“How, then, did this mirror ever manage to change anybody into two stones if nobody ever dared go near it?”
“Why, but the mirror was compelled to change them into two stones because that was the law. It was not at all the mirror’s fault. Surely, you who are a god and are omniscient, and who are now nearly drunk enough to see everything double, can see that much?”
“So far as your explanation goes, I can see the mirror’s blamelessness in the face of an obdurate physical law. Nor does any god object to a physical law which concerns other people.”
“And they kept away from the mirror because they knew about this law. Surely, that too was natural?”
“In a way, yes. But how could they be certain about this law?”
“How could they help it, how could anybody be ignorant of one of our very oldest and most famous laws, which comes down to us, indeed, from sources so august and venerable that they antedate all history?”
“Why, then, who enacted this law?”
“How should I know, when, as I was just telling you, this law is older than any recorded history?”
“But in a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of pleasure, and there are entirely too many laws,” said Gerald, shaking his red head above his golden goblet rather despondently. “There is common, statutory, international, maritime, ecclesiastical, and martial law. There is the law of averages, the Salic law, and Grimm’s law of the permutations of consonants. There is Jewish sacred law; there is prize law; there is the law of gravity; there is John Law, who first developed the natural wealth of the Mississippi, and William Law, who was a great mystic. There are, in logic, the laws of thought, just as in astronomy and physics and political economy there are, severally, the well-known laws of Kepler and Prevost and Gresham. In fine, there are laws everywhere, and they are very often a nuisance. He that goes to law loses time and money and rest and friends. Law is a lottery, law is a bottomless pit, law is an ass which slaps his tail in every man’s face. So it very well may be, my dear fellow, that in a world so legally overstocked this law of yours is superfluous, and therefore wrong.”
But Tenjo was not convinced by Gerald’s relentless logic. Tenjo said only: