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A Connecticut Yankee, Mark Twain/Clemens, Wiretap
The INTERNET WIRETAP First Electronic Edition of
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
by
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel L. Clemens)
This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Electronic Edition by <dell@wiretap.spies.com>
Released to the public June 1993
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
by
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel L. Clemens)
PREFACE
THE ungentle laws and customs touched upon in
this tale are historical, and the episodes which are
used to illustrate them are also historical. It is
not pretended that these laws and customs existed in
England in the sixth century; no, it is only pretended
that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other
civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that
it is no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to
have been in practice in that day also. One is quite
justified in inferring that whatever one of these laws or
customs was lacking in that remote time, its place was
competently filled by a worse one.
The question as to whether there is such a thing as
divine right of kings is not settled in this book. It
was found too difficult. That the executive head of a
nation should be a person of lofty character and
extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable;
that none but the Deity could select that head unerr-
ingly, was also manifest and indisputable; that the
Deity ought to make that selection, then, was likewise
manifest and indisputable; consequently, that He does
make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction. I
mean, until the author of this book encountered the
Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other
executive heads of that kind; these were found so
difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged
better to take the other tack in this book (which must
be issued this fall), and then go into training and
settle the question in another book. It is, of course,
a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going
to have anything particular to do next winter anyway.
MARK TWAIN.
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING
ARTHUR'S COURT
A WORD OF EXPLANATION
IT was in Warwick Castle that I came across the
curious stranger whom I am going to talk about.
He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity,
his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the
restfulness of his company -- for he did all the talking.
We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of
the herd that was being shown through, and he at once
began to say things which interested me. As he
talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed
to drift away imperceptibly out of this world and time,
and into some remote era and old forgotten country;
and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I
seemed to move among the specters and shadows and
dust and mold of a gray antiquity, holding speech with
a relic of it! Exactly as I would speak of my nearest
personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar
neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de
Ganis, Sir Launcelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all
the other great names of the Table Round -- and how
old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and
musty and ancient he came to look as he went on!
Presently he turned to me and said, just as one might
speak of the weather, or any other common matter --
"You know about transmigration of souls; do you
know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?"
I said I had not heard of it. He was so little inter-
ested -- just as when people speak of the weather --
that he did not notice whether I made him any answer
or not. There was half a moment of silence, imme-
diately interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried
cicerone:
"Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time
of King Arthur and the Round Table; said to have
belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor le Desirous; ob-
serve the round hole through the chain-mail in the left
breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been
done with a bullet since invention of firearms -- per-
haps maliciously by Cromwell's soldiers."
My acquaintance smiled -- not a modern smile, but
one that must have gone out of general use many, many
centuries ago -- and muttered apparently to himself:
"Wit ye well, I SAW IT DONE." Then, after a pause,
added: "I did it myself."
By the time I had recovered from the electric sur-
prise of this remark, he was gone.
All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick
Arms, steeped in a dream of the olden time, while the
rain beat upon the windows, and the wind roared about
the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped
into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and
fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures,
breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete names, and
dreamed again. Midnight being come at length, I read
another tale, for a nightcap -- this which here follows,
to wit:
HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A
CASTLE FREE
Anon withal came there upon him two great giants,
well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible
clubs in their hands. Sir Launcelot put his shield
afore him, and put the stroke away of the one
giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder.
When his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were
wood [* demented], for fear of the horrible strokes,
and Sir Launcelot after him with all his might,
and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to
the middle. Then Sir Launcelot went into the hall,
and there came afore him three score ladies and
damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked
God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said
they, the most part of us have been here this
seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all
manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all
great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time,
knight, that ever thou wert born;for thou hast
done the most worship that ever did knight in the
world, that will we bear record, and we all pray
you to tell us your name, that we may tell our
friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair
damsels, he said, my name is Sir Launcelot du
Lake. And so he departed from them and betaught
them unto God. And then he mounted upon his
horse, and rode into many strange and wild
countries, and through many waters and valleys,
and evil was he lodged. And at the last by
fortune him happened against a night to come to
a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old
gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will,
and there he had good cheer for him and his horse.
And when time was, his host brought him into a
fair garret over the gate to his bed. There
Sir Launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness
by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on
sleep. So, soon after there came one on
horseback, and knocked at the gate in great
haste. And when Sir Launcelot heard this he rose
up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the
moonlight three knights come riding after that
one man, and all three lashed on him at once
with swords, and that one knight turned on them
knightly again and defended him. Truly, said
Sir Launcelot, yonder one knight shall I help,
for it were shame for me to see three knights
on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his
death. And therewith he took his harness and
went out at a window by a sheet down to the four
knights, and then Sir Launcelot said on high,
Turn you knights unto me, and leave your
fighting with that knight. And then they all
three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Launcelot,
and there began great battle, for they alight
all three, and strake many strokes at Sir
Launcelot, and assailed him on every side. Then
Sir Kay dressed him for to have holpen Sir
Launcelot. Nay, sir, said he, I will none of
your help, therefore as ye will have my help
let me alone with them. Sir Kay for the pleasure
of the knight suffered him for to do his will,
and so stood aside. And then anon within six
strokes Sir Launcelot had stricken them to the
earth.
And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we
yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As
to that, said Sir Launcelot, I will not take
your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield
you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant
I will save your lives and else not. Fair knight,
said they, that were we loath to do; for as for
Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome
him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto
him it were no reason. Well, as to that, said
Sir Launcelot, advise you well, for ye may
choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be
yielden, it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair knight,
then they said, in saving our lives we will do
as thou commandest us. Then shall ye, said Sir
Launcelot, on Whitsunday next coming go unto the
court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield
you unto Queen Guenever, and put you all three
in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay
sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morn
Sir Launcelot arose early, and left Sir Kay
sleeping; and Sir Launcelot took Sir Kay's armor
and his shield and armed him, and so he went to
the stable and took his horse, and took his leave
of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after
arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Launcelot; and
then he espied that he had his armor and his
horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will
grieve some of the court of King Arthur; for on
him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I,
and that will beguile them; and because of his
armor and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace.
And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and
thanked his host.
As I laid the book down there was a knock at the
door, and my stranger came in. I gave him a pipe
and a chair, and made him welcome. I also comforted
him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him another one;
then still another -- hoping always for his story. After
a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite
simple and natural way:
THE STRANGER'S HISTORY
I am an American. I was born and reared in Hart-
ford, in the State of Connecticut -- anyway, just over
the river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the
Yankees -- and practical; yes, and nearly barren of
sentiment, I suppose -- or poetry, in other words. My
father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor,
and I was both, along at first. Then I went over to
the great arms factory and learned my real trade;
learned all there was to it; learned to make every-
thing: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all
sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make
anything a body wanted -- anything in the world, it
didn't make any difference what; and if there wasn't
any quick new-fangled way to make a thing, I could
invent one -- and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I
became head superintendent; had a couple of thou-
sand men under me.
Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight --
that goes without saying. With a couple of thousand
rough men under one, one has plenty of that sort of
amusement. I had, anyway. At last I met my match,
and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding
conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call
Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside
the head that made everything crack, and seemed to
spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its
neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and
I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything
at all -- at least for a while.
When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak
tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad
country landscape all to myself -- nearly. Not en-
tirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down
at me -- a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was
in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a
helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits
in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a pro-
digious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a
steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous
red and green silk trappings that hung down all around
him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground.
"Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.
"Will I which?"
"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or
for --"
"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along
back to your circus, or I'll report you."
Now what does this man do but fall back a couple
of hundred yards and then come rushing at me as hard
as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent down nearly to
his horse's neck and his long spear pointed straight
ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree
when he arrived.
He allowed that I was his property, the captive of
his spear. There was argument on his side -- and the
bulk of the advantage -- so I judged it best to humor
him. We fixed up an agreement whereby I was to go
with him and he was not to hurt me. I came down,
and we started away, I walking by the side of his
horse. We marched comfortably along, through glades
and over brooks which I could not remember to have
seen before -- which puzzled me and made me wonder
-- and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of
a circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and con-
cluded he was from an asylum. But we never came to
an asylum -- so I was up a stump, as you may say. I
asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said
he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a
lie, but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an
hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a
winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray
fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever
seen out of a picture.
"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing.
"Camelot," said he.
My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness.
He caught himself nodding, now, and smiled one of
those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his, and said:
"I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got
it all written out, and you can read it if you like."
In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal;
then by and by, after years, I took the journal and
turned it into a book. How long ago that was!"
He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the
place where I should begin:
"Begin here -- I've already told you what goes be-
fore." He was steeped in drowsiness by this time.
As I went out at his door I heard him murmur sleep-
ily: "Give you good den, fair sir."
I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure.
The first part of it -- the great bulk of it -- was parch-
ment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf particu-
larly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old
dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces of
a penmanship which was older and dimmer still --
Latin words and sentences: fragments from old monk-
ish legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated
by my stranger and began to read -- as follows:
THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND.
CHAPTER I.
CAMELOT
"CAMELOT -- Camelot," said I to myself. "I
don't seem to remember hearing of it before.
Name of the asylum, likely."
It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely
as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was
full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects,
and the twittering of birds, and there were no people,
no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on.
The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints
in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on
either side in the grass -- wheels that apparently had a
tire as broad as one's hand.
Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old,
with a cataract of golden hair streaming down over her
shoulders, came along. Around her head she wore a
hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as sweet an outfit
as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked indo-
lently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in
her innocent face. The circus man paid no attention
to her; didn't even seem to see her. And she -- she
was no more startled at his fantastic make-up than if
she was used to his like every day of her life. She
was going by as indifferently as she might have gone
by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice
me, THEN there was a change! Up went her hands,
and she was turned to stone; her mouth dropped
open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she was
the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear.
And there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied
fascination, till we turned a corner of the wood and
were lost to her view. That she should be startled at
me instead of at the other man, was too many for me;
I couldn't make head or tail of it . And that she
should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally
overlook her own merits in that respect, was another
puzzling thing, and a display of magnanimity, too,
that was surprising in one so young. There was food
for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream.
As we approached the town, signs of life began to
appear. At intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with
a thatched roof, and about it small fields and garden
patches in an indifferent state of cultivation. There
were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse, un-
combed hair that hung down over their faces and made
them look like animals. They and the women, as a
rule, wore a coarse tow-linen robe that came well below
the knee, and a rude sort of sandal, and many wore
an iron collar. The small boys and girls were always
naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of these
people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts
and fetched out their families to gape at me; but no-
body ever noticed that other fellow, except to make
him humble salutation and get no response for their
pains.
In the town were some substantial windowless houses
of stone scattered among a wilderness of thatched
cabins; the streets were mere crooked alleys, and un-
paved; troops of dogs and nude children played in the
sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted
contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking
wallow in the middle of the main thoroughfare and
suckled her family. Presently there was a distant blare
of military music; it came nearer, still nearer, and
soon a noble cavalcade wound into view, glorious with
plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners
and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spear-
heads; and through the muck and swine, and naked
brats, and joyous dogs, and shabby huts, it took its
gallant way, and in its wake we followed. Followed
through one winding alley and then another, -- and
climbing, always climbing -- till at last we gained the
breezy height where the huge castle stood. There was
an exchange of bugle blasts; then a parley from the
walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and morion,
marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder
under flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon
displayed upon them; and then the great gates were
flung open, the drawbridge was lowered, and the head
of the cavalcade swept forward under the frowning
arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in a
great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching
up into the blue air on all the four sides; and all about
us.the dismount was going on, and much greeting and
ceremony, and running to and fro, and a gay display
of moving and intermingling colors, and an altogether
pleasant stir and noise and confusion.
CHAPTER II.
KING ARTHUR'S COURT
THE moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately
and touched an ancient common looking man on
the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential
way:
"Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the
asylum, or are you just on a visit or something
like that?"
He looked me over stupidly, and said:
"Marry, fair sir, me seemeth --"
"That will do," I said; "I reckon you are a
patient."
I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time
keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his
right mind that might come along and give me some
light. I judged I had found one, presently; so I
drew him aside and said in his ear:
"If I could see the head keeper a minute -- only
just a minute --"
"Prithee do not let me."
"Let you WHAT?"
"HINDER me, then, if the word please thee better.
Then he went on to say he was an under-cook and
could not stop to gossip, though he would like it
another time; for it would comfort his very liver to
know where I got my clothes. As he started away he
pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough
for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no
doubt. This was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored
tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the
rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and
ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a
plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his
ear. By his look, he was good-natured; by his gait,
he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough
to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling
and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and
informed me that he was a page.
"Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a para-
graph."
It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However,
it never phazed him; he didn't appear to know he was
hurt. He began to talk and laugh, in happy, thought-
less, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made
himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts
of questions about myself and about my clothes, but
never waited for an answer -- always chattered straight
ahead, as if he didn't know he had asked a question
and wasn't expecting any reply, until at last he hap-
pened to mention that he was born in the beginning of
the year 513.
It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped
and said, a little faintly:
"Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again
-- and say it slow. What year was it?"
"513."
"513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am
a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable
with me. Are you in your right mind?"
He said he was.
"Are these other people in their right minds?"
He said they were.
"And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place
where they cure crazy people?"
He said it wasn't.
"Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or
something just as awful has happened. Now tell me,
honest and true, where am I?"
"IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT."
I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way
home, and then said:
"And according to your notions, what year is it now?"
"528 -- nineteenth of June."
I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered:
"I shall never see my friends again -- never, never
again. They will not be born for more than thirteen
hundred years yet."
I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why.
SOMETHING in me seemed to believe him -- my con-
sciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn't.
My reason straightway began to clamor; that was
natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it,
because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't
serve -- my reason would say they were lunatics, and
throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stum-
bled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the
only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the
sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A. D. 528,
O.S., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also
knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what
to ME was the present year -- i.e., 1879. So, if I
could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the
heart out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then
find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the
truth or not.
Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now
shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its
appointed day and hour should come, in order that I
might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the
present moment, and be alert and ready to make the
most out of them that could be made. One thing at a
time, is my motto -- and just play that thing for all it
is worth, even if it's only two pair and a jack. I made
up my mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth
century and I was among lunatics and couldn't get
away, I would presently boss that asylum or know the
reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really
the sixth century, all right, I didn't want any softer
thing: I would boss the whole country inside of three
months; for I judged I would have the start of the
best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter of
thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man
to waste time after my mind's made up and there's
work on hand; so I said to the page:
"Now, Clarence, my boy -- if that might happen to
be your name -- I'll get you to post me up a little if
you don't mind. What is the name of that apparition
that brought me here?"
"My master and thine? That is the good knight
and great lord Sir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to
our liege the king."
"Very good; go on, tell me everything."
He made a long story of it; but the part that had
immediate interest for me was this: He said I was Sir
Kay's prisoner, and that in the due course of custom
I would be flung into a dungeon and left there on scant
commons until my friends ransomed me -- unless I
chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had
the best show, but I didn't waste any bother about
that; time was too precious. The page said, further,
that dinner was about ended in the great hall by this
time, and that as soon as the sociability and the heavy
drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and
exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious
knights seated at the Table Round, and would brag
about his exploit in capturing me, and would probably
exaggerate the facts a little, but it wouldn't be good
form for me to correct him, and not over safe, either;
and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the
dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come
and see me every now and then, and cheer me up, and
help me get word to my friends.
Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't
do less; and about this time a lackey came to say I
was wanted; so Clarence led me in and took me off to
one side and sat down by me.
Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interest-
ing. It was an immense place, and rather naked --
yes, and full of loud contrasts. It was very, very
lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from the
arched beams and girders away up there floated in a
sort of twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at
each end, high up, with musicians in the one, and
women, clothed in stunning colors, in the other. The
floor was of big stone flags laid in black and white
squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing
repair. As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly
speaking; though on the walls hung some huge tapes-
tries which were probably taxed as works of art;
battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like those
which children cut out of paper or create in ginger-
bread; with men on them in scale armor whose scales
are represented by round holes -- so that the man's
coat looks as if it had been done with a biscuit-punch.
There was a fireplace big enough to camp in; and its
projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared
stonework, had the look of a cathedral door. Along
the walls stood men-at-arms, in breastplate and morion,
with halberds for their only weapon -- rigid as statues;
and that is what they looked like.
In the middle of this groined and vaulted public
square was an oaken table which they called the Table
Round. It was as large as a circus ring; and around
it sat a great company of men dressed in such various
and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look at
them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, ex-
cept that whenever one addressed himself directly to
the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was begin-
ning his remark.
Mainly they were drinking -- from entire ox horns;
but a few were still munching bread or gnawing beef
bones. There was about an average of two dogs to
one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a
spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for
it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there
ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultu-
ous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing
tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened
all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for
the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the
men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet
on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched them-
selves out over their balusters with the same object;
and all broke into delighted ejaculations from time to
time. In the end, the winning dog stretched himself
out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and
proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease
the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing;
and the rest of the court resumed their previous indus-
tries and entertainments.
As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people
were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they
were good and serious listeners when anybody was tell-
ing anything -- I mean in a dog-fightless interval. And
plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot;
telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle
and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to
anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to
associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and
yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a
guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder.
I was not the only prisoner present. There were
twenty or more. Poor devils, many of them were
maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful way; and their
hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with black
and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffer-
ing sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and
hunger and thirst, no doubt; and at least none had
given them the comfort of a wash, or even the poor
charity of a lotion for their wounds; yet you never
heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show
any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to com-
plain. The thought was forced upon me: "The ras-
cals -- THEY have served other people so in their day;
it being their own turn, now, they were not expecting
any better treatment than this; so their philosophical
bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellec-
tual fortitude, reasoning; it is mere animal training;
they are white Indians."
CHAPTER III.
KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND
MAINLY the Round Table talk was monologues --
narrative accounts of the adventures in which
these prisoners were captured and their friends and
backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor.
As a general thing -- as far as I could make out --
these murderous adventures were not forays undertaken
to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or sudden
fallings out; no, as a rule they were simply duels be-
tween strangers -- duels between people who had never
even been introduced to each other, and between
whom existed no cause of offense whatever. Many a
time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by
chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you," and
go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until
now that that sort of thing belonged to children only,
and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were
these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it
clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there was some-
thing very engaging about these great simple-hearted
creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did
not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so
to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem
to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that
brains were not needed in a society like that, and in-
deed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its sym-
metry -- perhaps rendered its existence impossible.
There was a fine manliness observable in almost every
face; and in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that
rebuked your belittling criticisms and stilled them. A
most noble benignity and purity reposed in the counte-
nance of him they called Sir Galahad, and likewise in the
king's also; and there was majesty and greatness in
the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Launcelot of
the Lake.
There was presently an incident which centered the
general interest upon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign
from a sort of master of ceremonies, six or eight of the
prisoners rose and came forward in a body and knelt
on the floor and lifted up their hands toward the ladies'
gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen.
The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed
flower-bed of feminine show and finery inclined her
head by way of assent, and then the spokesman of the
prisoners delivered himself and his fellows into her
hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death, as
she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he
said, he was doing by command of Sir Kay the Senes-
chal, whose prisoners they were, he having vanquished
them by his single might and prowess in sturdy conflict
in the field.
Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face
all over the house; the queen's gratified smile faded
out at the name of Sir Kay, and she looked disap-
pointed; and the page whispered in my ear with an
accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision --
"Sir KAY, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dear-
est, call me a marine! In twice a thousand years shall
the unholy invention of man labor at odds to beget the
fellow to this majestic lie!"
Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir
Kay. But he was equal to the occasion. He got up
and played his hand like a major -- and took every
trick. He said he would state the case exactly accord-
ing to the facts; he would tell the simple straightfor-
ward tale, without comment of his own; "and then,"
said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give
it unto him who is the mightiest man of his hands that
ever bare shield or strake with sword in the ranks of
Christian battle -- even him that sitteth there!" and he
pointed to Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetched them; it
was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told
how Sir Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time
gone by, killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword,
and set a hundred and forty-two captive maidens free;
and then went further, still seeking adventures, and
found him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperate fight against
nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle
solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and
that night Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him
in Sir Kay's armor and took Sir Kay's horse and gat
him away into distant lands, and vanquished sixteen
knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four in another;
and all these and the former nine he made to swear
that about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's
court and yield them to Queen Guenever's hands as
captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal, spoil of his knightly
prowess; and now here were these half dozen, and the
rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of
their desperate wounds.
Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and
smile, and look embarrassed and happy, and fling fur-
tive glances at Sir Launcelot that would have got him
shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty.
Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir
Launcelot; and as for me, I was perfectly amazed,
that one man, all by himself, should have been able to
beat down and capture such battalions of practiced
fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mock-
ing featherhead only said:
"An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of
sour wine into him, ye had seen the accompt doubled."
