"I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna," said Cassandra."I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent detachable hypnotizer you had.I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind into the future.I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy, and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I doubt not, still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr.AEneas would not have grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride on the opening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by Virgil.""I never heard about that," said Trilby."It sounds like a very funny story, though.""Well, it wasn't so humorous for some as it was for others," said Cassandra, with a sly glance at Helen."The fact is, until you mentioned it yourself, it never occurred to me that there was much fun in any portion of the Trojan incident, excepting perhaps the delirium tremens of old Laocoon, who got no more than he deserved for stealing my thunder.I had warned Troy against the Greeks, and they all laughed at me, and said my eye to the future was strabismatic;that the Greeks couldn't get into Troy at all, even if they wanted to.And then the Greeks made a great wooden horse as a gift for the Trojans, and when I turned my X-ray gaze upon it I saw that it contained about six brigades of infantry, three artillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score.It was a sort of military Noah's Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was so strong that nobody would believe what I told them.So I said nothing.My prophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my warning as to what would be was in itself the cause of their non-fulfilment.But desiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told him all about it, and he went out and announced it as his own private prophecy; and then, having tried to drown his conscience in strong waters, he fell a victim to the usual serpentine hallucination, and everybody said he wasn't sober, and therefore unworthy of belief.
The horse was accepted, hauled into the city, and that night orders came from hindquarters to the regiments concealed inside to march.
They marched, and next morning Troy had been removed from the map;ninety per cent of the Trojans died suddenly, and AEneas, grabbing up his family in one hand and his gods in the other, went yachting for several seasons, ultimately settling down in Italy.All of this could have been avoided if the Trojans would have taken the hint from my prophecies.They preferred, however, not to do it, with the result that to-day no one but Helen and myself knows even where Troy was, and we'll never tell.""It is all true," said Helen, proudly."I was the woman who was at the bottom of it all, and I can testify that Cassandra always told the truth, which is why she was always so unpopular.When anything that was unpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say, sweetly, 'I told you so.' She was the original 'I told you so' nuisance, and of course she had the newspapyruses down on her, because she never left them any sensation to spring upon the public.
