BABBALANJA—Your Highness; upon that point, Lombardo was frank. Saith he, in his autobiography: “For some time, I endeavored to keep in the good graces of those nymphs; but I found them so captious, and exacting; they threw me into such a violent passion with their fault-findings; that, at last, I renounced them.”
ABRAZZA—Very rash!
BABBALANJA—No, your Highness; for though Lombardo abandoned all monitors from without; he retained one autocrat within—his crowned and sceptered instinct. And what, if he pulled down one gross world, and ransacked the etherial spheres, to build up something of his own—a composite:—what then? matter and mind, though matching not, are mates; and sundered oft, in his Koztanza they unite:—the airy waist, embraced by stalwart arms.
MEDIA—Incoherent again! I thought we were to have no more of this!
BABBALANJA—My lord Media, there are things infinite in the finite; and dualities in unities. Our eyes are pleased with the redness of the rose, but another sense lives upon its fragrance. Its redness you must approach, to view: its invisible fragrance pervades the field. So, with the Koztanza. Its mere beauty is restricted to its form: its expanding soul, past Mardi does embalm. Modak is Modako; but fogle-foggle is not fugle-fi.
MEDIA (to Abrazza)—My lord, you start again; but ’tis only another phase of Azzageeddi; sometimes he’s quite mad. But all this you must needs overlook.
ABRAZZA—I will, my dear prince; what one can not see through, one must needs look over, as you say.
YOOMY—But trust me, your Highness, some of those strange things fall far too melodiously upon the ear, to be wholly deficient in meaning.
ABRAZZA—Your gentle minstrel, this must be, my lord. But Babbalanja, the Koztanza lacks cohesion; it is wild, unconnected, all episode.
BABBALANJA—And so is Mardi itself:—nothing but episodes; valleys and hills; rivers, digressing from plains; vines, roving all over; boulders and diamonds; flowers and thistles; forests and thickets; and, here and there, fens and moors. And so, the world in the Koztanza.