Something About Eve

    And at that, Horvendile shrugged. “A god with so many fine titles is not to be argued with. In any case, do you be of good cheer, for even after all these regrettable amours, and beyond the mire that my swine delight in, the Princess still awaits you.”

    “But in what place?” said Gerald, “and how is she called?”

    “She awaits in every place so long as youth remains—”

    “Upon my word, now, Horvendile, but that is the truth, and a rather plaguing truth!”

    “—However, this especial Princess is called, as it chances, Evangeline—”

    “Oh, come!” said Gerald, “come now, but really, my dear fellow—!”

    “—And at your first sight of her you will be enraptured. For this Princess Evangeline is so surpassingly lovely that she excels all the other women your gaze has ever beheld—”

    “I know,” said Gerald. “Her face is the proper shape, it is appropriately colored everywhere, and it is surmounted with an adequate quantity of hair.”

    “—Nor,” Horvendile went on, with rising enthusiasm, “is it possible to find any defect in her features—”

    “No: for, doubtless, the colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes are nicely matched, and her nose stands just equidistant between them. Beneath this is her mouth; and she has also a pair of ears.”

    “In fine,” said Horvendile, with his hands aflourish above his attendant pigs, “the Princess is young, she exhibits no absolute deformity anywhere, and your enamored glance will therefore perceive in her no fault, because of that magic which in the Marches of Antan the Two Truths exercise over all vigorous young persons.”

    “You very movingly depict a woman of extraordinary and, I have not the least doubt, resistless charm. Nevertheless, I cannot any longer be wandering about a place wherein there are only two truths, and where the magic of these Two Truths is forever meddling with my young body, for the gods of the Marches of Antan do not content me.”

    Then Horvendile replied: “Men have found many gods. But these gods pass. They descend into Antan, and they do not return. One god and one goddess alone do not pass. They remain eternally, if but to weave eternally a mist about the seeing and the thinking of the young, and thus to secure the existence of yet other young persons within a month or so.”

    “With observations to that same general effect,” Gerald answered, “I am not unfamiliar. But let us make the thing complete! Do you now voice, here in your murky pigsty, one or another long-winded restatement of the fact that time disastrously affects all organic material. You will then, I think, have summed up the entire philosophy of the Marches of Antan. Perhaps it is a true philosophy. Nevertheless, that philosophy is a morbid materialism such as does not amuse me, who am a self-respecting citizen of the United States of America. No: I had far rather play with a beautiful idea than with one utterly lacking in seductiveness. So I prefer to think that the gods and the dreams of men pass to a noble and a worthy goal—”

    It was then that Horvendile sighed, a bit despondently. “Ah, Gerald, but how may you presume to speak of such matters, who did not attain to Antan?”

    “My friend,” replied Gerald, affably, “I was too wise to risk any such indiscretion. No: I did not enter into my appointed kingdom; and I have destroyed it. Therefore it must remain, so long as I remain, whatever I choose to imagine it: I retain the privilege of playing with a beautiful idea, in just the proper half-remorseful frame of mind which begets the most luxuriant fancies—”

    “But—” Horvendile began.

    “No, my dear fellow, you are quite wrong.”

    Horvendile said, “Still—”

    “Yes, there is something in that, at first glance, yet it does not really touch the root of the matter.”

    Horvendile protested, “I was but going to say—”

    “I know! I perfectly comprehend your argument. And I admit that you phrase it forcefully. The trouble is that you are wrong in your underlying principle.”

    Horvendile said, “However—”