He Declared That He Saw A Kind
Of Military Procession, With Flags And Banners, Which He Described
Rather Minutely.
I was then called upon to name the absent person
whose form was to be made visible.
I named Keate. You were not at
Eton, and I must tell you, therefore, what manner of man it was
that I named, though I think you must have some idea of him
already, for wherever from utmost Canada to Bundelcund - wherever
there was the whitewashed wall of an officer's room, or of any
other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick their
heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head of
Keate would be seen scratched or drawn with those various degrees
of skill which one observes in the representations of saints.
Anybody without the least notion of drawing could still draw a
speaking, nay scolding, likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil,
you could draw him well enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair,
or the smoke of a candle. He was little more (if more at all) than
five feet in height, and was not very great in girth, but in this
space was concentrated the pluck of ten battalions. He had a
really noble voice, which he could modulate with great skill, but
he had also the power of quacking like an angry duck, and he almost
always adopted this mode of communication in order to inspire
respect. He was a capital scholar, but his ingenuous learning had
NOT "softened his manners" and HAD "permitted them to be fierce" -
tremendously fierce; he had the most complete command over his
temper - I mean over his GOOD temper, which he scarcely ever allowed
to appear: you could not put him out of humour - that is, out of
the ILL-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head-master.
His red shaggy eyebrows were so prominent, that he habitually used
them as arms and hands for the purpose of pointing out any object
towards which he wished to direct attention; the rest of his
features were equally striking in their way, and were all and all
his own; he wore a fancy dress partly resembling the costume of
Napoleon, and partly that of a widow-woman. I could not by any
possibility have named anybody more decidedly differing in
appearance from the rest of the human race.
"Whom do you name?" - "I name John Keate." - "Now, what do you see?"
said the wizard to the boy. - "I see," answered the boy, "I see a
fair girl with golden hair, blue eyes, pallid face, rosy lips."
THERE was a shot! I shouted out my laughter to the horror of the
wizard, who perceiving the grossness of his failure, declared that
the boy must have known sin (for none but the innocent can see
truth), and accordingly kicked him downstairs.
One or two other boys were tried, but none could "see truth"; they
all made sadly "bad shots."
Notwithstanding the failure of these experiments, I wished to see
what sort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon
him to show me some performances of a higher order than those which
had been attempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in
virtue of which he was to descend with me into the tombs near the
Pyramids, and there evoke the devil. The negotiation lasted some
time, for Dthemetri, as in duty bound, tried to beat down the
wizard as much as he could, and the wizard, on his part, manfully
stuck up for his price, declaring that to raise the devil was
really no joke, and insinuating that to do so was an awesome crime.
I let Dthemetri have his way in the negotiation, but I felt in
reality very indifferent about the sum to be paid, and for this
reason, namely, that the payment (except a very small present which
I might make or not, as I chose) was to be CONTINGENT ON SUCCESS.
At length the bargain was made, and it was arranged that after a
few days, to be allowed for preparation, the wizard should raise
the devil for two pounds ten, play or pay - no devil, no piastres.
The wizard failed to keep his appointment. I sent to know why the
deuce he had not come to raise the devil. The truth was, that my
Mahomet had gone to the mountain. The plague had seized him, and
he died.
Although the plague had now spread terrible havoc around me, I did
not see very plainly any corresponding change in the looks of the
streets until the seventh day after my arrival. I then first
observed that the city was SILENCED. There were no outward signs
of despair nor of violent terror, but many of the voices that had
swelled the busy hum of men were already hushed in death, and the
survivors, so used to scream and screech in their earnestness
whenever they bought or sold, now showed an unwonted indifference
about the affairs of this world: it was less worth while for men
to haggle and haggle, and crack the sky with noisy bargains, when
the great commander was there, who could "pay all their debts with
the roll of his drum."
At this time I was informed that of twenty-five thousand people at
Alexandria, twelve thousand had died already; the destroyer had
come rather later to Cairo, but there was nothing of weariness in
his strides. The deaths came faster than ever they befell in the
plague of London; but the calmness of Orientals under such
visitations, and the habit of using biers for interment, instead of
burying coffins along with the bodies, rendered it practicable to
dispose of the dead in the usual way, without shocking the people
by any unaccustomed spectacle of horror. There was no tumbling of
bodies into carts, as in the plague of Florence and the plague of
London.
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