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Page 49
"Old on!" he said; "don't pe in te urry - don't. Will you pe
take de odder pottle, or ave you pe got zober yet and come to your
zenzes?"
I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice - once in the
negative, meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the other
bottle at present - and once in the affirmative, intending thus to
imply that I _was_ sober and _had_ positively come to my senses. By
these means I somewhat softened the Angel.
"Und you pelief, ten," he inquired, "at te last? You pelief,
ten, in te possibilty of te odd?"
I again nodded my head in assent.
"Und you ave pelief in _me_, te Angel of te Odd?"
I nodded again.
"Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk and te vool?"
I nodded once more.
"Put your right hand into your left hand preeches pocket, ten, in
token ov your vull zubmizzion unto te Angel ov te Odd."
This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible
to do. In the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall
from the ladder, and, therefore, had I let go my hold with the right
hand, I must have let go altogether. In the second place, I could
have no breeches until I came across the crow. I was therefore
obliged, much to my regret, to shake my head in the negative -
intending thus to give the Angel to understand that I found it
inconvenient, just at that moment, to comply with his very reasonable
demand! No sooner, however, had I ceased shaking my head than -
"Go to der teuffel, ten!" roared the Angel of the Odd.
In pronouncing these words, he drew a sharp knife across the
guide-rope by which I was suspended, and as we then happened to be
precisely over my own house, (which, during my peregrinations, had
been handsomely rebuilt,) it so occurred that I tumbled headlong down
the ample chimney and alit upon the dining-room hearth.
Upon coming to my senses, (for the fall had very thoroughly
stunned me,) I found it about four o'clock in the morning. I lay
outstretched where I had fallen from the balloon. My head grovelled
in the ashes of an extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the
wreck of a small table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a
miscellaneous dessert, intermingled with a newspaper, some broken
glass and shattered bottles, and an empty jug of the Schiedam
Kirschenwasser. Thus revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.
[Mabbott states that Griswold "obviously had a revised form" for use
in the 1856 volume of Poe's works. Mabbott does not substantiate this
claim, but it is surely not unreasonable. An editor, and even
typographical errors, may have produced nearly all of the very minor
changes made in this version. (Indeed, two very necessary words were
clearly dropped by accident.) An editor might have corrected
"Wickliffe's 'Epigoniad' " to "Wilkie's 'Epigoniad'," but is unlikely
to have added "Tuckerman's 'Sicily' " to the list of books read by
the narrator. Griswold was not above forgery (in Poe's letters) when
it suited his purpose, but would have too little to gain by such an
effort in this instance.]
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
MELLONTA TAUTA
TO THE EDITORS OF THE LADY'S BOOK:
I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article which
I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than I
do myself. It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis,
(sometimes called the "Poughkeepsie Seer") of an odd-looking MS.
which I found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating
in the Mare Tenebrarum -- a sea well described by the Nubian
geographer, but seldom visited now-a-days, except for the
transcendentalists and divers for crotchets.
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