Chapter XVIII (2)

Although fearfully repugnant to our feelings, we turned our attention to the democratic amusements in the northern sectional arena, within the vestibule of the barriers; as you cautioned us of the necessity of seeing for ourselves all the enactments that we recorded for advisorial judgment. The “pit,” as it was aptly termed, was a miniature imitation of the large arena of the lists; but the contestants for the honors of mutilation were ants of the white, red, and black species, and their antagonists were tarantulas distinguished by the same order and variation of colors. But with naturally a higher object in view than their human Animalculan and Giga exemplars, and controllers of the lists, they fought without the artificial weapons that man’s superior intelligence has devised for kindred destruction, in direct controversion of the manifest designs of Creative intention. The instinctive impressions of a blind man could have detected without the aid of thought, the tangible distinctions that had furnished the motive attractions for the northern and southern divisions of divertisement predilections. The ants and the spiders engaged in mutilating encounter, were to us, in reality, more attractive objects to contemplate in their active ferocity, than their human spectator instigators, who combined with controlling intelligence the visual evidences of the most abject passions within sphere of animal and its reptile grade of expression. The patrons of the southern pavilion had been held in dalliance with the soft pleasures of amorous sensuality, which unopposed called forth the highest expression of instinctive refinement; but the current tendencies from multifarious indulgence were to the fall and deep whirlpool abyss of passion, hate, and deadly revenge.

The colored specie distinctions of the ants and spiders appeared to be as great a source of inveterate hatred between its caste representatives, as the antagonisms of race in form. This necessitated the separation of the white from the red, and the red from the black ants, with a like disposal of the tarantulas from specie representatives of opposing colors. The first encounter that we witnessed was between white and red ants; the former being universally successful with the odds of nine to one against them, and with the blacks twenty to one. The cause of this concentration of multiplied ability in the white, to cope with red and black antagonism, became soon apparent from their studied aforethought for the serried separation and disposal of their foes before they could effect united opposition. The deadly devices of the whites to lure their foes, with the stupid blindness of the red and black ants in accepting the proffered baits without consideration, afforded a relative study for detecting the cause of the instinctive superiority that rules with white humanity. When the whites in an encounter against overwhelming odds had gained decisive advantage, the cathedral bells of Saint Peter sounded from the chief dovecot beneath our place of concealment; its funeral peals announced a new phase in the strange enactments of the day, which had appeared to us so perverse as sources of amusement that we were at no loss to discover the Giga creed origin of hell. Fearful that the long-waited-for crisis was approaching, our eyes were upon the alert.

As the yellow tints from the sun’s fading rays grew hazy with the twilight heraldings of darkness, the folding doors of a large building of ominous appearance opened, and from its portals issued a procession of Dominican friars. In the midst of these inquisitorial representatives of the human sacrificial order, were the unfortunate tits supported by familiars of the Holy Office, with their limbs dragging helplessly upon the pavement, and their heads half revolving on their shoulders without the power of muscular control. The sight aroused the indignation of the tribune and his companions, who with difficulty restrained us from extending to them our immediate aid and sympathy. This was no slight undertaking on their part, for we were unused to a knowledge of the existence of such heartlessness, and would have adventured their deliverance if the odds had been an hundred fold greater; but we finally yielded to the wisdom of their discretion.

