|
|
|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
CHAPTER 28
The Preacher
Various reports went undulating through the city as to the nature
of what had taken place in the palace. The people gathered, and
stared at the house, eyeing it as if it had sprung up in the night.
But it looked sedate enough, remaining closed and silent, like a
house that was dead. They saw no one come out or go in. Smoke
arose from a chimney or two; there was hardly another sign of life.
It was not for some little time generally understood that the
highest officers of the crown as well as the lowest menials of the
palace had been dismissed in disgrace: for who was to recognize a
lord chancellor in his nightshirt? And what lord chancellor would,
so attired in the street, proclaim his rank and office aloud?
Before it was day most of the courtiers crept down to the river,
hired boats, and betook themselves to their homes or their friends
in the country. It was assumed in the city that the domestics had
been discharged upon a sudden discovery of general and unpardonable
peculation; for, almost everybody being guilty of it himself, petty
dishonesty was the crime most easily credited and least easily
passed over in Gwyntystorm.
Now that same day was Religion day, and not a few of the clergy,
always glad to seize on any passing event to give interest to the
dull and monotonic grind of their intellectual machines, made this
remarkable one the ground of discourse to their congregations.
More especially than the rest, the first priest of the great temple
where was the royal pew, judged himself, from his relation to the
palace, called upon to 'improve the occasion', for they talked ever
about improvement at Gwyntystorm, all the time they were going down
hill with a rush.
The book which had, of late years, come to be considered the most
sacred, was called The Book of Nations, and consisted of proverbs,
and history traced through custom: from it the first priest chose
his text; and his text was, 'Honesty Is the Best Policy.' He was
considered a very eloquent man, but I can offer only a few of the
larger bones of his sermon.
The main proof of the verity of their religion, he said, was that
things always went well with those who profess it; and its first
fundamental principle, grounded in inborn invariable instinct, was,
that every One should take care of that One. This was the first
duty of Man. If every one would but obey this law, number one,
then would every one be perfectly cared for - one being always
equal to one. But the faculty of care was in excess of need, and
all that overflowed, and would otherwise run to waste, ought to be
gently turned in the direction of one's neighbour, seeing that this
also wrought for the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch as the
reaction of excess so directed was upon the director of the same,
to the comfort, that is, and well-being of the original self. To
be just and friendly was to build the warmest and safest of all
nests, and to be kind and loving was to line it with the softest of
all furs and feathers, for the one precious, comfort-loving self
there to lie, revelling in downiest bliss. One of the laws
therefore most binding upon men because of its relation to the
first and greatest of all duties, was embodied in the Proverb he
had just read; and what stronger proof of its wisdom and truth
could they desire than the sudden and complete vengeance which had
fallen upon those worse than ordinary sinners who had offended
against the king's majesty by forgetting that 'Honesty Is the Best
Policy'?
At this point of the discourse the head of the legserpent rose from
the floor of the temple, towering above the pulpit, above the
priest, then curving downward, with open mouth slowly descended
upon him. Horror froze the sermon-pump. He stared upward aghast.
The great teeth of the animal closed upon a mouthful of the sacred
vestments, and slowly he lifted the preacher from the pulpit, like
a handful of linen from a washtub, and, on his four solemn stumps,
bore him out of the temple, dangling aloft from his jaws. At the
back of it he dropped him into the dust hole among the remnants of
a library whose age had destroyed its value in the eyes of the
chapter. They found him burrowing in it, a lunatic henceforth -
whose madness presented the peculiar feature, that in its paroxysms
he jabbered sense.
Bone-freezing horror pervaded Gwyntystorm. If their best and
wisest were treated with such contempt, what might not the rest of
them look for? Alas for their city! Their grandly respectable
city! Their loftily reasonable city! Where it was all to end, who
could tell!
But something must be done. Hastily assembling, the priests chose
a new first priest, and in full conclave unanimously declared and
accepted that the king in his retirement had, through the practice
of the blackest magic, turned the palace into a nest of demons in
the midst of them. A grand exorcism was therefore indispensable.
In the meantime the fact came out that the greater part of the
courtiers had been dismissed as well as the servants, and this fact
swelled the hope of the Party of Decency, as they called
themselves. Upon it they proceeded to act, and strengthened
themselves on all sides.
The action of the king's bodyguard remained for a time uncertain.
But when at length its officers were satisfied that both the master
of the horse and their colonel were missing, they placed themselves
under the orders of the first priest.
Every one dated the culmination of the evil from the visit of the
miner and his mongrel; and the butchers vowed, if they could but
get hold of them again, they would roast both of them alive. At
once they formed themselves into a regiment, and put their dogs in
training for attack.
incessant was the talk, innumerable were the suggestions, and great
was the deliberation. The general consent, however, was that as
soon as the priests should have expelled the demons, they would
depose the king, and attired in all his regal insignia, shut him in
a cage for public show; then choose governors, with the lord
chancellor at their head, whose first duty should be to remit every
possible tax; and the magistrates, by the mouth of the city
marshal, required all able-bodied citizens, in order to do their
part toward the carrying out of these and a multitude of other
reforms, to be ready to take arms at the first summons.
Things needful were prepared as speedily as possible, and a mighty
ceremony, in the temple, in the market place, and in front of the
palace, was performed for the expulsion of the demons. This over,
the leaders retired to arrange an attack upon the palace.
But that night events occurred which, proving the failure of their
first, induced the abandonment of their second, intent. Certain of
the prowling order of the community, whose numbers had of late been
steadily on the increase, reported frightful things. Demons of
indescribable ugliness had been espied careering through the
midnight streets and courts. A citizen - some said in the very act
of housebreaking, but no one cared to look into trifles at such a
crisis - had been seized from behind, he could not see by what, and
soused in the river. A well-known receiver of stolen goods had had
his shop broken open, and when he came down in the morning had
found everything in ruin on the pavement. The wooden image of
justice over the door of the city marshal had had the arm that held
the sword bitten off. The gluttonous magistrate had been pulled
from his bed in the dark, by beings of which he could see nothing
but the flaming eyes, and treated to a bath of the turtle soup that
had been left simmering by the side of the kitchen fire. Having
poured it over him, they put him again into his bed, where he soon
learned how a mummy must feel in its cerements.
Worst of all, in the market place was fixed up a paper, with the
king's own signature, to the effect that whoever henceforth should
show inhospitality to strangers, and should be convicted of the
same, should be instantly expelled the city; while a second, in the
butchers' quarter, ordained that any dog which henceforth should
attack a stranger should be immediately destroyed. It was plain,
said the butchers, that the clergy were of no use; they could not
exorcise demons! That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old
fellow in rags and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they
hounded their dogs upon him, and had it not been that the door of
Derba's cottage was standing open, and was near enough for him to
dart in and shut it ere they reached him, he would have been torn
in pieces.
And thus things went on for some days.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|
|
|