Here he was interrupted by Sir O’Ham Ill Tong,—from whose mouth the clout had been removed,—with the ejaculation: “An sure, by our holy mother, what your honor is plased to say is all gospel truth, and by the same token, if there is any more, I believe it on my shoul! But if your honor will be so obbleeging as to order one of your giants to remove this gorget that binds my throat to the stake, and set me free, if yees have closed what ye are going to say, I can hear the rest more comfortably, and ye’ll save from fire as good a Christian as ever was burnt for pargary,—an for the life of me, I can’t just see how that can be, for I niver spoke a blissed word in the matter at all!”
This characteristic wordy appeal of the Irishman was complied with on the moment, and when released he fell on his knees at the feet of the tribune, invoking upon his head the blessings of all the saints in the Irish calendar, offering to serve him to the end of his days, on foot, or on roachback, for nothing at all save fair wages, hursts, perquisites, pickings, and the run of the kitchen, and sich likes! The ludicrous fall, in the use of words, from knightly inflation caused a smile notwithstanding the embarrassments imposed by our interruption. But the flow of his tongued gratitude to the ascendant party, having reference to future benefits, could with difficulty be stayed. When accomplished he was advised to return with all speed to the place of his birth before a worse evil befell his body than purification by fire.
The pope and his cardinals, while subject to the tribune’s reprehensions, became as servile in their bearing as they had before been arrogant. The pope’s offer of entertainment for the night we could not accept, after witnessing the barbarous proceedings of the day, as we preferred the protection of our silicoth tapas under the cornice to the lair hospitality of human wolves. After the crowd dispersed a messenger was despatched to apprise the Coliseans of the successful result of our enterprise, with the desire that a falcon might be sent for us at early dawn. In accordance with our request a falcon appeared with the earliest light on the following morning, and on alighting, to our great surprise, Idolisima Canonica, in company with the tribune’s parents and other representatives of Coliseo to the howdah’s full capacity for entertainment, descended to receive our salutations. It appeared, from the relation of the tribune’s sister, that Idolisima after leaving the lists had sought protection under the escort of Penny Song and Long Bow, at the coliseum, well knowing that the ties of daughter and sister would not save her from the dungeons of the Inquisition, recently built by the pope, her uncle. From the greeting she gave the tribune, it required no prompting of speech to apprise us that a stronger motive than fear of the dungeons caused her to seek an asylum with her foster guardians of childhood.
Without teasing our curious interest in her welfare she appealed to the tribune: “Your Manatitlan cousins, Novuotus, would scarcely feel satisfied with your interest in my behalf, if I should allow you to hold me silently exculpated from your abiding confidence in the wisdom that dictated our betrothal. As we are united, yet single, in the fulfillment of our marital alliance, I am anxiously desirous of having the affectionate sanction of their approbation, which could not be conceded if they thought me capable of participating otherwise than by form, in the cruel enactments of yesterday. In speaking, it is my wish to vindicate myself from voluntary conformity with the chivalric usages in which I engaged, as they were then, as they ever have been, sadly repugnant to my conceptions of love and affection, which vividly impress me with the reality of an existence independent of the body’s mortality. That your cousins may realize in what measure they are entitled to bestow upon me their lenity and sympathy, I will relate to them the cause that influenced my introduction to the guardianship of your people. Of my ancestral origin, I am certain that the events of yesterday will better inform you than I am able from my own knowledge. In my fourth year, when my perceptions were only advanced in the bud sufficient for impression, without enlisting the maturing aid of thoughtful judgment derived from comparison, my father, mother, and two brothers, became very sick with the plague, alike destructive to the Giga and Animalculan races. The harrowing scenes of bereavement daily recounted in my presence aroused impressions of fear for myself, and when my parents became sick, I added anxiety to my aunt’s responsibility, to whose sole charge we had been left by the servants and neighbors. One day, despairing and hopeless, my aunt had enfolded me in her arms, and while wofully lamenting threatened desolation from the death of my parents and brother, I was trying to solace her with endearments, my arms were around her neck, with my lips to her ear and face turned backward, when the door softly opened and my voice was stilled by the surprise of my eyes at the entrance of a very large and beautiful woman. [Here Idolisima fondly embraced, with caresses, the neck of the Doschessa of Romelia.] My silence and fixed attention attracted my aunt’s eyes to the door, and when she discovered the stranger, who appeared to be well known to her, she was much abashed that she had been surprised in useless lamentation. This made me gladly hope that the visitor was an angel sent to help us; so, growing bold with the feeling of hope, I gently withdrew myself from my aunt’s embrace and approached the stranger imploring her aid for my parents and brothers! In a moment I was in her arms; then I became so quickly changed, I no longer feared, for her voice and touch made me feel so secure that I was sure she came from heaven to help us. But I have since experienced that she came from a far better place beyond the reach of gold and its selfish attractions. Urging my aunt to take new courage, she went out, still holding me in her arms, and meeting a censor, with others of her people, she returned, and soon our house became quite changed, for they brought with them your clothes that remain clean, so that from being dismal and sad everything looked nice and cheerful. Then mother reviving, she also knew the angel, who asked her if she could take me to her Coliseo home? Oh, how gladly my mother smiled with her whispered yes, so faintly and pleadingly grateful in earnest expression it has ever been present since. Striving to speak, my mother fell asleep without breathing, but still she smiled, until it paled to a shadow in the moonlight, then we were taken to the Coliseo, for my aunt required rest, where we were bathed and dressed with the care of so many sweet faced persons, that we became quite bewildered with love and slept. In the morning we were wakened with sunlight and song, so harmonious with gladness, my aunt touched me to be sure, for we both thought alike. I was placed in school where there were so many that in love we were counted as one, for we were so united in affection that tears of vexation and sadness never flowed. Then as I grew in years, I learned to grow emulous in the personal requirements