by Mark Twain
“You will save her? You will get the word to the priest, and when he knows who she is he will set her free and we will restore her to her family, God be praised!”
“No,” answered 44.
“No? Why?”
“She was appointed from the beginning of time to die at the stake this day.”
“How do you know?”
He made no reply. I waited a moment, in growing distress, then said—
“At least I will speak! I will tell her story. I will make myself visible, and I—”
“It is not so written,” he said; “that which is not foreordained will not happen.”
He was bringing a fresh fagot. A burly man suddenly appeared, from the monastery, and ran toward him and struck the fagot from his hand, saying roughly—
“You meddling old fool, mind what you are about! Pick it up and carry it back.”
“And if I don’t—what then?”
In his fury at being so addressed by so mean and humble a person the man struck a blow at 44’s jaw with his formidable fist, but 44 caught the fist in his hand and crushed it; it was sickening to hear the bones crunch. The man staggered away, groaning and cursing, and 44 picked up the fagot and renewed the old woman’s fire with it. I whispered—
“Quick—disappear, and let us get away from here; that man will soon—”
“Yes, I know,” said 44, “he is summoning his underlings; they will arrest me.”
“Then come—come along!”
“What good would it do? It is written. What is written must happen. But it is of no consequence, nothing will come of it.”
They came running—half a dozen—and seized him and dragged him away, cuffing him with fists and beating him with sticks till he was red with his own blood. I followed, of course, but I was merely a substanceless spirit, and there was nothing that I could do in his defence. They chained him in a dim chamber under the monastery and locked the doors and departed, promising him further attentions when they should be through with burning the witch. I was troubled beyond measure, but he was not. He said he would use this opportunity to increase the magician’s reputation: he would spread the report that the aged hand-crusher was the magician in disguise.
“They will find nothing here but the prisoner’s clothes when they come,” he said, “then they will believe.”
He vanished out of the clothes, and they slumped down in a pile. He could certainly do some wonderful things, feather-headed and frivolous as he was! There was no way of accounting for 44. We soared out through the thick walls as if they had been made of air, and followed a procession of chanting monks to the place of the burning. People were gathering, and soon they came flocking in crowds, men, women, youths, maidens; and there were even children in arms.
There was a half hour of preparation: a rope ring was widely drawn around the stake to keep the crowd at a distance; within this a platform was placed for the use of the preacher—Adolf. When all was ready he came, imposingly attended, and was escorted with proper solemnity and ceremony to this pulpit. He began his sermon at once and with business-like energy. He was very bitter upon witches, “familiars of the Fiend, enemies of God, abandoned of the angels, foredoomed to hell;” and in closing he denounced this present one unsparingly, and forbade any to pity her.
It was all lost upon the prisoner; she was warm, she was comfortable, she was worn out with fatigue and sorrow and privation, her gray head was bowed upon her breast, she was asleep. The executioners moved forward and raised her upon her feet and drew her chains tight, around her breast. She looked drowsily around upon the people while the fagots were being piled, then her head drooped again, and again she slept.
The fire was applied and the executioners stepped aside, their mission accomplished. A hush spread everywhere: there was no movement, there was not a sound, the massed people gazed, with lips apart and hardly breathing, their faces petrified in a common expression, partly of pity, mainly of horror. During more than a minute that strange and impressive absence of motion and movement continued, then it was broken in a way to make any being with a heart in his breast shudder—a man lifted his little child and sat her upon his shoulder, that she might see the better!
The blue smoke curled up about the slumberer and trailed away upon the chilly air; a red glow began to show at the base of the fagots; this increased in size and intensity and a sharp crackling sound broke upon the stillness; suddenly a sheet of flame burst upward and swept the face of the sleeper, setting her hair on fire, she uttered an agonizing shriek which was answered by a horrified groan from the crowd, then she cried out “Thou art merciful and good to Thy sinful servant, blessed be Thy holy Name—sweet Jesus receive my spirit!”
Then the flames swallowed her up and hid her from sight. Adolf stood sternly gazing upon his work. There was now a sudden movement upon the outskirts of the crowd, and a monk came plowing his way through and delivered a message to the priest—evidently a pleasant one to the receiver of it, if signs go for anything. Adolf cried out—
“Remain, everybody! It is reported to me that that arch malignant the magician, that son of Satan, is caught, and lies a chained prisoner under the monastery, disguised as an aged peasant. He is already condemned to the flames, no preliminaries are needed, his time is come. Cast the witch’s ashes to the winds, clear the stake! Go—you, and you, and you—bring the sorcerer!”
The crowd woke up! this was a show to their taste. Five minutes passed—ten. What might the matter be? Adolf was growing fiercely impatient. Then the messengers returned, crestfallen. They said the magician was gone—gone, through the bolted doors and the massive walls; nothing was left of him but his peasant clothes! And they held them up for all to see.
The crowd stood amazed, wondering, speechless—and disappointed. Adolf began to storm and curse. Forty-Four whispered—
“The opportunity is come. I will personate the magician and make some more reputation for him. Oh, just watch me raise the limit!”
