Deeply impressed with the belief (laugh at it if you will) that I was in the presence of a being of more than mortal endowments, I was withdrawing, when my glance fell on his weird familiars,—two tailless cats. This prodigy made me shudder, and I said, in tones of the deepest awe and sympathy, 'Poor puss!'
'Yes,' came the strange voice from within the tent, 'they are born without tails. I bred them so; it hath taken many centuries and much trouble, but at last I have triumphed. Once, too, I reared a breed of dogs with two tails, but after a while they became a proverb for pride; Nature loathed them, and they perished. Χαιρε! Vale!'22
22
I have consulted the authorities at the British Museum, who tell me these are the Greek and the Latin words for 'Don't you think you had better go? Get out!'—Ed.
This, though not understood, of course, by Pellmelli, was as good as an invitation to withdraw, so I induced the old man to come away, promising the magician I would return on the morrow.
Who was this awful man, to whom centuries were as moments, whose very correspondence, as I had noticed, came through the Dead Letter Office, and who spoke in the tongues of the dead past?
CHAPTER IX.
THE POWER OF HE.
Next day Leonora, the Boshman, and I returned to the home of the mage. He stood before us, a tall thin figure enwrapped in yellowish, strange garments, of a singular and perfumed character—spicy in fact—which produced upon me a feeling which I cannot attempt to describe, and which I can only vaguely hint at by saying that the whole form conveyed to me the notion of something wrapped up.23