'Well, and was there ever such a treasury as the Library of Cocaigne? All the diversions that you nature myths have practised I find recorded there: and to read of your ingenious devices delights and maddens me. For it is eminently interesting to meditate upon strange pleasures, and to make verses about them is the most amiable of avocations: it is merely the pursuit of them that I would discourage, as disappointing and mussy. Besides, the Library is the only spot I have to myself in the palace, what with your fellow nature myths making the most of life all over the place.'
'It is necessary, Jurgen, for one in my position to entertain more or less. And certainly I cannot close the doors against my own relatives.'
'Such riffraff, though, my darling! Such odds and ends! I cannot congratulate you upon your kindred, for I do not get on at all with these patchwork combinations, that are one-third man and the other two-thirds a vulgar fraction of bull or hawk or goat or serpent or ape or jackal or what not. Priapos is the only male myth who comes here in anything like the semblance of a complete human being: and I had infinitely rather he stayed away, because even I who am Jurgen cannot but be envious of him.'
'And why, pray?'
'Well, where I go reasonably equipped with Caliburn, Priapos carries a lance I envy—'
'Like all the Bacchic myths he usually carries a thyrsos, and it is a showy weapon, certainly; but it is not of much use in actual conflict.'
'My darling! and how do you know?'
'Why, Jurgen, how do women always know these things?—by intuition, I suppose.'
'You mean that you judge all affairs by feeling rather than reason? Indeed, I dare say that is true of most women, and men are daily chafed and delighted, about equally, by your illogical method of putting things together. But to get back to the congenial task of criticizing your kindred, your cousin Apis, for example, may be a very good sort of fellow: but, say what you will, it is ill-advised of him to be going about in public with a bull's head. It makes him needlessly conspicuous, if not actually ridiculous: and it puts me out when I try to talk to him.'
'Now, Jurgen, pray remember that you speak of a very generally respected myth, and that you are being irreverent—'
'—And moreover, I take the liberty of repeating, my darling, that even though this Ba of Mendes is your cousin, it honestly does embarrass me to have to meet three-quarters of a goat socially—'
'But, Jurgen, I must as a master of course invite prolific Ba to my feasts of the Sac?—'
'Even so, my dear, in issuing invitations a hostess may fairly presuppose that her guests will not make beasts of themselves. I often wish that this mere bit of ordinary civility were more rigorously observed by Ba and Hortanes and Fricco and Vul and Baal-Peor, and by all your other cousins who come to visit you in such a zoologically muddled condition. It shows a certain lack of respect for you, my darling.'
'Oh, but it is all in the family, Jurgen—'
'Besides, they have no conversation. They merely bellow—or twitter or bleat or low or gibber or purr, according to their respective incarnations,—about unspeakable mysteries and monstrous pleasures until I am driven to the verge of virtue by their imbecility.'
'If you were more practical, Jurgen, you would realize that it speaks splendidly for anyone to be really interested in his vocation—'
'And your female relatives are just as annoying, with their eternal whispered enigmas, and their crescent moons, and their mystic roses that change color and require continual gardening, and their pathetic belief that I have time to fool with them. And the entire pack practises symbolism until the house is positively littered with asherahs and combs and phalloses and linghams and yonis and arghas and pulleiars and talys, and I do not know what other idiotic toys that I am continually stepping on!'
'Which of those minxes has been making up to you?' says Anaitis, her eyes snapping.
'Ah, ah! now many of your female cousins are enticing enough—'
'I knew it! Oh, but you need not think you deluded me—!'
'My darling, pray consider! be reasonable about it! Your feminine guests at present are Sekhmet in the form of a lioness, Io incarnated as a cow, Hekt as a frog, Derceto as a sturgeon, and—ah, yes!—Thoueris as a hippopotamus. I leave it to your sense of justice, dear Anaitis, if of ladies with such tastes in dress a lovely myth like you can reasonably be jealous.'
