Chapter 7

Marget announced a party, and invited forty people; the date for it was

seven days away. This was a fine opportunity. Marget's house stood by

itself, and it could be easily watched. All the week it was watched

night and day. Marget's household went out and in as usual, but they

carried nothing in their hands, and neither they nor others brought

anything to the house. This was ascertained. Evidently rations for forty

people were not being fetched. If they were furnished any sustenance it

would have to be made on the premises. It was true that Marget went out

with a basket every evening, but the spies ascertained that she always

brought it back empty.

The guests arrived at noon and filled the place. Father Adolf followed;

also, after a little, the astrologer, without invitation. The spies had

informed him that neither at the back nor the front had any parcels

been brought in. He entered, and found the eating and drinking going

on finely, and everything progressing in a lively and festive way. He

glanced around and perceived that many of the cooked delicacies and all

of the native and foreign fruits were of a perishable character, and he

also recognized that these were fresh and perfect. No apparitions, no

incantations, no thunder. That settled it. This was witchcraft. And not

only that, but of a new kind--a kind never dreamed of before. It was

a prodigious power, an illustrious power; he resolved to discover its

secret. The announcement of it would resound throughout the world,

penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all the nations with

amazement--and carry his name with it, and make him renowned forever. It

was a wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck; the glory of it

made him dizzy.

All the house made room for him; Marget politely seated him; Ursula

ordered Gottfried to bring a special table for him. Then she decked it

and furnished it, and asked for his orders.

“Bring me what you will,” he said.

The two servants brought supplies from the pantry, together with white

wine and red--a bottle of each. The astrologer, who very likely had

never seen such delicacies before, poured out a beaker of red wine,

drank it off, poured another, then began to eat with a grand appetite.

I was not expecting Satan, for it was more than a week since I had

seen or heard of him, but now he came in--I knew it by the feel, though

people were in the way and I could not see him. I heard him apologizing

for intruding; and he was going away, but Marget urged him to stay, and

he thanked her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing him to the

girls, and to Meidling, and to some of the elders; and there was quite

a rustle of whispers: “It's the young stranger we hear so much about

and can't get sight of, he is away so much.” “Dear, dear, but he is

beautiful--what is his name?” “Philip Traum.” “Ah, it fits him!” (You

see, “Traum” is German for “Dream.”) “What does he do?” “Studying for

the ministry, they say.” “His face is his fortune--he'll be a cardinal

some day.” “Where is his home?” “Away down somewhere in the tropics,

they say--has a rich uncle down there.” And so on. He made his way at

once; everybody was anxious to know him and talk with him. Everybody

noticed how cool and fresh it was, all of a sudden, and wondered at it,

for they could see that the sun was beating down the same as before,

outside, and the sky was clear of clouds, but no one guessed the reason,

of course.

The astrologer had drunk his second beaker; he poured out a third. He

set the bottle down, and by accident overturned it. He seized it before

much was spilled, and held it up to the light, saying, “What a pity--it

is royal wine.” Then his face lighted with joy or triumph, or something,

and he said, “Quick! Bring a bowl.”

It was brought--a four-quart one. He took up that two-pint bottle and

began to pour; went on pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing

into the white bowl and rising higher and higher up its sides, everybody

staring and holding their breath--and presently the bowl was full to the

brim.

“Look at the bottle,” he said, holding it up; “it is full yet!” I

glanced at Satan, and in that moment he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose

up, flushed and excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his

great voice, “This house is bewitched and accursed!” People began to cry

and shriek and crowd toward the door. “I summon this detected household

to--”

His words were cut off short. His face became red, then purple, but he

could not utter another sound. Then I saw Satan, a transparent film,

melt into the astrologer's body; then the astrologer put up his hand,

and apparently in his own voice said, “Wait--remain where you are.” All

stopped where they stood. “Bring a funnel!” Ursula brought it, trembling

and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle and took up the great bowl

and began to pour the wine back, the people gazing and dazed with

astonishment, for they knew the bottle was already full before he began.

He emptied the whole of the bowl into the bottle, then smiled out over

the room, chuckled, and said, indifferently: “It is nothing--anybody can

do it! With my powers I can even do much more.”

A frightened cry burst out everywhere. “Oh, my God, he is possessed!”

and there was a tumultuous rush for the door which swiftly emptied the

house of all who did not belong in it except us boys and Meidling.

We boys knew the secret, and would have told it if we could, but we

couldn't. We were very thankful to Satan for furnishing that good help

at the needful time.

Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked kind of petrified; Ursula

the same; but Gottfried was the worst--he couldn't stand, he was so weak

and scared. For he was of a witch family, you know, and it would be

bad for him to be suspected. Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and

unaware, and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be petted, but Ursula

was afraid of her and shrank away from her, but pretending she was not

meaning any incivility, for she knew very well it wouldn't answer to

have strained relations with that kind of a cat. But we boys took Agnes

and petted her, for Satan would not have befriended her if he had not

had a good opinion of her, and that was indorsement enough for us. He

seemed to trust anything that hadn't the Moral Sense.

Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered in every direction and

fled in a pitiable state of terror; and such a tumult as they made with

their running and sobbing and shrieking and shouting that soon all the

village came flocking from their houses to see what had happened, and

they thronged the street and shouldered and jostled one another in

excitement and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and they fell

apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea, and presently down this lane

the astrologer came striding and mumbling, and where he passed the lanes

surged back in packed masses, and fell silent with awe, and their eyes

stared and their breasts heaved, and several women fainted; and when he

was gone by the crowd swarmed together and followed him at a distance,

talking excitedly and asking questions and finding out the

facts. Finding out the facts and passing them on to others, with

improvements--improvements which soon enlarged the bowl of wine to a

barrel, and made the one bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the

last.

When the astrologer reached the market-square he went straight to a

juggler, fantastically dressed, who was keeping three brass balls in the

air, and took them from him and faced around upon the approaching crowd

and said: “This poor clown is ignorant of his art. Come forward and see

an expert perform.”

So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another and set them

whirling in a slender bright oval in the air, and added another, then

another and another, and soon--no one seeing whence he got them--adding,

adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time, his hands moving so

swiftly that they were just a web or a blur and not distinguishable as

hands; and such as counted said there were now a hundred balls in the

air. The spinning great oval reached up twenty feet in the air and was

a shining and glinting and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms

and told the balls to go on spinning without his help--and they did it.

After a couple of minutes he said, “There, that will do,” and the oval

broke and came crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and rolled

every whither. And wherever one of them came the people fell back in

dread, and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at

the people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw

the tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money

to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they

should see the work of a master. With that he made a spring into the air

and lit firm on his feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length of

it back and forth on one foot, with his hands clasped over his eyes; and

next he began to throw somersaults, both backward and forward, and threw

twenty-seven.

The people murmured, for the astrologer was old, and always before

had been halting of movement and at times even lame, but he was nimble

enough now and went on with his antics in the liveliest manner. Finally

he sprang lightly down and walked away, and passed up the road and

around the corner and disappeared. Then that great, pale, silent, solid

crowd drew a deep breath and looked into one another's faces as if

they said: “Was it real? Did you see it, or was it only I--and was I

dreaming?” Then they broke into a low murmur of talking, and fell apart

in couples, and moved toward their homes, still talking in that awed

way, with faces close together and laying a hand on an arm and making

other such gestures as people make when they have been deeply impressed

by something.

We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened, catching all we could

of what they said; and when they sat down in our house and continued

their talk they still had us for company. They were in a sad mood, for

it was certain, they said, that disaster for the village must follow

this awful visitation of witches and devils. Then my father

remembered that father Adolf had been struck dumb at the moment of his

denunciation.

“They have not ventured to lay their hands upon an anointed servant

of God before,” he said; “and how they could have dared it this time I

cannot make out, for he wore his crucifix. Isn't it so?”

“Yes,” said the others, “we saw it.”

“It is serious, friends, it is very serious. Always before, we had a

protection. It has failed.”

The others shook, as with a sort of chill, and muttered those words

over--“It has failed.” “God has forsaken us.”

“It is true,” said Seppi Wohlmeyer's father; “there is nowhere to look

for help.”

“The people will realize this,” said Nikolaus's father, the judge, “and

despair will take away their courage and their energies. We have indeed

fallen upon evil times.”

He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled voice: “The report of it

all will go about the country, and our village will be shunned as being

under the displeasure of God. The Golden Stag will know hard times.”

“True, neighbor,” said my father; “all of us will suffer--all in repute,

many in estate. And, good God!--”

“What is it?”

“That can come--to finish us!”

“Name it--um Gottes Willen!”

“The Interdict!”

It smote like a thunderclap, and they were like to swoon with the terror

of it. Then the dread of this calamity roused their energies, and they

stopped brooding and began to consider ways to avert it. They discussed

this, that, and the other way, and talked till the afternoon was far

spent, then confessed that at present they could arrive at no decision.

