“The question is,” said Pluto to the deceased Tutor, “which of our penalties we can assign to you. Something you must have, you know: it’s the rule of the place.”
“Sorry to hear you say so,” replied the Tutor. “I had hoped that perhaps I might be allowed a little quiet to enjoy the pleasant warmth—my doctor really sent me here as an alternative to Algiers—and possibly throw in a little journalistic work which would advertise you in the evening papers. You’re not known enough up there.”
“Not known? Why, surely you yourself must often have been recommended to—”
“Of course, of course,” the Tutor hastily interrupted,—“but not by any one whose opinion or advice I at all respected. Whereas if I might just have leisure to look round and jot things down, now that I am here, I could put you in touch with specialists who—”
“Now, look here,” said the Monarch, “if you’re going to stay here at all, you must please to remember that this isn’t a University. I simply won’t have idlers loafing round wasting their own time and demoralizing society with their lazy habits. Pardon my abruptness” (he continued, more mildly), “but with all the exclusiveness in the world I can’t prevent our getting a little mixed now and then, and if people come here with academic ideas I really couldn’t be responsible for order and morality. We should be as Anglo-Indian as Olympus in no time.”
“Very true! very true!” said the Shade. “I quite see. Satan finds some mischief still—eh? as I used to say when I was a Dean. Since you really insist on it, I suppose there had better be some trifling torture by way of occupation. Only look here—it mustn’t be any of the things I used to do up above. Quite absurd, you know, to go on reading the same books you did at school—no, I mean, to be made to continue on the same old lines I followed before I came up—down, I should say. It’s so monotonous, and it isn’t improving.”
“Well,” said Pluto, “we’ll see what can be done, on that assumption. It does rather limit possibilities, though, doesn’t it? You see I have to
confess that, considering it’s the nineteenth century, we are a little behind the times—no great variety in the matter of punishments.”
“Why don’t you bring them up to date?” asked the visitor.
“Practically,” he replied, “it’s a question of expense. With funds, I could do much more. Roasting over a slow fire, for instance, is good: they have that in another place: but just think of the coal bill! Then viva-voceing and vivisecting without anæsthetics are of course admirable; but the cost of expert labour involved would be ruinous. Result is, that nearly all my penalties are self-acting and consequently simple in design; and, on the whole, except in the case of blasés people who come here with a too varied experience, they answer tolerably well.”