On the arrival of the sad cortege at the knight’s encampment they joined the procession escort of the doomed, among which were Sir O’Ham Ill Tong, and his squire, Kan Avan, who had been evidently condemned to the stake. As the gates of the northern barrier were obstructed by the occupation of the vestibule arena, in which the ants and spiders were engaged in an instinctive joust, the inquisitors in deference to the multitude awaited the decision of the contest; the latter, with reverence, giving place for them to witness the result of the sportive entertainment, as a prelude to their premeditated enactments. At the conclusion of the melée fight of the ants, in which the white champions had proved victorious, a large, whitish gray tarantula spider had been “pitted” against five mottled white ants, both parties having been subjected to a training abstinence from food to increase their ferocity. For a time the battle had been equally sustained, but a bold venture cost two of the ants their lives; in the feat the tarantula was maimed with the partial rupture of a carapace and the loss of the distal joints of two legs. Two of the remaining ants having a firm mandibular hold on the round carapace leg, the greatest excitement prevailed among the spectators, wagers being bantered between high and low; all distinctions of caste, for the time being, were banished by the talismanic greed for gold and silver. It soon became evident the auto-da-fe rites would be deferred until the result of the ant-fight was determined, for the order of procession was broken, the familiars with their human burdens crowding to gain a favorable position to witness the closing struggle. While the ants gnawed and swayed in hold upon the tarantula’s leg, he struggled to bring them within reach of his mandibles. The partial success of the assailants and assailed was greeted with vociferous shouts by the wager partisans, unabashed by the presence of the inquisitorial brotherhood and archiepiscopal dignitaries of the church. The tribune sadly reminded us, that the brutality of the scene was the tested ægis of democratic equality based upon individual or associate physical strength adroitly used,—chance advantages, or in massed subjection to the rule of selfish partisanship, as with ants in attacking the spider whose habits and interests in life interfered in no way with their own. But as you perceive, the hinds are so stupid in the dullness of their perceptions, that with the clear analogy of the cause and result of their own condition, in demonstration from the arbitrary power of physical strength that captured and forced the ants and spider into antagonistic collision, they fail to detect in the caste orders of priestcraft and knighthood the same motor influence in mental combination.

With our attention called so directly to the resemblance,—from the pitiable condition of the poor tit victims, who had been tortured into the vestibule of death, and were awaiting the ordeal of fire to recall from their bodies the vital spark,—we could not fail to admire the comprehensive quickness of our Coliseo cousins’ detective acumen for analyzing the relations and gradations of instinctive responsibility. Indeed, it would be impossible for you to imagine a more discordant or disgusting scene, or a baser use of language than these bloodthirsty humans used at every disjuncture effected by the combatants. That you may obtain an inkling of this pandemonic scene of instinctive madness, I will adventure a sketch.

Prominent among the representatives of foreign nations was a Scotch abbot of the abbey of Saint Maythedielscratch-me on the Tweed. In person and language he was tall and lank. Although engaged in “amusement” with an English prior, the incumbent of Goddamnmee on the Tyne, just over the border, they “staked” fearful invectives with their metallic coin. But the English canon was evidently no favorite, and required all the bluffness he had attained by a long course of dominant rule over a submissive brotherhood, as well as a full purse of tithes, for he was bantered with wagers on every side. But with bellowing disdain in the short and curt Durham dialect, he was ready with horned alternatives to oppose all comers. Chief among his secondary challengers, with coined words, was the abbe of Mortdieu, who mingled frothy gibes with his wager temptations. The ants were at length vanquished, to the great chagrin of the English abbot’s debtors, who tried all sorts of evasions to escape payment. Oncleslydenbet, the German prior of the priory of Shufflehausen, repudiated the payment of his forfeited wager in the concise terms, “Not a bit of it!” The Irish abbot of Fivewounds said, “To be sure I have bet and lost, but it was the understanding that I should never pay unless I won!” The Dutch incumbent of Dunderandblixen, the Welsh of Sweatmyleeks, and French paid theirs; the first with fearful imprecations and sputterings, the second with an abundant flow of perspiration, and the last with strings of sacres.

