“May the truth not lie indeed, then, just as you suggested, at the bottom of this identical well? For the Zhar-Ptitza alone knows the truth about all things, and I recall an old legend that the bird who has the true wisdom used to nest in this part of Poictesme.”
Kerin looked over the stone ledge about the great and bottomless Well of Ogde, peering downward as far as might be. “I consider it improbable, dear wife, that the Zhar-Ptitza, who is everywhere known to be the most wise and most ancient of birds and of all living creatures, would select such a cheerless looking hole to live in. Still, you never can tell: the wise affect profundity; and this well is known to be deep beyond the knowledge of man. Now nature, as Cicero informs us, in profundo veritatem penitus abstruserit—”
“Good Lord!” said Saraïde again, but with more emphasis. “Do you slip down there, then, like a dear fellow, and find the truth for me.”
Saying this, she clapped both hands to his backside, and she pushed her husband into the great and bottomless Well of Ogde.
43.
Prayer and the Lizard Maids
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THE unexpectedness of it all, alike of Saraïde’s assault and of the astonishing discovery that you could fall for hundreds after hundreds of feet, full upon your head, without getting even a bruise, a little bewildered Kerin when he first sat up at the bottom of the dry well. He shouted cheerily, “Wife, wife, I am not hurt a bit!” because the fact seemed so remarkably fortunate and so unaccountable.
But at once large stones began to fall everywhere about him, as though Saraïde upon hearing his voice had begun desperately to heave these stones into the well. Kerin thought this an inordinate manner of spurring him onward in the quest of knowledge and truth, because the habitual impetuosity of Saraïde, when thus expressed with cobblestones, would infallibly have been his death had he not sought shelter in the opening he very luckily found to the southwest side. There was really no understanding these women who married you, Kerin reflected, as after crawling for a while upon hands and feet, he came to a yet larger opening, in which he could stand erect.
But this passage led Kerin presently to an underground lake, which filled all that part of the cavern, so that he could venture no farther. Instead, he sat down upon the borders of these gloomy and endless looking waters. He could see these waters because of the many ignes fatui, such as are called corpse candles, which flickered and danced above the dark lake’s surface everywhere.