Joining in the search for Dr. Baāhar, he was discovered in a natural grotto, engaged in sketching in outline a statue garlanded with fresh vines. When aroused from his penciling meditations, by Correliana, he accosted her archly in the apostrophic style. “Ah, ha! so, so, Mistress Correliana, I have caught you at last? I see that your young gentlemen still pay their garlanded respects to Sieba the Vendic goddess of love! Moreover, in the future I shall claim a sort of cousinship with you, for your Roman ancestors in borrowing the Arconan goddess of Rugen isle to associate with their Venus, accepted a German as well as a Slavonian deity. But where are the associate representatives of your borrowed Nemisa—Flyntz, Zernbog, Iphabog, and others of the fraternal godhead—which should be in company? I hope, for relation’s sake, your people have not enacted the part of iconoclastics? for they were wont to hold near association in Vendic mythology.”
The doctor’s illusive antiquarian nest was here robbed of its cuckold eggs by a laughing exclamation of the mayorong, who in apologizing explained, that the supposed garlands were vine disguised Kyronese mousetraps, which were woven with leaves and flowers to prevent detection from the instinctive caution of the little rodentian marauders. This revelation collapsed the doctor’s enthusiasm for his discovery, which he supposed to be a sure indication of the Heraclean’s surreptitious worship of Pagan deities. Upon questioning the lad who had fabricated them, he stated that they were made to capture the destructive pirates of the banana patch, and that he had selected the head of the grotto image to keep the leaves and flowers fresh until night.
His denouement was a bonne bouche for the padre, who was in feudal arrears with his Irish bulls begot from hybrid mythology. His mirthful thrusts caused in the doctor’s mood a show of testiness, until Correliana reminded the exultant padre that it was hardly generous to pursue his advantage before strangers. With all his reverence and submissive obedience to her will, he sottoriously muttered in thought, “Does he think that a turban will make a turk, or a wreath upon an image declare it to be an object of worship?” The mirthful flashes of the padre’s eyes from beneath the wreath of Kyronese and Heraclean children surmounting his shoulders, with the frequent checks he placed upon his tongue, enhanced the humorous infection, to the evident discomfiture of his snuborian foe. Naturally endowed with the elements of strong affection, his habits had stimulated misplaced confidence, which had placed him at the beck of imposition and negotiable friendships. Of genial warmth, when the object was present, but with absence, his remembrance would relapse into hibernating torpidity. These superficial traits had subjected him to impositions without lessening his susceptibility to repetition. The Dosch had recommended Correliana and the prætor to observe his peculiarities closely, as from his superficial range of impressions they would obtain an idea of the leading traits of representative democracy, peculiar to the civilized races. Although in the manifestations of innate goodness he was not only an exception to the majority, but a rarity with the minority, still the evanescent durability of his affectionate impressions, depending upon the superficial current of precedental routine, that delights in the sensational excitement of the senses, was a typical reflection of the masses. “You will find a majority of those who patronize the legendary motto, ‘What shall I do to be saved,’ like the padre’s original self, when first encountered by Correliana. With a quid of tobacco in their mouths, and a pipe projecting therefrom, and a glass of demonizing spirits in their right hands, while from the effect produced ‘they cry out in the anguish of spirit, What shall I do to be saved from the wrath to come?’”