greeks. My age did not protect me atall. Everybody who in any way could be made useful was dragged into thatarmy. It was known that I had a knowledge of engineering and surveying,and I was taken into the army to help build bridges and lay out camps.

  "Here it was that I saw the curious method of counting the soldiers whichwas adopted by the officers of Xerxes's army. As you may have read, tenthousand men were collected on a plain and made to stand close togetherin a mass nearly circular in shape. Then a strong fence, with a wide gateto the west and another to the east, was built around them, and I wasengaged in the constructing and strengthening of this fence. When thefence was finished, the men were ordered to march out of the inclosure,and other soldiers marched in until it was again entirely filled. Thisprocess was repeated until the whole army had been in the inclosure. Thusthey got rid of the labor of counting--measuring the army instead ofenumerating it. But the results were not accurate. I was greatlyinterested in the matter, and on three occasions I stood at the exit gateas the soldiers were coming out, and counted them, and the number neveramounted to ten thousand. One counting showed less than seven thousand,--the men did not pack themselves together as closely as they were packedthe first time,--so I am confident that Xerxes's army was not so large asit was reported to be.

  "I became so much interested in the operations and constitution of thisgreat horde of soldiers, attendants, animals, vehicles, and ships, thatI went about looking at everything and getting all the informationpossible. In these days I would have been a war correspondent, and I didact somewhat in that capacity; for I told Herodotus a great many of thefacts which he put into his history of this great campaign."

  "Thee knew Herodotus?" his wife asked.

  "Oh, yes; I worked with him a long time, and gave him information whichhelped him very much in writing his histories; but it would have been ofgreater advantage to the world if he had adhered more closely to mystatements. I told him what I discovered in regard to the enumeration ofthe army of Xerxes, but he wanted to make that army as big as he could,and he paid little attention to my remonstrances.

  "Herodotus was only four years old when Xerxes invaded Greece, and ofcourse all his knowledge concerning that expedition was second-hand, andby the time he began to write his history of the campaign there were veryfew people living who knew anything personally about it. If he had notbeen a man so entirely wrapped up in his own work he would have wonderedhow any one of my apparent age could give him so much in the way ofpersonal experience; but he seemed to have no suspicions, and, at anyrate, asked no questions, and as I had a great desire that this remarkablehistorical event should be fully recorded, I helped him as much asI could.

  "I had been assisting in the construction of the canal behind Mount Athos,which Xerxes made in order to afford a short cut for his vessels, and asI had frequently climbed into the various portions of the mountain inorder to make surveys of the country below, I had obtained a pretty goodknowledge of the neighborhood; and when disaster after disaster began tohurl themselves upon this unfortunate multitude of invaders, I tookmeasures for my safety. I did not want to go back to Persia, even ifI could go there, which looked very doubtful after the battle of Salamis,and as I had come into the country with the Persians, it might have beenunsafe to show myself with the Greeks; so, remembering what I had seen ofthe wild regions of Mount Athos, I made my way there, with the intentionof dwelling in its rocky fastnesses until the country should become safefor the ordinary wayfarer. As there was no opportunity of teaching schoolon that desolate mountain--"

  "And marrying one of thy scholars," interpolated Mrs. Crowder.

  "--I became a sort of hermit," he continued; "but I did not spend my timeafter the usual fashion of the conventional hermit, who lives onwater-cresses and reads great books with a skull to keep the pages open.I built myself a rude cabin under a great rock, and lived somewhat afterthe fashion of the other inhabitants of that wild region, mostly robbersand outlaws. As I had nothing which any one would want to steal, I wasnot afraid of them, and I could occasionally be of a little service tothem, especially in the way of rude medical attendance, for which theywere willing to pay me by giving me now and then some food.

  "I had laid in a stock of writing-materials before I went up on themountain, and I now went to work with great enthusiasm to set down whatI knew of the expedition of Xerxes, and here it was that I made the noteswhich were afterward so useful to Herodotus.

  "When the country became quieter I went down into the plains, looked overthe battle-fields, and obtained a great deal of information from thevillagers and country people. I stayed here nearly two years, and had apretty hard time of it; but when I went away I took with me a veryvaluable collection of notes.

