There were other surprises: flesh and game and wines and fruits--things which had been strangers in that house lately; but Marget made no exclamations, and now even looked unsurprised, which was Satan's influence, of course.Satan talked right along, and was entertaining, and made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and although he told a good many lies, it was no harm in him, for he was only an angel and did not know any better.They do not know right from wrong; I knew this, because I remembered what he had said about it.He got on the good side of Ursula.He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speaking just loud enough for Ursula to hear.He said she was a fine woman, and he hoped some day to bring her and his uncle together.Very soon Ursula was mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous girly way, and smoothing out her gown and prinking at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time pretending she was not hearing what Satan was saying.I was ashamed, for it showed us to be what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial.
Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and to have a clever woman presiding over the festivities would double the attractions of the place.
"But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?" asked Marget.
"Yes," said Satan indifferently; "some even call him a Prince, out of compliment, but he is not bigoted; to him personal merit is everything, rank nothing."My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes came along and licked it; by this act a secret was revealed.I started to say, "It is all a mistake;this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles on her tongue point inward, not outward." But the words did not come, because they couldn't.
Satan smiled upon me, and I understood.
When it was dark Marget took food and wine and fruit, in a basket, and hurried away to the jail, and Satan and I walked toward my home.I was thinking to myself that I should like to see what the inside of the jail was like; Satan overheard the thought, and the next moment we were in the jail.We were in the torture-chamber, Satan said.The rack was there, and the other instruments, and there was a smoky lantern or two hanging on the walls and helping to make the place look dim and dreadful.There were people there--and executioners--but as they took no notice of us, it meant that we were invisible.A young man lay bound, and Satan said he was suspected of being a heretic, and the executioners were about to inquire into it.They asked the man to confess to the charge, and he said he could not, for it was not true.Then they drove splinter after splinter under his nails, and he shrieked with the pain.Satan was not disturbed, but I could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of there.
I was faint and sick, but the fresh air revived me, and we walked toward my home.I said it was a brutal thing.
"No, it was a human thing.You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it," and he went on talking like that."It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone possess them.No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense.When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong.And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it--only man does that.Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! Asense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do.Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he prefers the wrong.There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn't be any.And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession.Are you feeling better? Let me show you something."
Chapter 6
In a moment we were in a French village.We walked through a great factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved, and weak and drowsy.Satan said: