Chapter 8

Sleep would not come. It was not because I was proud of my travels and

excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling

contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, “the traveler,” as he called himself,

and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and

was the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the

world's wonders. At another time that would have kept me awake, but it

did not affect me now. No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts

ran upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and

frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer

days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought

we were in school. And now he was going out of this young life, and the

summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play

as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more.

To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been,

and it would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and

frivolous things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and

dull eyes, and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he

would not suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days

would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and

nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but

Seppi and me. Twelve days--only twelve days. It was awful to think of. I

noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar

names, Nick and Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and

reverently, as one speaks of the dead. Also, as incident after incident

of our comradeship came thronging into my mind out of the past, I

noticed that they were mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt

him, and they rebuked me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung with

remorse, just as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to friends who

have passed beyond the veil, and we wish we could have them back again,

if only for a moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say,

“Have pity, and forgive.”

Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of nearly two

miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for reward,

and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment

and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not

thinking of treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he

following me and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the

core, which was all that was left; and I laughed. Then he turned away,

crying, and said he had meant to give it to his little sister. That

smote me, for she was slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would

have been a proud moment for him, to see her joy and surprise and have

her caresses. But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said

something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care, and he made no reply

in words, but there was a wounded look in his face as he turned away

toward his home which rose before me many times in after years, in the

night, and reproached me and made me ashamed again. It had grown dim in

my mind, by and by, then it disappeared; but it was back now, and not

dim.

Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my ink and spoiled four

copy-books, and was in danger of severe punishment; but I put it upon

him, and he got the whipping.

And only last year I had cheated him in a trade, giving him a large

fish-hook which was partly broken through for three small sound ones.

The first fish he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I was

blamable, and he refused to take back one of the small hooks which my

conscience forced me to offer him, but said, “A trade is a trade; the

hook was bad, but that was not your fault.”

No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs upbraided me and

tortured me, and with a pain much sharper than one feels when the wrongs

have been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no matter; he was

to me as one already dead. The wind was still moaning about the eaves,

the rain still pattering upon the panes.

In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him. It was down by the

river. His lips moved, but he did not say anything, he only looked dazed

and stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood like that a few

moments, the tears welling into his eyes, then he turned away and I

locked my arm in his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking.

We crossed the bridge and wandered through the meadows and up among the

hills and the woods, and at last the talk came and flowed freely, and it

was all about Nikolaus and was a recalling of the life we had lived with

him. And every now and then Seppi said, as if to himself:

“Twelve days!--less than twelve days.”

We said we must be with him all the time; we must have all of him we

could; the days were precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It

would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid. We did not say it,

but that was what we were feeling. And so it gave us a shock when we

turned a curve and came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily:

“Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a ghost?”

We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion; he was willing to talk

for us all, for he had just seen Satan and was in high spirits about it.

Satan had told him about our trip to China, and he had begged Satan to

take him a journey, and Satan had promised. It was to be a far journey,

and wonderful and beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us,

too, but he said no, he would take us some day, maybe, but not now.

Satan would come for him on the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting

the hours, he was so impatient.

That was the fatal day. We were already counting the hours, too.

We wandered many a mile, always following paths which had been our

favorites from the days when we were little, and always we talked about

the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could

not shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely

gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and

we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy,

and saying, “Wait, let me do that for you,” and that pleased him, too. I

gave him seven fish-hooks--all I had--and made him take them; and

Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and

yellow--atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I

learned later, and probably no longer remembered by Nikolaus now. These

things touched him, and he could not have believed that we loved him so;

and his pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to the heart, we were

so undeserving of them. When we parted at last, he was radiant, and said

he had never had such a happy day.

As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, “We always prized him, but

never so much as now, when we are going to lose him.”

Next day and every day we spent all of our spare time with Nikolaus;

and also added to it time which we (and he) stole from work and other

duties, and this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and some

threats of punishment. Every morning two of us woke with a start and

a shudder, saying, as the days flew along, “Only ten days left;” “only

nine days left;” “only eight;” “only seven.” Always it was narrowing.

Always Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were

not. He wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us

up, but it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had

no heart in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some

obstruction or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh. He

tried to find out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of

our trouble or make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell

many lies to deceive him and appease him.