'And I know perfectly well who it is! It is that Ephesian hussy, and I had several times noticed her behavior. Very well, oh, very well, indeed! nevertheless, I shall have a plain word or two with her at once, and the sooner she gets out of my house the better, as I shall tell her quite frankly. And as for you, Jurgen—!'
'But, my dear Lisa—!'
'What do you call me? Lisa was never an epithet of mine. Why do you call me Lisa?'
'It was a slip of the tongue, my pet, an involuntary but not unnatural association of ideas. As for the Ephesian Diana, she reminds me of an animated pine-cone, with that eruption of breasts all over her, and I can assure you of your having no particular reason to be jealous of her. It was merely of the female myths in general I spoke. Of course they all make eyes at me: I cannot well help that, and you should have anticipated as much when you selected such an attractive Prince Consort. What do these poor enamored creatures matter when to you my heart is ever faithful?'
'It is not your heart I am worrying over, Jurgen, for I believe you have none. Yes, you have quite succeeded in worrying me to distraction, if that is any comfort to you. However, let us not talk about it. For it is now necessary, absolutely imperative, that I go into Armenia to take part in the mourning for Tammouz: people would not understand it at all if I stayed away from such important orgies. And I shall get no benefit whatever from the trip, much as I need the change, because, without speaking of that famous heart of yours, you are always up to some double-dealing, and I shall not know into what mischief you may be thrusting yourself.'
Jurgen laughed, and kissed her. 'Be off, and attend to your religious duties, dear, by all means. And I promise you I will stay safe locked in the Library till you come back.'
Thus Jurgen abode among the offspring of heathen perversity, and conformed to their customs. Death ends all things for all, they contended, and life is brief: for how few years do men endure, and how quickly is the most subtle and appalling nature myth explained away by the Philologists! So the wise person, and equally the foreseeing nature myth, will take his glut of pleasure while there is yet time to take anything, and will waste none of his short lien upon desire and vigor by asking questions.
'Oh, but by all means!' said Jurgen, and he docilely crowned himself with a rose garland, and drank his wine, and kissed his Anaitis. Then, when the feast of the Sac? was at full-tide, he would whisper to Anaitis, 'I will be back in a moment, darling,' and she would frown fondly at him as he very quietly slipped from his ivory dining couch, and went, with the merest suspicion of a reel, into the Library. She knew that Jurgen had no intention of coming back: and she despaired of his ever taking the position in the social life of Cocaigne to which he was entitled no less by his rank as Prince Consort than by his personal abilities. For Anaitis did not really think that, as went natural endowments, her Jurgen had much reason to envy even such a general favorite as Priapos, say, from what she knew of both.
So it was that Jurgen honored custom. 'Because these beastly nature myths may be right,' said Jurgen; 'and certainly I cannot go so far as to say they are wrong: but still, at the same time—!'
For Jurgen was content to dismiss no riddle with a mere 'I do not know.' Jurgen was no more able to give up questioning the meaning of life than could a trout relinquish swimming: indeed, he lived submerged in a flood of curiosity and doubt, as his native element. That death ended all things might very well be the case: yet if the outcome proved otherwise, how much more pleasant it would be, for everyone concerned, to have aforetime established amicable relations with the overlords of his second life, by having done whatever it was they expected of him here.
'Yes, I feel that something is expected of me,' says Jurgen: 'and without knowing what it is, I am tolerably sure, somehow, that it is not an indulgence in endless pleasure. Besides, I do not think death is going to end all for me. If only I could be quite certain my encounter with King Smoit, and with that charming little Sylvia Tereu, was not a dream! As it is, plain reasoning assures me I am not indispensable to the universe: but with this reasoning, somehow, does not travel my belief. No, it is only fair to my own interests to go graveward a little more openmindedly than do these nature myths, since I lack the requisite credulity to become a free-thinking materialist. To believe that we know nothing assuredly, and cannot ever know anything assuredly, is to take too much on faith.'
