delighted in the company of the brave gallants of Tupia. Ah! at such
heartless bravadoes, how mourned the poor little nymphs. Deep into
their arbors they went; and their little hearts burst like
rose-buds, and filled the whole air with an odorous grief. But when
their lovers were gentle and true, no happier maidens haunted the
lilies than they. By some mystical process they wrought minute balls
of light: touchy, mercurial globules, very hard to handle; and with
these, at pitch and toss, they played in the groves. Or mischievously
inclined, they toiled all night long at braiding the moon-beams
together, and entangling the plaited end to a bough; so that at
night, the poor planet had much ado to set."

Here Yoomy once more was mute.

"Pause you to invent as you go on?" said old Mohi, elevating his
chin, till his beard was horizontal.

Yoomy resumed.

"Little or nothing more, my masters, is extant of the legend; only it
must be mentioned, that these little people were very tasteful in
their personal adornings; the manikins wearing girdles of fragrant
leaves, and necklaces of aromatic seeds; and the little damsels, not
content with their vines, and their verdure, sporting pearls in their
ears; bracelets of wee little porpoise teeth; and oftentimes dancing
with their mates in the moonlit glades, coquettishly fanned
themselves with the transparent wings of the flying fish."

"Now, I appeal to you, royal Media; to you, noble Taji; to you,
Babbalanja;" said the chronicler, with an impressive gesture,
"whether this seems a credible history: Yoomy has invented."

"But perhaps he has entertained, old Mohi," said Babbalanja.

"He has not spoken the truth," persisted the chronicler.

"Mohi," said Babbalanja, "truth is in things, and not in words: truth
is voiceless; so at least saith old Bardianna. And I, Babbalanja,
assert, that what are vulgarly called fictions are as much realities
as the gross mattock of Dididi, the digger of trenches; for things
visible are but conceits of the eye: things imaginative, conceits of
the fancy. If duped by one, we are equally duped by the other."

"Clear as this water," said Yoomy.

"Opaque as this paddle," said Mohi, "But, come now, thou oracle, if
all things are deceptive, tell us what is truth?"

"The old interrogatory; did they not ask it when the world began? But
ask it no more. As old Bardianna hath it, that question is more final
than any answer."

CHAPTER XCIV
Of That Jo