So the next moment there was a commotion in the midst of the crowd, which fell apart in terror exposing to view the supposed magician in his glittering oriental robes; and his face was white with fright, and he was trying to escape. But there was no escape for him, for there was one there whose boast it was that he feared neither Satan nor his servants—this being Adolf the admired. Others fell back cowed, but not he; he plunged after the sorcerer, he chased him, gained upon him, shouted, “Yield—in His Name I command!”
An awful summons! Under the blasting might of it the spurious magician reeled and fell as if he had been smitten by a bolt from the sky. I grieved for him with all my heart and in the deepest sincerity, and yet I rejoiced for that at last he had learned the power of that Name at which he had so often and so recklessly scoffed. And all too late, too late, forever and ever too late—ah, why had he not listened to me!
There were no cowards there, now! Everybody was brave, everybody was eager to help drag the victim to the stake, they swarmed about him like raging wolves; they jerked him this way and that, they beat him and reviled him, they cuffed him and kicked him, he wailing, sobbing, begging for pity, the conquering priest exulting, scoffing, boasting, laughing. Briskly they bound him to the stake and piled the fagots around him and applied the fire; and there the forlorn creature stood weeping and sniffling and pleading in his fantastic robes, a sorry contrast to that poor humble Christian who but a little while before had faced death there so bravely. Adolf lifted his hand and pronounced with impressive solemnity the words—
“Depart, damned soul, to the regions of eternal woe!”
Whereat the weeping magician laughed sardonically in his face and vanished away, leaving his robes empty and hanging collapsed in the chains! There was a whisper at my ear—
“Come, August, let us to breakfast and leave these animals to gape and stare while Adolf explains to them the unexplainable—a job just in his line. By the time I have finished with the sorcerer he will have a dandy reputation—don’t
you think?”
So all his pretence of being struck down by the Name was a blasphemous jest. And I had taken it so seriously, so confidingly, innocently, exultantly. I was ashamed. Ashamed of him, ashamed of myself. Oh, manifestly nothing was serious to him, levity was the blood and marrow of him, death was a joke; his ghastly fright, his moving tears, his frenzied supplications—by God, it was all just coarse and vulgar horse-play! The only thing he was capable of being interested in, was his damned magician’s reputation! I was too disgusted to talk, I answered him nothing, but left him to chatter over his degraded performance unobstructed, and rehearse it and chuckle over it and glorify it up to his taste.
Chapter 22
It was in my room. He brought it—the breakfast—dish after dish, smoking hot, from my empty cupboard, and briskly set the table, talking all the while—ah, yes, and pleasantly, fascinatingly, winningly; and not about that so-recent episode, but about these fragrant refreshments and the far countries he had summoned them from—Cathay, India, and everywhere; and as I was famishing, this talk was pleasing, indeed captivating, and under its influence my sour mood presently passed from me. Yes, and it was healing to my bruised spirit to look upon the rich and costly table-service—quaint of shape and pattern, delicate, ornate, exquisite, beautiful!—and presently quite likely to be mine, you see.
“Hot corn-pone from Arkansas—split it, butter it, close your eyes and enjoy! Fried spring chicken—milk-and-flour gravy—from Alabama. Try it, and grieve for the angels, for they have it not! Cream-smothered strawberries, with the prairie-dew still on them—let them melt in your mouth, and don’t try to say what you feel! Coffee from Vienna—fluffed cream—two pellets of saccharin—drink, and have compassion for the Olympian gods that know only nectar!”
I ate, I drank, I reveled in these alien wonders; truly I was in Paradise!
“It is intoxication,” I said, “it is delirium!”
“It’s a jag!” he responded.
I inquired about some of the refreshments that had outlandish names. Again that weird detail: they were non-existent as yet, they were products of the unborn future! Understand it? How could I? Nobody could. The mere trying muddled the head. And yet it was a pleasure to turn those curious names over on the tongue and taste them: Corn-pone! Arkansas! Alabama! Prairie! Coffee! Saccharin! Forty-Four answered my thought with a stingy word of explanation—
“Corn-pone is made from maize. Maize is known only in America. America is not discovered yet. Arkansas and Alabama will be States, and will get their names two or three centuries hence. Prairie—a future French-American term for a meadow like an ocean. Coffee: they have it in the Orient, they will have it here in Austria two centuries from now. Saccharin—concentrated sugar, 500 to 1; as it were, the sweetness of five hundred pretty maids concentrated in a young fellow’s sweetheart. Saccharin is not due yet for nearly four hundred years; I am furnishing you several advance-privileges, you see.”
“Tell me a little, little more, 44—please! You starve me so! and I am so hungry to know how you find out these strange marvels, these impossible things.”
He reflected a while, then he said he was in a mood to enlighten me, and would like to do it, but did not know how to go about it, because of my mental limitations and the general meanness and poverty of my construction and qualities. He said this in a most casual and taken-for-granted way, just as an archbishop might say it to a cat, never suspecting that the cat could have any feelings about it or take a different view of the matter. My face flushed, and I said with dignity and a touch of heat—
“I must remind you that I am made in the image of God.”
