"From ten years of pain and slow recovery from an accident, and then from nineteen years' pollution, shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the hands of the executioner.Twelve days hence she will die; her mother would save her life if she could.Am I not kinder than her mother?""Yes--oh, indeed yes; and wiser."
"Father Peter's case is coming on presently.He will be acquitted, through unassailable proofs of his innocence.""Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really think it?""Indeed, I know it.His good name will be restored, and the rest of his life will be happy.""I can believe it.To restore his good name will have that effect.""His happiness will not proceed from that cause.I shall change his life that day, for his good.He will never know his good name has been restored."In my mind--and modestly--I asked for particulars, but Satan paid no attention to my thought.Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer, and Iwondered where he might be.
"In the moon," said Satan, with a fleeting sound which I believed was a chuckle."I've got him on the cold side of it, too.He doesn't know where he is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good enough for him, a good place for his star studies.I shall need him presently;then I shall bring him back and possess him again.He has a long and cruel and odious life before him, but I will change that, for I have no feeling against him and am quite willing to do him a kindness.I think Ishall get him burned."
He had such strange notions of kindness! But angels are made so, and do not know any better.Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides, human beings are nothing to them; they think they are only freaks.It seems to me odd that he should put the astrologer so far away; he could have dumped him in Germany just as well, where he would be handy.
"Far away?" said Satan."To me no place is far away; distance does not exist for me.The sun is less than a hundred million miles from here, and the light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes to come;but I can make that flight, or any other, in a fraction of time so minute that it cannot be measured by a watch.I have but to think the journey, and it is accomplished."I held out my hand and said, "The light lies upon it; think it into a glass of wine, Satan."He did it.I drank the wine.
"Break the glass," he said.
I broke it.
"There--you see it is real.The villagers thought the brass balls were magic stuff and as perishable as smoke.They were afraid to touch them.
You are a curious lot--your race.But come along; I have business.Iwill put you to bed." Said and done.Then he was gone; but his voice came back to me through the rain and darkness saying, "Yes, tell Seppi, but no other."It was the answer to my thought.
Chapter 8
Sleep would not come.It was not because I was proud of my travels and excited about having been around the big world to China, and feeling contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the traveler," as he called himself, and looked down upon us others because he had been to Vienna once and was the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a journey and seen the world's wonders.At another time that would have kept me awake, but it did not affect me now.No, my mind was filled with Nikolaus, my thoughts ran upon him only, and the good days we had seen together at romps and frolics in the woods and the fields and the river in the long summer days, and skating and sliding in the winter when our parents thought we were in school.And now he was going out of this young life, and the summers and winters would come and go, and we others would rove and play as before, but his place would be vacant; we should see him no more.To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as he had always been, and it would shock me to hear him laugh, and see him do lightsome and frivolous things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen hands and dull eyes, and I should see the shroud around his face; and next day he would not suspect, nor the next, and all the time his handful of days would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing coming nearer and nearer, his fate closing steadily around him and no one knowing it but Seppi and me.
Twelve days--only twelve days.It was awful to think of.I noticed that in my thoughts I was not calling him by his familiar names, Nick and Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name, and reverently, as one speaks of the dead.Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed that they were mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to friends who have passed beyond the veil, and we wish we could have them back again, if only for a moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say, "Have pity, and forgive."Once when we were nine years old he went a long errand of nearly two miles for the fruiterer, who gave him a splendid big apple for reward, and he was flying home with it, almost beside himself with astonishment and delight, and I met him, and he let me look at the apple, not thinking of treachery, and I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following me and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him the core, which was all that was left; and I laughed.Then he turned away, crying, and said he had meant to give it to his little sister.That smote me, for she was slowly getting well of a sickness, and it would have been a proud moment for him, to see her joy and surprise and have her caresses.But I was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care, and he made no reply in words, but there was a wounded look in his face as he turned away toward his home which rose before me many times in after years, in the night, and reproached me and made me ashamed again.It had grown dim in my mind, by and by, then it disappeared; but it was back now, and not dim.
