Chapter VII: Merlin's Tower

by Mark Twain

　　Inasmuch as I was now the second personage inthe Kingdom, as far as political power and authorty were concerned, much was made of me. Myraiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold,and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. But habit would soon reconcile me to my clothes;I was aware of that. I was given the choicest suite ofapartments in the castle, after the king's. They wereaglow with loud-colored silken hangings, but the stonefloors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet,and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all ofone breed. As for conveniences, properly speaking,there weren't any. I mean little conveniences; it isthe little conveniences that make the real comfort oflife. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude carvings,were well enough, but that was the stopping place.There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass -- except a metal one, about as powerful as a pail of water.And not a chromo. I had been used to chromos foryears, and I saw now that without my suspecting it apassion for art had got worked into the fabric of mybeing, and was become a part of me. It made mehomesick to look around over this proud and gaudybut heartless barrenness and remember that in our housein East Hartford, all unpretending as it was, you couldn'tgo into a room but you would find an insurance-chromo,or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home over thedoor; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, evenin my grand room of state, there wasn't anything inthe nature of a picture except a thing the size of abedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it haddarned places in it), and nothing in it was the rightcolor or the right shape; and as for proportions, evenRaphael himself couldn't have botched them moreformidably, after all his practice on those nightmaresthey call his "celebrated Hampton Court cartoons."Raphael was a bird. We had several of his chromos;one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," wherehe puts in a miracle of his own -- puts three men intoa canoe which wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired to study R.'s art, it was sofresh and unconventional.There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in thecastle. I had a great many servants, and those thatwere on duty lolled in the anteroom; and when Iwanted one of them I had to go and call for him.There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronzedish half full of boarding-house butter with a blazingrag floating in it was the thing that produced what wasregarded as light. A lot of these hung along the wallsand modified the dark, just toned it down enough tomake it dismal. If you went out at night, your servants carried torches. There were no books, pens,paper or ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows. It is a little thing -- glass is --until it is absent, then it becomes a big thing. Butperhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't anysugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was justanother Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabitedisland, with no society but some more or less tameanimals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I mustdo as he did -- invent, contrive, create, reorganizethings; set brain and hand to work, and keep thembusy. Well, that was in my line.One thing troubled me along at first -- the immenseinterest which people took in me. Apparently thewhole nation wanted a look at me. It soon transpiredthat the eclipse had scared the British world almost todeath; that while it lasted the whole country, from oneend to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, andthe churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowedwith praying and weeping poor creatures who thoughtthe end of the world was come. Then had followedthe news that the producer of this awful event was astranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that hecould have blown out the sun like a candle, and wasjust going to do it when his mercy was purchased, andhe then dissolved his enchantments, and was nowrecognized and honored as the man who had by hisunaided might saved the globe from destruction andits peoples from extinction. Now if you consider thateverybody believed that, and not only believed it, butnever even dreamed of doubting it, you will easilyunderstand that there was not a person in all Britainthat would not have walked fifty miles to get a sight ofme. Of course I was all the talk -- all other subjectswere dropped; even the king became suddenly a person of minor interest and notoriety. Within twentyfour hours the delegations began to arrive, and fromthat time onward for a fortnight they kept coming.The village was crowded, and all the countryside. Ihad to go out a dozen times a day and show myself tothese reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It cameto be a great burden, as to time and trouble, but ofcourse it was at the same time compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center of homage.It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, whichwas a great satisfaction to me. But there was onething I couldn't understand -- nobody had asked foran autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. ByGeorge! I had to explain to him what it was. Thenhe said nobody in the country could read or write buta few dozen priests. Land! think of that.There was another thing that troubled me a little.Those multitudes presently began to agitate for anothermiracle. That was natural. To be able to carry backto their far homes the boast that they had seen theman who could command the sun, riding in theheavens, and be obeyed, would make them great inthe eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all;but to be able to also say they had seen him work amiracle themselves -- why, people would come a distance to see them. The pressure got to be prettystrong. There was going to be an eclipse of themoon, and I knew the date and hour, but it was toofar away. Two years. I would have given a gooddeal for license to hurry it up and use it now whenthere was a big market for it. It seemed a great pityto have it wasted so, and come lagging along at a timewhen a body wouldn't have any use for it, as like asnot. If it had been booked for only a month away, Icould have sold it short; but, as matters stood, Icouldn't seem to cipher out any way to make it do meany good, so