re to confine yours for a mad one. That is to say,
if you be easily handled. For there are many bedeviled Bedlamites in
Mardi, doing an infinity of mischief, who are too brawny in the arms
to be tied."

"A very devilish doctrine that," cried Mohi. "I don't believe it."

"My lord," said Babbalanja, "here's collateral proof;--the sage
lawgiver Yamjamma, who flourished long before Bardianna, roundly
asserts, that all men who knowingly do evil are bedeviled; for good
is happiness; happiness the object of living; and evil is not good."

"If the sage Yamjamma said that," said old Mohi, "the sage Yamjamma
might have bettered the saying; it's not quite so plain as it might be."

"Yamjamma disdained to be plain; he scorned to be fully comprehended
by mortals. Like all oracles, he dealt in dark sayings. But old
Bardianna was of another sort; he spoke right out, going straight to
the point like a javelin; especially when he laid it down for a
universal maxim, that minus exceptions, all men are bedeviled."

"Of course, then," said Media, "you include yourself among the number."

"Most assuredly; and so did old Bardianna; who somewhere says, that
being thoroughly bedeviled himself, he was so much the better
qualified to discourse upon the deviltries of his neighbors. But in
another place he seems to contradict himself, by asserting, that he
is not so sensible of his own deviltry as of other people's."

"Hold!" cried Media, "who have we here?" and he pointed ahead of our
prow to three men in the water, urging themselves along, each with a
paddle.

We made haste to overtake them.

"Who are you?" said Media, "where from, and where bound?"

"From Variora," they answered, "and bound to Mondoldo." "And did that
devil Tribonnora swamp your canoe?" asked Media, offering to help
them into ours.

"We had no such useless incumbrance to lose," they replied, resting
on their backs, and panting with their exertions. "If we had had a
canoe, we would have had to paddle it along with us; whereas we have
only our bodies to paddle."

"You are a parcel of loons," exclaimed Media. "But go your ways, if
you are satisfied with your locomotion, well and good."

"Now, it is an extreme case, I grant," said Babbalanja, "but those
poor devils there, help to establish old Bardianna's position.
They belong to that species of our bedeviled race, called simpletons;
but their devils harming none but themselves, are permitted to be at
large with the