A NEW YEAR'S
FABLE
241
were executed. They were unable to lay their hands on the
sixth condemned man because complications developed in this
case. I shall tell you, first of all, who this sixth man was and in
what
his
guilt consisted. He was the head, the president, or, as
they call him, "the big wheel" of the entire society of the "law–
fully bound," the oldest and the most cunning of all the bandits.
He was sitting in some remote jail, and it was there no doubt,
in solitary confinement, that the thought occurred to him that
he had, in substance, done nothing in life, had received nothing,
and that there was but little time left to Jive. He reasoned as
follows: the whole meaning of <li bandit's life could be summed
up as the easiest way of acquiring other people's possessions,
whether gold or other valuables. But the value and the prestige
of possessions in human society are undergoing a catastrophic
decline."
"Your bandit seems to have been a theoretician!" the per–
sonnel man<liger could be heard saying ironically.
"Yes, he was a serious person," our eccentric agreed. "I
came to like him more and more. This criminal, who had done
a great deal of harm, quieted down in his later years and began
to read books. Books can be a terrific force! He read numerous
books. He was in no hurry to leave the jail-he found his cell
convenient for reading and reflecting, and his "lawful" brothers
supplied their potentate from the outside with any book, even
such as were guarded under seven seals in the official cellars.
Yes. . . . And thus he realized that the prestige of wealth was
catastrophically declining. Once upon a time, in the remote
past, magnates and princes used to make special fishing pre–
serves in bays for breeding moray eels. They used to feed the
moray eels on human flesh-that of slaves, whom they tossed
into the bay. Such a moray eel, served at a festive board, was
considered a supreme delicacy. But nowadays we cannot think
of such diversions on the part of our ancestors without shudder–
ing. Once upon a time gold was an anonymous metal embedded
in
the earth. Then man gave it a name and a value. To have the