I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw
the cloud of a deep despondency settle upon his counte-
nance. I followed the direction of his eye, and saw that
a very old and white-bearded man, clothed in a flowing
black gown, had risen and was standing at the table
upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient
head and surveying the company with his watery and
wandering eye. The same suffering look that was in
the page's face was observable in all the faces around
-- the look of dumb creatures who know that they must
endure and make no moan.
"Marry, we shall have it a again," sighed the boy;
"that same old weary tale that he hath told a
thousand times in the same words, and that he WILL tell
till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his barrel full
and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. Would
God I had died or I saw this day!"
"Who is it?"
"Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition
singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one
tale! But that men fear him for that he hath the
storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in
hell at his beck and call, they would have dug his en-
trails out these many years ago to get at that tale and
squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person,
making believe he is too modest to glorify himself --
maledictions light upon him, misfortune be his dole!
Good friend, prithee call me for evensong."
The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pre-
tended to go to sleep. The old man began his tale;
and presently the lad was asleep in reality; so also were
the dogs, and the court, the lackeys, and the files of
men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a soft
snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep
and subdued accompaniment of wind instruments.
Some heads were bowed upon folded arms, some lay
back with open mouths that issued unconscious music;
the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed
softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about,
and made themselves at home everywhere; and one of
them sat up like a squirrel on the king's head and held
a bit of cheese in its hands and nibbled it, and dribbled
the crumbs in the king's face with naive and impudent
irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and restful to the
weary eye and the jaded spirit.
This was the old man's tale. He said:
"Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went
until an hermit that was a good man and a great leech.
So the hermit searched all his wounds and gave him
good salves; so the king was there three days, and then
were his wounds well amended that he might ride and
go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said,
I have no sword. No force *, said Merlin, hereby is a
[* Footnote from M.T.: No matter.]
sword that shall be yours and I may. So they rode till
they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and
broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of
an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword
in that hand. Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword
that I spake of. With that they saw a damsel going
upon the lake. What damsel is that? said Arthur.
That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within
that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any
on earth, and richly beseen, and this damsel will come
to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will
give you that sword. Anon withal came the damsel
unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her again.
Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder
the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were
mine, for I have no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the
damsel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift
when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said
Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well,
said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row your-
self to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with
you, and I will ask my gift when I see my time. So
Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and tied their horses to
two trees, and so they went into the ship, and when
they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur
took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And
the arm and the hand went under the water; and so
they came unto the land and rode forth. And then Sir
Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What signifieth yonder
pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said Merlin,
that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is
out, he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of
yours, that hight Egglame, and they have fought
together, but at the last Egglame fled, and else he had
been dead, and he hath chased him even to Carlion,
and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. That
is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will
I wage battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir,
ye shall not so, said Merlin, for the knight is weary of
fighting and chasing, so that ye shall have no worship
to have ado with him; also, he will not lightly be
matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my
counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service
in short time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye
shall see that day in short space ye shall be right glad
to give him your sister to wed. When I see him, I will
do as ye advise me, said Arthur. Then Sir Arthur
looked on the sword, and liked it passing well.
Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or
the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur.
Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is
worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard
upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so
sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always
with you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way
they met with Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such
a craft that Pellinore saw not Arthur, and he passed by
without any words. I marvel, said Arthur, that the
knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw you
not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly de-
parted. So they came unto Carlion, whereof his
knights were passing glad. And when they heard of
his adventures they marveled that he would jeopard his
person so alone. But all men of worship said it was
merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his
person in adventure as other poor knights did."
CHAPTER IV.
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
IT seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply
and beautifully told; but then I had heard it only
once, and that makes a difference; it was pleasant to
the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and
he soon roused the rest with a practical joke of a suffi-
ciently poor quality. He tied some metal mugs to a
dog's tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and
around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other
dogs bellowing after him and battering and crashing
against everything that came in their way and making
altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening
din and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the
multitude laughed till the tears flowed, and some fell
out of their chairs and wallowed on the floor in ecstasy.
It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was so
proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling
over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with
humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it after
everybody else had got through. He was so set up
that he concluded to make a speech -- of course a
humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was
worse than the minstrels, worse than the clown in the
circus. It seemed peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen
hundred years before I was born, and listen again to
poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had given me the dry
gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years after-
wards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such
thing as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at
these antiquities -- but then they always do; I had
noticed that, centuries later. However, of course the
scoffer didn't laugh -- I mean the boy. No, he scoffed;
there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest
were petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I be-
lieved, myself, that the only right way to classify the
majestic ages of some of those jokes was by geologic
periods. But that neat idea hit the boy in a blank
place, for geology hadn't been invented yet. However,
I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate
the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is
no use to throw a good thing away merely because the
market isn't ripe yet.
Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his his-
tory-mill with me for fuel. It was time for me to feel
serious, and I did. Sir Kay told how he had en-
countered me in a far land of barbarians, who all wore
the same ridiculous garb that I did -- a garb that was a
work of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer
secure from hurt by human hands. However he had
nullified the force of the enchantment by prayer, and
had killed my thirteen knights in a three hours' battle,
and taken me prisoner, sparing my life in order that so
strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited to the
wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He
spoke of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this
prodigious giant," and "this horrible sky-towering
monster," and "this tusked and taloned man-devour-
ing ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh in the
naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
there was any discrepancy between these watered statis-
tics and me. He said that in trying to escape from him
I sprang into the top of a tree two hundred cubits high
at a single bound, but he dislodged me with a stone the
size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most of my
bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court
for sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at
noon on the 21st; and was so little concerned about it
that he stopped to yawn before he named the date.
I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was
hardly enough in my right mind to keep the run of a
dispute that sprung up as to how I had better be killed,
the possibility of the killing being doubted by some,
because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet it
was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-
shops. Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail,
to wit: many of the terms used in the most matter-of-
fact way by this great assemblage of the first ladies and
gentlemen in the land would have made a Comanche
blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the
idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Rod-
erick Random," and other books of that kind, and
knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in
England had remained little or no cleaner in their talk,
and in the morals and conduct which such talk implies,
clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our
own nineteenth century -- in which century, broadly
speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and real
gentleman discoverable in English history -- or in
European history, for that matter -- may be said to
have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, in-
stead of putting the conversations into the mouths of
his characters, had allowed the characters to speak for
themselves? We should have had talk from Rebecca
and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena which would
embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the uncon-
sciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Ar-
thur's people were not aware that they were indecent
and I had presence of mind enough not to mention it.
They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes
that they were mightily relieved, at last, when old
Merlin swept the difficulty away for them with a com-
mon-sense hint. He asked them why they were so dull
-- why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a
minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear,
dear, to think of it: I was the only embarrassed person
there. Everybody discussed me; and did it as uncon-
cernedly as if I had been a cabbage. Queen Guenever
was as naively interested as the rest, and said she had
never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It
was the only compliment I got -- if it was a compliment.
Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my
perilous clothes in another. I was shoved into a dark
and narrow cell in a dungeon, with some scant remnants
for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed, and no end
of rats for company.
CHAPTER V.
AN INSPIRATION
I WAS so tired that even my fears were not able to
keep me awake long.
