The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature)

by Mark Twain

  Satan said-

  "It is a mistake; you think me a poacher, but I am not. I give you my honor I am innocent."

  All the keepers laughed at that, and said "He gives us his honor -lie!" and Bart said he ought not to tell lies, he had no art in it.

  "I am not lying," said Satan. "I am a stranger; you do not know me; you have not seen me before; then how can you know whether it is I whom you have been seeking, or another?"

  Bart said, with an airy toss of his head-

  "It is plain that whether I know you or not, you do not know me; or you would know that I do not waste my time and my master's in bartering arguments with your kind of vermin. Now then, drop it. And answer: what is your name, and where are you from?"

  "I do not choose to tell my name, nor where I am from. And you are mistaken in thinking I do not know you. I know the four of you; and I know things about each of you which you would not like the magistrates to find out."

  It made them very angry, and three of them were for lashing him to a tree and flogging the insolence out of him; but Bart said-

  "Wait-let him speak, we shall lose nothing. For each separate lie that he tells he shall have a separate flogging. Begin. What do you know about Caspar there?"

  "That at midnight, ten nights ago, in a lonely place he hid something which the owner would much like to recover."

  "It is alie!" shouted Caspar, and the others slapped their thighs in malicious joy to see Caspar snapped up in that startling and ungracious fashion.

  "Then let us go and fetch it," said Satan.

  "Agreed!" said all but Caspar, and were for starting; but Caspar begged, and took back the "lie," and said he had spoken hastily.

  "Then confess," said Satan.

  "I do," said Caspar, but with an ill grace, and with a nod of his head as much as to say "you will pay for this," whereat the others made merry again.

  "It was a good guess, tramp," said Bart, "and saves you one thrashing. But you are not out of the woods yet. Try again. What do you know about Johan?"

  "That he also possesses something which does not belong to him. It is a piece of gold, and has a secret mark upon it. I know the owner and the mark. Also, I know where the gold-piece is."

  Johan burst into a wordy fury and called Satan the most shameful names, and threw off his jacket and challenged him to fight, but Satan was not moved. Then Johan's temper got so much the better of him that he made a mistake; for he swore he hadn't a gold-piece and dared Satan to prove the contrary.

  "He has sewed it up in the lining of his jacket, there," said Satan.

  Johan jumped for the jacket, but the others were too quick for him; and in the lining they found the coin.

  Things were beginning to look serious. The men lost their levity, and looked nonplussed and ill at ease. There was a moment's silence, then Bart said, with the manner of one who has been relaxing himself with a childish game, but is tired of it and would return to matters of dignity and importance-

  "Well, enough of this nonsense. Bind the loafer and fetch him along."

  "Ah," said Conrad, with a sneer, "it is that way that the cat jumps, is it?"

  "What do you mean?" said Bart.

  "I mean that you've got us exposed, and now you would sneak out yourself."

  "Take back the words!"

  "I won't take them back. You know you don't dare to let this devil's imp tell what he knows about you. Do you hear?-you don't dare."

  "It's a lie!" Then, his temper being up and hot, he made a mistake. "If he knows anything about me that I am hiding, let him out with it. Come-speak up, poacher and spy; and mind, if you utter so much as half a lie about me, I will not leave a whole bone in your body."

  "I shall say only the truth," said Satan. "First, then, from to-day you will not be a keeper, but will be kept. You will be a public show and a curiosity, and will earn your family's living in that way.

  This made the others laugh, but not Bart.

  "Damn your prophecies!" he cried. "Confine yourself to what you know about me."

  "Very well. Eighteen years ago a man was murdered near this village, for money. I know where the body lies; and with the body are the proofs that you did the murder, and not Jacob Hein whom you sent to the gallows for it."

  Before you could think, Bart's gun was at Satan's breast and his finger on the trigger. But he never pulled it; Satan turned him to stone-clothes, gun and all.

  And while those others were staring at this strange statue he turned himself into Father Adolf. They took only one glance at him, then fled away, crossing themselves, and soon they had spread the news, and set the persecuted village wild once more. The way Satan was acting, he was sure to greatly injure Father Adolf's character, which was bad enough already, but I did not say anything. It would have been of no use; Satan would have said, "He is only a human being-it is of no consequence."

  Seppi was sorry-for Bart's family, but Satan said he had done them a favor; that Bart was a fortune to them, now; they could exhibit him and get rich.

  We met the crowds coming up, but he had already told us to keep away from him, and we were obeying. Ile said he should not be favorably received, and he was right. They fell apart and gave him a wide passage and were cruelly afraid of him, and showed his ecclesiastical authority a servile deference by uncovering to him and making humble obeisance; but the minute his back was to them they stoned him. They fairly rained missiles upon him, which struck and bounded off in sprays, but he didn't mind it, but strode contentedly along, acting like a person who was refreshing himself with a shower-bath,-and much obliged.

  Then we turned back. It was pitiful to see the family, their grief was so bitter. They flung their arms around the statue, and kissed it and cried over it, and could not be comforted. All the crowd admired the statue, and were full of wonder at its minute fidelities to fact, even the least little frayed and torn places in the clothes being exactly preserved, while as a portrait the work was perfection, and the murderous expression in countenance and attitude splendidly lifelike and animated and true; so true and so real that when women found themselves suddenly in front of the malignant face and the marble gun they gave a little screech and jumped aside. The birds in the game-bag were perfectly rendered, and so was a fly that was on the left cheek; it was like the frozen flies you find on the panes, winter mornings, white-shrouded in glinting frost. Siebold the drunken artist was there, and he said there was not another work of art in Europe that could match this one for modeling and tone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The Coroner. Then you stand to your verdict.

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

  All the assemblage burst into a bravo of applause.

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

  The Foreman, sternly. It shall not be done.

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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