“Yes,” he said carelessly, but did not seem greatly impressed by it, certainly not crushed, not overpowered. I was more indignant than ever, but remained mute, coldly rebuking him by my silence. But it was wasted on him; he did not see it, he was thinking. Presently he said—
“It is difficult. Perhaps impossible, unless I should make you over again.” He glanced up with a yearningly explanatory and apologetic look in his eyes, and added, “For you are an animal, you see—you understand that?”
I could have slapped him for it, but I austerely held my peace, and answered with cutting indifference—
“Quite so. It happens to happen that all of us are that.”
Of course I was including him, but it was only another waste—he didn’t perceive the inclusion. He said, as one might whose way has been cleared of an embarrassing obstruction—
“Yes, that is just the trouble! It makes it ever so difficult. With my race it is different; we have no limits of any kind, we comprehend all things. You see, for your race there is such a thing as time—you cut it up and measure it; to your race there is a past, a present and a future—out of one and the same thing you make three; and to your race there is also such a thing as distance—and hang it, you measure that, . . . . . too! Let me see: if I could only . . . . if I . . . . oh, no, it is of no use—there is no such thing as enlightening that kind of a mind!” He turned upon me despairingly, pathetically, adding, “If it only had some capacity, some depth, or breadth, or—or—but you see it doesn’t hold anything; one cannot pour the starred and shoreless expanses of the universe into a jug!”
I made no reply; I sat in frozen and insulted silence; I would not have said a word to save his life. But again he was not aware of what was happening—he was thinking. Presently he said—
“Well, it is so difficult! If I only had a starting-point, a basis to proceed from—but I can’t find any. If—look here: can’t you extinguish time? can’t you comprehend eternity? can’t you conceive of a thing like that—a thing with no beginning—a thing that always was? Try it!”
“Don’t! I’ve tried it a hundred times,” I said, “It makes my brain whirl just to think of it!”
He was in despair again.
“Dear me—to think that there can be an ostensible Mind that cannot conceive of so simple a trifle as that! . . . . Look here, August: there are really no divisions of time—none at all. The past is always present when I want it—the real past, not an image of it; I can summon it, and there it is. The same with the future: I can summon it out of the unborn ages, and there it is, before my eyes, alive and real, not a fancy, an image, a creation of the imagination. Ah, these troublesome limitations of yours!—they hamper me. Your race cannot even conceive of something being made out of nothing—I am aware of it, your learned men and philosophers are always confessing it. They say there had to be something to start with—meaning a solid, a substance—to build the world out of. Man, it is perfectly simple—it was built out of thought. Can’t you comprehend that?”
“No, I can’t! Thought! There is no substance to thought; then how is a material thing going to be constructed out of it?”
“But August, I don’t mean your kind of thought, I mean my kind, and the kind that the gods exercise.”
“Come, what is the difference? Isn’t thought just thought, and all said?”
“No. A man originates nothing in his head, he merely observes exterior things, and combines them in his head—puts several observed things together and draws a conclusion. His mind is merely a machine, that is all—an automatic one, and he has no control over it; it cannot conceive of a new thing, an original thing, it can only gather material from the outside and combine it into new forms and patterns. But it always has to have the materials from the outside, for it can’t make them itself. That is to say, a man’s mind cannot create—a god’s can, and my race can. That is the difference. We need no contributed materials, we create them—out of thought. All things that exist were made out of thought—and out of nothing else.”
It seemed to me charitable, also polite, to take him at his word and not require proof, and I said so. He was not offended. He only said—
“Your automatic mind has performed its function—its sole function—and without help from you. That is to say, it has listened, it has observed, it has put this and that together, and dra
wn a conclusion—the conclusion that my statement was a doubtful one. It is now privately beginning to wish for a test. Is that true?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “I won’t deny it, though for courtesy’s sake I would have concealed it if I could have had my way.”
“Your mind is automatically suggesting that I offer a specific proof—that I create a dozen gold coins out of nothing; that is to say, out of thought. Open your hand—they are there.”
And so they were! I wondered; and yet I was not very greatly astonished, for in my private heart I judged—and not for the first time—that he was using magic learned from the magician, and that he had no gifts in this line that did not come from that source. But was this so? I dearly wanted to ask this question, and I started to do it. But the words refused to leave my tongue, and I realized that he had applied that mysterious check which had so often shut off a question which I wanted to ask. He seemed to be musing. Presently he ejaculated—
“That poor old soul!”
It gave me a pang, and brought back the stake, the flames and the death-cry; and I said—
“It was a shame and a pity that she wasn’t rescued.”
“Why a pity?”
“Why? How can you ask, 44?”
“What would she have gained?”
“An extension of life, for instance; is that nothing?”
“Oh, there spoke the human! He is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping out of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven.”
I was annoyed at my carelessness in giving him that chance. But I allowed it to stand at that, and said nothing; it could not help the matter to go into it further. Then, to get away from it I observed that there was at least one gain that the woman could have had if she had been saved: she might have entered heaven by a less cruel death.
“She isn’t going there,” said 44, placidly.