by Mark Twain
This struck us cold. Every face was blank with dismay. We realized that our circumstances were desperate, now. There was a long silence. Finally, Millet said with a sigh:
“Nothing occurs to me—nothing. Suggest something, lads.”
There was no response, unless a mournful silence may be called a response. Carl got up, and walked nervously up and down awhile, then said:
“It’s a shame! Look at these canvases: stacks and stacks of as good pictures as anybody in Europe paints—I don’t care who he is. Yes, and plenty of lounging strangers have said the same—or nearly that, anyway.”
“But didn’t buy,” Millet said.
“No matter, they said it; and it’s true, too. Look at your ‘Angelus’ there! Will anybody tell me—”
“Pah, Carl—my ‘Angelus’! I was offered five francs for it.”
“When?”
“Who offered it?”
“Where is he?”
“Why didn’t you take it?”
“Come—don’t all speak at once. I thought he would give more—I was sure of it—he looked it—so I asked him eight.”
“Well—and then?”
“He said he would call again.”
“Thunder and lightning! Why, François—”
“Oh, I know—I know! It was a mistake, and I was a fool. Boys, I meant for the best; you’ll grant me that, and I—”
“Why, certainly, we know that, bless your dear heart; but don’t you be a fool again.”
“I? I wish somebody would come along and offer us a cabbage for it—you’d see!”
“A cabbage! Oh, don’t name it—it makes my mouth water. Talk of things less trying.”
“Boys,” said Carl, “do these pictures lack merit? Answer me that.”
“No!”
“Aren’t they of very great and high merit? Answer me that.”
“Yes.”
“Of such great and high merit that, if an illustrious name were attached to them, they would sell at splendid prices. Isn’t it so?”
“Certainly it is. Nobody doubts that.”
“But—I’m not joking—isn’t it so?”
“Why, of course it’s so—and we are not joking. But what of it? What of it? How does that concern us?”
“In this way, comrades—we’ll attach an illustrious name to them!”
The lively conversation stopped. The faces were turned inquiringly upon Carl. What sort of riddle might this be? Where was an illustrious name to be borrowed? And who was to borrow it?
Carl sat down, and said:
“Now, I have a perfectly serious thing to propose. I think it is the only way to keep us out of the almshouse, and I believe it to be a perfectly sure way. I base this opinion upon certain multitudinous and long-established facts in human history. I believe my project will make us all rich.”
“Rich! You’ve lost your mind.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have—you’ve lost your mind. What do you call rich?”
“A hundred thousand francs apiece.”
“He has lost his mind. I knew it.”
“Yes, he has. Carl, privation has been too much for you, and—”
“Carl, you want to take a pill and get right to bed.”
“Bandage him first—bandage his head, and then—”
“No, bandage his heels; his brains have been settling for weeks—I’ve noticed it.”
“Shut up!” said Millet, with ostensible severity, “and let the boy say his say. Now, then—come out with your project, Carl. What is it?”
“Well, then, by way of preamble I will ask you to note this fact in human history: that the merit of many a great artist has never been acknowledged until after he was starved and dead. This has happened so often that I make bold to found a law upon it. This law: that the merit of every great unknown and neglected artist must and will be recognized, and his pictures climb to high prices after his death. My project is this: we must cast lots—one of us must die.”
The remark fell so calmly and so unexpectedly that we almost forgot to jump. Then there was a wild chorus of advice again—medical advice—for the help of Carl’s brain; but he waited patiently for the hilarity to calm down, then went on again with his project:
“Yes, one of us must die, to save the others—and himself. We will cast lots. The one chosen shall be illustrious, all of us shall be rich. Hold still, now—hold still; don’t interrupt—I tell you I know what I am talking about. Here is the idea. During the next three months the one who is to die shall paint with all his might, enlarge his stock all he can—not pictures, no! skeleton sketches, studies, parts of studies, fragments of studies, a dozen dabs of the brush on each—meaningless, of course, but his with his cipher on them; turn out fifty a day, each to contain some peculiarity or mannerism, easily detectable as his—they’re the things that sell you know, and are collected at fabulous prices for the world’s museums, after the great man is gone; we’ll have a ton of them ready—a ton! And all that time the rest of us will be busy supporting the moribund, and working Paris and the dealers—preparations for the coming event, you know; and when everything is hot and just right, we’ll spring the death on them and have the notorious funeral. You get the idea?”
