But now I listened more attentively: for Harrowby had gone on to suggest that theories now endemic among the miscellaneous gentry whom we inclose in the term "scientists"—these "new" theories as to a fourth dimension,—begin to-day to enable us to see much more than nonsense in that reiterated ageless whispering as to men who had sought and through the aid of magic had found their diversion in lands not formally set down on any map.
"You mean—?" I prompted him.
Well, it developed, he meant that certain travellers, this whispering has always reported, had been to very queer places. And returning, they had told discreetly of realms wherein living was much more satisfactorily conducted than in our workaday existence.
"Yes, but," I commented, "even so—" I spoke just as a conversational spur, just as a dubious provocative: and Harrowby went on.
One traveller had been down into a twilit country where the people were small and flaxen-haired, and ate neither fish nor flesh of any kind. These people, he reported, wore brown caps to which were fastened little silver bells. Their country knew no sunlight, but was radiant with the shining of what, to the eye, seemed diamonds and carbuncles: and nothing noxious nor hurtful was to be found anywhere in this covert lovely land.
"Still—!" I observed.
Another spoke of a hollow mountain, wherein you entered to unending delights. And he spoke, spoke as if he were troubled, of the queen of this place. Yes, she was different from other women. And he talked too of the great Emperor Karl, and of giants and dwarfs, and of the Wildefrauen, who were more beautiful than the wives and daughters of men.
"Nevertheless—" I stated. But Harrowby was in full cry.
So he went on to tell me how yet another spoke of a palace which was builded, so far as human sense might judge, of pink seashells and of crystal. A woman was to be encountered there also, very lovely in a robe of green: her eyes were intent and changeless: her black hair was interwoven with red coral. To her postulants she served, in a hall hung with pearls, eight kinds of wine in as many goblets of chased silver: and then with a gold frying-pan she prepared the velladen of fish, which was the marriage feast.
A fourth told of a quite different palace that was designed by the apostle Thomas; and was builded of Sethym wood and sardius and imperishable ebony and ivory and onyx; and was enwrought with the horns of reptiles. Before this palace stood a mirror to which you ascended upon a stairway of porphyry and serpentine: armed warriors guarded it night and day, for in this mirror you beheld all that was taking place in every province and region subject to the master of this palace: and within this palace you lived among all manner of pleasures and delights.