But for your injunction, I should have withheld the incidents of a scene so horribly repulsive in its ferocious combinations of speaking inhumanity. Especially as it implies distracted attention from the wretched condition of the dislocated tits; but in direction we submitted to the ulterior intention of the Coliseos. The tribune, whose aid you will recognize, said, that you required an exact index of the real condition of the Giga and Animalculan races under the instinctive rule of the stomach and senses, that you might compare the evidences with those of the first falcon era, to judge of the cycle changes. The task, with his assistance, is by no means pleasant, as with increasing familiarity the scenes of brutality become more repulsive, so that you need have no fears that they will affect us otherwise than as a ferment to clarify the instincts of our bodies from corrupt humors and indwelling passions. Much time was exhausted in wrangling before the ant circus was removed to admit the papal and inquisitorial trains into the lists. The arrival of the former, while the battle of the ants and spider was pending, was exceedingly fortunate for Cardinal Buenaventura, as by wagering with the pope an equivalent, with the spider for his champion, he was exorcised of his perjury, and by remitting to his holiness certain pecuniary obligations, received absolution to date. Our sympathy for the tarantula’s loss of his carapace legs, with the extreme division of the fourth, was not strongly excited, as in excess of his pope contemporary’s alleged stigmatic attributes of infliction and redemption, from instinctive woes, he in reality possesses the “miraculous” power of material reproduction of lost limbs.

The arena of the lists had been rearranged for the final enactment, and furnished with stakes and faggots for the sacrificial ordeal of fire, as a purgatorial agent for the purification of the body from heretical sins. These altars were raised between the two pavilions; and the ladies’, I am obliged with sadness to relate, was filled with representatives of the sex, yet they were of a class whose gratifications were solely dependent upon the organs of sense. During the converting labors of the confessors with the San Benitos the inquisitorial monks, dignitaries of the church, and knights, chanted a grand high mass to ritualistic ceremonial accompaniments. This was pronounced to be more affecting, by the occupants of the ladies pavilion, from the sobbing wails and lamentations of the doomed Irish knight, Sir O’Ham Ill Tong, and his squire, Kan Avan, who unceasingly proclaimed their innocence from perjury after they were tied to the stakes, thus adding contumacy to the ordeal and decisions of the judges. As their winnings disgraced the order of knighthood they were gagged with clouts.

When these preliminary preparations were nearly completed, the tribune gave the longed for signal of rescue. In a twinkling our Manatitlans were in the midst of the inquisitors and ecclesiastics, upsetting them in a confused pile with the knights. We liberated the tits by the time the Coliseo aids arrived, who placed the rescued in the arms of their relatives. The panic we created could not have been greater if we had been gigas instead of giantescoes. The women, who had looked calmly on the preparations for human sacrifice by the tortures of a slow fire, screamed and fainted at our appearance, their attendant knights surrendering without opposition. The pope and cardinals were in as much fear as the unsanctified until the tribune made known the source from whence we came. Then relieved from his apprehensions of bodily danger, he commenced crossing himself furiously, muttering the while anathemas against the Coliseos and their followers for the sacrilegious invasion, and interference with the sacred offices of the church. Counting upon our intimidation through the enactment of prestigious mummeries, he would have left with his satellites; but the tribune detained him by laying his hand upon his shoulder with an inflection that made the burly little head of the church understand that it had forced a crisis, from which mumbling ritual cant could not extricate it without the assurance of a strict regard for the personal independence of all Animalculans from religious restrictions. We will give you the terms of the tribune’s injunction:—

“Now Canonicus, that there may be no more acts of treachery on your part, or through the instigations of those subject to your direction, I shall dictate to you terms in behalf of our Manatitlan colonies that you must keep inviolate, for if they are infringed upon in the least degree we shall hold you and your associates personally responsible. We have heretofore offered you good will, but you have taken advantage of it to impose upon our communities and inflict personal injuries upon our adherents; showing that you are alike destitute of gratitude, and the disposition that inclines to honorable and just reciprocation. In the first place, you are to respect the privileges of all claiming a desire for our protection, whether an Animalculan of Mouthpat birth, or of other nationality. In the second place we shall hold you personally responsible for any acts of cruelty perpetrated by Animalculans under your control upon animal or insect; and for the honor of instinctive humanity we especially interdict all barbarous amusements between man and man. Fortunately, communication has again been opened with our motherland, and by the timely arrival of our cousins, we have been able to avail ourselves of their counsel when most needed. From the enactments of to-day, which have borne witness to the steadfast goodness of your daughter, Idolisima, in her adherence to the inculcations of her Coliseo education, we shall hereafter require that all the Animalculan children of Rome shall from henceforth be submitted to our censorial and educational charge. We are aware that in assuming the charge we undertake an immense and arduous responsibility from the fecundity of your animal propensities. But in time our inauguration will effect the substitution of improved quality for quantity with an affectionate compensation that with cultivation and reciprocation you have the means of realizing in fatherly association with your daughter.”

Here he was interrupted by Sir O’Ham Ill Tong,—from whose mouth the clout had been removed,—with the ejaculation: “An sure, by our holy mother, what your honor is plased to say is all gospel truth, and by the same token, if there is any more, I believe it on my shoul! But if your honor will be so obbleeging as to order one of your giants to remove this gorget that binds my throat to the stake, and set me free, if yees have closed what ye are going to say, I can hear the rest more comfortably, and ye’ll save from fire as good a Christian as ever was burnt for pargary,—an for the life of me, I can’t just see how that can be, for I niver spoke a blissed word in the matter at all!”

This characteristic wordy appeal of the Irishman was complied with on the moment, and when released he fell on his knees at the feet of the tribune, invoking upon his head the blessings of all the saints in the Irish calendar, offering to serve him to the end of his days, on foot, or on roachback, for nothing at all save fair wages, hursts, perquisites, pickings, and the run of the kitchen, and sich likes! The ludicrous fall, in the use of words, from knightly inflation caused a smile notwithstanding the embarrassments imposed by our interruption. But the flow of his tongued gratitude to the ascendant party, having reference to future benefits, could with difficulty be stayed. When accomplished he was advised to return with all speed to the place of his birth before a worse evil befell his body than purification by fire.

The pope and his cardinals, while subject to the tribune’s reprehensions, became as servile in their bearing as they had before been arrogant. The pope’s offer of entertainment for the night we could not accept, after witnessing the barbarous proceedings of the day, as we preferred the protection of our silicoth tapas under the cornice to the lair hospitality of human wolves. After the crowd dispersed a messenger was despatched to apprise the Coliseans of the successful result of our enterprise, with the desire that a falcon might be sent for us at early dawn. In accordance with our request a falcon appeared with the earliest light on the following morning, and on alighting, to our great surprise, Idolisima Canonica, in company with the tribune’s parents and other representatives of Coliseo to the howdah’s full capacity for entertainment, descended to receive our salutations. It appeared, from the relation of the tribune’s sister, that Idolisima after leaving the lists had sought protection under the escort of Penny Song and Long Bow, at the coliseum, well knowing that the ties of daughter and sister would not save her from the dungeons of the Inquisition, recently built by the pope, her uncle. From the greeting she gave the tribune, it required no prompting of speech to apprise us that a stronger motive than fear of the dungeons caused her to seek an asylum with her foster guardians of childhood.