So they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed hearts which were filled with

bodings.

While they were saying their parting words I slipped out and set my

course for Marget's house to see what was happening there. I met many

people, but none of them greeted me. It ought to have been surprising,

but it was not, for they were so distraught with fear and dread that

they were not in their right minds, I think; they were white and

haggard, and walked like persons in a dream, their eyes open but seeing

nothing, their lips moving but uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping

and unclasping their hands without knowing it.

At Marget's it was like a funeral. She and Wilhelm sat together on the

sofa, but said nothing, and not even holding hands. Both were steeped

in gloom, and Marget's eyes were red from the crying she had been doing.

She said:

“I have been begging him to go, and come no more, and so save himself

alive. I cannot bear to be his murderer. This house is bewitched, and

no inmate will escape the fire. But he will not go, and he will be lost

with the rest.”

Wilhelm said he would not go; if there was danger for her, his place was

by her, and there he would remain. Then she began to cry again, and it

was all so mournful that I wished I had stayed away. There was a knock,

now, and Satan came in, fresh and cheery and beautiful, and brought that

winy atmosphere of his and changed the whole thing. He never said a

word about what had been happening, nor about the awful fears which were

freezing the blood in the hearts of the community, but began to talk and

rattle on about all manner of gay and pleasant things; and next about

music--an artful stroke which cleared away the remnant of Marget's

depression and brought her spirits and her interests broad awake. She

had not heard any one talk so well and so knowingly on that subject

before, and she was so uplifted by it and so charmed that what she was

feeling lit up her face and came out in her words; and Wilhelm noticed

it and did not look as pleased as he ought to have done. And next Satan

branched off into poetry, and recited some, and did it well, and Marget

was charmed again; and again Wilhelm was not as pleased as he ought to

have been, and this time Marget noticed it and was remorseful.

I fell asleep to pleasant music that night--the patter of rain upon the

panes and the dull growling of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan

came and roused me and said: “Come with me. Where shall we go?”

“Anywhere--so it is with you.”

Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he said, “This is China.”

That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of drunk with vanity and

gladness to think I had come so far--so much, much farther than anybody

else in our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such a great

opinion of his travels. We buzzed around over that empire for more than

half an hour, and saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles

we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible to think. For

instance--However, I may go into that by and by, and also why Satan

chose China for this excursion instead of another place; it would

interrupt my tale to do it now. Finally we stopped flitting and lit.

We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast landscape of mountain-range

and gorge and valley and plain and river, with cities and villages

slumbering in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the farther

verge. It was a tranquil and dreamy picture, beautiful to the eye and

restful to the spirit. If we could only make a change like that whenever

we wanted to, the world would be easier to live in than it is, for

change of scene shifts the mind's burdens to the other shoulder and

banishes old, shop-worn wearinesses from mind and body both.

We talked together, and I had the idea of trying to reform Satan and

persuade him to lead a better life. I told him about all those things

he had been doing, and begged him to be more considerate and stop making

people unhappy. I said I knew he did not mean any harm, but that he

ought to stop and consider the possible consequences of a thing before

launching it in that impulsive and random way of his; then he would

not make so much trouble. He was not hurt by this plain speech; he only

looked amused and surprised, and said:

“What? I do random things? Indeed, I never do. I stop and consider

possible consequences? Where is the need? I know what the consequences

are going to be--always.”

“Oh, Satan, then how could you do these things?”

“Well, I will tell you, and you must understand if you can. You

belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and

a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together

harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take

principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the

other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain--maybe a dozen.

In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between

happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness

predominates--always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and

disposition are such that his misery-machine is able to do nearly all

the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what

happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a

misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person

life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an

hour's happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery. Don't

you know that? It happens every now and then. I will give you a case

or two presently. Now the people of your village are nothing to me--you

know that, don't you?”

I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I said I had suspected it.

“Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It is not possible

that they should be. The difference between them and me is abysmal,

immeasurable. They have no intellect.”

“No intellect?”

“Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I will examine what man

calls his mind and give you the details of that chaos, then you will see

and understand. Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of

contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities

and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a

laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral

Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big

as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in

him--caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or

poor, or whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, or whether his

mother is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society or

not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, or

whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail,

or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and

despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the

elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to

the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the

elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get

down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is

indifferent; I am indifferent. The elephant would not take the trouble

to do the spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might do him a

good turn, if it came in his way and cost nothing. I have done men good

service, but no ill turns.

“The elephant lives a century, the red spider a day; in power,

intellect, and dignity the one creature is separated from the other by

a distance which is simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all

qualities, man is immeasurably further below me than is the wee spider

below the elephant.

“Man's mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little

trivialities together and gets a result--such as it is. My mind creates!

Do you get the force of that? Creates anything it desires--and in

a moment. Creates without material. Creates fluids, solids,

colors--anything, everything--out of the airy nothing which is called

Thought. A man imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine to make it,

imagines a picture, then by weeks of labor embroiders it on canvas

with the thread. I think the whole thing, and in a moment it is before

you--created.

“I think a poem, music, the record of a game of chess--anything--and

it is there. This is the immortal mind--nothing is beyond its reach.

Nothing can obstruct my vision; the rocks are transparent to me, and

darkness is daylight. I do not need to open a book; I take the whole of

its contents into my mind at a single glance, through the cover; and in

a million years I could not forget a single word of it, or its place in

the volume. Nothing goes on in the skull of man, bird, fish, insect, or

other creature which can be hidden from me. I pierce the learned man's

brain with a single glance, and the treasures which cost him threescore

years to accumulate are mine; he can forget, and he does forget, but I

retain.

“Now, then, I perceive by your thoughts that you are understanding me

fairly well. Let us proceed. Circumstances might so fall out that the

elephant could like the spider--supposing he can see it--but he could

not love it. His love is for his own kind--for his equals. An

angel's love is sublime, adorable, divine, beyond the imagination of

man--infinitely beyond it! But it is limited to his own august order. If

it fell upon one of your race for only an instant, it would consume

its object to ashes. No, we cannot love men, but we can be harmlessly

indifferent to them; we can also like them, sometimes. I like you and

the boys, I like father Peter, and for your sakes I am doing all these

things for the villagers.”

He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and he explained his position.

“I have wrought well for the villagers, though it does not look like

it on the surface. Your race never know good fortune from ill. They are

always mistaking the one for the other. It is because they cannot see

into the future. What I am doing for the villagers will bear good fruit

some day; in some cases to themselves; in others, to unborn generations

of men. No one will ever know that I was the cause, but it will be none

the less true, for all that. Among you boys you have a game: you stand a

row of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a brick, it knocks its

neighbor over, the neighbor knocks over the next brick--and so on till

all the row is prostrate. That is human life. A child's first act knocks

over the initial brick, and the rest will follow inexorably. If you

could see into the future, as I can, you would see everything that was

going to happen to that creature; for nothing can change the order of

its life after the first event has determined it. That is, nothing will

change it, because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act begets

another, and so on to the end, and the seer can look forward down the

line and see just when each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave.”

“Does God order the career?”

“Foreordain it? No. The man's circumstances and environment order it.

His first act determines the second and all that follow after. But

suppose, for argument's sake, that the man should skip one of these

acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance; suppose that it had been

appointed that on a certain day, at a certain hour and minute and second

and fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he didn't go.

That man's career would change utterly, from that moment; thence to the

grave it would be wholly different from the career which his first act

as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might be that if he had

gone to the well he would have ended his career on a throne, and that

omitting to do it would set him upon a career that would lead to

beggary and a pauper's grave. For instance: if at any time--say in

boyhood--Columbus had skipped the triflingest little link in the chain

of acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it

would have changed his whole subsequent life, and he would have become

a priest and died obscure in an Italian village, and America would not

have been discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this. To

skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus's chain would have wholly

changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and

in only one of them occurs the discovery of America. You people do not

suspect that all of your acts are of one size and importance, but it is

true; to snatch at an appointed fly is as big with fate for you as is

any other appointed act--”

“As the conquering of a continent, for instance?”

“Yes. Now, then, no man ever does drop a link--the thing has never

happened! Even when he is trying to make up his mind as to whether

he will do a thing or not, that itself is a link, an act, and has its

proper place in his chain; and when he finally decides an act, that also

was the thing which he was absolutely certain to do. You see, now, that

a man will never drop a link in his chain. He cannot. If he made up his

mind to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link--a thought

bound to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the

first act of his babyhood.”

It seemed so dismal!

“He is a prisoner for life,” I said sorrowfully, “and cannot get free.”

“No, of himself he cannot get away from the consequences of his first

childish act. But I can free him.”

I looked up wistfully.

“I have changed the careers of a number of your villagers.”

I tried to thank him, but found it difficult, and let it drop.

“I shall make some other changes. You know that little Lisa Brandt?”

