A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, James De Mille [best classic romance novels .TXT] 📗

not be seized. It must be given by nature or man. Those who violate the blessed mystery of death are infamous.”

He assured me that he had all his life cultivated the loftiest feelings of love to others. His greatest happiness consisted in doing good to others, especially in killing them. The blessing of death, being the greatest of all blessings, was the one which he loved best to bestow upon others; and the more he loved his fellow-creatures the more he wished to give them this blessing. “You,” said he, “are particularly dear to me, and I should rather give to you the blessing of death than to any other human being. I love you, Atam-or, and I long to kill you at this moment.”

“You had better not try it,” said I, grimly.

He shook his head despondingly.

“Oh no,” said he; “it is against the law. I must not do it till the time comes.”

“Do you kill many?” I asked.

“It is my pleasing and glorious office,” he replied, “to kill more than any other; for, you must know, I am the Sar Tabakin” (chief of the executioners).

The Chief Pauper’s love of death had grown to be an all-absorbing passion. He longed to give death to all. As with us there are certain philanthropists who have a mania for doing good, so here the pauper class had a mania for doing what they considered good in this way. The Chief Pauper was a sort of Kosekin Howard or Peabody, and was regarded by all with boundless reverence. To me, however, he was an object of never-ending hate, abhorrence, and loathing; and, added to this, was the thought that there might be here some equally hideous female⁠—someone like the nightmare hag of the outer sea⁠—a torment and a horror to Almah.

XXIX The Ceremony of Separation

Separated from Almah, surrounded by foul fiends, in darkness and the shadow of death, with the baleful prospect of the Mista Kosek, it was mine to endure the bitterest anguish and despair; and in me these feelings were all the worse from the thought that Almah was in a similar state, and was enduring equal woes. All that I suffered in my present condition she too was suffering⁠—and from this there was no possibility of escape. Perhaps her surroundings were even worse, and her sufferings keener; for who could tell what these people might inflict in their strange and perverted impulses?

Many joms passed, and there was only one thing that sustained me⁠—the hope of seeing Almah yet again, though it were but for a moment. That hope, however, was but faint. There was no escape. The gate was barred without and within. I was surrounded by miscreants, who formed the chief class in the state and the ruling order. The Chief Pauper was the highest magistrate in the land, from whose opinion there was no appeal, and the other paupers here formed the Kosekin senate. Here, in imprisonment and darkness, they formed a secret tribunal and controlled everything. They were objects of envy to all. All looked forward to this position as the highest object of human ambition, and the friends and relatives of those here rejoiced in their honor. Their powers were not executive, but deliberative. To the Meleks and Athons was left the exercise of authority, but their acts were always in subordination to the will of the paupers.

“I have everything that heart can wish,” said the Chief Pauper to me once. “Look at me, Atam-or, and see me as I stand here: I have poverty, squalor, cold, perpetual darkness, the privilege of killing others, the near prospect of death, and the certainty of the Mista Kosek⁠—all these I have, and yet, Atam-or, after all, I am not happy.”

To this strange speech I had nothing to say.

“Yes,” continued the Chief Pauper, in a pensive tone, “for twenty seasons I have reigned as chief of the Kosekin in this place. My cavern is the coldest, squalidest, and darkest in the land. My raiment is the coarsest rags. I have separated from all my friends. I have had much sickness. I have the closest captivity. Death, darkness, poverty, want, all that men most live and long for, are mine to satiety; and yet, as I look back and count the joms of my life to see in how many I have known happiness, I find that in all they amount to just seven! Oh, Atam-or, what a comment is this on the vanity of human life!”

To this I had no answer ready; but by way of saying something, I offered to kill him on the spot.

“Nay, nay, Atam-or,” said he, with a melancholy smile, “do not tempt me. Leave me to struggle with temptations by myself, and do not seek to make me falter in my duty. Yes, Atam-or, you behold in me a melancholy example of the folly of ambition; for I often think, as I look down from my lofty eminence, that after all it is as well to remain content in the humble sphere in which we are placed at birth; for perhaps, if the truth were known, there is quite as much real happiness among the rich and splendid⁠—among the Athons and Meleks.”

On this occasion I took advantage of the Chief Pauper’s softer mood to pour forth an earnest entreaty for him to save Almah’s life, or at least to mitigate her miseries. Alas! he was inexorable. It was like an appeal of some mad prisoner to some gentle-hearted governor in Christendom, entreating him to put some fellow-prisoner to death, or at least to make his confinement more severe.

The Chief Pauper stared at me in horror.

“You are a strange being, Atam-or,” said he, gently. “Sometimes I think you mad. I can only say that such a request is horrible to me beyond all words. Such degradation and cruelty to the gentle