Satan’s Diary, Leonid Andreyev [the beginning after the end read novel .TXT] 📗

Magnus, the very striking resemblance between your daughter, the Signorina Maria, and a certain⁠—celebrated personage? Don’t you think she resembles the Madonna?”

“Madonna?” drawled out Magnus. “No, dear Wondergood, I haven’t noticed that. I never go to church. But I fear you will be late. The Roman fever⁠—”

I again seized his white hand and shook it vigorously. No, I did not tear it off. And from my eyes there burst forth again those two tears:

“Let us speak plainly, Signor Magnus,” said I. “I am a straightforward man and have grown to love you. Do you want to come along with me and be the lord of my billions?”

Magnus was silent. His hand lay motionless in mine. His eyes were lowered and something dark seemed to pass over his face, then immediately to disappear. Finally he said, seriously and simply:

“I understand you, Mr. Wondergood⁠—but I must refuse. No, I will not go with you. I have failed to tell you one thing, but your frankness and confidence in me compels me to say that I must, to a certain extent, steer clear of the police.”

“The Roman police,” I asked, betraying a slight excitement. “Nonsense, we shall buy it.”

“No, the international,” he replied. “I hope you do not think that I have committed some base crime. The trouble is not with police which can be bought. You are right, Mr. Wondergood, when you say that one can buy almost anyone. The truth is that I can be of no use to you. What do you want me for? You love humanity and I detest it. At best I am indifferent to it. Let it live and not interfere with me. Leave me my Maria, leave me the right and strength to detest people as I read the history of their life. Leave me my Campagna and that is all I want and all of which I am capable. All the oil within me has burned out, Wondergood. You see before you an extinguished lamp hanging on a wall, a lamp which once⁠—Goodbye.”

“I do not ask your confidence, Magnus,” I interjected.

“Pardon me, you will never receive it, Mr. Wondergood. My name is an invention but it is the only one I can offer to my friends.”

To tell the truth: I liked “Thomas Magnus” at that moment. He spoke bravely and simply. In his face one could read stubbornness and will. This man knew the value of human life and had the mien of one condemned to death. But it was the mien of a proud, uncompromising criminal, who will never accept the ministrations of a priest! For a moment I thought: My Father had many bastard children, deprived of legacy and wandering about the world. Perhaps Thomas Magnus is one of these wanderers? And is it possible that I have met a brother on this earth? Very interesting. But from a purely human, business point of view, one cannot help but respect a man whose hands are steeped in blood!

I saluted, changed my position, and in the humblest possible manner, asked Magnus’s permission to visit him occasionally and seek his advice. He hesitated but finally looked me straight in the face and agreed.

“Very well, Mr. Wondergood. You may come. I hope to hear from you things that may supplement the knowledge I glean from my books. And, by the way, Mr. Toppi has made an excellent impression upon my Maria”⁠—

“Toppi?”

“Yes. She has found a striking resemblance between him and one of her favorite saints. She goes to church frequently.”

Toppi a saint! Or has his prayer book overbalanced his huge back and the fishbone in his throat. Magnus gazed at me almost gently and only his thin nose seemed to tremble slightly with restrained laughter.⁠—It is very pleasant to know that behind this austere exterior there is so much quiet and restrained merriment!

It was twilight when we left. Magnus followed us to the threshold, but Maria remained in seclusion. The little white house surrounded by the cypress trees was as quiet and silent as we found it yesterday, but the silence was of a different character: the silence was the soul of Maria.

I confess that I felt rather sad at this departure but very soon came a new series of impressions, which dispelled this feeling. We were approaching Rome. We entered the brightly illuminated, densely populated streets through some opening in the city wall and the first thing we saw in the Eternal City was a creaking trolley car, trying to make its way through the same hole in the wall. Toppi, who was acquainted with Rome, revelled in the familiar atmosphere of the churches we were passing and indicated with his long finger the remnants of ancient Rome which seemed to be clinging to the huge wall of the new structures: just as if the latter had been bombarded with the shells of old and fragments of the missiles had clung to the bricks.

Here and there we came upon additional heaps of this old rubbish. Above a low parapet of stone, we observed a dark shallow ditch and a large triumphal gate, half sunk in the earth. “The Forum!” exclaimed Toppi, majestically. Our coachman nodded his head in affirmation. With every new pile of old stone and brick the fellow swelled with pride, while I longed for my New York and its skyscrapers, and tried to calculate the number of trucks that would be necessary to clear these heaps of rubbish called ancient Rome away before morning. When I mentioned this to Toppi he was insulted and replied:

“You don’t understand anything: better close your eyes and just reflect that you are in Rome.”

I did so and was again convinced that sight is as much of an impediment to the mind as sound: not without reason are all wise folk on the earth blind and all good musicians deaf.

Like Toppi I began to sniff the air and through my sense of smell I gathered more of Rome and its horribly long and highly entertaining history than hitherto: thus a decaying