Марк Твен – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Янки из Коннектикута при дворе короля Артура. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 17)
And now here I was, in a country where the right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus-side of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler[70] who tries such a thing without first educating his materials up to revolution-grade is almost absolutely certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left; even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the “deal” which had been for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort.
So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him. After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark:
“Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand.”
“He is a priest, then,” said the man, and some of the enthusiasm went out of his face.
“How – a priest? Didn’t I tell you that no chattel of the Church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was your own free property?”
“Marry it is so, and for that was I glad; wherefore it liked me not, and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there.”
“But he isn’t a priest, I tell you.”
The man looked far from satisfied. He said:
“He is not a priest, and yet can read?”
“He is not a priest, and yet can read – yes, and write, too, for that matter. I taught him myself.” The man’s face cleared. “And it is the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory…”
“I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why, I will be your slave, your…”
“No you won’t; you won’t be anybody’s slave. Take your family and go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your small property, but no matter, Clarence will fix you all right.”
Chapter 14
“Defend Thee, Lord!”
I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen persons for that money; but I was feeling good, by this time, and I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial lift where the money would do so much more good than it would in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron, and not stinted in weight, my half dollar’s worth was a good deal of a burden to me. I spent money rather too freely, in those days, it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn’t got the proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long a sojourn in Britain – hadn’t got along to where I was able to absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur’s land and a couple of dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted the American values exclusively. In a week or two, now, cents, nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars, and also a trifle of gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this new blood freshen up its life.
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