by Mark Twain
"I am sure it is true. What is His allness?"
"I pass."
"You which?"
"Pass. Theological expression. It probably means that she entered the game because she thought only His halfness was in it and would need help; then perceiving that His allness was there and playing on the other side, she considered it best to cash-in and draw out. I think that that must be it; it looks reasonable, you see, because in seventeen months she hadn't put up a single chip and got it back again, and so in the circumstances it would be natural for her to want to go out and see a friend. In Roman times the business went to pot through bad interpreting, as I told you before. Here in Suetonius is an instance. He is speaking of Atia, the mother of Augustus Caesar:
" `Before her delivery she dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth.'
"Now how would you interpret that, August?"
"Who-me? I do not think I could interpret it at all, but I do wish I could have seen it, it must have been magnificent."
"Oh, yes, like enough; but doesn't it suggest anything to you?"
"Why, n-no, I can't see that it does. What would you thinkthat there had been an accident?"
"Of course not! It wasn't real, it was only a dream. It was sent to inform her that she was going to be delivered of something remarkable. What should you think it was?"
"I-why, I don't know."
"Guess."
"Do you think-well, would it be a slaughterhouse?"
"Sho, you've no talent for interpretation. But that is a striking instance of what the interpreter had to deal with, in that day. The dream-messages had become loose and rickety and indefinite, like the Founder's telegram, and soon the natural thing happened: the interpreters became loose and careless and discouraged, and got to guessing instead of interpreting, and the business went to ruin. Rome had to give up dream-messages, and the Romans took to entrails for prophetic information."
"Why, then, these ones must have come good, 44, don't you think?"
"I mean bird entrails-entrails of chickens."
"I would stake my money on the others; what does a chicken know about the future?"
"Sho, you don't get the idea, August. It isn't what the chicken knows; a chicken doesn't know anything, but by examining the condition of its entrails when it was slaughtered, the augurs could find out a good deal about what was going to happen to emperors, that being the way the Roman gods had invented to communicate with them when dream-transportation went out and Western Union hadn't come in yet. It was a good idea, too, because often a chicken's entrails knew more than a Roman god did, if he was drunk, and he generally was."
"FortyFour, aren't you afraid to speak like that about a god?"
"No. Why?"
"Because it's irreverent."
"No, it isn't."
"Why isn't it? What do you call irreverence?"
"Irreverence is another person's disrespect to your god; there isn't any word that tells what your disrespect to his god is."
I studied it over and saw that it was the truth, but I hadn't ever happened to look at it in that way before.
"Now then, August, to come back to Atia's dream. It beat every soothsayer. None of them got it right. The real meaning of it was—
The cat dashed in, excited, and said, "I heard Katzenyammer say there's hell to pay down below!" and out she dashed again. I jumped up, but 44 said-
"Sit down. Keep your head. There's no hurry. Things are working; I think we can have a good time. I have shut down the prophecy-works and prepared for it."
"The prophecy-works?"
"Yes. Where I come from, we-"
'Where do you co-'
It was as far as I could get. My jaw caught, there, and he gave me a look and went on as if nothing had happened:
"Where I come from we have a gift which we get tired of, now and then. We foresee everything that is going to happen, and so when it happens there's nothing to it, don't you see? we don't get any surprises. We can't shut down the prophecy-works there, but we can here. That is one of the main reasons that I come here so much. I do love surprises! I'm only a youth, and it's natural. I love shows and spectacles, and stunning dramatics, and I love to astonish people, and show off, and be and do all the gaudy things a boy loves to be and do; and whenever I'm here and have got matters worked up to where there is a good prospect to the fore, I shut down the works and have a time! I've shut them down now, two hours ago, and I don't know a thing that's ahead, any more than you do. That's all-now we'll go. I wanted to tell you that. I had plans, but I've thrown them aside. I haven't any now. I will let things go their own way, and act as circumstances suggest. Then there will be surprises. They may be small ones, and nothing to you, because you are used to them; but even the littlest ones are grand to me!"
The cat came racing in, greatly excited, and said-
"Oh, I'm so glad I'm in time! Shut the door-there's people everywhere-don't let them see in. Dear magician, get a disguise, you are in greater danger now than ever before. You have been seen, and everybody knows it, everybody is watching for you, it was most imprudent in you to show yourself. Do put on a disguise and come with me, I know a place in the castle where they'll never find you. Oh, please, please hurry! don't you hear the distant noises? they're hunting for you-do please hurry!"
FortyFour was that gratified, you can't think! He said-
"There it is, you see! I hadn't any idea of it, any more than you! And there'll be more-I just feel it."
"Oh, please don't stop to talk, but get the disguise! you don't know what may happen any moment. Everybody is searching for me, and for you, too, Duplicate, and for your Original; they've been at it some time, and are coming to think all three of us is murdered-"
"Now I know what I'll do!" cried 44; "oh but we'll have the gayest time! go on with your news!"
