Yes, that was a very fine thing to say; but before an hour had gone
by the Fiddler’s head began to hum and buzz like a beehive. “I don’t
believe,” said he, “there would be a grain of harm in my peeping inside
that door; all the same, I will not do it. I will just go down and peep
through the key-hole.” So off he went to do as he said; but there was
no key-hole to that door, either. “Why, look!” says he, “it is just like
the door at the rich man’s house over yonder; I wonder if it is the same
inside as outside,” and he opened the door and peeped in. Yes; there was
the long passage and the spark of light at the far end, as though the
sun were shining. He cocked his head to one side and listened. “Yes,”
said he, “I think I hear the water rushing, but I am not sure; I will
just go a little further in and listen,” and so he entered and closed
the door behind him. Well, he went on and on until--pop! there he was
out at the farther end, and before he knew what he was about he had
stepped out upon the sea-shore, just as he had done before.
Whiz! whirr! Away flew the Fiddler like a bullet, and there was Ill-Luck
carrying him by the belt again. Away they sped, over hill and valley,
over moor and mountain, until the Fiddler’s head grew so dizzy that
he had to shut his eyes. Suddenly Ill-Luck let him drop, and down he
fell--thump! bump!--on the hard ground. Then he opened his eyes and sat
up, and, lo and behold! there he was, under the oak-tree whence he had
started in the first place. There lay his fiddle, just as he had left
it. He picked it up and ran his fingers over the strings--trum, twang!
Then he got to his feet and brushed the dirt and grass from his knees.
He tucked his fiddle under his arm, and off he stepped upon the way he
had been going at first.
“Just to think!” said he, “I would either have been the richest man
in the world, or else I would have been a king, if it had not been for
Ill-Luck.”
And that is the way we all of us talk.
Dr. Faustus had sat all the while neither drinking ale nor smoking
tobacco, but with his hands folded, and in silence. “I know not why it
is,” said he, “but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind
a story of a man whom I once knew--a great magician in his time, and
a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a
rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher as well.”
“Tis a long list of excellency,” said old Bidpai.
“Tis not as long as was his head,” said Dr. Faustus.
“It would be good for us all to hear a story of such a man,” said old
Bidpai.
“Nay,” said Dr. Faustus, “the story is not altogether of the man
himself, but rather of a pupil who came to learn wisdom of him.”
“And the name of your story is what?” said Fortunatus.
“It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus.
“Nay,” said St. George, “everything must have a name.”
“It hath no name,” said Dr. Faustus. “But I shall give it a name, and it
shall be--”
Empty Bottles
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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