The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) (23 page)

The coroner's jury took their seats and reverently uncovered
their heads, and the keepers were sworn and gave testimony. They
said they caught the priest red-handed, and that by the power of his
devil he had for the moment taken upon himself the semblance of a
poacher, which deceived them and they did not suspect it was the
priest. A quarrel followed, and the poacher tried to kill deceased,
whereupon deceased, in self-defence, pulled his gun upon the
poacher, but before he could fire, deceased, by black magic and
devil's arts, turned deceased into the present rock, as here exhibited;
then assumed his own proper shape and said with many ribald
oaths that if any durst lay a hand upon him, by God he would
perpetuate his substance likewise.

Then the jury rendered a verdict that deceased had come to his
death by the visitation of God. Also the fly.

The coroner was not willing to accept the verdict, because it
included the fly.

The jury insisted that they could not exclude the fly without
irreverence, since God in His inscrutable wisdom had seen fit to
honor the humble animal with an equal share in His visitation.

The coroner said it was manifest to any thoughtful mind that the
overtaking of the fly by the visitation was an accident, and not
intentional.

The foreman retorted, "if there has been an accident, then a
verdict cannot be reached at all, since we have no way of determining which of the parties fell by accident and which by intention."

The coroner advanced the theory that the foreman was an ass;
which made a great stir, Siebold the drunken artist and some others approving, and were called to order, and silence enjoined upon
them. The coroner continued, "To the reflecting mind there is
no difficulty here. The intention would necessarily be directed
against the party in chief, which would be deceased, by right of his
superior dignity as man, office-bearer and Christian, and not against
the party of the second part, who, being without estate, position or
legal recognition, cannot in reason claim precedence over the party
of the first part in a so grave matter as the present, wherein the
divine grace has manifestly purposed a rebuke to but one party and
not both."

The foreman responded with some heat: "How do you know
there was an accident? Is it in the character of the Deity to deal in
accidents? (Siebold-Good!) Is Ile so poor a marksman as to fire at
one and bring down two? (Siebold-Good again!) How do you
know what the fly had been doing? Are you in the secret of the
privacies of God? Is it your high privilege to sit in judgment upon
His acts and determine for Him which of them are intentional and
which of them are due to heedlessness and inattention-at your
salary? It is self-conceit gone mad, it is blasphemous impertinence."

Several excited jurymen. Stand by the verdict! stand by it!

The Foreman. Trust me to do my whole duty. Sir, this jury
cannot concede, without the most awful irreverence, that an allcompassionate Providence would lift its hand against even so humble a creature as a fly without just and righteous cause. We cannot
and will not concede that this fly fell by accident. This fly was
guilty of an offence which is hidden from us and which we are not
privileged to pry into. What it did is a secret between itself and its
Creator (and perhaps the coroner!) but it was guilty, and that guilt
is witnessed and forever established by its fate. Let it be a lesson to
us all.

The Coroner. Then you stand to your verdict.

The Foreman, impressively. God helping us, we do; and to the
issue we do solemnly commit our lives, our fortunes and our sacred
honor. (Voices. Amen!) "Not even a sparrow falls," and so forth
and so forth; and neither does a fly. This Christian-such as he was -this alleged Christian fell by the dispensation of God; this fly
likewise. Such is the verdict, and by it we stand or fall. Wir konnen
nicht anders.

All the assemblage burst into a bravo of applause.

The Coroner, with dignity. Remove the fly from the image, and
exclude it from the verdict. On no other terms will I accept a finding
of the court.

The Foreman, sternly. It shall not be done.

The Coroner. The inquest is closed. There is no verdict. The
absence of a verdict determining the cause of the man's death
debars me from issuing the necessary burial-permit; deceased must
therefore remain unburied-that is, in consecrated ground. He may
be a suicide.

The family began to wail and plead, but the coroner was firm,
saying, with a wave of his hand toward the image-

"The law must be respected. Remove the petrifaction."

