rd, "that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are
early sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack
in physical advantages; they are also witty, like AEesop the fabulist
and Besa the Egyptian god, who, as I have been told by our old friend
Horus, from whom we derive all our Egyptian lore, presided among those
heathen over festivity, jesting, and wit, and also over the toilet
of women. This shows the subtle observation of the ancients; for the
hunchback whose body is bent, applies a crooked standard to things
in general. His keen insight often enables him to measure life as
the majority of men do, that is by a straight rule; but in some happy
moments when he yields to natural impulse he makes the straight crooked
and the crooked straight; and this gives rise to wit, which only
consists in looking at things obliquely and--setting them askew as it
were. You have only to talk to my hump-backed gardener Gibbus, or listen
to what he says. When he is sitting with the rest of our people in an
evening, they all laugh as soon as he opens his mouth.--And why? Because
his conformation makes him utter nothing but paradoxes.--You know what
they are?"

"Certainly."

"And you, Pul?"

"No, Father."

"You are too straight-nay, and so is your simple soul, to know what the
thing is! Well, listen then: It would be a paradox, for instance, if
I were to say to the Bishop as he marches past in procession: 'You are
godless out of sheer piety;' or if I were to say to Paula, by way of
excuse for all the flattery which I and your mother offered her just
now: 'Our incense was nauseous for very sweetness.'--These paradoxes,
when examined, are truths in a crooked form, and so they best suit the
deformed. Do you understand?"

"Certainly," said Paula.

"And you, Pul?"

"I am not quite sure. I should be better pleased to be simply told: 'We
ought not to have made such flattering speeches; they may vex a young
girl.'"

"Very good, my straightforward child," laughed her father. "But look,
there is the man! Here, good Gibbus--come here!--Now, just consider:
supposing you had flattered some one so grossly that you had offended
him instead of pleasing him: How would you explain the state of affairs
in telling me of it?"

The gardener, a short, square man, with a huge hump but a clever face
and good features, reflected a minute and then replied: "I wanted to
make an ass smell at some roses and I put thistles un