When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been
asleep a very long time. My first thought was, "Well,
what an astonishing dream I've had! I reckon I've
waked only just in time to keep from being hanged or
drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap
again till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to
the arms factory and have it out with Hercules."
But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains
and bolts, a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly,
Clarence, stood before me! I gasped with surprise;
my breath almost got away from me.
"What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with
the rest of the dream! scatter!"
But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and
fell to making fun of my sorry plight.
"All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go
on; I'm in no hurry."
"Prithee what dream?"
"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in
Arthur's court -- a person who never existed; and that
I am talking to you, who are nothing but a work of the
imagination."
"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be
burned to-morrow? Ho-ho -- answer me that!"
The shock that went through me was distressing. I
now began to reason that my situation was in the last
degree serious, dream or no dream; for I knew by past
experience of the lifelike intensity of dreams, that to
be burned to death, even in a dream, would be very far
from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by
any means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I
said beseechingly:
"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got, --
for you ARE my friend, aren't you? -- don't fail me; help
me to devise some way of escaping from this place!"
"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man,
the corridors are in guard and keep of men-at-arms."
"No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence?
Not many, I hope?"
"Full a score. One may not hope to escape."
After a pause -- hesitatingly: "and there be other rea-
sons -- and weightier."
"Other ones? What are they?"
"Well, they say -- oh, but I daren't, indeed
daren't!"
"Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you
blench? Why do you tremble so?"
"Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you,
but --"
"Come, come, be brave, be a man -- speak out,
there's a good lad!"
He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other
way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out,
listening; and finally crept close to me and put his
mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a
whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension of one
who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of
things whose very mention might be freighted with
death.
"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this
dungeon, and there bides not the man in these king-
doms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross
its lines with you! Now God pity me, I have told it!
Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who
means thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"
I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had
for some time; and shouted:
"Merlin has wrought a spell! MERLIN, forsooth!
That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass?
Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why,
it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic,
chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that
ev -- oh, damn Merlin!"
But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had
half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind
with fright.
"Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any
moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say
such things. Oh call them back before it is too late!"
Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and
set me to thinking. If everybody about here was so
honestly and sincerely afraid of Merlin's pretended
magic as Clarence was, certainly a superior man like
me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way
to take advantage of such a state of things. I went
on thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:
"Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the
eye. Do you know why I laughed?"
"No -- but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no
more."
"Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a
magician myself."
"Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his
breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden; but the
aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. I
took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug
didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum; people
stood ready to take him at his word, without that. I
resumed.
"I've know Merlin seven hundred years, and he --"
"Seven hun --"
"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive
again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name
every time: Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters,
Haskins, Merlin -- a new alias every time he turns up.
I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago; I knew
him in India five hundred years ago -- he is always
blethering around in my way, everywhere I go; he
makes me tired. He don't amount to shucks, as a
magician; knows some of the old common tricks,
but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never
will. He is well enough for the provinces-- one-night
stands and that sort of thing, you know -- but dear me,
HE oughtn't to set up for an expert -- anyway not
where there's a real artist. Now look here, Clarence,
I am going to stand your friend, right along, and in re-
turn you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor.
I want you to get word to the king that I am a magician
myself -- and the Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck-
amuck and head of the tribe, at that; and I want him
to be made to understand that I am just quietly arrang-
ing a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these
realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm
comes to me. Will you get that to the king for me?"
The poor boy was in such a state that he could
hardly answer me. It was pitiful to see a creature so
terrified, so unnerved, so demoralized. But he prom-
ised everything; and on my side he made me promise
over and over again that I would remain his friend, and
never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon
him. Then he worked his way out, staying himself
with his hand along the wall, like a sick person.
Presently this thought occurred to me: how heed-
less I have been! When the boy gets calm, he will
wonder why a great magician like me should have
begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place;
he will put this and that together, and will see that I
am a humbug.
I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour,
and called myself a great many hard names, meantime.
But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these
animals didn't reason; that THEY never put this and
that together; that all their talk showed that they
didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at
rest, then.
But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes
on something else to worry about. It occurred to me
that I had made another blunder: I had sent the boy
off to alarm his betters with a threat -- I intending to
invent a calamity at my leisure; now the people who are
the readiest and eagerest and willingest to swallow
miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you
perform them; suppose I should be called on for a
sample? Suppose I should be asked to name my
calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder; I ought to
have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?
what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble
again; in the deepest kind of trouble:...
"There's a footstep! -- they're coming. If I had only
just a moment to think.... Good, I've got it.
I'm all right."
You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind
in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one
of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump
once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could
play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism,
either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand
years ahead of those parties.
Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said:
"I hasted the message to our liege the king, and
straightway he had me to his presence. He was
frighted even to the marrow, and was minded to give
order for your instant enlargement, and that you be
clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so
great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he
persuaded the king that you are mad, and know not
whereof you speak; and said your threat is but foolish-
ness and idle vaporing. They disputed long, but in the
end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore hath he not
NAMED his brave calamity? Verily it is because he can-
not.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the
king's mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the
argument; and so, reluctant, and full loth to do you
the discourtesy, he yet prayeth you to consider his per-
plexed case, as noting how the matter stands, and name
the calamity -- if so be you have determined the nature
of it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay
not; to delay at such a time were to double and treble
the perils that already compass thee about. Oh, be
thou wise -- name the calamity!"
I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my im-
pressiveness together, and then said:
"How long have I been shut up in this hole?"
"Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent
It is 9 of the morning now."
"No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine
in the morning now! And yet it is the very complex-
ion of midnight, to a shade. This is the 20th, then?"
"The 20th -- yes."
"And I am to be burned alive to-morrow." The
boy shuddered.
"At what hour?"
"At high noon."
"Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused,
and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in
awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured,
charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically
graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered
in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a
thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at
that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead
blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he
shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall
rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the
earth shall famish and die, to the last man!"
I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such
a collapse. I handed him over to the soldiers, and
went back.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ECLIPSE
IN the stillness and the darkness, realization soon
began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowl-
edge of a fact is pale; but when you come to REALIZE
your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference be-
tween hearing of a man being stabbed to the heart, and
seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness, the
knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself
deeper and deeper meaning all the time; a something
which was realization crept inch by inch through my
veins and turned me cold.
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times
like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to
a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies.
Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and
then he is in good shape to do something for himself,
if anything can be done. When my rally came, it
came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse
would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest
man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my
mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solici-
tudes all vanished. I was as happy a man as there
was in the world. I was even impatient for to-
morrow to come, I so wanted to gather in that great
triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder
and reverence. Besides, in a business way it would be
the making of me; I knew that.
Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed
into the background of my mind. That was the half-
conviction that when the nature of my proposed
calamity should be reported to those superstitious
people, it would have such an effect that they would
want to compromise. So, by and by when I heard
footsteps coming, that thought was recalled to me, and
I said to myself, "As sure as anything, it's the com-
promise. Well, if it is good, all right, I will accept;
but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play my
hand for all it is worth."
The door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared.
The leader said:
"The stake is ready. Come!"