But the most distressing thing of all was that he was always making

plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it

made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way

to conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but

three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over

it--a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we

first met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for

that was his funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only

have brought a “Why?” which we could not answer. He wanted us to help

him invite his guests, and we did it--one can refuse nothing to a dying

friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting them to his

funeral.

It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime stretching back

between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me, and

beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred

dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious.

We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted

away, and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser

feels who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is

helpless to prevent it.

When the evening of the last day came we stayed out too long; Seppi and

I were in fault for that; we could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so

it was very late when we left him at his door. We lingered near awhile,

listening; and that happened which we were fearing. His father gave him

the promised punishment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened only

a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for this thing which we had

caused. And sorry for the father, too; our thought being, “If he only

knew--if he only knew!”

In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the appointed place, so we

went to his home to see what the matter was. His mother said:

“His father is out of all patience with these goings-on, and will not

have any more of it. Half the time when Nick is needed he is not to be

found; then it turns out that he has been gadding around with you two.

His father gave him a flogging last night. It always grieved me before,

and many's the time I have begged him off and saved him, but this time

he appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience myself.”

“I wish you had saved him just this one time,” I said, my voice

trembling a little; “it would ease a pain in your heart to remember it

some day.”

She was ironing at the time, and her back was partly toward me. She

turned about with a startled or wondering look in her face and said,

“What do you mean by that?”

I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to say; so it was awkward,

for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and spoke up:

“Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember, for the very reason

we were out so late was that Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to

him, and how he never got whipped when you were by to save him; and he

was so full of it, and we were so full of the interest of it, that none

of us noticed how late it was getting.”

“Did he say that? Did he?” and she put her apron to her eyes.

“You can ask Theodor--he will tell you the same.”

“It is a dear, good lad, my Nick,” she said. “I am sorry I let him get

whipped; I will never do it again. To think--all the time I was sitting

here last night, fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and

praising me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then we shouldn't ever

go wrong; but we are only poor, dumb beasts groping around and making

mistakes. I shan't ever think of last night without a pang.”

She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody could open a mouth, in

these wretched days, without saying something that made us shiver. They

were “groping around,” and did not know what true, sorrowfully true

things they were saying by accident.

Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us.

“I am sorry,” she answered, “but he can't. To punish him further, his

father doesn't allow him to go out of the house to-day.”

We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi's eyes. We thought, “If he cannot

leave the house, he cannot be drowned.” Seppi asked, to make sure:

“Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?”

“All day. It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful day, and he is so

unused to being shut up. But he is busy planning his party, and maybe

that is company for him. I do hope he isn't too lonesome.”

Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him to ask if we might go up

and help him pass his time.

“And welcome!” she said, right heartily. “Now I call that real

friendship, when you might be abroad in the fields and the woods, having

a happy time. You are good boys, I'll allow that, though you don't

always find satisfactory ways of improving it. Take these cakes--for

yourselves--and give him this one, from his mother.”

The first thing we noticed when we entered Nikolaus's room was the

time--a quarter to 10. Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to

live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus jumped up and gave us

a glad welcome. He was in good spirits over his plannings for his party

and had not been lonesome.

“Sit down,” he said, “and look at what I've been doing. And I've

finished a kite that you will say is a beauty. It's drying, in the

kitchen; I'll fetch it.”

He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful trifles of various

kinds, to go as prizes in the games, and they were marshaled with fine

and showy effect upon the table. He said:

“Examine them at your leisure while I get mother to touch up the kite

with her iron if it isn't dry enough yet.”

Then he tripped out and went clattering down-stairs, whistling.

We did not look at the things; we couldn't take any interest in anything

but the clock. We sat staring at it in silence, listening to

the ticking, and every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded

recognition--one minute fewer to cover in the race for life or for

death. Finally Seppi drew a deep breath and said:

“Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and he will pass the

death-point. Theodor, he is going to be saved! He's going to--”

“Hush! I'm on needles. Watch the clock and keep still.”

Five minutes more. We were panting with the strain and the excitement.

Another three minutes, and there was a footstep on the stair.

“Saved!” And we jumped up and faced the door.

The old mother entered, bringing the kite. “Isn't it a beauty?” she

said. “And, dear me, how he has slaved over it--ever since daylight,

I think, and only finished it awhile before you came.” She stood it

against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of it. “He drew the

pictures his own self, and I think they are very good. The church isn't

so very good, I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge--any one can

recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me to bring it up.... Dear

me! it's seven minutes past ten, and I--”

“But where is he?”

