Chapter XI: The Yankee in Search of Adventures.

by Mark Twain

　　There never was such a country for wanderingliars; and they were of both sexes. Hardly amonth went by without one of these tramps arriving;and generally loaded with a tale about some princessor other wanting help to get her out of some far-awaycastle where she was held in captivity by a lawlessscoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think thatthe first thing the king would do after listening to sucha novelette from an entire stranger, would be to askfor credentials -- yes, and a pointer or two as tolocality of castle, best route to it, and so on. Butnobody ever thought of so simple and common-sensea thing at that. No, everybody swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question of anysort or about anything. Well, one day when I wasnot around, one of these people came along -- it was ashe one, this time -- and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast and gloomycastle, along with forty-four other young and beautifulgirls, pretty much all of them princesses; they hadbeen languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-sixyears; the masters of the castle were three stupendousbrothers, each with four arms and one eye -- the eye inthe center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort offruit not mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.Would you believe it? The king and the wholeRound Table were in raptures over this preposterousopportunity for adventure. Every knight of the Tablejumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to theirvexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me,who had not asked for it at all.By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarencebrought me the news. But he -- he could not containhis. His mouth gushed delight and gratitude in asteady discharge -- delight in my good fortune, gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor forme. He could keep neither his legs nor his body still,but pirouetted about the place in an airy ecstasy ofhappiness.On my side, I could have cursed the kindness thatconferred upon me this benefaction, but I kept myvexation under the surface for policy's sake, and didwhat I could to let on to be glad. Indeed, I said Iwas glad. And in a way it was true; I was as glad asa person is when he is scalped.Well, one must make the best of things, and notwaste time with useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be done. In all lies there iswheat among the chaff; I must get at the wheat in thiscase: so I sent for the girl and she came. She was acomely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, ifsigns went for anything, she didn't know as much as alady's watch. I said:"My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?"She said she hadn't."Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought Iwould ask, to make sure; it's the way I've been raised.Now you mustn't take it unkindly if I remind you thatas we don't know you, we must go a little slow. Youmay be all right, of course, and we'll hope that youare; but to take it for granted isn't business. Youunderstand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions; just answer up fair and square, and don't beafraid. Where do you live, when you are at home?""In the land of Moder, fair sir.""Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of itbefore. Parents living?""As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sithit is many years that I have lain shut up in the castle.""Your name, please?""I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an itplease you.""Do you know anybody here who can identify you?""That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hithernow for the first time.""Have you brought any letters -- any documents --any proofs that you are trustworthy and truthful?""Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? HaveI not a tongue, and cannot I say all that myself?""But your saying it, you know, and somebodyelse's saying it, is different.""Different? How might that be? I fear me I donot understand.""Don't understand? Land of -- why, you see --you see -- why, great Scott, can't you understand alittle thing like that? Can't you understand thedifference between your -- why do you look so innocent and idiotic!""I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will ofGod.""Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it.Don't mind my seeming excited; I'm not. Let uschange the subject. Now as to this castle, with fortyfive princesses in it, and three ogres at the head of it,tell me -- where is this harem?""Harem?""The castle, you understand; where is the castle?""Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen,and lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues.""How many?""Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, theyare so many, and do so lap the one upon the other,and being made all in the same image and tincted withthe same color, one may not know the one league fromits fellow, nor how to count them except they be takenapart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do that,being not within man's capacity; for ye will note --""Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance;whereabouts does the castle lie? What's the directionfrom here?""Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction fromhere; by reason that the road lieth not straight, butturneth evermore; wherefore the direction of its placeabideth not, but is some time under the one sky andanon under another, whereso if ye be minded that it isin the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe thatthe way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself bythe space of half a circle, and this marvel happingagain and yet again and still again, it will grieve youthat you had thought by vanities of the mind to thwartand bring to naught the will of Him that giveth not acastle a direction from a place except it pleaseth Him,and if it please Him not, will the rather that even allcastles and all directions thereunto vanish out of theearth, leaving the places wherein they tarried desolateand vacant, so warning His creatures that where Hewill He will, and where He will not He --""Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest;never mind about the direction, hang the direction -- Ibeg pardon, I beg a thousand pardons, I am not wellto-day; pay no attention when I soliloquize, it is anold habit, an old, bad habit, and hard to get rid ofwhen one's digestion is all disordered with eating foodthat was raised forever and ever before he was born;good land! a man can't keep his functions regular onspring chickens thirteen hundred years old. But come-- never mind about that; let's -- have you got sucha thing as a map of that region about you? Now agood map --""Is it peradventure that manner of thing which oflate the unbelievers have brought from over the greatseas, which, being boiled in oil, and an onion and saltadded thereto, doth --""What, a map? What are you talking about?Don't you know what a map is? There, there, nevermind, don't explain, I hate explanations; they fog athing up so that you can't tell anything about it. Runalong, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence."Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why thesedonkeys didn't prospect these liars for details. Itmay be that this girl had a fact in her somewhere, butI don't believe you could have sluiced it out with ahydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of blasting,even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was aperfect ass; and yet the king and his knights hadlistened to her as if she had been a leaf out of thegospel. It kind of sizes up the whole party. Andthink of the simple ways of this court: this wanderingwench hadn't any more trouble to get access to theking in his palace than she would have had to get intothe poorhouse in my day and country. In fact, hewas glad to see her, glad to hear her tale; with thatadventure of hers to offer, she was as welcome as acorpse is to a coroner.Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarencecame back. I remarked upon the barren result of myefforts with the girl; hadn't got hold of a single pointthat could help me to find the castle. The youthlooked a little surprised, or puzzled, or something, andintimated that he had been wondering to himself whatI had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for."Why, great guns," I said, "don't I want to findthe castle? And how else would I go about it?""La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answerthat, I ween. She will go with thee. They alwaysdo. She will ride with thee.""Ride with me? Nonsense!""But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee.Thou shalt see.""What? She browse around the hills and scour thewoods with me -- alone -- and I as good as engaged tobe married? Why, it's scandalous. Think how itwould look."My, the dear face that rose before me! The boywas eager to know all about this tender matter. Iswore him to secresy and then whispered her name -"Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed, and saidhe didn't remember the countess. How natural it wasfor the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked mewhere she lived."In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped,a little confused; then I said, "Never mind, now; I'lltell you some time."And might he see her? Would I let him see hersome day?It was but a little thing to promise -- thirteen hundred years or so -- and he so eager; so I said Yes.But I sighed; I couldn't help it. And yet there wasno sense in sighing, for she wasn't born yet. But thatis the way we are made: we don't reason, where wefeel; we just feel.My expedition was all the talk that day and thatnight, and the boys were very good to me, and mademuch of me, and seemed to have forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as anxiousfor me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they were good children -- but just children, that is all. And they gave me no end of pointsabout how to scout for giants, and how to scoop themin; and they told me all sorts of charms against enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish toput on my wounds. But it never occurred to one ofthem to reflect that if I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be, I ought not to needsalves or instructions, or charms against enchantments,and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of anykind -- even against fire-spouting dragons, and devilshot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries asthese I was after, these commonplace ogres of theback settlements.I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn,for that was the usual way; but I had the demon'sown time with my armor, and this delayed me a little.It is troublesome to get into, and there is so muchdetail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket aroundyour body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off thecold iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt ofchain mail -- these are made of small steel links woventogether, and they form a fabric so flexible that if youtoss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps into a pile likea peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and is nearlythe uncomfortablest material in the world for a nightshirt, yet plenty used it for that -- tax collectors, andreformers, and one-horse kings with a defective title,and those sorts of people; then you put on your shoes-- flat-boats roofed over with interleaving bands ofsteel -- and screw your clumsy spurs into the heels.Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and yourcuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate andyour breastplate, and you begin to feel crowded; thenyou hitch onto the breastplate the half-petticoat ofbroad overlapping bands of steel which hangs down infront but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down,and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coalscuttle, either for looks or for wear, or to wipe yourhands on; next you belt on your sword; then youput your stove-pipe joints onto your arms, your irongauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap ontoyour head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it tohang over the back of your neck -- and there you are,snug as a candle in a candle-mould. This is no timeto dance. Well, a man that is packed away like thatis a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so littleof the meat, when you get down to it, by comparisonwith the shell.The boys helped me, or I never could have got in.Just as we finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and Isaw that as like as not I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How stately he looked;and tall and broad and grand. He had on his head aconical steel casque that only came down to his ears,and for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extendeddown to his upper lip and protected his nose; and allthe rest of him, from neck to heel, was flexible chainmail, trousers and all. But pretty much all of him washidden under his outside garment, which of course wasof chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from hisshoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to thebottom, both before and behind, was divided, so thathe could ride and let the skirts hang down on eachside. He was going grailing, and it was just the outfitfor it, too. I would have given a good deal for thatulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around.The sun was just up, the king and the court were allon hand to see me off and wish me luck; so it wouldn'tbe etiquette for me to tarry. You don't get on yourhorse yourself; no, if you tried it you would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carry asun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, andhelp get you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups;and all the while you do feel so strange and stuffy andlike somebody else -- like somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning, or somethinglike that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and is sortof numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then theystood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket bymy left foot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastlythey hung my shield around my neck, and I was allcomplete and ready to up anchor and get to sea.Everybody was as good to me as they could be, anda maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self.There was nothing more to do now, but for thatdamsel to get up behind me on a pillion, which shedid, and put an arm or so around me to hold on.And so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved their handkerchiefs or helmets. Andeverybody we met, going down the hill and throughthe village was respectful to us, except some shabbylittle boys on the outskirts. They said:"Oh, what a guy!" And hove clods at us.In my experience boys are the same in all ages.They don't respect anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. They say "Go up, baldhead" tothe prophet going his unoffending way in the gray ofantiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of theMiddle Ages; and I had seen them act the same wayin Buchanan's administration; I remember, because Iwas there and helped. The prophet had his bears andsettled with his boys; and I wanted to get down andsettle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because Icouldn't have got up again. I hate a country withouta derrick.