The stake! The strength went out of me, and I
almost fell down. It is hard to get one's breath at
such a time, such lumps come into one's throat, and
such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said:
"But this is a mistake -- the execution is to-
morrow."
"Order changed; been set forward a day. Haste
thee!"
I was lost. There was no help for me. I was
dazed, stupefied; I had no command over myself, I
only wandered purposely about, like one out of his
mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and pulled me
along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of
underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare
of daylight and the upper world. As we stepped into
the vast enclosed court of the castle I got a shock;
for the first thing I saw was the stake, standing in the
center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk. On
all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose
rank above rank, forming sloping terraces that were
rich with color. The king and the queen sat in their
thrones, the most conspicuous figures there, of course.
To note all this, occupied but a second. The next
second Clarence had slipped from some place of con-
cealment and was pouring news into my ear, his eyes
beaming with triumph and gladness. He said:
"'Tis through ME the change was wrought! And
main hard have I worked to do it, too. But when I
revealed to them the calamity in store, and saw how
mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I also
that this was the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently
pretended, unto this and that and the other one, that
your power against the sun could not reach its full
until the morrow; and so if any would save the sun
and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your
enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency.
Odsbodikins, it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent
invention, but you should have seen them seize it and
swallow it, in the frenzy of their fright, as it were sal-
vation sent from heaven; and all the while was I
laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so
cheaply deceived, and glorifying God the next, that
He was content to let the meanest of His creatures be
His instrument to the saving of thy life. Ah how
happy has the matter sped! You will not need to do
the sun a REAL hurt -- ah, forget not that, on your soul
forget it not! Only make a little darkness -- only the
littlest little darkness, mind, and cease with that. It
will be sufficient. They will see that I spoke falsely, --
being ignorant, as they will fancy -- and with the fall-
ing of the first shadow of that darkness you shall see
them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and
make you great! Go to thy triumph, now! But re-
member -- ah, good friend, I implore thee remember
my supplication, and do the blessed sun no hurt. For
MY sake, thy true friend."
I choked out some words through my grief and
misery; as much as to say I would spare the sun; for
which the lad's eyes paid me back with such deep and
loving gratitude that I had not the heart to tell him his
good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me
to my death.
As the soldiers assisted me across the court the still-
ness was so profound that if I had been blindfold I
should have supposed I was in a solitude instead of
walled in by four thousand people. There was not a
movement perceptible in those masses of humanity;
they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and
dread sat upon every countenance. This hush con-
tinued while I was being chained to the stake; it still
continued while the fagots were carefully and tediously
piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs, my body.
Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible,
and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch;
the multitude strained forward, gazing, and parting
slightly from their seats without knowing it; the monk
raised his hands above my head, and his eyes toward
the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in this
attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then
stopped. I waited two or three moments; then looked
up; he was standing there petrified. With a common
impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into
the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there
was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling
through my veins; I was a new man! The rim of
black spread slowly into the sun's disk, my heart beat
higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the
priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that
this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it
was, l was ready. I was in one of the most grand
attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up
pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You
could SEE the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.
Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the
other:
"Apply the torch!"
"I forbid it!"
The one was from Merlin, the other from the king.
Merlin started from his place -- to apply the torch
himself, I judged. I said:
"Stay where you are. If any man moves -- even
the king -- before I give him leave, I will blast him
with thunder, I will consume him with lightnings!"
The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was
just expecting they would. Merlin hesitated a moment
or two, and I was on pins and needles during that little
while. Then he sat down, and I took a good breath;
for I knew I was master of the situation now. The
king said:
"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this
perilous matter, lest disaster follow. It was reported
to us that your powers could not attain unto their full
strength until the morrow; but --"
"Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a
lie? It WAS a lie."
That made an immense effect; up went appealing
hands everywhere, and the king was assailed with a
storm of supplications that I might be bought off at
any price, and the calamity stayed. The king was
eager to comply. He said:
"Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving
of my kingdom; but banish this calamity, spare the
sun!"
My fortune was made. I would have taken him up
in a minute, but I couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing
was out of the question. So I asked time to consider.
The king said:
"How long -- ah, how long, good sir? Be merci-
ful; look, it groweth darker, moment by moment.
Prithee how long?"
"Not long. Half an hour -- maybe an hour."
There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I
couldn't shorten up any, for I couldn't remember
how long a total eclipse lasts. I was in a puzzled con-
dition, anyway, and wanted to think. Something was
wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very un-
settling. If this wasn't the one I was after, how was
I to tell whether this was the sixth century, or nothing
but a dream? Dear me, if I could only prove it was
the latter! Here was a glad new hope. If the boy
was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th,
it WASN'T the sixth century. I reached for the monk's
sleeve, in considerable excitement, and asked him what
day of the month it was.
Hang him, he said it was the TWENTY-FIRST! It made
me turn cold to hear him. I begged him not to make
any mistake about it; but he was sure; he knew it
was the 21st. So, that feather-headed boy had botched
things again! The time of the day was right for the
eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning,
by the dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King
Arthur's court, and I might as well make the most out
of it I could.
The darkness was steadily growing, the people be-
coming more and more distressed. I now said:
"I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will
let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the
world; but whether I blot out the sun for good, or
restore it, shall rest with you. These are the terms, to
wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions,
and receive all the glories and honors that belong to
the kingship; but you shall appoint me your perpetual
minister and executive, and give me for my services
one per cent. of such actual increase of revenue over
and above its present amount as I may succeed in
creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I sha'n't
ask anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?"
There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of
the midst of it the king's voice rose, saying:
"Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do
him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is
become the king's right hand, is clothed with power
and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of
the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and
bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may
bless thee."
But I said:
"That a common man should be shamed before
the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the KING
if any that saw his minister naked should not also see
him delivered from his shame. If I might ask that my
clothes be brought again --"
"They are not meet," the king broke in. "Fetch
raiment of another sort; clothe him like a prince!"
My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they
were till the eclipse was total, otherwise they would be
trying again to get me to dismiss the darkness, and of
course I couldn't do it. Sending for the clothes
gained some delay, but not enough. So I had to
make another excuse. I said it would be but natural
if the king should change his mind and repent to some
extent of what he had done under excitement; there-
fore I would let the darkness grow a while, and if at
the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his
mind the same, the darkness should be dismissed.
Neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with
that arrangement, but I had to stick to my point.
It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker,
while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century
clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the
multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny
night breezes fan through the place and see the stars
come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse
was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody
else was in misery; which was quite natural. I said:
"The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms."
Then I lifted up my hands -- stood just so a moment --
then I said, with the most awful solemnity: "Let the
enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!"
There was no response, for a moment, in that deep
darkness and that graveyard hush. But when the
silver rim of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or
two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout
and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me
with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the
last of the wash, to be sure.
CHAPTER VII.
MERLIN'S TOWER
INASMUCH as I was now the second personage in
the Kingdom, as far as political power and author-
ty were concerned, much was made of me. My
raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold,
and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfort-
able. But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes;
I was aware of that. I was given the choicest suite of
apartments in the castle, after the king's. They were
aglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stone
floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet,
and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of
one breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking,
there weren't any. I mean LITTLE conveniences; it is
the little conveniences that make the real comfort of
life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings,
were well enough, but that was the stopping place.
