The soldiers hastened off in the direction he had indicated; while Abner went home chuckling over his cunning. Before he was twenty-four hours older, however, a company of the palace guards defiled his house by entering it on the Sabbath, and dragged him into the presence of the Emperor of Morocco.
"Dog of a Jew!" shouted the emperor. "You dare to send the imperial servants, who were pursuing a fugitive, on a false scent into the mountains, while the slave was fleeing towards the coast, and very nearly escaped on a Spanish ship. Seize him, soldiers! A hundred on his soles, and a hundred zecchini from his purse! The more his feet swell under the lash, the more his purse will collapse."
You know, O Sire, that in the kingdom of Fez and Morocco the people love swift justice; and so the poor Abner was whipped and taxed without consulting his own inclinations beforehand. He cursed his fate, that condemned his feet and his purse to suffer every time it pleased his majesty to lose any thing. As he limped out of the room, bellowing and groaning, amidst the laughter of the rough court people, Schnuri, the jester, said to him: "You ought to be contented, Abner, ungrateful Abner; is it not honor enough for you that every loss that our gracious emperor--whom God preserve--suffers, likewise arouses in your bosom the profoundest grief? But if you will promise me a good fee, I will come to your shop in Jews Alley an hour before the Sovereign of the West is to lose any thing, and say: 'Don't go out of your house, Abner; you know why; shut yourself up in your bedroom under lock and key until sunset.'"
This, O Sire, is the story of Abner, the Jew, Who had seen Nothing.
When the slave had finished, and every thing was quiet in the salon, the young writer reminded the old man that the thread of their discourse had been broken, and requested him to declare wherein lay the captivating power of tales.
"I will reply to your question," returned the old man. "The human spirit is lighter and more easily moved than water, although that is tossed into all kinds of shapes, and by degrees, too, bores through the thickest objects. It is light and free as the air, and, like that element, the higher it is lifted from earth, the lighter and purer it is. Therefore is there an inclination in humanity to lift itself above the common events of life, in order to give itself the freer play accorded in more lofty domains, even if it be only in dreams. You yourself, my young friend, said to me: 'We lived in those stories, we thought and felt with those beings,' and hence the charm they had for you. While you listened to the stories of yonder slaves, that were only fictions invented by another, did you also use your imagination? You did not remain in spirit with the objects around you, nor were you engrossed by your every-day thoughts: no, you experienced in your own person all that was told; it was you yourself to whom this and that adventure occurred, so strongly were you interested in the hero of the tale. Thus your spirit raised itself, on the thread of such a story, over and away from the present, which does not appear so fair or have such charms for you. Thus this spirit moved about, free and unconfined in a strange and higher atmosphere; fiction became reality to you--or, if you prefer, reality became fiction--because your imagination and being were absorbed into fiction."
"I do not quite comprehend you," returned the young merchant; "but you are right in saying that we live in fiction, or fiction lives in us. I remember clearly that beautiful time when we had nothing to do. Waking, we dreamed; we pretended that we were wrecked on desert islands, and took counsel with one another as to what we should do to prolong our lives; and often we built ourselves huts in a willow copse, made scanty meals of miserable fruits, although we could have procured the very best at the house not a hundred paces distant; yes, there were even times when we waited for the appearance of a kind fairy, or a wonderful dwarf, who should step up to us and say: 'The earth is about to open--will it please you to descend with me down to my palace of rock-crystal, and take your choice of what my servants, the baboons, can serve up?'"
The young men laughed, but confessed to their friend that he had spoken truth. "To this day," continued another, "this enchantment creeps over me now and then. I became, for instance, somewhat vexed at the stupid fable with which my brother would come rushing up to the door: 'Have you heard of the misfortune of our neighbor, the stout baker? He had dealings with a magician, who, out of revenge, transformed him into a bear, and now he lies within his chamber growling fearfully.' I would get angry, and call him a liar. But what a different aspect the case took on when I was told that the stout neighbor had made a journey into a far-distant and unknown land, and there fell into the hands of a magician who transformed him into a bear! I would after a while find myself absorbed in the story; would take the trip with my stout neighbor; experience wonderful adventures, and it would not have astonished me very much if he had actually been stuck into a bear-skin and forced to go on all fours."
"And yet," said the old man, "there is a very delightful form of narrative, in which neither fairies nor magicians figure, no palace of crystal and no genii who bring the most delicious food, no magic horse, but a kind that differs materially from those usually designated as tales."
"Another kind?" exclaimed the young men. "Please explain to us more clearly what you mean."