“He? Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a minute.”

“Gone out?”

“Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's mother came in and said

the child had wandered off somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I

told Nikolaus to never mind about his father's orders--go and look her

up.... Why, how white you two do look! I do believe you are sick. Sit

down; I'll fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you. It is a

little heavy, but I thought--”

She disappeared without finishing her sentence, and we hurried at once

to the back window and looked toward the river. There was a great crowd

at the other end of the bridge, and people were flying toward that point

from every direction.

“Oh, it is all over--poor Nikolaus! Why, oh, why did she let him get out

of the house!”

“Come away,” said Seppi, half sobbing, “come quick--we can't bear to

meet her; in five minutes she will know.”

But we were not to escape. She came upon us at the foot of the stairs,

with her cordials in her hands, and made us come in and sit down and

take the medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did not satisfy

her; so she made us wait longer, and kept upbraiding herself for giving

us the unwholesome cake.

Presently the thing happened which we were dreading. There was a sound

of tramping and scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in, with

heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned bodies on the bed.

“Oh, my God!” that poor mother cried out, and fell on her knees, and put

her arms about her dead boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.

“Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his death. If I had obeyed,

and kept him in the house, this would not have happened. And I am

rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night, and him begging me, his

own mother, to be his friend.”

And so she went on and on, and all the women cried, and pitied her, and

tried to comfort her, but she could not forgive herself and could not

be comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent him out he would be

alive and well now, and she was the cause of his death.

It shows how foolish people are when they blame themselves for anything

they have done. Satan knows, and he said nothing happens that your first

act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable; and so, of your own

motion you can't ever alter the scheme or do a thing that will break

a link. Next we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly plowing and

plunging through the crowd with her dress in disorder and hair flying

loose, and flung herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses and

pleadings and endearments; and by and by she rose up almost exhausted

with her outpourings of passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and

lifted it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew hard and

resentful, and she said:

“For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and presentiments and warnings

that death was going to strike what was most precious to me, and day and

night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt before Him praying

Him to have pity on my innocent child and save it from harm--and here is

His answer!”

Why, He had saved it from harm--but she did not know.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and stood awhile gazing

down at the child and caressing its face and its hair with her hands;

then she spoke again in that bitter tone: “But in His hard heart is no

compassion. I will never pray again.”

She gathered her dead child to her bosom and strode away, the crowd

falling back to let her pass, and smitten dumb by the awful words they

had heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said, we do not know good

fortune from bad, and are always mistaking the one for the other. Many

a time since I have heard people pray to God to spare the life of sick

persons, but I have never done it.

Both funerals took place at the same time in our little church next day.

Everybody was there, including the party guests. Satan was there, too;

which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts that the funerals

had happened. Nikolaus had departed this life without absolution, and

a collection was taken up for masses, to get him out of purgatory. Only

two-thirds of the required money was gathered, and the parents were

going to try to borrow the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us

privately that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed in order

that Nikolaus's parents and their friends might be saved from worry and

distress. We thought it very good of him, but he said money did not cost

him anything.

At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was seized for debt by a

carpenter to whom the mother owed fifty groschen for work done the year

before. She had never been able to pay this, and was not able now. The

carpenter took the corpse home and kept it four days in his cellar,

the mother weeping and imploring about his house all the time; then he

buried it in his brother's cattle-yard, without religious ceremonies. It

drove the mother wild with grief and shame, and she forsook her work

and went daily about the town, cursing the carpenter and blaspheming

the laws of the emperor and the church, and it was pitiful to see. Seppi

asked Satan to interfere, but he said the carpenter and the rest were

members of the human race and were acting quite neatly for that species

of animal. He would interfere if he found a horse acting in such a way,

and we must inform him when we came across that kind of horse doing

that kind of human thing, so that he could stop it. We believed this was

sarcasm, for of course there wasn't any such horse.

But after a few days we found that we could not abide that poor woman's

distress, so we begged Satan to examine her several possible careers,

and see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a new one. He said

the longest of her careers as they now stood gave her forty-two years to

live, and her shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged with

grief and hunger and cold and pain. The only improvement he could make

would be to enable her to skip a certain three minutes from now; and

he asked us if he should do it. This was such a short time to decide in

that we went to pieces with nervous excitement, and before we could pull

ourselves together and ask for particulars he said the time would be up

in a few more seconds; so then we gasped out, “Do it!”