There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass -- ex-
cept a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water.
And not a chromo. I had been used to chromos for
years, and I saw now that without my suspecting it a
passion for art had got worked into the fabric of my
being, and was become a part of me. It made me
homesick to look around over this proud and gaudy
but heartless barrenness and remember that in our house
in East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn't
go into a room but you would find an insurance-chromo,
or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home over the
door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even
in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in
the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a
bedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it had
darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right
color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even
Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more
formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares
they call his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons."
Raphael was a bird. We had several of his chromos;
one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
he puts in a miracle of his own -- puts three men into
a canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without up-
setting. I always admired to study R.'s art, it was so
fresh and unconventional.
There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the
castle. I had a great many servants, and those that
were on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when I
wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.
There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze
dish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazing
rag floating in it was the thing that produced what was
regarded as light. A lot of these hung along the walls
and modified the dark, just toned it down enough to
make it dismal. If you went out at night, your ser-
vants carried torches. There were no books, pens,
paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they be-
lieved to be windows. It is a little thing -- glass is --
until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. But
perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't any
sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just
another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited
island, with no society but some more or less tame
animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must
do as he did -- invent, contrive, create, reorganize
things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them
busy. Well, that was in my line.
One thing troubled me along at first -- the immense
interest which people took in me. Apparently the
whole nation wanted a look at me. It soon transpired
that the eclipse had scared the British world almost to
death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one
end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and
the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed
with praying and weeping poor creatures who thought
the end of the world was come. Then had followed
the news that the producer of this awful event was a
stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he
could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was
just going to do it when his mercy was purchased, and
he then dissolved his enchantments, and was now
recognized and honored as the man who had by his
unaided might saved the globe from destruction and
its peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that
everybody believed that, and not only believed it, but
never even dreamed of doubting it, you will easily
understand that there was not a person in all Britain
that would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight of
me. Of course I was all the talk -- all other subjects
were dropped; even the king became suddenly a per-
son of minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-
four hours the delegations began to arrive, and from
that time onward for a fortnight they kept coming.
The village was crowded, and all the countryside. I
had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to
these reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came
to be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but of
course it was at the same time compensatingly agree-
able to be so celebrated and such a center of homage.
It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, which
was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one
thing I couldn't understand -- nobody had asked for
an autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. By
George! I had to explain to him what it was. Then
he said nobody in the country could read or write but
a few dozen priests. Land! think of that.
There was another thing that troubled me a little.
Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another
miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back
to their far homes the boast that they had seen the
man who could command the sun, riding in the
heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in
the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all;
but to be able to also say they had seen him work a
miracle themselves -- why, people would come a dis-
tance to see THEM. The pressure got to be pretty
strong. There was going to be an eclipse of the
moon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was too
far away. Two years. I would have given a good
deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when
there was a big market for it. It seemed a great pity
to have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a time
when a body wouldn't have any use for it, as like as
not. If it had been booked for only a month away, I
could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, I
couldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do me
any good, so I gave up trying. Next, Clarence found
that old Merlin was making himself busy on the sly
among those people. He was spreading a report that
I was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accom-
modate the people with a miracle was because I
couldn't. I saw that I must do something. I pres-
ently thought out a plan.
By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into
prison -- the same cell I had occupied myself. Then
I gave public notice by herald and trumpet that I
should be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, but
about the end of that time I would take a moment's
leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from
heaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil re-
ports about me, let him beware. Furthermore, I
would perform but this one miracle at this time, and
no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, I
would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them
useful. Quiet ensued.
I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain
degree, and we went to work privately. I told him
that this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle of
preparation, and that it would be sudden death to ever
talk about these preparations to anybody. That made
his mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few
bushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superin-
tended my armorers while they constructed a lightning-
rod and some wires. This old stone tower was very
massive -- and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman,
and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome,
after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to
summit, as with a shirt of scale mail. It stood on a
lonely eminence, in good view from the castle, and
about half a mile away.
Working by night, we stowed the powder in the
tower -- dug stones out, on the inside, and buried the
powder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feet
thick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in a
dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower of
London with these charges. When the thirteenth night
was come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in
one of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it to
the other batches. Everybody had shunned that
locality from the day of my proclamation, but on the
morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the
people, through the heralds, to keep clear away -- a
quarter of a mile away. Then added, by command,
that at some time during the twenty-four hours I
would consummate the miracle, but would first give a
brief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the
daytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if at
night.
Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late,
and I was not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't
have cared for a delay of a day or two; I should have
explained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, and
the people must wait.
Of course, we had a blazing sunny day -- almost the
first one without a cloud for three weeks; things always
happen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather.
Clarence dropped in from time to time and said the
public excitement was growing and growing all the
time, and the whole country filling up with human
masses as far as one could see from the battlements.
At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared -- in
the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a
little while I watched that distant cloud spread and
blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear.
I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liber-
ated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I
ascended the parapet and there found the king and the
court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward
Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy
that one could not see far; these people and the old
turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the
red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made
a good deal of a picture.
Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:
"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done
you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to
injure my professional reputation. Therefore I am
going to call down fire and blow up your tower, but
it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you think
you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires,
step to the bat, it's your innings."
"I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not."
He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the
roof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent up
a small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybody
fell back and began to cross themselves and get un-
comfortable. Then he began to mutter and make
passes in the air with his hands. He worked himself
up slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got
to thrashing around with his arms like the sails of a
windmill. By this time the storm had about reached
us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and
making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops
of rain were falling, the world abroad was black as
pitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. Of course,
my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, things
were imminent. So I said:
"You have had time enough. I have given you
every advantage, and not interfered. It is plain your
magic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now."
I made about three passes in the air, and then there
was an awful crash and that old tower leaped into the
sky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain of
fire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thou-
sand acres of human beings groveling on the ground in
a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained
mortar and masonry the rest of the week. This was
the report; but probably the facts would have modi-
fied it.
It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome
temporary population vanished. There were a good
many thousand tracks in the mud the next morning,
but they were all outward bound. If I had advertised
another miracle I couldn't have raised an audience
with a sheriff.
Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop
his wages; he even wanted to banish him, but I inter-
fered. I said he would be useful to work the weather,
and attend to small matters like that, and I would give
him a lift now and then when his poor little parlor-
magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower
left, but I had the government rebuild it for him, and
advised him to take boarders; but he was too high-
toned for that. And as for being grateful, he never
even said thank you. He was a rather hard lot, take
him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly ex-
pect a man to be sweet that had been set back so.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BOSS
TO be vested with enormous authority is a fine
thing; but to have the on-looking world consent
to it is a finer. The tower episode solidified my
power, and made it impregnable. If any were per-
chance disposed to be jealous and critical before that,
they experienced a change of heart, now. There was
not any one in the kingdom who would have considered
it good judgment to meddle with my matters.