“N-o; at least, not qu—”
“Not quite? Don’t you see? The man doesn’t really die; he changes his name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all the world to help. And I—”
But he wasn’t allowed to finish. Everybody broke out into a rousing hurrah of applause; and all jumped up and capered about the room and fell on each other’s necks in transports of gratitude and joy. For hours we talked over the great plan, without ever feeling hungry; and at last, when all the details had been arranged satisfactorily, we cast lots and Millet was elected—elected to die, as we called it. Then we scraped together those things which one never parts with until he is betting them against future wealth—keepsake trinkets and such like—and these we pawned for enough to furnish us a frugal farewell supper and breakfast, and leave us a few francs over for travel, and a stake of turnips and such for Millet to live on for a few days.
Next morning, early, the three of us cleared out, straightway after breakfast—on foot, of course. Each of us carried a dozen of Millet’s small pictures, purposing to market them. Carl struck for Paris, where he would start the work of building up Millet’s fame against the coming great day. Claude and I were to separate, and scatter abroad over France.
Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch a villa in the outskirts of a big town—because I saw the proprietor standing on an upper veranda. He came down to look on—I thought he would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally he fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by and by he spoke up with enthusiasm, and said I was a master!
I put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and pointed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly:
“I suppose you recognize that? Well, he taught me! I should think I ought to know my trade!”
The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said, sorrowfully:
“You don’t mean to intimate that you don’t know the cipher of François Millet!”
Of course he didn’t know that cipher; but he was the gratefulest man you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place on such easy terms. He said:
“No! Why, it is Millet’s, sure enough! I don’t know what I could have been thinking of. Of course I recognize it now.”
Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn’t rich I wasn’t that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred francs.
“Eight hundred!”
Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork-chop. Yes, I got eight hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for eighty thousand. But that time’s gone
by. I made a very nice picture of that man’s house, and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that wouldn’t answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight back to Millet from that town and struck out again next day.
But I didn’t walk—no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my customer:
“I am a fool to sell a picture of François Millet’s at all, for that man is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can’t be had for love or money.”
I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare the world for the event.
I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures—it was mine. I suggested it that last evening when we were laying out our campaign, and all three of us agreed to give it a good fair trial before giving it up for some other. It succeeded with all of us. I walked only two days, Claude walked two—both of us afraid to make Millet celebrated too close to home—but Carl walked only half a day, the bright, conscienceless rascal, and after that he traveled like a duke.
Every now and then we got in with a country editor and started an item around through the press; not an item announcing that a new painter had been discovered, but an item which let on that everybody knew François Millet; not an item praising him in any way, but merely a word concerning the present condition of the “master”—sometimes hopeful, sometimes despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We always marked these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people who had bought pictures of us.
Carl was soon in Paris, and he worked things with a high hand. He made friends with the correspondents, and got Millet’s condition reported to England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere.
At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and called a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional pictures. The boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that it would be a mistake not to strike now, right away, without waiting any longer. So we wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty fast, for we should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready.
Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five small pictures and studies, and had sixty-nine thousand francs to show for it. Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all. He sold the “Angelus” for twenty-two hundred francs. How we did glorify him!—not foreseeing that a day was coming by and by when France would struggle to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and fifty thousand, cash.
We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and I packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep busybodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris for publication in the papers of several continents for the information of a waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time to help in the final mournful rites.
You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over the globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and testify their sorrow. We four—still inseparable—carried the coffin, and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it hadn’t anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone forever, carried the cof—
“Which four?”
“We four—for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you know. Disguised as a relative—distant relative.”
“Astonishing!”
“But true, just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up. Money? We didn’t know what to do with it. There’s a man in Paris to-day who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet shoveled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays—that is, when we consent to let one go!”
“It is a wonderful history, perfectly wonderful!”
“Yes—it amounts to that.”
“Whatever became of Millet?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“I can.”
“Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining-room to-day? That was François Millet.”
