A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain [microsoft ebook reader .TXT] 📗

had listened, without any necromancer’s help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles away, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been the same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actuality of the telephone and its wonders⁠—and in both cases would be absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane⁠—to Sandy⁠—I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed that the world was not flat, and hadn’t pillars under it to support it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too, if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody as a madman.

The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may. I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my lofty official rank; but I hadn’t, and so accepted the unavoidable slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at the second table. The family were not at home. I said:

“How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?”

“Family?”

“Yes.”

“Which family, good my lord?”

“Why, this family; your own family.”

“Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family.”

“No family? Why, Sandy, isn’t this your home?”

“Now how indeed might that be? I have no home.”

“Well, then, whose house is this?”

“Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew myself.”

“Come⁠—you don’t even know these people? Then who invited us here?”

“None invited us. We but came; that is all.”

“Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march into a man’s house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility the sun has yet discovered in the Earth, and then it turns out that we don’t even know the man’s name. How did you ever venture to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was your home. What will the man say?”

“What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?”

“Thanks for what?”

Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:

“Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words. Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace his house withal?”

“Well, no⁠—when you come to that. No, it’s an even bet that this is the first time he has had a treat like this.”

“Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor of dogs.”

To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so. It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:

“The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together and be moving.”

“Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?”

“We want to take them to their home, don’t we?”

“La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the Earth! Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created life, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein all such as native be to that rich estate and⁠—”

“Great Scott!”

“My lord?”

“Well, you know we haven’t got time for this sort of thing. Don’t you see, we could distribute these people around the Earth in less time than it is going to take you to explain that we can’t. We mustn’t talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn’t let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this. To business now⁠—and sharp’s the word. Who is to take the aristocracy home?”

“Even their friends. These will come for them from the far parts of the Earth.”

This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain to deliver the goods, of course.

“Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully ended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one⁠—”

“I also am ready; I will go with thee.”

This was recalling the pardon.

“How? You will go with me? Why should you?”

“Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor. I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap.”

“Elected for the long term,” I sighed to myself. “I may as well make the best of it.” So then I spoke up and said:

“All right; let us make