No More Learning

"

But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture,
then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance
brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I
recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy
equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols
showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy
gifts. "

The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the
lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the
first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch
overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a
crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of
universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung
themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and
under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently
than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging
abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more
surprising.

This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence
came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a
sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing
his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely.
Then the creature said to me:

"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes
the place of all. " And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a
sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away
with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness;
nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy
skin as upon a tapestry. "

As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in
her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the
charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to
age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of
ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though
heavy, held a certain power of fascination.
I was struck most by her
voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti,
as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with
brandy.

"Wouldst thou know my power? " said the charming and paradoxical voice of
the false goddess. "Then listen. " And she put to her mouth a gigantic
trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the
newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so
that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand
thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet.

"Devil! " cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something. " But
it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more
attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of
my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not
what memory of a fanfare prostituted.

So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed
the light o' love of them that I will not name. "

Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But
unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said,
"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples.
Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so
delicate. "

So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as
often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too
deeply offended them, for they have never returned.


THE END





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