He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our hearts beat.He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, "Don't you remember? --he was an angel himself, once.""Yes--it's true," said Seppi; "I didn't think of that.""Before the Fall he was blameless."
"Yes," said Nikolaus, "he was without sin.""It is a good family--ours," said Satan; "there is not a better.He is the only member of it that has ever sinned."I should not be able to make any one understand how exciting it all was.
You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.I was bursting to ask one question--I had it on my tongue's end and could hardly hold it back--but I was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness.Satan set an ox down that he had been making, and smiled up at me and said:
"It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should forgive it if it was.Have Iseen him? Millions of times.From the time that I was a little child a thousand years old I was his second favorite among the nursery angels of our blood and lineage--to use a human phrase--yes, from that time until the Fall, eight thousand years, measured as you count time.""Eight--thousand!"
"Yes." He turned to Seppi, and went on as if answering something that was in Seppi's mind: "Why, naturally I look like a boy, for that is what Iam.With us what you call time is a spacious thing; it takes a long stretch of it to grow an angel to full age." There was a question in my mind, and he turned to me and answered it, "I am sixteen thousand years old--counting as you count." Then he turned to Nikolaus and said: "No, the Fall did not affect me nor the rest of the relationship.It was only he that I was named for who ate of the fruit of the tree and then beguiled the man and the woman with it.We others are still ignorant of sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall abide in that estate always.We--" Two of the little workmen were quarreling, and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows and blood; then they locked themselves together in a life-and-death struggle.Satan reached out his hand and crushed the life out of them with his fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is."It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances, but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked and grieved at the wanton murder he had committed--for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was without palliation or excuse, for the men had not wronged him in any way.It made us miserable, for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and so beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed he was an angel; and to have him do this cruel thing--ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such pride in him.He went right on talking, just as if nothing had happened, telling about his travels, and the interesting things he had seen in the big worlds of our solar systems and of other solar systems far away in the remotenesses of space, and about the customs of the immortals that inhabit them, somehow fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in spite of the pitiful scene that was now under our eyes, for the wives of the little dead men had found the crushed and shapeless bodies and were crying over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest was kneeling there with his hands crossed upon his breast, praying; and crowds and crowds of pitying friends were massed about them, reverently uncovered, with their bare heads bowed, and many with the tears running down--a scene which Satan paid no attention to until the small noise of the weeping and praying began to annoy him, then he reached out and took the heavy board seat out of our swing and brought it down and mashed all those people into the earth just as if they had been flies, and went on talking just the same.
An angel, and kill a priest! An angel who did not know how to do wrong, and yet destroys in cold blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women who had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed, and to think that none of those poor creatures was prepared except the priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or seen a church.And we were witnesses; we had seen these murders done and it was our duty to tell, and let the law take its course.
But he went on talking right along, and worked his enchantments upon us again with that fatal music of his voice.He made us forget everything;we could only listen to him, and love him, and be his slaves, to do with us as he would.He made us drunk with the joy of being with him, and of looking into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the ecstasy that thrilled along our veins from the touch of his hand.
Chapter 3
The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew everything, and he forgot nothing.What another must study, he learned at a glance; there were no difficulties for him.And he made things live before you when he told about them.He saw the world made; he saw Adam created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and looking at them with our own eyes.And we felt them, too, but there was no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments.Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating in anguish--why, we could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an artificial fire.
