The Mysterious stranger - Chapter 11

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter eleven of The Mysterious Stranger byMark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the publicdomain. For more information or to
volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Patrick seventy nine, Chapter
eleven. For as much as ayear, Satan continued these visits, but

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at last he came less often,and then for a long time he did
not come at all. This alwaysmade me feel lonely and melancholy. I
felt that he was losing interest inour tiny volue, and might at any

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time abandon his visits entirely. Whenone day he finally came to me,
I was oh overjoyed, but onlyfor a little while. He had come
to say goodbye, he told me, and for the last time. He

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had investigations and undertakings in other coronersof the universe. He said that would
keep him busy for a longer periodthan I could wait for his return.
And you are going away, andwe'll not come back anymore. Yes,
he said, we have comraded longtogether, and it has been pleasant,

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oh pleasant, for both. ButI must go now and we shall not
see each other anymore in this life. Satan, or but in another are
meeting another? Surely then all tranquilityand soberly he made the strange answer,

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there is no other. A subtleinfluence blew upon my spirit from his bringing
with it a vague, dim butblessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words
might be true, even must betrue. Have you never suspected this?

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Theodore? No? But how couldI? But if it can only be
true, it is true. Agust of thankfulness rose in my breast,
but a doubt checked it before itcould issue in words. And I said,

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but we have seen that future life, seen it in its actuality,
and so it was a vision.It had no existence. I could hardly
breathe for the great hope that wasstruggling in me. A vision, a

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vision, life itself is only avision, a dream. It was electrical
by God. I had had thatvery thought a thousand times in my musings.

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Nothing exists a God, man,the world, the sun, the
moon, the wilderness of stars,a dreamy or a dream. They have

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no existence. Nothing exists save emptyspace. And you I and you are
not you. You have no body, nobler, no bones. You are

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but a thought. I myself haveno existence. I am but a dream,
your your truth, truth, truth, creature of your imagination. In
a moment you will have realized this. Then you will banish me from your

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visions, and I shall dissolve intonothingness out of which you made me.
I am perishing already, I amfailing. I am passing away. In
a little while, you will bealone in shoreless space to wonder its limitless

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solitudes, without friend or comrade forever, For you will remain a thought,
the only existent thought, and byyour nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But

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I, your poor servant, haverevealed you to yourself and set you free
dream other dreamies and better. Strangethat you should not have suspected years ago,

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centuries, ages, eons ago,for you have existed companionless through all
the eternities. Strange, indeed,that you should not have suspected that your
universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction, Strange because they

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are so frankly and hysterically insane,like all dreams. A god who could
make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones,
who could have made every one ofthem happy, yet never made a single

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one happy who made them prize theirbitter life, yet stingily cut it short.
Who have made the angels eternal happinessunearned, yet required his other children
to earn it. Who gave hisangels painless lives, y had cursed his

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other children with biting miseries and maladiesof mind and body. Who mouths justice,
and invented hell mouths mercy, andinvented hell mouths golden rules and forgiveness

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multiplied by seventy times seven, andinvented hell, who mouths morals to other
people and has none himself, Whofrowns upon crimes, yet commits them all,
Who created man without invitation, thentries to shuffle the responsibility for man's

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acts upon man instead of honorably placingit where it belongs upon himself. And
finally, with altogether divine obtuseness,invites this poor abused slave to worship him.

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You perceive now that these things areall impossible, except in a you
perceive that they are pure and puerileinsanities, the silly creations of an imagination
that is not conscious of its freaks. In a word, that they are

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a dream, and you the makerof it. The dream marks are all
present. You should have recognized themearlier. It is true that which I
have revealed you. There is noGod, no universe, no human race,

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no earthly life, no heaven,no hell. It is all a
dreamy, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you, and you

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are but a thought, a vagrantthought, her useless thought, a homeless
thought, wandering forlorn among the emptyeternities. Ha ha ha. He vanished,

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and he left me upon for Iknew and realized that all he had
said was true. The End ofthe Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain