Devil Stories Part 21

"Your soul and that of Paternostre against the souls of two golfers."

IX

The devil played up, "pressing" furiously; his club blazed at each stroke with showers of sparks. The ball flew from Conde to Bon-Secours, to Pernwelz, to Leuze. Once it spun away to Tournai, six leagues from there.

It left behind a luminous tail like a comet, and the two golfers followed, so to speak, on its track. Roger was never able to understand how he ran, or rather flew so fast, and without fatigue.

In short, he did not lose a single game, and won the souls of the six defunct golfers. Belzebuth rolled his eyes like an angry tom-cat.

"Shall we go on?" said the wheelwright of Coq.

"No," replied the other; "they expect me at the Witches' Sabbath on the hill of Copiemont.

"That brigand," said he aside, "is capable of filching all my game."

And he vanished.

Returned home, the great golfer shut up his souls in a sack and went to bed, enchanted to have beaten Mynheer van Belzebuth.

X

Two years after the wheelwright of Coq received a visit which he little expected. An old man, tall, thin and yellow, came into the workshop carrying a scythe on his shoulder.

"Are you bringing me your scythe to haft anew, master?"

"No, faith, _my_ scythe is never unhafted."

"Then how can I serve you?"

"By following me: your hour is come."

"The devil," said the great golfer, "could you not wait a little till I have finished this wheel?"

"Be it so! I have done hard work today and I have well earned a smoke."

"In that case, master, sit down there on the _causeuse_. I have at your service some famous tobacco at seven petards the pound."

"That's good, faith; make haste."

And Death lit his pipe and seated himself at the door on the elm trunk.

Laughing in his sleeve, the wheelwright of Coq returned to his work.

At the end of a quarter of an hour Death called to him:

"Ho! faith, will you soon have finished?"

The wheelwright turned a deaf ear and went on planing, singing:

"Attendez-moi sur l'orme; Vous m'attendrez longtemps."

"I don't think he hears me," said Death. "Ho! friend, are you ready?"

"Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent, Jean, Va-t-en voir s'ils viennent,"

replied the singer.

"Would the brute laugh at me?" said Death to himself.

And he tried to rise.

To his great surprise he could not detach himself from the _causeuse_.

He then understood that he was the sport of a superior power.

"Let us see," he said to Roger. "What will you take to let me go? Do you wish me to prolong your life ten years?"

"J'ai de bon tabac dans ma tabatiere,"

sang the great golfer.

"Will you take twenty years?"

"Il pleut, il pleut, bergere; Rentre tes blancs moutons."

"Will you take a fifty, wheelwright?--may the devil admire you!"

The wheelwright of Coq intoned:

"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet, A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."

In the meanwhile the clock of Conde had just struck four, and the boys were coming out of school. The sight of this great dry heron of a creature who struggled on the _causeuse_, like a devil in a holy-water pot, surprised and soon delighted them.

Never suspecting that when seated at the door of the old, Death watches the young, they thought it funny to put out their tongues at him, singing in chorus:

"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet, A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."

"Will you take a hundred years?" yelled Death.

"Hein? How? What? Were you not speaking of an extension of a hundred years? I accept with all my heart, master; but let us understand: I am not such a fool as to ask for the lengthening of my old age."

"Then what do you want?"

"From old age I only ask the experience which it gives by degrees. 'Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!' says the proverb. I wish to preserve for a hundred years the strength of a young man, and to acquire the knowledge of an old one."

"So be it," said Death; "I shall return this day a hundred years."

"Bon voyage, cher Dumollet, A Saint-Malo debarquez sans naufrage."