I gave up trying. Next, Clarence foundthat old Merlin was making himself busy on the slyamong those people. He was spreading a report thatI was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accommodate the people with a miracle was because Icouldn't. I saw that I must do something. I presently thought out a plan.By my authority as executive I threw Merlin intoprison -- the same cell I had occupied myself. ThenI gave public notice by herald and trumpet that Ishould be busy with affairs of state for a fortnight, butabout the end of that time I would take a moment'sleisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires fromheaven; in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him beware. Furthermore, Iwould perform but this one miracle at this time, andno more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured, Iwould turn the murmurers into horses, and make themuseful. Quiet ensued.I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certaindegree, and we went to work privately. I told himthat this was a sort of miracle that required a trifle ofpreparation, and that it would be sudden death to evertalk about these preparations to anybody. That madehis mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a fewbushels of first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while they constructed a lightningrod and some wires. This old stone tower was verymassive -- and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman,and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome,after a rude fashion, and clothed with ivy from base tosummit, as with a shirt of scale mail. It stood on alonely eminence, in good view from the castle, andabout half a mile away.Working by night, we stowed the powder in thetower -- dug stones out, on the inside, and buried thepowder in the walls themselves, which were fifteen feetthick at the base. We put in a peck at a time, in adozen places. We could have blown up the Tower ofLondon with these charges. When the thirteenth nightwas come we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it inone of the batches of powder, and ran wires from it tothe other batches. Everybody had shunned thatlocality from the day of my proclamation, but on themorning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn thepeople, through the heralds, to keep clear away -- aquarter of a mile away. Then added, by command,that at some time during the twenty-four hours Iwould consummate the miracle, but would first give abrief notice; by flags on the castle towers if in thedaytime, by torch-baskets in the same places if atnight.Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late,and I was not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn'thave cared for a delay of a day or two; I should haveexplained that I was busy with affairs of state yet, andthe people must wait.Of course, we had a blazing sunny day -- almost thefirst one without a cloud for three weeks; things alwayshappen so. I kept secluded, and watched the weather.Clarence dropped in from time to time and said thepublic excitement was growing and growing all thetime, and the whole country filling up with humanmasses as far as one could see from the battlements.At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared -- inthe right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For alittle while I watched that distant cloud spread andblacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear.I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later Iascended the parapet and there found the king and thecourt assembled and gazing off in the darkness towardMerlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavythat one could not see far; these people and the oldturrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in thered glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, madea good deal of a picture.Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not doneyou any harm, and latterly you have been trying toinjure my professional reputation. Therefore I amgoing to call down fire and blow up your tower, butit is only fair to give you a chance; now if you thinkyou can break my enchantments and ward off the fires,step to the bat, it's your innings.""I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not."He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of theroof, and burnt a pinch of powder in it, which sent upa small cloud of aromatic smoke, whereat everybodyfell back and began to cross themselves and get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and makepasses in the air with his hands. He worked himselfup slowly and gradually into a sort of frenzy, and gotto thrashing around with his arms like the sails of awindmill. By this time the storm had about reachedus; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches andmaking the shadows swash about, the first heavy dropsof rain were falling, the world abroad was black aspitch, the lightning began to wink fitfully. Of course,my rod would be loading itself now. In fact, thingswere imminent. So I said:"You have had time enough. I have given youevery advantage, and not interfered. It is plain yourmagic is weak. It is only fair that I begin now."I made about three passes in the air, and then therewas an awful crash and that old tower leaped into thesky in chunks, along with a vast volcanic fountain offire that turned night to noonday, and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground ina general collapse of consternation. Well, it rainedmortar and masonry the rest of the week. This wasthe report; but probably the facts would have modified it.It was an effective miracle. The great bothersometemporary population vanished. There were a goodmany thousand tracks in the mud the next morning,but they were all outward bound. If I had advertisedanother miracle I couldn't have raised an audiencewith a sheriff.Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stophis wages; he even wanted to banish him, but I interfered. I said he would be useful to work the weather,and attend to small matters like that, and I would givehim a lift now and then when his poor little parlormagic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his towerleft, but I had the government rebuild it for him, andadvised him to take boarders; but he was too hightoned for that. And as for being grateful, he nevereven said thank you. He was a rather hard lot, takehim how you might; but then you couldn't fairly expect a man to be sweet that had been set back so.