“Great—”
“Scott! Yes. For once they didn’t starve a genius to death and then put into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This songbird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.”
1893
THE £1,000,000 BANK-NOTE
WHEN I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining-broker’s clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the details of stock traffic. I was alone in the world, and had nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation; but these were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I was content with the prospect.
My time was my own after the afternoon board, Saturdays, and I was accustomed to put it in on a little sail-boat on the bay. One day I ventured too far, and was carried out to sea. Just at nightfall, when hope was about gone, I was picked up by a small brig which was bound for London. It was a long and stormy voyage, and they made me work my passage without pay, as a common sailor. When I stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged and shabby, and I had only a dollar in my pocket. This money fed and sheltered me twenty-four hours. During the next twenty-four I went without food and shelter.
About ten o’clock on the following morning, seedy and hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place, when a child that was passing, towed by a nurse-maid, tossed a luscious big pear—minus one bite—into the gutter. I stopped, of course, and fastened my desiring eye on that muddy treasure. My mouth watered for it, my stomach craved it, my whole being begged for it. But every time I made a move to get it some passing eye detected my purpose, and of course I straightened up then, and looked indifferent, and pretended that I hadn’t been thinking about the pear at all. This same thing kept happening and happening, and I couldn’t get the pear. I was just getting desperate enough to brave all the shame, and to seize it, when a window behind me was raised, and a gentleman spoke out of it, saying:
“Step in here, please.”
I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey, and shown into a sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting. They sent away the servant, and made me sit down. They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost overpowered me. I could hardly keep my wits together in the presence of that food, but as I was not asked to sample it, I had to bear my trouble as best I could.
Now, something had been happening there a little before, which I did not know anything about until a good many days afterward, but I will tell you about it now. Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot argument a couple of days before, and had ended by agreeing to decide it by a bet, which is the English way of settling everything.
You will remember that the Bank of England once issued two notes of a million pounds each, to be used for a special purpose connected with some public transaction with a foreign country. For some reason or other only one of these had been used and canceled; the other still lay in the vaults of the Bank. Well, the brothers, chatting along, happened to get to wondering what might be the fate of a perfectly honest and intelligent stranger who should be turned adrift in London without a friend, and with no money but that million-pound bank-note, and no way to account for his being in possession of it. Brother A said he would starve to death; Brother B said he wouldn’t. Brother A said he couldn’t offer it at a bank or anywhere else, because he would be arrested on the spot. So they went on disputing till Brother B said he would bet twenty thousand pounds that the man would live thirty days, anyway, on that million, and k
eep out of jail, too. Brother A took him up. Brother B went down to the Bank and bought that note. Just like an Englishman, you see; pluck to the backbone. Then he dictated a letter, which one of his clerks wrote out in a beautiful round hand, and then the two brothers sat at the window a whole day watching for the right man to give it to.
They saw many honest faces go by that were not intelligent enough; many that were intelligent, but not honest enough; many that were both, but the possessors were not poor enough, or, if poor enough, were not strangers. There was always a defect, until I came along; but they agreed that I filled the bill all around; so they elected me unanimously, and there I was now waiting to know why I was called in. They began to ask me questions about myself, and pretty soon they had my story. Finally they told me I would answer their purpose. I said I was sincerely glad, and asked what it was. Then one of them handed me an envelope, and said I would find the explanation inside. I was going to open it, but he said no; take it to my lodgings, and look it over carefully, and not be hasty or rash. I was puzzled, and wanted to discuss the matter a little further, but they didn’t; so I took my leave, feeling hurt and insulted to be made the butt of what was apparently some kind of a practical joke, and yet obliged to put up with it, not being in circumstances to resent affronts from rich and strong folk.
I would have picked up the pear now and eaten it before all the world, but it was gone; so I had lost that by this unlucky business, and the thought of it did not soften my feeling toward those men. As soon as I was out of sight of that house I opened my envelope, and saw that it contained money! My opinion of those people changed, I can tell you! I lost not a moment, but shoved note and money into my vest pocket, and broke for the nearest cheap eating-house. Well, how I did eat! When at last I couldn’t hold any more, I took out my money and unfolded it, took one glimpse and nearly fainted. Five millions of dollars! Why, it made my head swim.