"-and Katrina is wild to get a chance at you because you burnt up 44, which was the idol of her heart, and she's got a carving knife three times as long as my tail, and is ambushed behind a marble column in the great hall, and it's awful to see how savagely she rakes it and whets it up and down that column and makes the sparks fly, and darts her head out, with her eyes glaring, to see if she can see you-oh, do get the disguise and come with me, quick! and laws bless me, there's a conspiracy, and-"
"Oh, it's grand, August, it's just grand! and I didn't know a thing about it, any more than you. What conspiracy are you talking about, pussy?"
"It's the strikers, going to kill the Duplicates-I sat in Fischer's lap and heard them talk the whole thing in whispers; and they've got signs and grips and passwords and all that, so't they can tell which is themselves and which is other people, though I hope to goodness if I can, not if I had a thousand such; do get the disguise and come, I'm just ready to cry!"
"Oh, bother the disguise, I'm going just so, and if they offer to do anything to me I will give them a piece of my mind."
And so he opened the door and started away, Mary following him, with the tears running down, and saying-
"Oh, they won't care for your piece of mind-why will you be so imprudent and throw your life away, and you know they'll abuse me and bang me when you are gone!"
I became invisible and joined them.
Chapter 31
IT WAS a dark, sour, gloomy morning, and bleak and cold, with a slanting veil of powdery snow driving along, and a clamorous hollow wind bellowing down the chimneys and rumbling around the battlements and towers-just the right weather for the occasion, 44 said, nothing could improve it but an eclipse. That gave him an idea, and he said he would do an eclipse; not a real one, but an artificial one that nobody but Simon Newcomb could tell from the original Jacobs-so he started it at once, and it certainly did make those yawning old stone tunnels pretty dim and sepulchral, and also of course it furnished an additional uncanniness and muffledness to way-off footfalls, taking the harshness out of them and the edge off their echoes, because when you walk
on that kind of eclipsy gloominess on a stone floor it squshes under the foot and makes that dull effect which is so shuddery and uncomfortable in these crumbly old castles where there has been such ages of cruelty and captivity and murder and mystery. And to-night would be Ghost-Night besides, and 44 did not forget to remember that, and said he wished eclipses weren't so much trouble after sundown, hanged if he wouldn't run this one all night, because it could be a great help, and a lot of ghastly effects could be gotten out of it, because all the castle ghosts turn out then, on account of its coming only every ten years, which makes it kind of select and distinguished, and still more so every Hundredth Year-which this one was-because the best ghosts from many other castles come by invitation, then, and take a hand at the great ball and banquet at midnight, a good spectacle and full of interest, insomuch that 44 had come more than once on the Hundredth Night to see it, he said, and it was very pathetic and interesting to meet up with shadowy friends that way that you haven't seen for one or two centuries and hear them tell the same mouldy things over again that they've told you several times before; because they don't have anything fresh, the way they are situated, poor things. And besides, he was going to make this the swellest Hundredth Night that had been celebrated in this castle in twelve centuries, and said he was inviting A 1 ghosts from everywhere in the world and from all the ages, past and future, and each could bring a friend if he likedany friend, character no object, just so he is dead-and if I wanted to invite some I could, he hoped to accumulate a thousand or two, and make this the Hundredth Night of Hundredth Nights, and discourage competition for a thousand years.
We didn't see a soul, all the murky way from my door to the central grand staircase and half way down it-then we began to see plenty of people, our own and men from the village-and they were armed, and stood in two ranks, waiting, a double fence across the spacious hall-for the magician to pass between, if it might please him to try it; and Katrina was there, between the fences, grim and towering and soldierly, and she was watching and waiting, with her knife. I glanced back, by chance, and there was also a living fence behind! dim forms, men who had been keeping watch in ambush, and had silently closed in upon the magician's tracks as he passed along. Mary G. had apparently had enough of this grisly journey-she was gone.
When the people below saw that their plans had succeeded, and that their quarry was in the trap they had set, they set up a loud cheer of exultation, but it didn't seem to me to ring true; there was a doubtful note in it, and I thought likely those folks were not as glad they had caught their bird as they were letting on to be; and they kept crossing themselves industriously; I took that for a sign, too.
FortyFour moved steadily down. When he was on the last step there was turmoil down the hall, and a volley of shoutings, with cries of "make way-Father Adolf is come!" then he burst panting through one of the ranks and threw himself in the way, just as Katrina was plunging for the disguised 44, and stormed out-
"Stop her, everybody! Donkeys, would you let her butcher him, and cheat the Church's fires!"
They jumped for Katrina, and in a moment she was struggling in the jumble of swaying forms, with nothing visible above it but her head and her long arm with the knife in it; and her strong voice was pouring out her feelings with energy, and easily making itself heard above the general din and the priest's commands:
"Let me at him-he burnt my child, my darling!" .... "Keep her off, men, keep her off!" . . . . "He is not the Church's, his blood is mine by rights-out of my way! I will have it!" ... . "Back! woman, back, I tell you-force her back, men, have you no strength? are you nothing but boys?" . . . . "A hundred of you shan't stay me, woman though I be!"
And sure enough, with one massy surge she wrenched herself free, and flourished her knife, and bent her head and body forward like a foot-racer and came charging down the living lane through the gathering darkness—
Then suddenly there was a great light! she lifted her head and caught it full in her swarthy face, which it transfigured with its white glory, as it did also all that place, and its marble pillars, and the frightened people, and Katrina dropped her knife and fell to her knees, with her hands clasped, everybody doing the same; and so there they were, all kneeling, like that, with hands thrust forward or clasped, and they and the stately columns all awash in that unearthly splendor; and there where the magician had stood, stood 44 now, in his supernal beauty and his gracious youth; and it was from him that that flooding light came, for all his form was clothed in that immortal fire, and flashing like the sun; and Katrina crept on her knees to him, and bent down her old head and kissed his feet, and he bent down and patted her softly on the shoulder and touched his lips to the gray hair-and was gone!-and for two or three minutes you were so blinded you couldn't see your next neighbor in that submerging black darkness. Then after that it was better, and you could make out the murky forms, some still kneeling, some lying prone in a swoon, some staggering about, here and there, with their hands pressed over their eyes, as if that light had hurt them and they were in pain. Katrina was wandering off, on unsteady feet, and her knife was lying there in the midst.
It was good he thought of the eclipse, it helped out ever so much; the effects would have been fine and great in any case, but the eclipse made them grand and stunning-just letter-perfect, as it seemed to me; and he said himself it beat Barnum and Bailey hands down, and was by as much as several shades too good for the provinces-which was all Sanscrit to me, and hadn't any meaning even in Sanscrit I reckon, but was invented for the occasion, because it had a learned sound, and he liked sound better than sense as a rule. There's been others like that, but he was the worst.
I judged it would take those people several hours to get over that, and accumulate their wits again and get their bearings, for it had knocked the whole bunch dizzy; meantime there wouldn't be anything doing. I must put in the time some way until they should be in a condition to resume business at the old stand. I went to my room and put on my flesh and stretched myself out on a lounge before the fire with a book, first setting the door ajar, so that the cat could fetch news if she got hold of any, which I wished she might; but in a little while I was asleep. I did not stir again until ten at night. I woke then, and found the cat finishing her supper, and my own ready on the table and hot; and very welcome, for I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Mary came and occupied a chair at my board, and washed herself and delivered her news while I ate. She had witnessed the great transformation scene, and had been so astonished by it and so interested in it that she did not wait to see the end, but went up a chimney and stayed there half an hour freezing, until somebody started a fire under her, and then she was thankful and very comfortable. But it got too comfortable, and she climbed out and came down a skylight stairway and went visiting around, and a little while ago she caught a rat, and did it as easy as nothing, and would teach me how, sometime, if I cared for such things; but she didn't eat it, it wasn't a fresh rat, or was out of season or something, but it reminded her that she was hungry, so she came home. Then she said-
"If you like to be astonished, I can astonish you. The magician isn't dead!"
I threw my hands up and did the astonishment-act like an old expert, crying out-
"Mary Florence Fortescue, what can you mean!"
She was delighted, and exclaimed-
"There, it's just as I said! I told him you wouldn't ever believe it; but I can lay my paw on my heart, just so, and I wish I may never stir if I haven't seen him!-seen him, you hear?-and he's just as alive as ever he was since the day he was born!"
"Oh, go'long, you're deceiving me!"
She was almost beside herself with joy over the success of her astonisher, and said-
"Oh, it's lovely, it's too lovely, and just as I said it would be-I told him you wouldn't, and it's come out just so!"
In her triumph and delight she tried to clap her hands, but it was a failure, they wouldn't clap any more than mushrooms. Then she said-
"Dupl
icate, would you believe he is alive if I should prove it?"
"Sho," I said, "come off!-what are you giving me?-as he used to say. You're talking nonsense, Mary. When a person is dead, known to be dead, permanently dead, demonstrably dead, you can't prove him alive, there isn't any way. Come, don't you know that?"
Well, she was just beaming, by now, and she could hardly hold her system together, she was that near to bursting with the victory she was going to spring on me. She skipped to the floor and flirted something to my foot with her paw; I picked it up, and she jumped into her chair again and said-
"There, now, he said you would know what that is; what is it?"
"It's a thing he calls a paper-Boston paper."
"That's right, that's what he said. And he said it is future English and you know present English and can read it. Did he say right?"
"The fact is right, but he didn't say it, because he's dead."
"You wait-that's all. He said look at the date."
"Very well. He didn't say it, because he's dead, and of course wouldn't think of it; but here it is, all the same-June 28, 1905."
"That's right, it's what he said. Then he said ask you what was the Founder's message to her disciples, that was in the other Boston paper. What was it?"
"Well, he told me there was an immense war going on, and she got tired having her people pray for peace and never take a trick for seventeen months, so she ordered them to quit, and put their battery out of commission. And he said nobody could understand the rest of the message, and like enough that very ignorance would bring on an immense disaster."