  "For many years I made no use of these notes; but being in Halicarnassus,I heard of Herodotus, who was described as a great scholar and traveler,and engaged in writing history. To him I applied without loss of time, andI made a regular engagement, working several hours with him every day. Forthis he paid me weekly a sum equal to about two dollars and seventy-fivecents of our present money; but it was enough to support me, and I wasvery glad to have the opportunity of sending some of my experiences andobservations down into history. It was at this time that the love ofliterary work began to arise within me, and in the next three or fourcenturies after the death of Herodotus I wrote a number of books onvarious subjects and under various names, and some of these, asI mentioned before, were destroyed with the Alexandrian Library.

  "It was in this period that I made the acquaintance of an editor--thefirst editor, in fact, of whom I know anything at all. I was in Rhodes,and there was a learned man there named Andronicus, who was engaged inediting the works of Aristotle. All the manuscripts and books which thatgreat philosopher left behind him had been given to a friend, or trustee,and had passed from this person into the possession of others, so that forabout a hundred years the world knew nothing of them. Then they came intothe hands of Andronicus, who undertook to edit them and get them intoproper shape for publication. I went to Andronicus, and as soon as hefound I was a person qualified for such work, he engaged me as hisassistant editor. I held this position for several years, and two or threeof the books of Aristotle I transcribed entirely with my own hand,properly shaping sentences and paragraphs, and very often making thenecessary divisions. From my experience with Andronicus, I am sure thatnone of the works of Aristotle were given to the world exactly as he wrotethem, for we often found his manuscript copies very rough and disjointedso far as literary construction is concerned, but I will also say that wenever interfered with his philosophical theories or his scientificstatements and deductions."

  "In all that time thee never married?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

  Crowder and I could not help laughing.

  "I did not say so," said he, "but I will say that, with one exception,I do not remember any interesting matrimonial alliances which occurredduring the period of my literary labors. I married a young woman ofRhodes, and gave her a very considerable establishment, which I was ableto do, for Andronicus paid me much better than Herodotus had done; but shedid not prove a very suitable helpmeet, and I believe she married mesimply because I was in fairly good circumstances. She soon showed thatshe preferred a young man to an elderly student, the greater part of whosetime was occupied with books and manuscripts, and we had not been marrieda year when she ran away with a young goldsmith, and disappeared fromRhodes, as I discovered, on a vessel bound for Rome. I resigned myselfto my loss, and did not even try to obtain news of her. I was
too muchengrossed in my work to be interested in a runaway wife.

  "It was a little more than half a century after this that I was in Romeand sitting on the steps of one of the public buildings in the Forum.I was waiting to meet some one with whom I had business, and while I satthere an old woman stopped in front of me. She was evidently poor, andwretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkledand shrunken. I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about togive her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her andexclaimed, 'How like! How like! How like!' 'Like whom?' said I. 'What areyou talking about?' 'Like your father,' she said, 'like your father! Youare so like him, you resemble him so much in form and feature, in the wayyou sit, in everything, that you must be his son!' 'I have no doubt I ammy father's son,' said I, 'and what do you know about him?' 'I marriedhim,' she said. 'For nearly a year I was his wife, and then I foolishlyran away and left him. What became of him I know not, nor how long helived, but he was a great deal older than I was, and must have passed awaymany years ago. But thou art his image. He had the same ruddy face, thesame short white hair, the same broad shoulders, the same way of crossinghis legs as he sat. He must have married soon after I left him. Tell me,whom did he marry? What was thy mother's name?' I gave her the name of myreal mother, and she shook her head. 'I never heard of her,' she said.'Did thy father ever speak of me, a wife who ran away from him?' 'Yes; hehas spoken of you--that is, if you are Zalia, the daughter of anoil-merchant of Rhodes?'

  "'HOW LIKE!'"]

  "'I am that woman,' she exclaimed, 'I am that woman! And did he mourn myloss?'

  "'Not much, I think, not much.' Then I became a little nervous, for ifthis old woman talked to me much longer I was afraid, in spite of thefact that I was an elderly man when she was a girl, that she would becomeconvinced that I could not be the son of the man who had once been herhusband, but must be that man himself. So I hastily excused myself on theplea of business, and after having given her some money I left her."

