"Between the Indus and Oregon--there in the old library I discovered at last the long-looked for Manuscript. There I found the whole story."
"What was it?"
"There it was stated in purest High-Bramaputric, that--translate all that into our modern notions and expressions----"
"Yes, for Heaven's sake do so, or I won't understand a word."
"That there were, from the beginning, two pairs of human beings created; as it could not well be otherwise: the one noble and the other not noble. The name of this first noble race is not recorded in the Manuscript. At the very place where it once stood, there is now a big blot. So much is certain, it was not Oldenburg; it began with a C, and somewhere in the middle there was a t."
"Perhaps Cloten," said the other.
"It may be, but I cannot swear to it. Nor is it said what family his wife belonged to; she is simply called a noble damsel."
"But I thought she was made from the rib of man?"
"Why, you would not believe that stupid nonsense, Cloten? She is expressly called a noble damsel, and so she must have been of noble blood."
"But that is a curiously complicated story."