“I have been spared that necessity,” said he, “but I know all about them, and I assert to you upon my honor as a courier and the best guide in the Archipelago that Jupiter is the worst old roue a country ever had saddled upon it; Apollo’s music would drive you mad and make you welcome a xylophone duet; and as for Mercury’s business capacity, that is merely a capacity for getting away from his creditors.  Why shouldn’t a man wax rich if, after floating a thousand bogus corporations, selling the stock at par and putting the money into his own pocket, he could unfold his wings and fly off into the empyrean, leaving his stock and bond holders to mourn their loss?”

[Illustration:  Hippopopolis explains]

“Excuse me, Hippopopolis,” I put in, interrupting him fearlessly for the moment, “pray don’t try to deceive me by any such statement as that.  I don’t know very much, but I know something about Mercury, and when you say he puts other people’s money into his pockets, I am in a position to prove otherwise.  From five years of age up to the present time I have been brought up in a home where a bronze statue of Mercury, said to be the most perfect resemblance in all the statuary of the world, classic or otherwise, has been the most conspicuous ornament.  At ten I could reproduce on paper with my pencil every line, every shade, every curve, every movement of the effigy in so far as my artistic talent would permit, and I know that Mercury not only had no pocket, but wore no garments in which even so little as a change pocket could have been concealed.  Wherefore there must be some mistake about your charge.”

Hippopopolis laughed.

“Humph!” he said.  “It is very evident that you people over the sea have very superficial notions of things here.  When Mercury posed for that statue, like most of you people who have your photographs taken, he posed in full evening dress.  That is why there is so little of it in evidence.  But in his business suit, Mercury is a very different sort of a person.  Even in Olympus he’d have been ruled off the stock exchange if he’d ventured to appear there as scantily attired as he is in most of his statuary appearances.  You certainly are not so green as to suppose that that suit he wears in his statues is the whole extent of his wardrobe?”

“I had supposed so,” I confessed.  “It’s a trifle unconventional; but, then, he’s one of the gods, and, I presumed, could dress as he pleased.  Your gods are independent, I should imagine, of the mere decrees of fashion.”

“The more exalted one’s position, the greater the sartorial obligation,” retorted Hippopopolis, who, for a Greek and a guide, had, as will be seen, a vocabulary of most remarkable range.  “Just as it happens that our King here, like H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, has to be provided with seven hundred and sixty-eight suits of clothes so as to be properly clad at the variety of functions he is required to grace, so does a god have to be provided with a wardrobe of rare quality and extent.  For drawing-room tables, mantel-pieces, and pedestals, otherwise for statuary, Mercury can go about clad in just about half as much stuff as it would require to cover a fairly sized sofa-cushion and not arouse drastic criticism; but when he goes to business he is as well provided with pockets as any other speculator.”