Chapter XXII: The Holy Fountain

by Mark Twain

　　The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise theywould have acted differently. They had come along and difficult journey, and now when the journeywas nearly finished, and they learned that the mainthing they had come for had ceased to exist, theydidn't do as horses or cats or angle-worms wouldprobably have done -- turn back and get at somethingprofitable -- no, anxious as they had before been tosee the miraculous fountain, they were as much asforty times as anxious now to see the place where ithad used to be. There is no accounting for humanbeings.We made good time; and a couple of hours beforesunset we stood upon the high confines of the Valleyof Holiness, and our eyes swept it from end to endand noted its features. That is, its large features.These were the three masses of buildings. They weredistant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert-- and was. Such a scene is always mournful, it is soimpressively still, and looks so steeped in death. Butthere was a sound here which interrupted the stillnessonly to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint farsound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on thepassing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardlyknew whether we heard it with our ears or with ourspirits.We reached the monastery before dark, and therethe males were given lodging, but the women were sentover to the nunnery. The bells were close at handnow, and their solemn booming smote upon the earlike a message of doom. A superstitious despair possessed the heart of every monk and published itselfin his ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed,soft-sandaled, tallow-visaged specters appeared, flittedabout and disappeared, noiseless as the creatures of atroubled dream, and as uncanny.The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Evento tears; but he did the shedding himself. He said:"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. Anwe bring not the water back again, and soon, we areruined, and the good work of two hundred years mustend. And see thou do it with enchantments that beholy, for the Church will not endure that work in hercause be done by devil's magic.""When I work, Father, be sure there will be nodevil's work connected with it. I shall use no artsthat come of the devil, and no elements not createdby the hand of God. But is Merlin working strictlyon pious lines?""Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would,and took oath to make his promise good.""Well, in that case, let him proceed.""But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?""It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neitherwould it be professional courtesy. Two of a trademust not underbid each other. We might as well cutrates and be done with it; it would arrive at that inthe end. Merlin has the contract; no other magiciancan touch it till he throws it up.""But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the act is thereby justified. And if it werenot so, who will give law to the Church? The Churchgiveth law to all; and what she wills to do, that shemay do, hurt whom it may. I will take it from him;you shall begin upon the moment.""It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say,where power is supreme, one can do as one likes andsuffer no injury; but we poor magicians are not sosituated. Merlin is a very good magician in a smallway, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. Heis struggling along, doing the best he can, and it wouldnot be etiquette for me to take his job until he himselfabandons it."The abbot's face lighted."Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuadehim to abandon it.""No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say.If he were persuaded against his will, he would loadthat well with a malicious enchantment which wouldbalk me until I found out its secret. It might take amonth. I could set up a little enchantment of minewhich I call the telephone, and he could not find outits secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, hemight block me for a month. Would you like to risk amonth in a dry time like this?""A month! The mere thought of it maketh me toshudder. Have it thy way, my son. But my heart isheavy with this disappointment. Leave me, and letme wear my spirit with weariness and waiting, even asI have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thusthe thing that is called rest, the prone body makingoutward sign of repose where inwardly is none."Of course, it would have been best, all round, forMerlin to waive etiquette and quit and call it half aday, since he would never be able to start that water,for he was a true magician of the time; which is tosay, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his reputation, always had the luck to be performed whennobody but Merlin was present; he couldn't start thiswell with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was asbad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for aspiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to besome skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucialmoment and spoil everything. But I did not wantMerlin to retire from the job until I was ready to takehold of it effectively myself; and I could not do thatuntil I got my things from Camelot, and that wouldtake two or three days.My presence gave the monks hope, and cheeredthem up a good deal; insomuch that they ate a squaremeal that night for the first time in ten days. Assoon as their stomachs had been properly reinforcedwith food, their spirits began to rise fast; when themead began to go round they rose faster. By thetime everybody was half-seas over, the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; sowe stayed by the board and put it through on thatline. Matters got to be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that made the tears run downand cavernous mouths stand wide and the round belliesshake with laughter; and questionable songs werebellowed out in a mighty chorus that drowned theboom of the tolling bells.At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was thesuccess of it. Not right off, of course, for the nativeof those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon theearly applications of a humorous thing; but the fifthtime I told it, they began to crack in places; the eighttime I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfthrepetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenththey disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept themup. This language is figurative. Those islanders --well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of returnfor your investment of effort, but in the end they makethe pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin wasthere, enchanting away like a beaver, but not raisingthe moisture. He was not in a pleasant humor; andevery time I hinted that perhaps this contract was ashade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongueand cursed like a bishop -- French bishop of theRegency days, I mean.Matters were about as I expected to find them.The "fountain" was an ordinary well, it had been dugin the ordinary way, and stoned up in the ordinaryway. There was no miracle about it. Even the liethat had created its reputation was not miraculous; Icould have told it myself, with one hand tied behindme. The well was in a dark chamber which stood inthe center of a cut-stone chapel, whose walls werehung with pious pictures of a workmanship that wouldhave made a chromo feel good; pictures historicallycommemorative of curative miracles which had beenachieved by the waters when nobody was looking.That is, nobody but angels; they are always on deckwhen there is a miracle to the fore -- so as to get putin the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that asa fire company; look at the old masters.The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; thewater was drawn with a windlass and chain by monks,and poured into troughs which delivered it into stonereservoirs outside in the chapel -- when there waswater to draw, I mean -- and none but monks couldenter the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority to do so, by courtesy of my professionalbrother and subordinate. But he hadn't entered ithimself. He did everything by incantations; he neverworked his intellect. If he had stepped in there andused his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he couldhave cured the well by natural means, and then turnedit into a miracle in the customary way; but no, he wasan old numskull, a magician who believed in his ownmagic; and no magician can thrive who is handicappedwith a superstition like that.I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; thatsome of the wall stones near the bottom had fallen andexposed fissures that allowed the water to escape. Imeasured the chain -- 98 feet. Then I called incouple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, andmade them lower me in the bucket. When the chainwas all paid out, the candle confirmed my suspicion;a considerable section of the wall was gone, exposing agood big fissure.I almost regretted that my theory about the well'strouble was correct, because I had another one thathad a showy point or two about it for a miracle. Iremembered that in America, many centuries later,when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to blast itout with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find thiswell dry and no explanation of it, I could astonishthese people most nobly by having a person of noespecial value drop a dynamite bomb into it. It wasmy idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was plainthat there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannothave everything the way he would like it. A man hasno business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in nohurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet.And it did, too.When I was above ground again, I turned out themonks, and let down a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there was forty-one feetof water in it I I called in a monk and asked:"How deep is the well?""That, sir, I wit not, having never been told.""How does the water usually stand in it?""Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth, brought down to us through our predecessors."It was true -- as to recent times at least -- for therewas witness to it, and better witness than a monk;only about twenty or thirty feet of the chain showedwear and use, the rest of it was unworn and rusty.What had happened when the well gave out that othertime? Without doubt some practical person had comealong and mended the leak, and then had come up andtold the abbot he had discovered by divination that ifthe sinful bath were destroyed the well would flowagain. The leak had befallen again now, and thesechildren would have prayed, and processioned, andtolled their bells for heavenly succor till they all driedup and blew away, and no innocent of them all wouldever have thought to drop a fish-line into the well orgo down in it and find out what was really the matter.Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things toget away from in the world. It transmits itself likephysical form and feature; and for a man, in thosedays, to have had an idea that his ancestors hadn'thad, would have brought him under suspicion of beingillegitimate. I said to the monk:"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a drywell, but we will try, if my brother Merlin fails.Brother Merlin is a very passable artist, but only in theparlor-magic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, isnot likely to succeed. But that should be nothing tohis discredit; the man that can do this kind of miracleknows enough to keep hotel.""Hotel? I mind not to have heard --""Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The manthat can do this miracle can keep hostel. I can do thismiracle; I shall do this miracle; yet I do not try toconceal from you that it is a miracle to tax the occultpowers to the last strain.""None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for it is of record that aforetime it wasparlous difficult and took a year. Natheless, God sendyou good success, and to that end will we pray."As a matter of business it was a good idea to get thenotion around that the thing was difficult. Many asmall thing has been made large by the right kind ofadvertising. That monk was filled up with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.In two days the solicitude would be booming.On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She hadbeen sampling the hermits. I said:"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there a matinee?""A which, please you, sir?""Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?""Who?""The hermits, of course.""Keep open?""Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Dothey knock off at noon?""Knock off?""Knock off? -- yes, knock off. What is the matterwith knock off? I never saw such a dunderhead;can't you understand anything at all? In plain terms,do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank thefires --""Shut up shop, draw --""There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired.You can't seem to understand the simplest thing."I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to medole and sorrow that I fail, albeit sith I am but asimple damsel and taught of none, being from thecradle unbaptized in those deep waters of learning thatdo anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of thatmost noble sacrament, investing him with reverendstate to the mental eye of the humble mortal who, bybar and lack of that great consecration seeth in hisown unlearned estate but a symbol of that other sortof lack and loss which men do publish to the pityingeye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes ofgrief do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, whensuch shall in the darkness of his mind encounter thesegolden phrases of high mystery, these shut-up-shops,and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is but by thegrace of God that he burst not for envy of the mindthat can beget, and tongue that can deliver so greatand mellow-sounding miracles of speech, and if theredo ensue confusion in that humbler mind, and failureto divine the meanings of these wonders, then if so bethis miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dearhomage and may not lightly be misprized, nor hadbeen, an ye had noted this complexion of moodand mind and understood that that I would I couldnot, and that I could not I might not, nor yet normight nor could, nor might-not nor could-not, mightbe by advantage turned to the desired would, and so Ipray you mercy of my fault, and that ye will of yourkindness and your charity forgive it, good my masterand most dear lord."I couldn't make it all out -- that is, the details -- butI got the general idea; and enough of it, too, to beashamed. It was not fair to spring those nineteenthcentury technicalities upon the untutored infant of thesixth and then rail at her because she couldn't gettheir drift; and when she was making the honest bestdrive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that shecouldn't fetch the home plate; and so I apologized.Then we meandered pleasantly away toward the hermitholes in sociable converse together, and better friendsthan ever.I was gradually coming to have a mysterious andshuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenevershe pulled out from the station and got her train fairlystarted on one of those horizonless transcontinentalsentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I wasstanding in the awful presence of the Mother of theGerman Language. I was so impressed with this, thatsometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude ofreverence, and stood uncovered; and if words hadbeen water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind tobe delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, ora cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get itinto a single sentence or die. Whenever the literaryGerman dives into a sentence, that is the last you aregoing to see of him till he emerges on the other side ofhis Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon.It was a most strange menagerie. The chief emulationamong them seemed to be, to see which could manageto be the uncleanest and most prosperous with vermin.Their manner and attitudes were the last expression ofcomplacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite'spride to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bitehim and blister him unmolested; it was another's tolean against a rock, all day long, conspicuous to theadmiration of the throng of pilgrims and pray; it wasanother's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;it was another's to drag about with him, year in andyear out, eighty pounds of iron; it was another's tonever lie down when he slept, but to stand among thethorn-bushes and snore when there were pilgrimsaround to look; a woman, who had the white hair ofage, and no other apparel, was black from crown toheel with forty-seven years of holy abstinence fromwater. Groups of gazing pilgrims stood around alland every of these strange objects, lost in reverentwonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity whichthese pious austerities had won for them from anexacting heaven.By and by we went to see one of the supremelygreat ones. He was a mighty celebrity; his fame hadpenetrated all Christendom; the noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on theglobe to pay him reverence. His stand was in thecenter of the widest part of the valley; and it took allthat space to hold his crowds.His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broadplatform on the top of it. He was now doing what hehad been doing every day for twenty years up there --bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly almost to hisfeet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with astop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and 46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all thispower going to waste. It was one of the most usefulmotions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so I madea note in my memorandum book, purposing some dayto apply a system of elastic cords to him and run asewing machine with it. I afterward carried out thatscheme, and got five years' good service out of him;in which time he turned out upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which was ten a day. Iworked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,the same as week days, and it was no use to waste thepower. These shirts cost me nothing but just the meretrifle for the materials -- I furnished those myself, itwould not have been right to make him do that -- andthey sold like smoke to pilgrims at a dollar and a halfapiece, which was the price of fifty cows or a bloodedrace horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as aperfect protection against sin, and advertised as suchby my knights everywhere, with the paint-pot andstencil-plate; insomuch that there was not a cliff or abowlder or a dead wall in England but you could readon it at a mile distance:"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by theNobility. Patent applied for."There was more money in the business than oneknew what to do with. As it extended, I brought outa line of goods suitable for kings, and a nobby thingfor duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stayand triced up with a half-turn in the standing riggingforward of the weather-gaskets. Yes, it was a daisy.But about that time I noticed that the motive powerhad taken to standing on one leg, and I found thatthere was something the matter with the other one; soI stocked the business and unloaded, taking Sir Borsde Ganis into camp financially along with certain of hisfriends; for the works stopped within a year, and thegood saint got him to his rest. But he had earned it.I can say that for him.When I saw him that first time -- however, his personal condition will not quite bear description here.You can read it in the Lives of the Saints. *[* All the details concerning the hermits, in thischapter, are from Lecky -- but greatly modified. Thisbook not being a history but only a tale, the majorityof the historian's frank details were too strong forreproduction in it. - EDITOR]