The Complete Novels of Mark Twain and the Complete Biography of Mark Twain (199 page)

Marinel took the patients as they came.  He examined the candidate; if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed along to the king.  A priest pronounced the words, "They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover."  Then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the patient graduated and got his nickel—the king hanging it around his neck himself—and was dismissed.  Would you think that that would cure?  It certainly did.  Any mummery will cure if the patient's faith is strong in it.  Up by Astolat there was a chapel where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there—the girl said so herself—and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence—a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them; but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb.  I saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp.  There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.

In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him.  In others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured.  Wherever you find a king who can't cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne—the subject's belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign—has passed away.  In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence:  they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.

Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: "they shall lay their hands on the sick"—when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears:  "Camelot
Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano!
—latest irruption—only two cents—all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!"  One greater than kings had arrived—the newsboy.  But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.

I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet.  It was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines.  I had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me:

—and so on, and so on.  Yes, it was too loud.  Once I could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its note was discordant.  It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas.  Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper.  It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it.  I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life.  There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:

Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing.  The "Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities.  But even it could have been improved. Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that.  There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse.  The best way to manage—in fact, the only sensible way—is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form:  skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words.  It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made out of a single bean.  Clarence's way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way:

However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur's day and realm.  As a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not much mind these things.  They are common defects of my own, and one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself.

I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager questions:  What is this curious thing?  What is it for?  Is it a handkerchief?—saddle blanket?—part of a shirt?  What is it made of? How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. Will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it?  Is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation?  They suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole.  I put my information in the simplest form I could:

"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time. It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain what paper is.  The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is. A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail—they can't be told apart."  Then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration:

"A thousand!  Verily a mighty work—a year's work for many men."

"No—merely a day's work for a man and a boy."

They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.

"Ah-h—a miracle, a wonder!  Dark work of enchantment."

I let it go at that.  Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through: "Ah-h-h!"  "How true!"  "Amazing, amazing!"  "These be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!"  And might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine it?—they would be very careful.  Yes.  So they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes.  These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes—how beautiful to me!  For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it?  I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it were not, for that time.  I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a contentment.

During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment.  Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more.

THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO

About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth.  So I inverted a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it. I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and succeeded.  It was a villainous disfigurement.  When he got his lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest and most commonplace and unattractive.  We were dressed and barbered alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose, our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of its strength and cheapness.  I don't mean that it was really cheap to a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest material there was for male attire—manufactured material, you understand.

We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country.  I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions—provisions for the king to taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage.

I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with.  Then I said I would find some water for him, and strolled away.  Part of my project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself.  It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence; even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then I had a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert and was as comfortable as the toothache.  I didn't want to break him in suddenly, but do it by degrees.  We should have to sit together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when there was no necessity for it.