So This Learned Man Did All He Was Required, And Daily Would Inform
The Messenger Imps Of The Good Being
Done or prepared in the
neighbourhood, and they would upset it; so that the place he lived in
from a
Nice country town became a great Centre of Industry, full of
wealth and desirable family mansions and street property, and was
called in hell 'Depot B' (Depot A you may guess at). But at last
toward the 15th of October 1900, the Learned Man began to shake in his
shoes and to dread the judgement; for, you see, he had not the
comfortable ignorance of his kind, and was compelled to believe in the
Devil willy-nilly, and, as I say, he shook in his shoes.
So he bethought him of a plan to cheat the Devil, and the day before
All-Hallowe'en he cut a very small round hole in the floor of his
study, just near the fireplace, right through down to the cellar. Then
he got a number of things that do great harm (newspapers, legal
documents, unpaid bills, and so forth) and made ready for action.
Next morning when the little imps came for orders as usual, after
prayers, he took them down into the cellar, and pointing out the hole
in the ceiling, he said to them:
'My friends, this little hole is a mystery. It communicates, I
believe, with the chapel; but I cannot find the exit. All I know is,
that some pious person or angel, or what not, desirous to do good,
slips into it every day whatever he thinks may be a cause of evil in
the neighbourhood, hoping thus to destroy it' (in proof of which
statement he showed them a scattered heap of newspapers on the floor
of the cellar beneath the hole). 'And the best thing you can do,' he
added, 'is to stay here and take them away as far as they come down
and put them back into circulation again.
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