That their one holiday in the year was being filched from
them, when, just as the process was going on so fast that it roared
like a printing-machine in full blast, the clock in the hall struck
twelve.
The Devil suddenly stopped and stood up.
'Out of my house,' said the Learned Man; 'out of my house! I've had
enough of you, and I've no time for fiddle-faddle! It's past twelve,
and I've won!'
The Devil, though still panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and
pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the
body of a member of Parliament), said, 'I suppose you keep Greenwich
time?'
'Certainly!' said Sir Charles.
'Well,' said the Devil, 'so much the worse for you to live in Suffolk.
You're four minutes fast, so I'll trouble you to come along with me;
and I warn you that any words you now say may be used against...'
At this point the Learned Man's patron saint, who thought things had
gone far enough, materialized himself and coughed gently. They both
looked round, and there was St Charles sitting in the easy chair.
'So far,' murmured the Saint to the Devil suavely, 'so far from being
four minutes too early, you are exactly a year too late.' On saying
this, the Saint smiled a genial, priestly smile, folded his hands,
twiddled his thumbs slowly round and round, and gazed in a fatherly
way at the Devil.
'What do you mean?' shouted the Devil.
'What I say,' said St Charles calmly; '1900 is not the last year of
the nineteenth century; it is the first year of the twentieth.'
'Oh!' sneered the Devil, 'are you an anti-vaccinationist as well? Now,
look here' (and he began counting on his fingers); 'supposing in the
year 1 B.C. ...'
'I never argue,' said St Charles.
'Well, all I know is,' answered the Devil with some heat, 'that in
this matter as in most others, thank the Lord, I have on my side all
the historians and all the scientists, all the universities, all
the...'
'And I,' interrupted St Charles, waving his hand like a gentleman (he
is a Borromeo), 'I have the Pope!'
At this the Devil gave a great howl, and disappeared in a clap of
thunder, and was never seen again till his recent appearance at
Brighton.
So the Learned Man was saved; but hardly; for he had to spend five
hundred years in Purgatory catechizing such heretics and pagans as got
there, and instructing them in the true faith. And with the more
muscular he passed a knotty time.
You do not see the river Po till you are close to it. Then, a little
crook in the road being passed, you come between high trees, and
straight out before you, level with you, runs the road into and over a
very wide mass of tumbling water. It does not look like a bridge, it
looks like a quay. It does not rise; it has all the appearance of
being a strip of road shaved off and floated on the water.
All this is because it passes over boats, as do some bridges over the
Rhine. (At Cologne, I believe, and certainly at Kiel - for I once sat
at the end of that and saw a lot of sad German soldiers drilling, a
memory which later made me understand (1) why they can be out-marched
by Latins; (2) why they impress travellers and civilians; (3) why the
governing class in Germany take care to avoid common service; (4) why
there is no promotion from the ranks; and (5) why their artillery is
too rigid and not quick enough. It also showed me something intimate
and fundamental about the Germans which Tacitus never understood and
which all our historians miss - they are _of necessity_ histrionic.
Note I do not say it is a vice of theirs. It is a necessity of theirs,
an appetite. They must see themselves on a stage. Whether they do
things well or ill, whether it is their excellent army with its
ridiculous parade, or their eighteenth-century _sans-soucis_ with
avenues and surprises, or their national legends with gods in wigs and
strong men in tights, they _must_ be play-actors to be happy and
therefore to be efficient; and if I were Lord of Germany, and desired
to lead my nation and to be loved by them, I should put great golden
feathers on my helmet, I should use rhetorical expressions, spout
monologues in public, organize wide cavalry charges at reviews, and
move through life generally to the crashing of an orchestra. For by
doing this even a vulgar, short, and diseased man, who dabbled in
stocks and shares and was led by financiers, could become a hero, and
do his nation good.)
LECTOR. What is all this?
AUCTOR. It is a parenthesis.
LECTOR. It is good to know the names of the strange things one meets
with on one's travels.
AUCTOR. So I return to where I branched off, and tell you that the
river Po is here crossed by a bridge of boats.
It is a very large stream. Half-way across, it is even a trifle
uncomfortable to be so near the rush of the water on the trembling
pontoons. And on that day its speed and turbulence were emphasized by
the falling rain. For the marks of the rain on the water showed the
rapidity of the current, and the silence of its fall framed and
enhanced the swirl of the great river.
Once across, it is a step up into Piacenza - a step through mud and
rain.