“Oh yes, everybody does. My mother says she is so sweet and so lovely

that she is not like any other child. She says she will be the pride of

the village when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she is now.”

“I shall change her future.”

“Make it better?” I asked.

“Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus.”

I was glad, this time, and said, “I don't need to ask about his case;

you will be sure to do generously by him.”

“It is my intention.”

Straight off I was building that great future of Nicky's in my

imagination, and had already made a renowned general of him and

hofmeister at the court, when I noticed that Satan was waiting for me

to get ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having exposed my cheap

imaginings to him, and was expecting some sarcasms, but it did not

happen. He proceeded with his subject:

“Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years.”

“That's grand!” I said.

“Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall change their lives and

those ages. Two minutes and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of

his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was appointed that he should

turn over and go to sleep again. But I have appointed that he shall

get up and close the window first. That trifle will change his career

entirely. He will rise in the morning two minutes later than the chain

of his life had appointed him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth

nothing will ever happen to him in accordance with the details of the

old chain.” He took out his watch and sat looking at it a few moments,

then said: “Nikolaus has risen to close the window. His life is changed,

his new career has begun. There will be consequences.”

It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.

“But for this change certain things would happen twelve days from now.

For instance, Nikolaus would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive

on the scene at exactly the right moment--four minutes past ten, the

long-ago appointed instant of time--and the water would be shoal, the

achievement easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds too late,

now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper water. He will do his best,

but both will drown.”

“Oh, Satan! Oh, dear Satan!” I cried, with the tears rising in my eyes,

“save them! Don't let it happen. I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my

loving playmate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor mother!”

I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he was not moved. He made me

sit down again, and told me I must hear him out.

“I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has changed Lisa's. If I had

not done this, Nikolaus would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from

his drenching; one of your race's fantastic and desolating scarlet

fevers would follow, with pathetic after-effects; for forty-six years

he would lie in his bed a paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying

night and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I change his life

back?”

“Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and pity leave it as it is.”

“It is best so. I could not have changed any other link in his life and

done him so good a service. He had a billion possible careers, but not

one of them was worth living; they were charged full with miseries and

disasters. But for my intervention he would do his brave deed twelve

days from now--a deed begun and ended in six minutes--and get for all

reward those forty-six years of sorrow and suffering I told you of.

It is one of the cases I was thinking of awhile ago when I said

that sometimes an act which brings the actor an hour's happiness and

self-satisfaction is paid for--or punished--by years of suffering.”

I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would save her from. He

answered the thought:

“From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then

from nineteen years' pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with

death at the hands of the executioner. Twelve days hence she will die;

her mother would save her life if she could. Am I not kinder than her

mother?”

“Yes--oh, indeed yes; and wiser.”

“Father Peter's case is coming on presently. He will be acquitted,

through unassailable proofs of his innocence.”

“Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it?”

“Indeed, I know it. His good name will be restored, and the rest of his

life will be happy.”

“I can believe it. To restore his good name will have that effect.”

“His happiness will not proceed from that cause. I shall change his

life that day, for his good. He will never know his good name has been

restored.”

In my mind--and modestly--I asked for particulars, but Satan paid no

attention to my thought. Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer, and I

wondered where he might be.

“In the moon,” said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believed was

a chuckle. “I've got him on the cold side of it, too. He doesn't know

where he is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good enough

for him, a good place for his star studies. I shall need him presently;

then I shall bring him back and possess him again. He has a long and

cruel and odious life before him, but I will change that, for I have no

feeling against him and am quite willing to do him a kindness. I think I

shall get him burned.”

He had such strange notions of kindness! But angels are made so, and

do not know any better. Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides,

human beings are nothing to them; they think they are only freaks. It

seems to me odd that he should put the astrologer so far away; he could

have dumped him in Germany just as well, where he would be handy.

“Far away?” said Satan. “To me no place is far away; distance does not

exist for me. The sun is less than a hundred million miles from here,

and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come;

but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so

minute that it cannot be measured by a watch. I have but to think the

journey, and it is accomplished.”

I held out my hand and said, “The light lies upon it; think it into a

glass of wine, Satan.”

He did it. I drank the wine.

“Break the glass,” he said.

I broke it.

“There--you see it is real. The villagers thought the brass balls were

magic stuff and as perishable as smoke. They were afraid to touch them.

You are a curious lot--your race. But come along; I have business. I

will put you to bed.” Said and done. Then he was gone; but his voice

came back to me through the rain and darkness saying, “Yes, tell Seppi,

but no other.”

It was the answer to my thought.