More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble and diffident way to convert him, and as he had remained silent we had taken his silence as a sort of encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his was a disappointment to us, for it showed that we had made no deep impression upon him.The thought made us sad, and we knew then how the missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a glad hope and has seen it blighted.We kept our grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the time to continue our work.
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a remarkable progress.In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people.They all did their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of.Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his religion, but his guns.The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with."By this time his theater was at work again, and before our eyes nation after nation drifted by, during two or three centuries, a mighty procession, an endless procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying.
"And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle.
"Nothing at all.You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in.For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it.The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built.Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to--" Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling, and his manner changed.He said, gently: "No, we will drink one another's health, and let civilization go.The wine which has flown to our hands out of space by desire is earthly, and good enough for that other toast; but throw away the glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not visited this world before."We obeyed, and reached up and received the new cups as they descended.
They were shapely and beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any material that we were acquainted with.They seemed to be in motion, they seemed to be alive; and certainly the colors in them were in motion.
They were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint, and they were never still, but flowed to and fro in rich tides which met and broke and flashed out dainty explosions of enchanting color.I think it was most like opals washing about in waves and flashing out their splendid fires.
But there is nothing to compare the wine with.We drank it, and felt a strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go stealing through us, and Seppi's eyes filled and he said worshipingly:
"We shall be there some day, and then--"
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he hoped Satan would say, "Yes, you will be there some day," but Satan seemed to be thinking about something else, and said nothing.This made me feel ghastly, for I knew he had heard; nothing, spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him.Poor Seppi looked distressed, and did not finish his remark.The goblets rose and clove their way into the sky, a triplet of radiant sundogs, and disappeared.Why didn't they stay? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed me.Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi ever see his?
Chapter 9
It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance.For him they did not exist.He called them human inventions, and said they were artificialities.We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule.You could prove it by the clock.One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way.She came flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face.They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they caught her.They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.
