“Yes,” said the princess, “I see that, but that is what I call being parallel.”
“But can’t you see that you are defying the axioms upon which all cognition is based. If parallel lines meet, then when I meet you you do not meet me.”
“I see no harm in that,” said the princess, who, to be perfectly honest, had formed a (quite unjustly) low opinion of the professor’s social gifts; “but speaking of axioms, would you agree that God is omnipotent?”
“Certainly,” said the professor, “but I do not see how——”
“Forgive me,” said the princess icily. “If God is omnipotent should he not be able to draw parallel lines that meet?”
“You will forgive my observing,” said the professor, “that if God interfered with mathematics he would cease to be God.”
“And if mathematics interfered with God?” inquired the princess.
“I cannot,” said the professor, slapping his tall hat on his head with a resounding bang, “waste my time in talking nonsense.”
“You could, however,” cried the princess after him, “give up teaching mathematics, could you not?”