“It is done,” he said; “she was going around a corner; I have turned her

back; it has changed her career.”

“Then what will happen, Satan?”

“It is happening now. She is having words with Fischer, the weaver. In

his anger Fischer will straightway do what he would not have done but

for this accident. He was present when she stood over her child's body

and uttered those blasphemies.”

“What will he do?”

“He is doing it now--betraying her. In three days she will go to the

stake.”

We could not speak; we were frozen with horror, for if we had not

meddled with her career she would have been spared this awful fate.

Satan noticed these thoughts, and said:

“What you are thinking is strictly human-like--that is to say, foolish.

The woman is advantaged. Die when she might, she would go to heaven. By

this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more of heaven than she is

entitled to, and escapes twenty-nine years of misery here.”

A moment before we were bitterly making up our minds that we would ask

no more favors of Satan for friends of ours, for he did not seem to

know any way to do a person a kindness but by killing him; but the whole

aspect of the case was changed now, and we were glad of what we had done

and full of happiness in the thought of it.

After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer, and asked,

timidly, “Does this episode change Fischer's life-scheme, Satan?”

“Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If he had not met Frau Brandt

awhile ago he would die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now he will

live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and comfortable life of

it, as human lives go.”

We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done for Fischer, and were

expecting Satan to sympathize with this feeling; but he showed no sign

and this made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but he didn't; so,

to assuage our solicitude we had to ask him if there was any defect in

Fischer's good luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then said,

with some hesitation:

“Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under his several former

possible life-careers he was going to heaven.”

We were aghast. “Oh, Satan! and under this one--”

“There, don't be so distressed. You were sincerely trying to do him a

kindness; let that comfort you.”

“Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You ought to have told us what

we were doing, then we wouldn't have acted so.”

But it made no impression on him. He had never felt a pain or a sorrow,

and did not know what they were, in any really informing way. He had no

knowledge of them except theoretically--that is to say, intellectually.

And of course that is no good. One can never get any but a loose and

ignorant notion of such things except by experience. We tried our best

to make him comprehend the awful thing that had been done and how we

were compromised by it, but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said

he did not think it important where Fischer went to; in heaven he would

not be missed, there were “plenty there.” We tried to make him see that

he was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not other people,

was the proper one to decide about the importance of it; but it all went

for nothing; he said he did not care for Fischer--there were plenty more

Fischers.

The next minute Fischer went by on the other side of the way, and it

made us sick and faint to see him, remembering the doom that was upon

him, and we the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that anything

had happened to him! You could see by his elastic step and his alert

manner that he was well satisfied with himself for doing that hard

turn for poor Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his shoulder

expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty soon Frau Brandt followed after,

in charge of the officers and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her

wake, jeering and shouting, “Blasphemer and heretic!” and some among

them were neighbors and friends of her happier days. Some were trying

to strike her, and the officers were not taking as much trouble as they

might to keep them from it.

“Oh, stop them, Satan!” It was out before we remembered that he

could not interrupt them for a moment without changing their whole

after-lives. He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and they

began to reel and stagger and grab at the empty air; then they broke

apart and fled in every direction, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain.

He had crushed a rib of each of them with that little puff. We could not

help asking if their life-chart was changed.

“Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some have lost them. Some few

will profit in various ways by the change, but only that few.”

We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's luck to any of them.

We did not wish to know. We fully believed in Satan's desire to do us

kindnesses, but we were losing confidence in his judgment. It was at

this time that our growing anxiety to have him look over our life-charts

and suggest improvements began to fade out and give place to other

interests.

For a day or two the whole village was a chattering turmoil over Frau

Brandt's case and over the mysterious calamity that had overtaken the

mob, and at her trial the place was crowded. She was easily convicted of

her blasphemies, for she uttered those terrible words again and said she

would not take them back. When warned that she was imperiling her life,

she said they could take it in welcome, she did not want it, she would

rather live with the professional devils in perdition than with these

imitators in the village. They accused her of breaking all those ribs

by witchcraft, and asked her if she was not a witch? She answered

scornfully:

“No. If I had that power would any of you holy hypocrites be alive five

minutes? No; I would strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence and

let me go; I am tired of your society.”

So they found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and cut off from

the joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed

in a coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the

market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to

the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air.

Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in

front of her and said, with gentleness:

“We played together once, in long-agone days when we were innocent

little creatures. For the sake of that, I forgive you.”

We went away then, and did not see the fires consume her, but we heard

the shrieks, although we put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased

we knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excommunication; and we

were glad of her death and not sorry that we had brought it about.

One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared again. We were always

watching out for him, for life was never very stagnant when he was by.

He came upon us at that place in the woods where we had first met him.

Being boys, we wanted to be entertained; we asked him to do a show for

us.

“Very well,” he said; “would you like to see a history of the progress

of the human race?--its development of that product which it calls

civilization?”

We said we should.

So, with a thought, he turned the place into the Garden of Eden, and we

saw Abel praying by his altar; then Cain came walking toward him with

his club, and did not seem to see us, and would have stepped on my foot

if I had not drawn it in. He spoke to his brother in a language which

we did not understand; then he grew violent and threatening, and we knew

what was going to happen, and turned away our heads for the moment; but

we heard the crash of the blows and heard the shrieks and the groans;

then there was silence, and we saw Abel lying in his blood and gasping

out his life, and Cain standing over him and looking down at him,

vengeful and unrepentant.

Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a long series of unknown

wars, murders, and massacres. Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing

around in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the distance

showing veiled and dim through the rain. Satan said:

“The progress of your race was not satisfactory. It is to have another

chance now.”

The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome with wine.

Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and “the attempt to discover two or

three respectable persons there,” as Satan described it. Next, Lot and

his daughters in the cave.

Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the victors massacre the

survivors and their cattle, and save the young girls alive and

distribute them around.

Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent and drive the nail into

the temple of her sleeping guest; and we were so close that when the

blood gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our feet, and we

could have stained our hands in it if we had wanted to.

Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings

of the earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward

the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of

those brave people. Also we saw Caesar invade Britain--“not that those

barbarians had done him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and

desired to confer the blessings of civilization upon their widows and

orphans,” as Satan explained.

Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe passed in review before

us, and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through

those ages, “leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and

other signs of the progress of the human race,” as Satan observed.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over

Europe, all over the world. “Sometimes in the private interest of royal

families,” Satan said, “sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a

war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war

in the history of the race.”

“Now,” said Satan, “you have seen your progress down to the present, and

you must confess that it is wonderful--in its way. We must now exhibit

the future.”

He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more

devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.

“You perceive,” he said, “that you have made continual progress. Cain

did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins

and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine

arts of military organization and generalship; the Christian has added

guns and gunpowder; a few centuries from now he will have so greatly

improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that

all men will confess that without Christian civilization war must have

remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.”

Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way, and make fun of the

human race, although he knew that what he had been saying shamed us and

wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted so; but suffering is

nothing to them; they do not know what it is, except by hearsay.

More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to

convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as

a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a

disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression

upon him. The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary

must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it

blighted. We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the

time to continue our work.

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: “It is a

remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high

civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world,

then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest

ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did

their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race

and the earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian

civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries

from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are

Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not

to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will

buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.”

By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation

after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty

procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through

seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted

and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder

of the guns and the cries of the dying.

“And what does it amount to?” said Satan, with his evil chuckle.

“Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went

in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating

itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end?

No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel

of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel

defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you

proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not

ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you

and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your

alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who

address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the

language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth,

while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it.

The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet

failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations

have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their

augmentation! Drink to--” Then he saw by our faces how much we were

hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his

manner changed. He said, gently: “No, we will drink one another's

health, and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to our hands

out of space by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast;

but throw away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not

visited this world before.”

We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as they descended.

They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any

material that we were acquainted with. They seemed to be in motion, they

seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion.

They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were

never still, but flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and

flashed out dainty explosions of enchanting color. I think it was most

like opals washing about in waves and flashing out their splendid fires.

But there is nothing to compare the wine with. We drank it, and felt a

strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us, and

Seppi's eyes filled and he said worshipingly:

“We shall be there some day, and then--”

He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan would say,

“Yes, you will be there some day,” but Satan seemed to be thinking about

something else, and said nothing. This made me feel ghastly, for I knew

he had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi

looked distressed, and did not finish his remark. The goblets rose

and clove their way into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and

disappeared. Why didn't they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed

me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his?