A REVOLT OF THE GODS
by Ambrose Bierce
My father was a deodorizer of dead dogs, my mother
kept the only shop for the sale of cats'-meat in my
native city. They did not live happily; the difference
in social rank was a chasm which could not be bridged
by the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-assorted
and most unlucky alliance; and as might have been
foreseen it ended in disaster. One morning after the
customary squabbles at breakfast, my father rose from
the table, quivering and pale with wrath, and proceeding
to the parsonage thrashed the clergyman who had performed
the marriage ceremony. The act was generally condemned
and public feeling ran so high against the offender
that people would permit dead dogs to lie on their
property until the fragrance was deafening rather than
employ him; and the municipal authorities suffered one
bloated old mastiff to utter itself from a public square
in so clamorous an exhalation that passing strangers
supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a saw-mill.
My father was indeed unpopular. During these dark days
the family's sole dependence was on my mother's emporium
for cats'-meat.
The business was profitable. In that city, which was
the oldest in the world, the cat was an object of
veneration. Its worship was the religion of the country.
The multiplication and addition of cats were a perpetual
instruction in arithmetic. Naturally, any inattention
to the wants of a cat was punished with great severity
in this world and the next; so my good mother numbered
her patrons by the hundred. Still, with an unproductive
husband and seventeen children she had some difficulty
in making both ends cats'-meat; and at last the necessity
of increasing the discrepancy between the cost price
and the selling price of her carnal wares drove her to
an expedient which proved eminently disastrous: she
conceived the unlucky notion of retaliating by refusing
to sell cats'-meat until the boycott was taken off her
husband.
On the day when she put this resolution into practice
the shop was thronged with excited customers, and others
extended in turbulent and restless masses up four streets,
out of sight. Inside there was nothing but cursing,
crowding, shouting and menace. Intimidation was freely
resorted to--several of my younger brothers and sisters
being threatened with cutting up for the cats--but my
mother was as firm as a rock, and the day was a black
one for Sardasa, the ancient and sacred city that was
the scene of these events. The lock-out was vigorously
maintained, and seven hundred and fifty thousand cats
went to bed hungry!
The next morning the city was found to have been
placarded during the night with a proclamation of the
Federated Union of Old Maids. This ancient and powerful
order averred through its Supreme Executive Head that
the boycotting of my father and the retaliatory lock-out
of my mother were seriously imperiling the interests
of religion. The proclamation went on to state that if
arbitration were not adopted by noon that day all the
old maids of the federation would strike--and strike
they did.
The next act of this unhappy drama was an insurrection
of cats. These sacred animals, seeing themselves doomed
to starvation, held a mass-meeting and marched in
procession through the streets, swearing and spitting
like fiends. This revolt of the gods produced such
consternation that many pious persons died of fright
and all business was suspended to bury them and pass
terrifying resolutions.
Matters were now about as bad as it seemed possible
for them to be. Meetings among representatives of the
hostile interests were held, but no understanding was
arrived at that would hold. Every agreement was broken
as soon as made, and each element of the discord was
frantically appealing to the people. A new horror was
in store.
It will be remembered that my father was a deodorizer
of dead dogs, but was unable to practice his useful
and humble profession because no one would employ
him. The dead dogs in consequence reeked rascally.
Then they struck! From every vacant lot and public
dumping ground, from every hedge and ditch and gutter
and cistern, every crystal rill and the clabbered
waters of all the canals and estuaries--from all
the places, in short, which from time immemorial
have been preempted by dead dogs and consecrated
to the uses of them and their heirs and successors
forever--they trooped innumerous, a ghastly crew!
Their procession was a mile in length. Midway of
the town it met the procession of cats in full song.
The cats instantly exalted their backs and magnified
their tails; the dead dogs uncovered their teeth as
in life, and erected such of their bristles as still
adhered to the skin.
The carnage that ensued was too awful for relation!
The light of the sun was obscured by flying fur,
and the battle was waged in the darkness, blindly
and regardless. The swearing of the cats was audible
miles away, while the fragrance of the dead dogs
desolated seven provinces.
How the battle might have resulted it is impossible
to say, but when it was at its fiercest the Federated
Union of Old Maids came running down a side street
and sprang into the thickest of the fray. A moment
later my mother herself bore down upon the warring
hosts, brandishing a cleaver, and laid about her
with great freedom and impartiality. My father joined
the fight, the municipal authorities engaged, and
the general public, converging on the battle-field
from all points of the compass, consumed itself in
the center as it pressed in from the circumference.
Last of all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery
and resolving on a general strike, began to destroy
vaults, tombs, monuments, headstones, willows, angels
and young sheep in marble--everything they could lay
their hands on. By nightfall the living and the dead
were alike exterminated, and where the ancient and
sacred city of Sardasa had stood nothing remained
but an excavation filled with dead bodies and building
materials, shreds of cat and blue patches of decayed
dog. The place is now a vast pool of stagnant water
in the center of a desert.
The stirring events of those few days constituted
my industrial education, and so well have I improved
my advantages that I am now Chief of Misrule to the
Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen
million American workingmen.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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