  "And did thee never see her again?" his wife asked, almost with tears inher eyes.

  "No, I never saw her again," said Mr. Crowder; "I was careful not to dothat: but I did not neglect her; I caused good care to be taken of heruntil she died."

  There was a slight pause here, and then Mrs. Crowder said:

  "Thee has known a great deal of poverty; in nearly all thy stories thee isa poor man."

  "There is good reason for that," said Mr. Crowder; "poor people frequentlyhave more adventures, at least more interesting ones, than those who arein easy circumstances. Possession of money is apt to make life smootherand more commonplace; so, in selecting the most interesting events of mycareer to tell you, I naturally describe periods of comparativepoverty--and there were some periods in which I was in actual want of thenecessaries of life.

  "But you must not suppose that I have always been poor. I have had myperiods of wealth, but, as I explained to you before, it was verydifficult, on account of the frequent necessity of changing my place ofresidence, as well as my identity, to carry over my property from one setof conditions to another. However, I have often been able to do this, andat one time I was in comfortable circumstances for nearly two hundredyears. But generally, when I found myself obliged to leave a place whereI had been living, for fear of suspicion concerning my age, I had toleave everything behind me.

  "I will tell you a little story about one of my attempts, to provide forthe future. It was toward the end of the fifteenth century, about the timethat Columbus set out on his first voyage of discovery,--and you would besurprised, considering the important results of his voyage, to know howlittle sensation it caused in Europe,--that I devised a scheme by whichI thought I might establish for myself a permanent fortune. I was thenliving in Genoa, and was carrying on the same business in which I am nowengaged. I was a broker, a dealer in money and commercial paper. I wasprosperous and well able to carry out the plan I had formed. This planwas a simple one. I would purchase jewels, things easily carried about orconcealed, and which would be valuable in any country or any age; and withthis idea in my mind I spent many years in collecting valuable stones andjewels, confining myself generally to rings, for I wished to make the bulkof my treasures very small when compared with their value.

  "About the middle of the sixteenth century I went to Rome, and took myjewels with me. They were then a wonderfully fine collection of gems, someof them of great antiquity and value; for, in gradually gathering themtogether, the enthusiasm of the collector had possessed me, and I oftentraveled far to possess myself of a valuable jewel of which I had heard.I remained in Rome as long as I dared do so, and then prepared to set outfor Egypt, which I had not visited for a long time, and where I expectedto find interesting though depressing changes. I concluded, naturallyenough, that it would be dangerous for me to take my treasures with me,and I could conceive of no place where it would be better to leave themthan in the Eternal City. Rome was central and comparatively easy ofaccess from any part of the world, and, moreover, was less liable tochanges than any other place; so I determined to leave my treasures inRome, and to put them somewhere where they were not likely to bedisturbed by the march of improvement, by the desolations of war andconquest, or to become lost to me by the action of nature. I decided tobury them in the catacombs. With these ancient excavations I was familiar,and I believed that in their dark and mysterious recesses I could concealmy jewels, and that I could find them again when I wanted them.

  "I procured a small box made of thick bronze, and in this I put all myrings and gems, and with them I inclosed several sheets of parchment,on which I had written, with the fine ink the monks used in engrossingtheir manuscripts, a detailed description, and frequently a history, ofevery one of these valuable objects. Having securely fastened up the box,I concealed it in my clothing and then made my way to the catacombs.

  "It was a dark and rainy evening, and as the entrances to the catacombswere not guarded in those days, it was not difficult for me to make myway unseen into their interior. I had brought with me a tinder-box andseveral rushlights, and as soon as I felt secure from observation fromthe outside I struck a light and began my operations. Then, according toa plan I had previously made, I slowly walked along the solemn passagewaywhich I had entered.

  "My plan of procedure was a very simple one, and I had purposely made itso in order that it might be more easily remembered. I was well acquaintedwith the position of the opening by which I had entered. For several daysI had studied carefully its relation to other points in the surroundingcountry. Starting from this opening, my plan was to proceed inward throughthe long corridor until I came to a transverse passage; to pass this untilI reached another; to pass this also, and to go on until I came to athird; then I would turn to my left and proceed until I had passed twoother transverse passages and reached a third; then I would again turnto my left and count the open tombs on my left hand. When I reached thethird tomb I would stop. Thus there would be a series of three threes,and it was scarcely possible that I could forget that.

