



Produced by Edward A. Malone.









THE LADY, OR THE TIGER?

by

Frank R. Stockton




In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas,
though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of
distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as
became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant
fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will,
he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to
self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the
thing was done.  When every member of his domestic and political
systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland
and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his
orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for
nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush
down uneven places.

Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified
was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and
beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined and cultured.

But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The
arena of the king was built, not to give the people an opportunity of
hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view
the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and
hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop
the mental energies of the people. This vast amphitheater, with its
encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages,
was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue
rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.

When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to
interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the
fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's arena, a
structure which well deserved its name, for, although its form and plan
were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of
this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he
owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every
adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his
barbaric idealism.

When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king,
surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on
one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and
the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly
opposite him, on the other side of the inclosed space, were two doors,
exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the privilege of
the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of
them. He could open either door he pleased; he was subject to no
guidance or influence but that of the aforementioned impartial and
incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a
hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which
immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for
his guilt. The moment that the case of the criminal was thus decided,
doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired
mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience,
with bowed heads and downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way,
mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected,
should have merited so dire a fate.

But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth from
it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty
could select among his fair subjects, and to this lady he was
immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that
he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections
might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed
no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of
retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took
place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the
king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing
maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic
measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side, and the
wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells
rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the
innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his path, led
his bride to his home.

This was the king's