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Mark
Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Chapter 18
IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS
WELL, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home. I
had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was a good,
painstaking and paingiving official, -- for surely it was not to his
discredit that he performed his functions well -- but to pay him back
for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that young woman. The
priests told me about this, and were generously hot to have him punished.
Something of this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then.
I mean, episodes that showed that not all priests were frauds and
self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that
were down on the ground among the common people, were sincere and
right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and
sufferings. Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom
fretted about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been
my way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did
not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people reconciled
to an Established Church. We must have a religion -- it goes without
saying -- but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects,
so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United
States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is
bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it
was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that;
it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not
better do in a split-up and scattered condition. That wasn't law;
it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion -- my opinion, and I was
only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's --
or any less, for that matter.
Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook
the just complaint of the priests. The man must be punished somehow
or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him leader of
the band -- the new one that was to be started. He begged hard, and
said he couldn't play -- a plausible excuse, but too thin; there wasn't
a musician in the country that could.
The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found
she was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But I
told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom she
certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property, there
were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the king's name I
had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields, and he had
killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he had carried
it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make detection
of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't make her see that
sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance in the killing of venison
-- or of a person -- so I gave it up and let her sulk it out I did
think I was going to make her see it by remarking that her own sudden
passion in the case of the page modified that crime.
"Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest! Crime,
forsooth! Man, I am going to pay for him!"
Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training -- training is
everything; training is all there is to a person. We speak of nature;
it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that
misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts
of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained
into us. All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point
of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and
inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion
years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race
has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.
And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage,
this pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly
live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one microscopic
atom in me that is truly me: the rest may land in Sheol and welcome
for all I care.
No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough,
but her training made her an ass -- that is, from a many-centuries-later
point of view. To kill the page was no crime -- it was her right;
and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense.
She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and
unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject
when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one.
Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved a compliment
for one thing; and I tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my throat.
She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise obliged to
pay for him. That was law for some other people, but not for her.
She knew quite well that she was doing a large and generous thing
to pay for that lad, and that I ought in common fairness to come out
with something handsome about it, but I couldn't -- my mouth refused.
I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy, that poor old grandma with the
broken heart, and that fair young creature lying butchered, his little
silken pomps and vanities laced with his golden blood. How could she
pay for him! Whom could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman,
trained as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet
not able to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was
to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak -- and the pity
of it was, that it was true:
"Madame, your people will adore you for this."
Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived.
Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. A master might
kill his slave for nothing -- for mere spite, malice, or to pass the
time -- just as we have seen that the crowned head could do it with
his slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could kill a free
commoner, and pay for him -- cash or garden-truck. A noble could kill
a noble without expense, as far as the law was concerned, but reprisals
in kind were to be expected. Anybody could kill somebody, except the
commoner and the slave; these had no privileges. If they killed, it
was murder, and the law wouldn't stand murder. It made short work
of the experimenter -- and of his family, too, if he murdered somebody
who belonged up among the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble
even so much as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt,
he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags
and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and
crack jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of
the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable,
as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his chapter
about the dismemberment of Louis XV.'s poor awkward enemy.
I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted to
leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind that my
conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget. If
I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience. It is
one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although
it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay,
in the long run; it would be much better to have less good and more
comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and I am only one man; others,
with less experience, may think differently. They have a right to
their view. I only stand to this: I have noticed my conscience for
many years, and I know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything
else I started with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it,
because we prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was
to think so. If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it
is: if I had an anvil in me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet
when you come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience
and an anvil -- I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand times.
And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you couldn't stand
it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can work off a conscience
-- at least so it will stay worked off; not that I know of, anyway.
There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was a
disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it bothered me
all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king, but what
would be the use? -- he was but an extinct volcano; he had been active
in his time, but his fire was out, this good while, he was only a
stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly enough for my purpose,
without doubt, but not usable. He was nothing, this so-called king:
the queen was the only power there. And she was a Vesuvius. As a favor,
she might consent to warm a flock of sparrows for you, but then she
might take that very opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a
city. However, I reflected that as often as any other way, when you
are expecting the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after
all.
So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness. I
said I had been having a general jail-delivery at Camelot and among
neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like to examine
her collection, her bric-a-brac -- that is to say, her prisoners.
She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she finally consented.
I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about ended my discomfort.
She called her guards and torches, and we went down into the dungeons.
These were down under the castle's foundations, and mainly were small
cells hollowed out of the living rock. Some of these cells had no
light at all. In one of them was a woman, in foul rags, who sat on
the ground, and would not answer a question or speak a word, but only
looked up at us once or twice, through a cobweb of tangled hair, as
if to see what casual thing it might be that was disturbing with sound
and light the meaningless dull dream that was become her life; after
that, she sat bowed, with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked
in her lap, and gave no further sign. This poor rack of bones was
a woman of middle age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been
there nine years, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner,
and had been sent here on her bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite,
a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said
lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du seigneur,
and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt half a gill
of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had interfered at that
point. believing the bride's life in danger, and had flung the noble
out into the midst of the humble and trembling wedding guests, in
the parlor, and left him there astonished at this strange treatment,
and implacably embittered against both bride and groom. The said lord
being cramped for dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate
his two criminals, and here in her bastile they had been ever since;
hither, indeed, they had come before their crime was an hour old,
and had never seen each other since. Here they were, kenneled like
toads in the same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within
fifty feet of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive
or not. All the first years, their only question had been -- asked
with beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time,
perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is
she alive?" But they had never got an answer; and at last that
question was not asked any more -- or any other.
I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirty-four
years old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block of stone,
with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees, his long
hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was muttering to
himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly over, in a listless
dull way, blinking with the distress of the torchlight, then dropped
his head and fell to muttering again and took no further notice of
us. There were some pathetically suggestive dumb witnesses present.
On his wrists and ankles were cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened
to the stone on which he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters
attached; but this apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick
with rust. Chains cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out
of a prisoner.
I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take him to her, and
see -- to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him,
once -- roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work,
the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice
like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and beauty,
that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams -- as he thought
-- and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant blood
leaping; the sight of her --
But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and
looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a sort
of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence, and dropped
their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and wandering in
some far land of dreams and shadows that we know nothing about.
I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not
like it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter,
but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However,
I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I would fix him
so that he could.
I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes,
and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killed another
lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord had ambushed
him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the best of him and
cut his throat. However, it was not for that that I left him jailed,
but for maliciously destroying the only public well in one of his
wretched villages. The queen was bound to hang him for killing her
kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was no crime to kill an assassin.
But I said I was willing to let her hang him for destroying the well;
so she concluded to put up with that, as it was better than nothing.
Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven
men and women were shut up there! Indeed, some were there for no distinct
offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite; and not always
the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest prisoner's crime
was a mere remark which he had made. He said he believed that men
were about all alike, and one man as good as another, barring clothes.
He said he believed that if you were to strip the nation naked and
send a stranger through the crowd, he couldn't tell the king from
a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel clerk. Apparently here was
a man whose brains had not been reduced to an ineffectual mush by
idiotic training. I set him loose and sent him to the Factory.
Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the
face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been
pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin ray
from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of these poor
fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's hole high
up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out through the
arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the valley; and for
twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache and longing, through
that crack. He could see the lights shine there at night, and in the
daytime he could see figures go in and come out -- his wife and children,
some of them, no doubt, though he could not make out at that distance.
In the course of years he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice,
and wondered if they were weddings or what they might be. And he noted
funerals; and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin,
but he could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether
it was wife or child. He could see the procession form, with priests
and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with them.
He had left behind him five children and a wife; and in nineteen years
he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them humble enough in
pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost five of his treasures; there
must still be one remaining -- one now infinitely, unspeakably precious,
-- but which one? wife, or child? That was the question that tortured
him, by night and by day, asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest,
of some sort, and half a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon,
is a great support to the body and preserver of the intellect. This
man was in pretty good condition yet. By the time he had finished
telling me his distressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that
you would have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity;
that is to say, I was as burning up as he was to find out which member
of the family it was that was left. So I took him over home myself;
and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too -- typhoons and
cyclones of frantic joy, and whole Niagaras of happy tears; and by
George! we found the aforetime young matron graying toward the imminent
verge of her half century, and the babies all men and women, and some
of them married and experimenting familywise themselves -- for not
a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the ingenious devilishness
of that queen: she had a special hatred for this prisoner, and she
had invented all those funerals herself, to scorch his heart with;
and the sublimest stroke of genius of the whole thing was leaving
the family-invoice a funeral short, so as to let him wear his poor
old soul out guessing.
But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him
with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him.
And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than deliberate
depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she had; but that was
no way to speak of it. When redheaded people are above a certain social
grade their hair is auburn.
Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five whose
names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer known!
One woman and four men -- all bent, and wrinkled, and mind-extinguished
patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten these details;
at any rate they had mere vague theories about them, nothing definite
and nothing that they repeated twice in the same way. The succession
of priests whose office it had been to pray daily with the captives
and remind them that God had put them there, for some wise purpose
or other, and teach them that patience, humbleness, and submission
to oppression was what He loved to see in parties of a subordinate
rank, had traditions about these poor old human ruins, but nothing
more. These traditions went but little way, for they concerned the
length of the incarceration only, and not the names of the offenses.
And even by the help of tradition the only thing that could be proven
was that none of the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years:
how much longer this privation has lasted was not guessable. The king
and the queen knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that
they were heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from
the former firm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with
their persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of
no value, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:
"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"
The question was a puzzler. She didn't know why she hadn't, the
thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting
the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If, without
knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with her training, those
inherited prisoners were merely property -- nothing more, nothing
less. Well, when we inherit property, it does not occur to us to throw
it away, even when we do not value it.
When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world
and the glare of the afternoon sun -- previously blindfolding them,
in charity for eyes so long untortured by light -- they were a spectacle
to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic frights, every
one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy by the Grace of God
and the Established Church. I muttered absently:
"I wish I could photograph them!"
You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they
don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they are,
the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over
their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and was always making
the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She hesitated a moment; then
her face brightened up with sudden comprehension, and she said she
would do it for me.
I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography?
But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she was
moving on the procession with an axe!
Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan
le Fay. I have seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she
laid over them all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of
her this episode was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to
photograph a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her
to try to do it with an axe.
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