  "At this period a great many of the tombs were open, having been despoiledeven of the few bones they contained. The opening at which I stopped wasquite a large one, and when I put my light inside I found it was entirelyempty.

  "Lighting another rush-candle, I stuck it in the bottom of the tomb, whichwas about four feet above the floor of the passage, and drawing my largedagger, I proceeded to dig a hole in the left-hand corner nearest thefront. The earth was dry and free from stones, and I soon made a hole twofeet deep, at the bottom of which I placed my box. Then I covered it up,pressing the earth firmly down into the hole. When this was entirelyfilled, I smoothed away the rest of the earth I had taken out, and afterI finished my work, the floor of the tomb did not look as if it had beendisturbed. Then I went away, reached the passage three tombs from me,turned to the right, went on until I reached the third transverse passage,then went on until I came to the entrance. It was raining heavily, butI was glad to get out into the storm.
"

  "'I PROCEEDED TO DIG A HOLE.'"]

  "Now, please hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder. "When did thee get them again?"

  "A great many things happened in Egypt," said Mr. Crowder, "some pleasantand some unpleasant, and they kept me there a long time. After that I wentto Constantinople, and subsequently resided in Greece and in Venice.I lived very comfortably during the greater part of this period, andtherefore there was no particular reason why I should go after my jewels.So it happened that, for one cause or another, I did not go back to Romeuntil early in the nineteenth century, and I need not assure you thatalmost the first place I visited was the catacombs.

  "After three hundred years of absence I found the entrance, but if I hadnot so well noted its position in relation to certain ruins and naturalobjects I should not have recognized it. It was not now a wide openingthrough which a man might walk; it was a little hole scarcely big enoughfor a fox to crawl through; in fact, I do not believe there would havebeen any opening there at all if it had not been for the small animalsliving in the catacombs, which had maintained this opening for the purposeof going in and out. It was broad daylight when I found this entrance. Ofcourse I did not attempt to do anything then, but in the night, when therewas no moon, I came with a spade. I enlarged the hole, crawled through,and after a time found myself in a passageway, which was unobstructed."

  "Now, hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder.

  "I brought no rushlights with me this time," said Mr. Crowder. "I had agood lantern, and I walked steadily on until I came to the thirdtransverse passage; I turned to the left, counted three more passages;I turned to the left, I walked on slowly, I examined the left-hand wall,and apparently there were no open tombs. This startled me, but I soonfound that I had been mistaken. I saw some tombs which were not open, butwhich had been opened and were now nearly filled with the dust of ages.I stopped before the first of these; then I went on and clearly made outthe position of another; then I came to the third: that was really open,although the aperture was much smaller than it had been. It did not lookas I remembered it, but without hesitation I took a trowel which I hadbrought with me, and began to dig in the nearest left-hand corner.

  "I dug and I dug until I had gone down more than two feet; then I dug onand on until, standing in the passage as I was, I could not reach down anydeeper into the hole I had made. So I crawled into the tomb, crouched downon my breast, and dug down and down as far as I could reach.

  "Then," said Mr. Crowder, looking at us as he spoke, "I found the box."

  A great sigh of relief came from Mrs. Crowder.

  "I was so afraid," said she--"I was so afraid it had sunk out of reach."

  "No," said he; "its weight had probably made it settle down, and then thedust of ages, as I remarked before, had accumulated over it. That sortof thing is going on in Rome all the time. But I found my box, and, afterhours and hours of wandering, I got out of the catacombs."

  "How was that?" we both asked.

  "I was so excited at the recovery of my treasures after the lapse of threecenturies that when I turned into the first passage I forgot to countthose which crossed it, and my mind became so thoroughly mixed up inregard to this labyrinth that I don't know when I would have found my wayout if I had not heard a little animal--I don't know what it was--scurrying away in front of me. I followed it, and eventually saw alittle speck of light. That proved to be the hole through which I had comein."

  "What did thee do with the jewels?" asked Mrs. Crowder.

  Her husband looked at his watch, and then held it with the face towardher.

  She gave a cry of surprise, and we all went up-stairs to bed.