Fire flames on my tongue; and though of old the Bactrian prophets were stoned, yet the stoners in oblivion sleep.  But whoso stones me, shall be as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple; though Genghis Khan with Cambyses combine to obliterate him, his name shall be extant in the mouth of the last man that lives.  And if so be, down unto death, whence I came, will I go, like Xenophon retreating on Greece, all Persia brandishing her spears in his rear.

My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in my spite.  Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell.  The fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in the land.

CHAPTER XVI Media And Babbalanja Discourse

Our visiting the Pontiff at a time previously unforeseen, somewhat altered our plans.  All search in Maramma for the lost one proving fruitless, and nothing of note remaining to be seen, we returned not to Uma; but proceeded with the tour of the lagoon.

When day came, reclining beneath the canopy, Babbalanja would fain have seriously discussed those things we had lately been seeing, which, for all the occasional levity he had recently evinced, seemed very near his heart.

But my lord Media forbade; saying that they necessarily included a topic which all gay, sensible Mardians, who desired to live and be merry, invariably banished from social discourse.

“Meditate as much as you will,” Babbalanja, “but say little aloud, unless in a merry and mythical way.  Lay down the great maxims of things, but let inferences take care of themselves.  Never be special; never, a partisan.  In safety, afar off, you may batter down a fortress; but at your peril you essay to carry a single turret by escalade.  And if doubts distract you, in vain will you seek sympathy from your fellow men.  For upon this one theme, not a few of you free-minded mortals, even the otherwise honest and intelligent, are the least frank and friendly.  Discourse with them, and it is mostly formulas, or prevarications, or hollow assumption of philosophical indifference, or urbane hypocrisies, or a cool, civil deference to the dominant belief; or still worse, but less common, a brutality of indiscriminate skepticism.  Furthermore, Babbalanja, on this head, final, last thoughts you mortals have none; nor can have; and, at bottom, your own fleeting fancies are too often secrets to yourselves; and sooner may you get another’s secret, than your own.  Thus with the wisest of you all; you are ever unfixed.  Do you show a tropical calm without? then, be sure a thousand contrary currents whirl and eddy within.  The free, airy robe of your philosophy is but a dream, which seems true while it lasts; but waking again into the orthodox world, straightway you resume the old habit.  And though in your dreams you may hie to the uttermost Orient, yet all the while you abide where you are.  Babbalanja, you mortals dwell in Mardi, and it is impossible to get elsewhere.”