It was loaded into a six-ox van by twenty-two men and followed
to the Bart homestead by the weeping family and by the public,
who walked uncovered, and there it was housed from view and
crape hung upon the door. There was a wake that night, and next
day the customary funeral-feast; and in every way the due and
usual decencies were observed, even to the sending out of invitations (with the date blank), to the funeral. After some months,
when the season of first-mourning had expired, the public exhibition began, and was inordinately successful, children and servants
half price, and crowds coming from all over the Empire, and even
from foreign countries, and many Italian image-dealers paying a
commission for the privilege of making and selling small casts of it.
The family quickly grew rich, and in the next generation obtained
nobility in Germany at the usual rates. After many, many years it
was sold, and passed from hand to hand and country to country,
and now for a long time it has been in the Pitti palace in Florence,
earning its living as a Roman antique.

I WANTED to know my whole history in advance, but I never
asked Satan for it. I was afraid, for it might be an unhappy history.
I could change it if I had the plan of it, but any change might
happen to be for the worse. I knew this because Satan had shown
me other people's lives and I saw that in nearly all cases there
would be little or no advantage in altering them. He made maps of
these lives, as cross-lined and intricate as spider-webs, and pointed
out to me that while each change in a billion would introduce a
new career, I could not trace any one of them very far without
perceiving that as a rule it only skipped one kind of unhappiness to
land in one of a different breed, and not any easier to bear. And
there was another deterrent: I believed that to know my whole life
beforehand would take the interest out of it. It would be destitute
of surprises. No glad event could stir me, I should have discounted
all its possible effects long before it arrived. I should fix my attention on coming griefs and calamities mainly, and be mourning and
suffering on their account all the dragging years till their appointed
dates came round and the disasters fell.

So I conquered my curiosity and left the secret of my future
sealed, and I am sure it was best so. I did ask for Seppi's future, and
got it instantly, beautifully printed in many large volumes, which I
hid away and still possess. But I read only a page or two in the
beginning. They spoiled a couple of days for me, for during that
time Seppi was merely a weariness to me, because every smart
remark he made had a stale sound-I had read it in the book; and
there was no surprise in anything he did-I had read it in the book.
After that, he was interesting again; for I allowed him to do his day
and say his say, and then at night reviewed the performance in the
book to see that he had been honest and had not skipped anything.
- - - - - - - - -- - --- -

I found afterward that he had my life, and was following the
same system. When we grew to manhood we were often separated -sometimes years at a stretch-but the books kept us united.
Every morning each of us read what was going to happen to the
other that day. During separations we corresponded constantly, yet
never wrote a letter. The letters which we were about to write, and
which were in our minds, were always in the books-put there by
Satan long before. Whenever a great joy or a great sorrow came
into my life I took my book and read Seppi's letter of sympathy
about it. And when a joy or a sorrow came into Seppi's life I knew
that he was finding a letter from me in his book concerning it. I
have lost a grandchild to-day. I have his good letter of pity and
condolence in my book.

But I am wandering too far from my boyhood. We often got
Satan to furnish us the happenings of the town a day in advance,
and this was a very good scheme, and interesting. When there was
to be an event, we turned out and made bets with the other boys
and bankrupted them. The time that the church was to be struck
by lightning, we stripped them clean. It was a particularly good
opportunity, for nothing could have made them believe that God
would strike his own house; so they were an easy prey. We betted
that it would happen on the morrow; they took us up and gave us
the odds of two to one; we betted that it would happen in the
afternoon; we got odds of four to one on that; we betted that it
would happen at two minutes to three; they willingly granted us
the odds of ten to one on that. They went home rejoicing, and we
were not sad ourselves.

Next day it was beautiful weather; at noon it was the same. The
boys began to make fun of us, and said perhaps we wanted to make
some more bets, and we said no, and looked depressed, as well as we
could. This was to draw them on. They offered us multiplied odds,
but we declined. It made them bolder, and they followed us up,
increasing the odds, and we looking ashamed and regretful, and not
taking them up. This also was to draw them on. It had that effect.
They still followed us around and raised the odds, and got everybody to laughing at us, and all had a good time. At a quarter past 2
we were looking cowed-which was intentional, and made them lose the rest of their judgment. They raised the odds to the bursting
point, and then all of a sudden we took them up!

At first they could not believe it, and were funnier over it than
ever, for still the skies were bright. But only for a quarter of an
hour. Then the clouds came and a storm began to gather. It grew
blacker and blacker, and the lightnings began to glimmer and the
thunder to mutter. The boys stopped laughing and began to look
sober; and it was time. Then we began to jeer and offer odds, but
there were no takers. They grew very anxious and went drifting
toward the church, so that they could see the clock. At ten minutes
to 3 the thunder was booming and the lightning glaring fiercely out
on the gloom every little while. We all stood in the rain, unconscious of it, saying not a word, holding our breath, gaping at the
creeping minute-hand. It crept and crept, dragged and dragged-it
seemed weeks to those boys, no doubt. Then at 2 minutes to 3 there
was a crash and a blinding flash, and the gilt Apostle over the great
door was struck down.

There was not a marble, nor a top, nor a kite, nor any useful
thing left in that town that did not belong to Seppi and me. And
silbergroschen galore! It was a long time before those boys' fortunes
recovered from that cataclysm. And when they did recover, at last,
we could not get them to bet with us. They betted with each other,
but were afraid to take risks with us, thinking we might be in
league with the evil spirit which was occupying Father Adolf. But
little by little we drew them on once more. This was by art. By
a private arrangement Seppi made bets with me, in the boys' presence, and won them every time, he jeering and I losing my temper.
So then they began to bet with me and I let them win, but they
would not risk a bet with Seppi. At last they were ripe, and we set
our trap for them. On a Monday Simon Hirsch was going to break
his leg at seven minutes after 12, noon, and as soon as Satan told us
the day before, Seppi went to betting with me that it would not
happen, and soon they got excited and went to betting with me
themselves. By working the game judiciously I presently had them
in for all they were worth; and next day, sure enough, at 7 minutes after 12 we skinned them again, and divided the take. We were not
sorry, for it was wrong for them to bet on Sunday. It seemed to me
that it was a plain judgment on them. And not an accident, but
intentional. Seppi said it was as manifest as the fly's case. Seppi
knew about judgments, for his uncle was in the ministry.

We tried to sell advance-news to the man who wrote the daily
news-letter in the cathedral town ten miles up the river, but he said
we were fools: "how could we know what was going to happen
next day." But we had already told him; so next day he saw that we
had been right; then he was ready to buy, and we furnished him
the news early enough so that he could get his news-letter out a
whole day before the happenings happened. His circulation was
much increased, and there was an excitement. We offered to sell
him news a year in advance-a century if he liked; but his faith
was not strong enough for that; he said a couple of days ahead was
good enough for him. The excitement increased; and presently we
were able to tell him a specially good item-that inside of twentyfour hours he would be in jail as a wizard. It came near to scaring
him to death, and in the jail he sent for us to come and tell him
some more of his future, and how to beat it if possible. Satan said
he was due to be burnt in a week, but that if he would not answer
the jailor's knock at once, that night, but count five, first, it would
change his career and he would live fifteen years and then be
hanged; but he must be exact, for if he counted only four he would
get his throat cut before the end of the year, and if he counted six
he would break his neck in three months and be certainly damned
besides-he could have his choice. So we went and reported, and
he was very grateful, and paid us nobly, and elected to be hanged.

It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance.
For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and
said they were mere artificialities. We often went to the most
distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months,
and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule. You could
prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful
distress because the witch-commission were afraid to proceed
against Father Adolf and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took
to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a bom lady
who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts,
such as bathing them, washing them and nourishing them, instead
of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a
barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the
mob after her howling and cursing, and tried to take refuge in
houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more
than half an hour, we following, to see it, and at last she was
exhausted, and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a
tree and threw a rope over a limb and began to make a noose in it,
some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her
young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do
anything.