“My native country,” replied the other, “is five hundred millions of leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius.”
“Charming country!” said Memnon. “And are there indeed with you no jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?”
“No,” said the inhabitant of the star, “we have nothing of the kind. We are never duped by women because we have none among us; we never commit excesses at table because we neither eat nor drink; we have no bankrupts because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of yours, and satraps never do us injustice, because in our world we are all equal.”
“Pray, my lord,” said Memnon, “without women and without eating, how do you spend your time?”
“In watching over the other worlds that are entrusted to us, and I am now come to give you consolation.”
“Alas!” replied Memnon, “why did you not come yesterday to hinder me from committing so many indiscretions?”
“I was with your elder brother Hassan,” said the celestial being. “He is still more to be pitied than you are. His most gracious majesty, the sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honor to serve, has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion, and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.”
“Tis a happy thing, truly,” said Memnon, “to have a good genius in one’s family, when out of two brothers, one is blind of an eye, the other blind of both; one stretched upon straw, the other in a dungeon.”
“Your fate will soon change,” said the spirit of the star. “It is true you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a perfect philosopher.”
“Is it, then, impossible?” said Memnon.