of purity, and with the care of myself, was able to assist others, for the grateful meed of love. Much more I could say, but I feel that you do not require it. When my father became my uncle, Pope Innocent I., I had reached my eighteenth year, and had been betrothed to Novuotus, and we were enjoying the hospitality of my foster parents, the Dosch and Doschessa of Romelia, during our term of probation, when my father, after his election, demanded that my aunt and myself should be restored to his care. The Dosch, after a long consultation with his advisors, for he was very sorry to part with us, concluded that it was best for us to return. This was a very sad decision for us, but we were assured that if we found ourselves unhappy from being unable to do good, we could come back. We were then taken to my ‘uncle’s’ temporal court, but none were truly glad to see us, for we were strangers, even to my father, for he would not accept the monthly invitation to visit me at the Coliseo school. Yet we were constantly surrounded with a throng of servants and people of condition, so that with them, we were mere puppets, and felt very unclean, for we could do nothing for ourselves. But all were very profuse in the utterance of complimentary formalities, which made us feel like exiles from real affection. The first process to which we were subjected was purification from heresy; in preparation our silicoth garments were removed, and our persons were redressed with woven stuffs, that in their newness smelt animally earthy, and soon became irksome in weight, and rankly unendurable, notwithstanding they had been sprinkled with holy water at the time we were baptized. Then, my aunt was made, or created, queen of Rome, and I was christened Princess Idolisima Canonica by the same process. A few days since my aunt escaped and went back to unite with her Coliseo affections; since than I have been closely guarded, as I had attempted to leave with her, but was foiled by accident. So with my father turned uncle, I became the puppet, or bone and flesh of contention for the strongest and best trained brute in the lists, and was seemingly obliged to conform to the dictated usages; but with the determination to escape if an opportunity offered. In this relation I have traced my childish impressions in the language I have been accustomed to impart them to my loved school associates; to remodel them to suit my present perceptions would detract from memorial pledges of affection. That you saw me in the lists yesterday, came not through my own volition, as you will concede; but perhaps, from a wise wish on the part of the Dosch and his advisors to test in what I lacked for the power of resisting the wordy flatteries and material vanities to which I would be exposed in the papal court of my uncle. For I had exceeded in years your period of matriculation, as my instinctive impressions are still retained in memory, with the infantile desires perpetuated in assumed motherhood of artificial productions in baby likeness. But if you can only see me as I feel, and have felt, in pity for the barren love of the mothers of Rome, who are content with the pride of hope in the advancement of their children to material possessions, and the empty honors conferred by my uncle, the pope, you must know that with all my imperfections I am, in the current love of purity and goodness, free from my body’s instinctive taint. Knowing my earnest yearning for purified worth, in my desire for the welfare of others, you will, I am sure, lend me your aid for the higher attainments achieved in realization by your primitive people for loving perception.”
This appeal of Idolisima received the sanction of our affections with a warmth of genial outflow confirmed in baptismal attestation from our eyes. The Doschessa in reciprocating the fond caresses of Idolisima said that she and her aunt had nobly sustained the venture, showing that with woman love’s perception, when free from selfishness, is in a measure independent of age, when subject to the constant lead of example. In closing it will be well to state that the union of Novuotus with Idolisima was consummated with her father’s consent. The event was celebrated by Penny Song, with an improvisation styled the Epoch Ardens, Long Bow assisting with a transposition of High Water to Fair Water. But from their lack of precedental knowledge pertaining to Manatitlan history, and of love independent of the body’s instinctive materialism for the bombastic usury of imagination in word portrayal, their poetical ovations would have been deemed tame unaided by their skillful rendition in the well timed measure of song with the instrumental accompaniment of zithern and gourd. This transcript, of an event so varied in its bearings, will afford you a more correct insight into the condition of our Roman colonists, than tracings from historical records, and statistical accounts, of which you will be advised at our earliest leisure.
Titview.
Nota Bene.—Our wives have not been idle, but under the direction of Oluisandria have auramented many of the Giga women of Rome, who with silent example emulate the family of Indegatus.
At the conclusion of Titview’s letter, the Dosch stated that the initial voyagers of the second falcon era found the colonists of Constantinople and Jerusalem in a still more prosperous condition than those of Rome, and equally rejoiced in the fulfillment of expectant waiting. But as they presented the same characteristic features of dogmatic rule, with caste variations, having their origin in the degree of control exercised by individuals over their own habits, for the control of the masses, the opposition to colonistic example was in the main the same. “Now, in company of Mr. Welson, I will leave you to meditate upon the examples I have adduced of Giga and Animalculan humanity under the rule of instinctive habits and customs engendered from the unreason of the stomach in its control of the brain, until your letters arrive from the other side of the precedental gulph to strengthen the contrast between your past and present thoughts. In the meantime you can study, with our auramental aid, the habits of professional instinct cultivated by the adjunct members of the corps, in adverse defiance of Heraclean example and our thought substitutions. Although formalistically influenced to habits of outward conformity, neither Dr. Baāhar or the curators of sound, and artist, have changed in thought from precedental routine; and in their present mood, would relate the events which have transpired as surface matters of fact, for publication, or scientific gossip, and the excitement of wonder and surprise in the gaping multitude who throng with open ears lyceums and public lecture rooms, for drum impressions. Your college and scientific professors can be truthfully likened to your railroad locomotives, which swiftly progress forwards and backwards on their rails, but once off their tracks are helpless, from their own resources, to move themselves or their trains. But with the stage gradations of instinct now open to your view, you can readily discover and test the animus source of present happiness with the realities of its impression as an assurance of immortality.”