I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and cir-
cumstances. For a time, I used to wake up, mornings,
and smile at my "dream," and listen for the Colt's
factory whistle; but that sort of thing played itself
out, gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize
that I was actually living in the sixth century, and in
Arthur's court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I
was just as much at home in that century as I could
have been in any other; and as for preference, I
wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth. Look at
the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains,
pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the
country. The grandest field that ever was; and all my
own; not a competitor; not a man who wasn't a baby
to me in acquirements and capacities; whereas, what
would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should
be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could
drag a seine down street any day and catch a hundred
better men than myself.
What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from
thinking about it, and contemplating it, just as one
does who has struck oil. There was nothing back of
me that could approach it, unless it might be Joseph's
case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal
it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's
splendid financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but
the king, the general public must have regarded him
with a good deal of disfavor, whereas I had done my
entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was
popular by reason of it.
I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance;
the king himself was the shadow. My power was
colossal; and it was not a mere name, as such things
have generally been, it was the genuine article. I
stood here, at the very spring and source of the second
great period of the world's history; and could see the
trickling stream of that history gather and deepen and
broaden, and roll its mighty tides down the far
centuries; and I could note the upspringing of adven-
turers like myself in the shelter of its long array of
thrones: De Montforts, Gavestons, Mortimers, Villier-
ses; the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of
France, and Charles the Second's scepter-wielding
drabs; but nowhere in the procession was my full-
sized fellow visible. I was a Unique; and glad to
know that that fact could not be dislodged or chal-
lenged for thirteen centuries and a half, for sure.
Yes, in power I was equal to the king. At the same
time there was another power that was a trifle stronger
than both of us put together. That was the Church.
I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't, if I
wanted to. But never mind about that, now; it will
show up, in its proper place, later on. It didn't cause
me any trouble in the beginning -- at least any of
consequence.
Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest.
And the people! They were the quaintest and sim-
plest and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but
rabbits. It was pitiful for a person born in a whole-
some free atmosphere to listen to their humble and
hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and
Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion
to love and honor king and Church and noble than a
slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to
love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why,
dear me,ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified,
ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly
an insult; but if you are born and brought up under
that sort of arrangement you probably never find it
out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody
else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed
of his race to think of the sort of froth that has
always occupied its thrones without shadow of right
or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always
figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs
and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only
poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their
own exertions.
The most of King Arthur's British nation were
slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name, and wore
the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves
in fact, but without the name; they imagined them-
selves men and freemen, and called themselves so.
The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world
for one object, and one only: to grovel before king
and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood
for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they
might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might
be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and
jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from pay-
ing them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading
language and postures of adulation that they might
walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this
world. And for all this, the thanks they got were
cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they
that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.
Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting
to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his
people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts
worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should
have proposed to divert them by reason and argument
would have had a long contract on his hands. For
instance, those people had inherited the idea that all
men without title and a long pedigree, whether they
had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't,
were creatures of no more consideration than so many
animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the
idea that human daws who can consent to masquerade
in the peacock-shams of inherited dignities and un-
earned titles, are of no good but to be laughed at.
The way I was looked upon was odd, but it was
natural. You know how the keeper and the public
regard the elephant in the menagerie: well, that is the
idea. They are full of admiration of his vast bulk and
his prodigious strength; they speak with pride of the
fact that he can do a hundred marvels which are far
and away beyond their own powers; and they speak
with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is
able to drive a thousand men before him. But does
that make him one of THEM? No; the raggedest
tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. He couldn't
comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any
remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the
nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves
and tramps, I was just that kind of an elephant, and
nothing more. I was admired, also feared; but it
was as an animal is admired and feared. The animal
is not reverenced, neither was I; I was not even re-
spected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so
in the king's and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the
people regarded me with wonder and awe, but there
was no reverence mixed with it; through the force of
inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of any-
thing being entitled to that except pedigree and lord-
ship. There you see the hand of that awful power,
the Roman Catholic Church. In two or three little
centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation
of worms. Before the day of the Church's supremacy
in the world, men were men, and held their heads up,
and had a man's pride and spirit and independence;
and what of greatness and position a person got, he
got mainly by achievement, not by birth. But then
the Church came to the front, with an axe to grind;
and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one
way to skin a cat -- or a nation; she invented "divine
right of kings," and propped it all around, brick by
brick, with the Beatitudes -- wrenching them from
their good purpose to make them fortify an evil one;
she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience
to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached
(to the commoner) meekness under insult; preached
(still to the commoner, always to the commoner) pa-
tience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance under op-
pression; and she introduced heritable ranks and
aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations
of the earth to bow down to them and worship them.
Even down to my birth-century that poison was still in
the blood of Christendom, and the best of English com-
moners was still content to see his inferiors impudently
continuing to hold a number of positions, such as lord-
ships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of
his country did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he
was not merely contented with this strange condition
of things, he was even able to persuade himself that
he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't
anything you can't stand, if you are only born and
bred to it. Of course that taint, that reverence for
rank and title, had been in our American blood, too --
I know that; but when I left America it had disap-
peared -- at least to all intents and purposes. The
remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses.
When a disease has worked its way down to that level,
it may fairly be said to be out of the system.
But to return to my anomalous position in King
Arthur's kingdom. Here I was, a giant among pig-
mies, a man among children, a master intelligence
among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement
the one and only actually great man in that whole
British world; and yet there and then, just as in the
remote England of my birth-time, the sheep-witted
earl who could claim long descent from a king's leman,
acquired at second-hand from the slums of London,
was a better man than I was. Such a personage was
fawned upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked
up to by everybody, even though his dispositions were
as mean as his intelligence, and his morals as base as
his lineage. There were times when HE could sit down
in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I could have
got a title easily enough, and that would have raised
me a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the
king's, the giver of it. But I didn't ask for it; and I
declined it when it was offered. I couldn't have enjoyed
such a thing with my notions; and it wouldn't have
been fair, anyway, because as far back as I could go,
our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister. I
couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and
proud and set-up over any title except one that should
come from the nation itself, the only legitimate source;
and such an one I hoped to win; and in the course of
years of honest and honorable endeavor, I did win it
and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This
title fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one
day, in a village, was caught up as a happy thought
and tossed from mouth to mouth with a laugh and an
affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept the kingdom,
and was become as familiar as the king's name. I
was never known by any other designation afterward,
whether in the nation's talk or in grave debate upon
matters of state at the council-board of the sovereign.
This title, translated into modern speech, would be
THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me.
And it was a pretty high title. There were very few
THE'S, and I was one of them. If you spoke of the
duke, or the earl, or the bishop, how could anybody
tell which one you meant? But if you spoke of The
King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different.
Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him
-- respected the office; at least respected it as much as
I was capable of respecting any unearned supremacy;
but as MEN I looked down upon him and his nobles --
privately. And he and they liked me, and respected
my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham
title, they looked down upon me -- and were not par-
ticularly private about it, either. I didn't charge for
my opinion about them, and they didn't charge for
their opinion about me: the account was square, the
books balanced, everybody was satisfied.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TOURNAMENT
THEY were always having grand tournaments there
at Camelot; and very stirring and picturesque
and ridiculous human bull-fights t | |
