by Mark Twain
We tried to sell advance-news to the man who wrote the daily news-letter in the cathedral town ten miles up the river, but he said we were fools: "how could we know what was going to happen next day." But we had already told him; so next day he saw that we had been right; then he was ready to buy, and we furnished him the news early enough so that he could get his news-letter out a whole day before the happenings happened. His circulation was much increased, and there was an excitement. We offered to sell him news a year in advance-a century if he liked; but his faith was not strong enough for that; he said a couple of days ahead was good enough for him. The excitement increased; and presently we were able to tell him a specially good item-that inside of twentyfour hours he would be in jail as a wizard. It came near to scaring him to death, and in the jail he sent for us to come and tell him some more of his future, and how to beat it if possible. Satan said he was due to be burnt in a week, but that if he would not answer the jailor's knock at once, that night, but count five, first, it would change his career and he would live fifteen years and then be hanged; but he must be exact, for if he counted only four he would get his throat cut before the end of the year, and if he counted six he would break his neck in three months and be certainly damned besides-he could have his choice. So we went and reported, and he was very grateful, and paid us nobly, and elected to be hanged.
It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were mere artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch-commission were afraid to proceed against Father Adolf and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a bom lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them and nourishing them, instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the mob after her howling and cursing, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following, to see it, and at last she was exhausted, and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over a limb and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.
In a way it was dreadful; still it was brave in the people, seeing they were not backed up by authority, but were willing to do their Christian duty without it, a thing which was to our Church's credit, and I said so; and said only Catholics could have this courage. But Satan said-
"No, Protestants have it also. Come with me to Scotland and I will show you that which will rebuke your pride."
So we went. The Protestants were chasing a middle-aged gentlewoman who was charged by a servant with secretly practising the papist religion. She was large and strong, and horribly frightened, and she ran like a deer, her gray hair flying out loose behind; and whenever the mob came near to overtaking her she dodged quickly off on another course and got ahead again, and it seemed as if they would never catch her. But after two hours the clergyman arrived, and he said "form a halfcircle and close in on her and drive her to the sea-beach." That worked better, and I think she lost hope, then. Still, she struggled on, in her despair, and it was another half hour before they caught her, so many ingenious ways did she invent to elude them. But at last she stumbled and fell, and before she could rise they were upon her, and a great shout of triumph went up. She struggled, but some held her down while others fetched a barn door and laid it upon her and stood on it. Even dying she struggled with such power that she made the door rock and surge under their feet for a little while; then all was still, and she was dead. And sure enough, her daughter stood apart and saw it all, weeping, but afraid to speak or try to help her mother. Satan said-
"There-you see? You have nothing to be proud of more than these Protestants. Come back to Eseldorf."
We had been gone more than three hours, and yet were back just as they finished making the noose. We had seen them begin it, it took them only a minute to finish it; and in that little interval we had spent all that time far away across the sea in Scotland. It was wonderful. They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing.
All that were near by turned upon him astonished and not pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways and his supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all over the town and turned many privately against him. The big blacksmith called attention to him, now, raising his voice so that all should hear, and said-
"What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to the company why you threw no stone."
"Are you sure I did not throw a stone?"
"Yes. You needn't try to get out of it; I had my eye on you."
"And I-I noticed you!" shouted two others.
"Three witnesses," said Satan. "Muller, the blacksmith; Klein, the butcher's man; Pfeiffer, the weaver's journeyman. Three very ordinary liars. Are there any more?"
"Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind about what you consider us-three's enough to settle your matter for you. You'll prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you.
"That's so!" shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they could to the centre of interest.
"And first you will answer that other question," cried the black smith, pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and hero of the occasion. "What were you laughing at?"
Satan smiled, and answered pleasantly-
"To see three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were so near to death themselves."
You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their breath under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said-
"Pooh! what do you know about it?"
"I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read the hands of you three-and some others-when you lifted them to stone the woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to live-and yonder is the clock!"
It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blenched, and turned mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with spirit-
"It is not long to wait for prediction Number One. If it fails, young master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you that."
No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness which was impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone, the blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped his hand upon his heart, saving, "Give me breath! give me room!" and began to sink down. The crowd surged back, no one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering to the ground and was dead. The people stared at him, then at Satan, then at each other, and their lips moved but no words came. Then Satan said-
"Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let them speak."
It struck a kind of panic into them, and although no one answered him, many began to violently accuse each other, saying, 'You said he didn't throw," and getting for reply, "It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!" And so in a moment they were in a raging and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging each other; and in the midst was the only indifferent one-the dead lady hanging from her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.
So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but was saying to myself, "He told them he was laughing at them, but it was a lie, he was laughing at me."
"Yes, I was laughing at you, because in fear of what others might report about you, you stoned the woman when your heart revolted at the act-but I was laughing at the others, too."
"Why?"
"Because their case was yours."
"How is that?"
"Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone than you had."
"Satan!"
"Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted, and shrink from inflicting pain; but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! one kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed. Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise-perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it-and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunt ing will come o a sudden end. In fact this happened within these ten years, in a little country called New England.
"Monarchies, aristocracies and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race-the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eyes. These institutions will always remain, always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to either of these institutions."
I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.
"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war-what mutton you are, and how ridiculous."
"In war? How?"
"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one-on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful-as usual-will shout for the war. The pulpit will-warily and cautiously-object-at first; the great big dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will out-shout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform and free speech strangled, by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers, as earlier,-but do not dare to sav so! And now the whole nationpulpit and all-will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
"But Satan, as civilization advances-"
Of course he broke in with a laugh. He never could hear that word without jeering at it and making fun of it. He said he had seen thirteen of them rise in the world and decay and perish to savagery-three of them the superiors in every way to any now known to the histories or to be known to the histories in the next ten thousand years-and they were all poor things: shams and hypocrisies and tyrannies, every one.
"Two centuries from now," he said, "the Christian civilization will reach its highest mark. Yet its kings will still be, then, what they are now, a close corporation of land-thieves. Is that an advance? England will be prodigious and strong; she will bear the most honorable name that ever a nation bore, and will lose it in a single little shameful war and carry the stench of it and the blot of it to the end of her days. To please a dozen rich adventurers her statesmen will pick a quarrel with a couple of wee little Christian farmer-communities, and send against that half dozen villages the mightiest army that ever invaded any country, and will crush those little nations and rob them of their independence and their land. She will make a noisy pretence of being proud of these things, but deep down in her heart she will be ashamed of them and will grieve for her soiled flag-once the symbol of liberty and honor and justice, now the pirate's emblem."
"Satan," I said, "this would not happen if she could have the true religion."
"Ah, yes-the kind of treasure which you have here in Austria. My uncle is thinking of introducing it into his dominions."
It was shocking to hear him talk so.
"Satan," I said, "it would defile it!"
He only pulled down the corner of his eye with his finger.
Chapter 10
DAYS AND DAYS went by, now, and no Satan. It was dull without him. But Father Adolf was around braving public opinion in his impudent way and getting a stone in the middle of his back now and then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to throw it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working well for Marget. Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped going to her house, and this had hurt her pride and she had set herself the task of banishing him from her heart; the reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation brought to her from time to time by old Ursula had touched her with remorse, she being the cause of it; and so now, these two matters working upon her together, she was getting a good profit out of the combination: her interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm as steadily warming. All that was needed to complete her conversion was that Wilhelm should brace up and do something that should cause favorable talk and incline the public toward him again.
The opportunity came, now. Marget sent and asked him to defend her uncle in the approaching trial, and he was greatly pleased, and stopped drinking and began his preparations with diligence. With more diligence than hope, in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many interviews in his office with Seppi and me, and thrashed out our testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest was poor, of course.
If Satan would only come! That was my constant thought. He could invent some way to win the case; for he had said it would be won, so he necessarily knew how it could be done. But the days dragged on, and still he did not come. Of course I did not doubt that it would win, and that Father Peter would be happy for the rest of his life, since Satan had said so; yet I knew I should be much more comfortable if he would come and tell us how to manage it. It was getting high time for Father Peter to have a saving change toward happiness, for by general report he was worn out with his imprisonment and the ignominy that was burdening him, and was like to die of his miseries unless he got relief soon.
At last the trial came on, and the people gathered from all around to witness it; among them many strangers from considerable distances. Yes, everybody was there, except the accused. He was too feeble in body for the strain. But Marget was present, and keeping up her hope and her spirit the best she could.
The money was present, too. It was emptied on the table, and was handled and caressed and examined by such as were privileged.
Father Adolf was put in the witness box.
Question. You claim that this money is yours?
Answer. I do.
Q. How did you come by it?
A. I found the bag in the road when I was returning from a journey.
Q. When?
A. More than two years ago.
Q. What did you do with it?
A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret place in my study, intending to find the owner if I could.
Q. You endeavored to find him?
A. I made diligent inquiry during several months, but nothing came of it.
Q. And then?
A. I thought it not worth while to look further, and was minded to use the money in finishing the wing of the foundling asylum connected with the priory and nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-place and counted it to see if any of it was missing. And then—
Q. Why do you stop? Proceed.
A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I had finished and was restoring the bag to its place, I looked up and there stood Father Peter behind me.
Several murmured, "That looks bad," but others answered, "Ah, but he is such a liar!"
Q. That made you uneasy?
A. No, I thought nothing of it at the time, for Father Peter often came in unannounced to ask for a little help in his need.
Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle falsely and impudently charged with begging, and was going to speak, but remembered herself in time and held her peace.
Q. Proceed.
A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the money to the foundling asylum, but elected to wait yet another year and continue my inquiries. When I heard of Father Peter's find I was glad, and no suspicions entered my mind; when I came home a day or two later and discovered that my own money was gone I still did not suspect, until three circumstances connected with Father Peter's good fortune struck me as being singular coincidences.