A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I said, “what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up,
right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is
doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three
yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with my
right hand--they will indorse you if you tell correctly.” He was
still dumb. “Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up and
tell; it is because you don't know. _You_ a magician! Good friends,
this tramp is a mere fraud and liar.”
This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used
to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know
what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now;
superstitious bodings were in every mind. The magician began to
pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy,
nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated
that his mood was not destructive. He said:
“It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's
speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not,
that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with
the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born
in the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur the great
king is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but the
doings of a subject interest me not.”
“Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody,' and so
I supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody; that is, everybody.”
“It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if
he be royal.”
“That, it meseemeth, might well be,” said the abbot, who saw his
opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, “for it were not
likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for
the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be
born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king--”
“Would you know of him?” broke in the enchanter.
“Most gladly, yea, and gratefully.”
Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the
incorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly,
and looked at me with a “There, now, what can you say to that?”
air, when the announcement came:
“The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these
two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep.”
“God's benison upon him!” said the abbot, and crossed himself;
“may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul.”
“And so it might be, if he were sleeping,” I said, “but the king
is not sleeping, the king rides.”
Here was trouble again--a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which
of us to believe; I still had some reputation left. The magician's
scorn was stirred, and he said:
“Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and
magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and
see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help.”
“You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantations
myself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on occasions
of moment.”
When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up.
That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the
queen and the court, and got this information:
“They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king.”
I said:
“That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements,
the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Now
perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king
and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?”
“They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride,
for they go a journey toward the sea.”
“And where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?”
“Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done.”
“That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles.
Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done,
and they will be _here_, in this valley.”
_That_ was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl
of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followed
the thing right up:
“If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail:
if he does I will ride you on a rail instead.”
Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the king
had passed through two towns that were on the line. I spotted
his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these
matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he
kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There
was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed
to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange
thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that other
magician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I asked
a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician
had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court
had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. Think
of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country.
These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in
history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive
value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer
who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word.
However, it was not good politics to let the king come without
any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up a
procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and
started them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was the
sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage
and humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed
him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to
offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad
his spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces.
The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various
buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a
rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician
--and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation
was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can
keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit
around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business
right along.
CHAPTER XXV
A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION
When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or
visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost
of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was
a fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examination
of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the
Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just
as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a
holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business
functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual;
he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was
himself Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane
judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,--according
to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights--I mean
his rearing--often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a
dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree,
the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always,
whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should
be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's
moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a
privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders
under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not
be offensive to any--even to the noble himself--unless the fact
itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact.
The repulsive feature of slavery is the _thing_, not its name. One
needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below
him to recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure
--the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these
are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling.
They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's
old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being.
The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely
the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies.
He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother
for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in
famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest.
One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an
orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow
who had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory held
by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of
the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that
she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out
of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory--the one heretofore
referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or
avoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was, that the
lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the
particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be
exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older
law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising
it. It was a very odd case, indeed.
It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the
ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money
that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the
Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a
candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible;
they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected.
The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise,
hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine
of L400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for
sheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after being
elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and
elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it up
until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the
stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen
in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees
slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given
their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good
and holy peoples that be in the earth.
The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just
as strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out of
this hole. But he got out. I append his decision:
“Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a
child's affair for simpleness. An the young bride had conveyed
notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master
and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said
bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary
conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus
would she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her first
duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging
to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no
defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any
deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman's
case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that