Chapter XXVII: The Yankee and the King Travel Incognito

by Mark Twain

　　About bedtime I took the king to my privatequarters to cut his hair and help him get thehang of the lowly raiment he was to wear. The highclasses wore their hair banged across the forehead buthanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around,whereas the lowest ranks of commoners were bangedfore and aft both; the slaves were bangless, andallowed their hair free growth. So I inverted a bowlover his head and cut away all the locks that hungbelow it. I also trimmed his whiskers and mustacheuntil they were only about a half-inch long; and triedto do it inartistically, and succeeded. It was a villainousdisfigurement. When he got his lubberly sandals on,and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth, whichhung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he wasno longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but oneof the unhandsomest and most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barbered alike, andcould pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, orshepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, ifwe chose, our costume being in effect universal amongthe poor, because of its strength and cheapness. Idon't mean that it was really cheap to a very poorperson, but I do mean that it was the cheapest materialthere was for male attire -- manufactured material, youunderstand.We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broadsun-up had made eight or ten miles, and were in themidst of a sparsely settled country. I had a prettyheavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions -- provisions for the king to taper down on, till he couldtake to the coarse fare of the country without damage.I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then gave him a morsel or two to stay hisstomach with. Then I said I would find some waterfor him, and strolled away. Part of my project was toget out of sight and sit down and rest a little myself.It had always been my custom to stand when in hispresence; even at the council board, except uponthose rare occasions when the sitting was a very longone, extending over hours; then I had a trifling littlebackless thing which was like a reversed culvert andwas as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want tobreak him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. Weshould have to sit together now when in company, orpeople would notice; but it would not be good politicsfor me to be playing equality with him when there wasno necessity for it.I found the water some three hundred yards away,and had been resting about twenty minutes, when Iheard voices. That is all right, I thought -- peasantsgoing to work; nobody else likely to be stirring thisearly. But the next moment these comers jingled intosight around a turn of the road -- smartly clad peopleof quality, with luggage-mules and servants in theirtrain! I was off like a shot, through the bushes, bythe shortest cut. For a while it did seem that thesepeople would pass the king before I could get to him;but desperation gives you wings, you know, and Icanted my body forward, inflated my breast, and heldmy breath and flew. I arrived. And in plenty goodenough time, too."Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony --jump! Jump to your feet -- some quality are coming!""Is that a marvel? Let them come.""But my liege! You must not be seen sitting.Rise! -- and stand in humble posture while they pass.You are a peasant, you know.""True -- I had forgot it, so lost was I in planningof a huge war with Gaul" -- he was up by this time,but a farm could have got up quicker, if there wasany kind of a boom in real estate -- "and right-so athought came randoming overthwart this majesticdream the which --""A humbler attitude, my lord the king -- andquick! Duck your head! -- more! -- still more! --droop it!"He did his honest best, but lord, it was no greatthings. He looked as humble as the leaning tower atPisa. It is the most you could say of it. Indeed, itwas such a thundering poor success that it raisedwondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeousflunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but Ijumped in time and was under it when it fell; andunder cover of the volley of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned the king to takeno notice. He mastered himself for the moment, butit was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession.I said:"It would end our adventures at the very start;and we, being without weapons, could do nothing withthat armed gang. If we are going to succeed in ouremprise, we must not only look the peasant but actthe peasant.""It is wisdom; none can gainsay it. Let us go on,Sir Boss. I will take note and learn, and do the bestI may."He kept his word. He did the best he could, butI've seen better. If you have ever seen an active,heedless, enterprising child going diligently out ofone mischief and into another all day long, and ananxious mother at its heels all the while, and justsaving it by a hair from drowning itself or breakingits neck with each new experiment, you've seen theking and me.If I could have foreseen what the thing was going tobe like, I should have said, No, if anybody wants tomake his living exhibiting a king as a peasant, let himtake the layout; I can do better with a menagerie, andlast longer. And yet, during the first three days Inever allowed him to enter a hut or other dwelling. Ifhe could pass muster anywhere during his earlynovitiate it would be in small inns and on the road;so to these places we confined ourselves. Yes, hecertainly did the best he could, but what of that? Hedidn't improve a bit that I could see.He was always frightening me, always breaking outwith fresh astonishers, in new and unexpected places.Toward evening on the second day, what does he dobut blandly fetch out a dirk from inside his robe!"Great guns, my liege, where did you get that?""From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve.""What in the world possessed you to buy it?""We have escaped divers dangers by wit -- thy wit-- but I have bethought me that it were but prudenceif I bore a weapon, too. Thine might fail thee insome pinch.""But people of our condition are not allowed tocarry arms. What would a lord say -- yes, or anyother person of whatever condition -- if he caught anupstart peasant with a dagger on his person?"It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came alongjust then. I persuaded him to throw the dirk away;and it was as easy as persuading a child to give upsome bright fresh new way of killing itself. We walkedalong, silent and thinking. Finally the king said:"When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath a peril in it, why do you notwarn me to cease from that project?"It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn'tquite know how to take hold of it, or what to say, andso, of course, I ended by saying the natural thing:"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughtsare?"The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared atme."I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; andtruly in magic thou art. But prophecy is greater thanmagic. Merlin is a prophet."I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back mylost ground. After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said:"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain.There are two kinds of prophecy. One is the gift toforetell things that are but a little way off, the other isthe gift to foretell things that are whole ages andcenturies away. Which is the mightier gift, do youthink?""Oh, the last, most surely!""True. Does Merlin possess it?""Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birthand future kingship that were twenty years away.""Has he ever gone beyond that?""He would not claim more, I think.""It is probably his limit. All prophets have theirlimit. The limit of some of the great prophets hasbeen a hundred years.""These are few, I ween.""There have been two still greater ones, whose limitwas four hundred and six hundred years, and onewhose limit compassed even seven hundred andtwenty.""Gramercy, it is marvelous!""But what are these in comparison with me? Theyare nothing.""What? Canst thou truly look beyond even sovast a stretch of time as --""Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as thevision of an eagle does my prophetic eye penetrate andlay bare the future of this world for nearly thirteencenturies and a half!"My land, you should have seen the king's eyesspread slowly open, and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! That settled Brer Merlin.One never had any occasion to prove his facts, withthese people; all he had to do was to state them. Itnever occurred to anybody to doubt the statement."Now, then," I continued, "I could work bothkinds of prophecy -- the long and the short -- if Ichose to take the trouble to keep in practice; but Iseldom exercise any but the long kind, because theother is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin'ssort -- stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course, I whet up now and then and flirtout a minor prophecy, but not often -- hardly ever, infact. You will remember that there was great talk,when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about myhaving prophesied your coming and the very hour ofyour arrival, two or three days beforehand.""Indeed, yes, I mind it now.""Well, I could have done it as much as forty timeseasier, and piled on a thousand times more detail intothe bargain, if it had been five hundred years awayinstead of two or three days.""How amazing that it should be so!""Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thingthat is five hundred years away easier than he can athing that's only five hundred seconds off.""And yet in reason it should clearly be the otherway; it should be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first, for, indeed, it is so close bythat one uninspired might almost see it. In truth, thelaw of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods, moststrangely making the difficult easy, and the easydifficult."It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safedisguise for it; you could know it for a king's under adiving-bell, if you could hear it work its intellect.I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it.The king was as hungry to find out everything that wasgoing to happen during the next thirteen centuries asif he were expecting to live in them. From that timeout, I prophesied myself bald-headed trying to supplythe demand. I have done some indiscreet things inmy day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophetwas the worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. Aprophet doesn't have to have any brains. They aregood to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies oflife, but they are no use in professional work. It isthe restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit ofprophecy comes upon you, you merely cake yourintellect and lay it off in a cool place for a rest, andunship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work itself:the result is prophecy.Every day a knight-errant or so came along, andthe sight of them fired the king's martial spirit everytime. He would have forgotten himself, sure, andsaid something to them in a style a suspicious shadeor so above his ostensible degree, and so I always gothim well out of the road in time. Then he would standand look with all his eyes; and a proud light wouldflash from them, and his nostrils would inflate like awar-horse's, and I knew he was longing for a brushwith them. But about noon of the third day I hadstopped in the road to take a precaution which hadbeen suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen tomy share two days before; a precaution which I hadafterward decided to leave untaken, I was so loath toinstitute it; but now I had just had a fresh reminder:while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread andintellect at rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed mytoe and fell sprawling. I was so pale I couldn't thinkfor a moment; then I got softly and carefully up andunstrapped my knapsack. I had that dynamite bombin it, done up in wool in a box. It was a good thingto have along; the time would come when I could doa valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervousthing to have about me, and I didn't like to ask theking to carry it. Yet I must either throw it away orthink up some safe way to get along with its society.I got it out and slipped it into my scrip, and just thenhere came a couple of knights. The king stood,stately as a statue, gazing toward them -- had forgotten himself again, of course -- and before I couldget a word of warning out, it was time for him to skip,and well that he did it, too. He supposed they wouldturn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirtunder foot? When had he ever turned aside himself --or ever had the chance to do it, if a peasant saw himor any other noble knight in time to judiciously savehim the trouble? The knights paid no attention tothe king at all; it was his place to look out himself,and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidlyridden down, and laughed at besides.The king was in a flaming fury, and launched outhis challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor.The knights were some little distance by now. Theyhalted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddlesand looked back, as if wondering if it might be worthwhile to bother with such scum as we. Then theywheeled and started for us. Not a moment must belost. I started for them. I passed them at a rattlinggait, and as I went by I flung out a hair-lifting soulscorching thirteen-jointed insult which made the king'seffort poor and cheap by comparison. I got it out ofthe nineteenth century where they know how. Theyhad such headway that they were nearly to the kingbefore they could check up; then, frantic with rage,they stood up their horses on their hind hoofs andwhirled them around, and the next moment here theycame, breast to breast. I was seventy yards off, then,and scrambling up a great bowlder at the roadside.When they were within thirty yards of me they let theirlong lances droop to a level, depressed their mailedheads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streamingstraight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightningexpress came tearing for me! When they were withinfifteen yards, I sent that bomb with a sure aim, and itstruck the ground just under the horses' noses.Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty tosee. It resembled a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the next fifteen minutes we stoodunder a steady drizzle of microscopic fragments ofknights and hardware and horse-flesh. I say we, forthe king joined the audience, of course, as soon as hehad got his breath again. There was a hole therewhich would afford steady work for all the people inthat region for some years to come -- in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service wouldbe comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot ofa select few -- peasants of that seignory; and theywouldn't get anything for it, either.But I explained it to the king myself. I said it wasdone with a dynamite bomb, This information didhim no damage, because it left him as intelligent as hewas before. However, it was a noble miracle, in hiseyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thought itwell enough to explain that this was a miracle of sorare a sort that it couldn't be done except when theatmospheric conditions were just right. Otherwise hewould be encoring it every time we had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I hadn'tany more bombs along.