Stories Toto Told Me (Valancourt Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page B

cherubini sat in the trees saying nothing, but watching with all their might, for they never had seen such a thing before.
      Presently, as nothing happened to the little divel, he plucked up what small courage he had and took a sly look round. The first thing he saw was the fountain near the magnolia tree; and as the divels know very well what water is, although a rare commodity in their own country, where one drop is worth more than all the wealth the world has ever seen, he plunged head first into the basin, to cool the burning pangs which always torment him. And still the cherubini said not a word, but watched with all their eyes.
      Now the basin, sir, is a deep one, as you know, because you have often dived in there yourself when the sun was in Leo. And the little divel disappeared under the water. But a moment after his head popped up, twitching with pain, amid clouds of steam and a frightful hissing; and he screamed very much and began to clamber over the edge as fast as possible.
      When he got on to the grass, he jumped and skipped all over the place, and shook his wings and squeezed his hairy legs, and stroked his naked breast, and rolled about on the ground, and leaped and howled, till the cherubini found him most diverting, and laughed so much that they tumbled out of the trees, and came and fluttered round the little divel; for this was a far funnier entertainment even than that which they had promised themselves.
      And the reason of it all is very easy to understand, if you will only think. You see, one of the torments that the divels and the damned have to bear is to be always disappointed; they never get their wishes fulfilled; all their plans, no matter how carefully they construct them, fall to the ground; all their arrangements are always upset at the very last moment, and everything goes by the rule of contrary. So when the wretched little creature plunged into the cold water, the heat of hell-flame boiled it, and the Breath of God made it hotter still; and so, instead of being cooled at all, the little divel got handsomely scalded.
      Now, when the cherubini had had their fill of laughter, and could observe accurately this sight, which was to them so strange, they saw great patches of scalded flesh hanging in shreds and strips from his neck and sides and back and belly, and the skinny leather of his wings crinkled and warped, and the horn of his hoofs beginning to peel; and they would have felt sorry, if to grieve over a little divel had not been wrong. So they said nothing, hovering in the air around him, and looking at him with their clear eyes all the time.
      The little divel looked at them too; and, being a cheeky little beast, he asked who, the hell, they were staring at.
      They said that they wanted to play with him, and they desired him to do some more tricks, and to tell them merry stories, and where he came from, and what he did there, and how he liked it, and why he had that nasty black heart-shaped blotch hanging in the middle of his inside, and many other things.
      And the little divel said that he had had a bad accident, and he was not going to hurt his throat by shouting to a lot of blue birds up there in the sky; and if they wanted him to answer their questions, they must come down lower, because he was in great pain.
      And the cherubini wondered very much where this pain could be in which the little divel said he was, and, also, what kind of thing was this same pain: but, as they were curious and wanted to know, they descended a bit until they fluttered in a ring round and round the little divel’s head.
      And there they became aware of a horrible stench, and they said to one another: “He stinks—stinks of sin!” But, because they wished to be diverted, they resolved to put up with small inconveniences for a while.
      Still the little divel was not satisfied; and perceiving that these would be very agreeable playmates, he tried to make a good impression. So he flopped