“Very dead,” said Mr. Cardan.
They walked on. Mrs. Chelifer did not speak; she seemed preoccupied.
CHAPTER V
“An pris caruns flucuthukh”; Mr. Cardan beckoned to the guide. “Bring the lamp a little nearer,” he said in Italian, and when the light had been approached, he went on slowly spelling out the primitive Greek writing on the wall of the tomb: “flucuthukh nun tithuial khues khathc anulis mulu vizile ziz riin puiian acasri flucuper pris an ti ar vus ta aius muntheri flucuthukh.” He straightened himself up. “Charming language,” he said, “charming! Ever since I learned that the Etruscans used to call the god of wine Fufluns, I’ve taken the keenest interest in their language. Fufluns—how incomparably more appropriate that is than Bacchus, or Liber, or Dionysos! Fufluns, Fufluns,” he repeated with delighted emphasis. “It couldn’t be better. They had a real linguistic genius, those creatures. What poets they must have produced! ‘When Fufluns flucuthukhs the ziz’—one can imagine the odes in praise of wine which began like that. You couldn’t bring together eight such juicy, boozy syllables as that in English, could you?”
“What about ‘Ale in a Saxon rumkin then’?” suggested Chelifer.
Mr. Cardan shook his head. “It doesn’t compare with the Etruscan,” he said. “There aren’t enough consonants. It’s too light, too fizzy and trivial. Why, you might be talking about soda water.”
“But for all you know,” said Chelifer, “flucuthukh in Etruscan may mean soda water. Fufluns, I grant you, is apposite. But perhaps it was just a fluke. You have no evidence to show that they fitted sound to sense so aptly in other words. ‘When Fufluns flucuthukhs the ziz’ may be the translation of ‘When Bacchus drowns the hock with soda.’ You don’t know.”
“You’re quite right,” Mr. Cardan agreed. “I don’t. Nor does any one else. My enthusiasm for Fufluns carried me away. Flucuthukh may not have the fruity connotation that a word with a sound like that ought to have; it may even, as you say, mean soda water. Still, I continue to hope for the best; I believe in my Etruscans. One day, when they find the key to this fossilised language, I believe I shall be justified; flucuthukh will turn out to be just as appropriate as Fufluns—you mark my words! It’s a great language, I insist; a great language. Who knows? A couple of generations hence some new Busby or Keate may be drumming Etruscan syntax and Etruscan prosody into the backsides of British boyhood. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction. Latin and Greek have a certain infinitesimal practical value. But Etruscan is totally and absolutely useless. What better basis for a gentleman’s education could possibly be discovered? It’s the great dead language of the future. If Etruscan didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.”
“Which is precisely what the pedagogues will have to do,” said Chelifer, “there being no Etruscan literature beyond the inscriptions and the rigmarole on the mummy-wrappings at Agram.”