Without teasing our curious interest in her welfare she appealed to the tribune: “Your Manatitlan cousins, Novuotus, would scarcely feel satisfied with your interest in my behalf, if I should allow you to hold me silently exculpated from your abiding confidence in the wisdom that dictated our betrothal. As we are united, yet single, in the fulfillment of our marital alliance, I am anxiously desirous of having the affectionate sanction of their approbation, which could not be conceded if they thought me capable of participating otherwise than by form, in the cruel enactments of yesterday. In speaking, it is my wish to vindicate myself from voluntary conformity with the chivalric usages in which I engaged, as they were then, as they ever have been, sadly repugnant to my conceptions of love and affection, which vividly impress me with the reality of an existence independent of the body’s mortality. That your cousins may realize in what measure they are entitled to bestow upon me their lenity and sympathy, I will relate to them the cause that influenced my introduction to the guardianship of your people. Of my ancestral origin, I am certain that the events of yesterday will better inform you than I am able from my own knowledge. In my fourth year, when my perceptions were only advanced in the bud sufficient for impression, without enlisting the maturing aid of thoughtful judgment derived from comparison, my father, mother, and two brothers, became very sick with the plague, alike destructive to the Giga and Animalculan races. The harrowing scenes of bereavement daily recounted in my presence aroused impressions of fear for myself, and when my parents became sick, I added anxiety to my aunt’s responsibility, to whose sole charge we had been left by the servants and neighbors. One day, despairing and hopeless, my aunt had enfolded me in her arms, and while wofully lamenting threatened desolation from the death of my parents and brother, I was trying to solace her with endearments, my arms were around her neck, with my lips to her ear and face turned backward, when the door softly opened and my voice was stilled by the surprise of my eyes at the entrance of a very large and beautiful woman. [Here Idolisima fondly embraced, with caresses, the neck of the Doschessa of Romelia.] My silence and fixed attention attracted my aunt’s eyes to the door, and when she discovered the stranger, who appeared to be well known to her, she was much abashed that she had been surprised in useless lamentation. This made me gladly hope that the visitor was an angel sent to help us; so, growing bold with the feeling of hope, I gently withdrew myself from my aunt’s embrace and approached the stranger imploring her aid for my parents and brothers! In a moment I was in her arms; then I became so quickly changed, I no longer feared, for her voice and touch made me feel so secure that I was sure she came from heaven to help us. But I have since experienced that she came from a far better place beyond the reach of gold and its selfish attractions. Urging my aunt to take new courage, she went out, still holding me in her arms, and meeting a censor, with others of her people, she returned, and soon our house became quite changed, for they brought with them your clothes that remain clean, so that from being dismal and sad everything looked nice and cheerful. Then mother reviving, she also knew the angel, who asked her if she could take me to her Coliseo home? Oh, how gladly my mother smiled with her whispered yes, so faintly and pleadingly grateful in earnest expression it has ever been present since. Striving to speak, my mother fell asleep without breathing, but still she smiled, until it paled to a shadow in the moonlight, then we were taken to the Coliseo, for my aunt required rest, where we were bathed and dressed with the care of so many sweet faced persons, that we became quite bewildered with love and slept. In the morning we were wakened with sunlight and song, so harmonious with gladness, my aunt touched me to be sure, for we both thought alike. I was placed in school where there were so many that in love we were counted as one, for we were so united in affection that tears of vexation and sadness never flowed. Then as I grew in years, I learned to grow emulous in the personal requirements of purity, and with the care of myself, was able to assist others, for the grateful meed of love. Much more I could say, but I feel that you do not require it. When my father became my uncle, Pope Innocent I., I had reached my eighteenth year, and had been betrothed to Novuotus, and we were enjoying the hospitality of my foster parents, the Dosch and Doschessa of Romelia, during our term of probation, when my father, after his election, demanded that my aunt and myself should be restored to his care. The Dosch, after a long consultation with his advisors, for he was very sorry to part with us, concluded that it was best for us to return. This was a very sad decision for us, but we were assured that if we found ourselves unhappy from being unable to do good, we could come back. We were then taken to my ‘uncle’s’ temporal court, but none were truly glad to see us, for we were strangers, even to my father, for he would not accept the monthly invitation to visit me at the Coliseo school. Yet we were constantly surrounded with a throng of servants and people of condition, so that with them, we were mere puppets, and felt very unclean, for we could do nothing for ourselves. But all were very profuse in the utterance of complimentary formalities, which made us feel like exiles from real affection. The first process to which we were subjected was purification from heresy; in preparation our silicoth garments were removed, and our persons were redressed with woven stuffs, that in their newness smelt animally earthy, and soon became irksome in weight, and rankly unendurable, notwithstanding they had been sprinkled with holy water at the time we were baptized. Then, my aunt was made, or created, queen of Rome, and I was christened Princess Idolisima Canonica by the same process. A few days since my aunt escaped and went back to unite with her Coliseo affections; since than I have been closely guarded, as I had attempted to leave with her, but was foiled by accident. So with my father turned uncle, I became the puppet, or bone and flesh of contention for the strongest and best trained brute in the lists, and was seemingly obliged to conform to the dictated usages; but with the determination to escape if an opportunity offered. In this relation I have traced my childish impressions in the language I have been accustomed to impart them to my loved school associates; to remodel them to suit my present perceptions would detract from memorial pledges of affection. That you saw me in the lists yesterday, came not through my own volition, as you will concede; but perhaps, from a wise wish on the part of the Dosch and his advisors to test in what I lacked for the power of resisting the wordy flatteries and material vanities to which I would be exposed in the papal court of my uncle. For I had exceeded in years your period of matriculation, as my instinctive impressions are still retained in memory, with the infantile desires perpetuated in assumed motherhood of artificial productions in baby likeness. But if you can only see me as I feel, and have felt, in pity for the barren love of the mothers of Rome, who are content with the pride of hope in the advancement of their children to material possessions, and the empty honors conferred by my uncle, the pope, you must know that with all my imperfections I am, in the current love of purity and goodness, free from my body’s instinctive taint. Knowing my earnest yearning for purified worth, in my desire for the welfare of others, you will, I am sure, lend me your aid for the higher attainments achieved in realization by your primitive people for loving perception.”

