, startled by this incident into a
momentary conviction of the truth of his own theory.

CHAPTER IV. -- THE POET AND THE PALAEONTO-THEOLOGIST

'Puis nous fut dit que chose estrange ne leur sembloit estre
deux contradictoires Vrayes en mode, en figure, et en
temps.' Pantagruel, v. xxii.

Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, they all three rushed out into the
garden; and far beyond them, in the sunlight, they did indeed catch one
parting gleam of gauzy wings, as the fairy vanished. When the professor
led the way into the room again, and, rather crestfallen, looked at the
tall empty bottle and the stopper, which in his hurry he had thrown down
upon the floor.

'She is gone!' sobbed the child. 'My beautiful Dala. I shall never see
her again.'

He was right; the professor and the theologian, between them, had scared
Queen Mab away pretty successfully. She would certainly never
revisit that part of the city if she could help it. The divine looked
uncomfortable. In spite of himself he had recognised something strange
and unusual in the appearance of this last capture of his friend's
butterfly-net, and almost unconsciously he began to ponder on the old
theory that the Evil One might occasionally disguise himself as an angel
of light. The poet, meanwhile, was more voluble.

'Your soul is sordid!' he said indignantly to the professor. 'You have
no eyes for the Immaterial, the intangibly Ideal, that lies behind the
shadowy and deceptive veil that we call Matter.'

'My soul,' said the professor with equal indignation, 'that is, if I
have got one, is as good as yours.'

'No, it isn't,' said the poet; 'I am all soul, or nearly all. You are
nothing but a mass of Higher Protoplasm.'

'No one need wish to be anything better. I should like to know,' cried
the professor angrily, 'where we should all be without Protoplasm.'

'My friends,' said the theologian, still rather confused, 'this heat is
both irreverent and irrational. Protoplasm is invaluable, but is it not
also transient? The flight of that butterfly may well remind us--'

'Stop!' interrupted the philosopher. '_Was_ it a butterfly? Now I come
to think of it, I hardly know whether to refer it to the lepidoptera
or not. At all events, it is a striking example of the manner in which
natural and sexual selection, continued through a series of epochs, can
evolve the most brilliant and graceful combinations of tint and plumage,
by simple survival of th