This appeal of Idolisima received the sanction of our affections with a warmth of genial outflow confirmed in baptismal attestation from our eyes. The Doschessa in reciprocating the fond caresses of Idolisima said that she and her aunt had nobly sustained the venture, showing that with woman love’s perception, when free from selfishness, is in a measure independent of age, when subject to the constant lead of example. In closing it will be well to state that the union of Novuotus with Idolisima was consummated with her father’s consent. The event was celebrated by Penny Song, with an improvisation styled the Epoch Ardens, Long Bow assisting with a transposition of High Water to Fair Water. But from their lack of precedental knowledge pertaining to Manatitlan history, and of love independent of the body’s instinctive materialism for the bombastic usury of imagination in word portrayal, their poetical ovations would have been deemed tame unaided by their skillful rendition in the well timed measure of song with the instrumental accompaniment of zithern and gourd. This transcript, of an event so varied in its bearings, will afford you a more correct insight into the condition of our Roman colonists, than tracings from historical records, and statistical accounts, of which you will be advised at our earliest leisure.

TITVIEW.

_Nota Bene._—Our wives have not been idle, but under the direction of Oluisandria have auramented many of the Giga women of Rome, who with silent example emulate the family of Indegatus.

* * * * *

At the conclusion of Titview’s letter, the Dosch stated that the initial voyagers of the second falcon era found the colonists of Constantinople and Jerusalem in a still more prosperous condition than those of Rome, and equally rejoiced in the fulfillment of expectant waiting. But as they presented the same characteristic features of dogmatic rule, with caste variations, having their origin in the degree of control exercised by individuals over their own habits, for the control of the masses, the opposition to colonistic example was in the main the same. “Now, in company of Mr. Welson, I will leave you to meditate upon the examples I have adduced of Giga and Animalculan humanity under the rule of instinctive habits and customs engendered from the unreason of the stomach in its control of the brain, until your letters arrive from the other side of the precedental gulph to strengthen the contrast between your past and present thoughts. In the meantime you can study, with our auramental aid, the habits of professional instinct cultivated by the adjunct members of the corps, in adverse defiance of Heraclean example and our thought substitutions. Although formalistically influenced to habits of outward conformity, neither Dr. Baāhar or the curators of sound, and artist, have changed in thought from precedental routine; and in their present mood, would relate the events which have transpired as surface matters of fact, for publication, or scientific gossip, and the excitement of wonder and surprise in the gaping multitude who throng with open ears lyceums and public lecture rooms, for drum impressions. Your college and scientific professors can be truthfully likened to your railroad locomotives, which swiftly progress forwards and backwards on their rails, but once off their tracks are helpless, from their own resources, to move themselves or their trains. But with the stage gradations of instinct now open to your view, you can readily discover and test the animus source of present happiness with the realities of its impression as an assurance of immortality.”