The preparation of a cheerful repast was one day well advanced, when, lifting up their eyes, the pair beheld a haggard and emaciated couple tottering along the road that led from the Palace of Illusion.

“Heavens!” exclaimed they simultaneously, “no! yes! ’tis surely they!” O friends! whence this forlorn semblance? whence this osseous condition?”

“Of them anon,” replied the attenuated youth, “but, before all things, dinner!”

The restorative was speedily administered, and the pilgrim commenced his narration.

“Guarded,” he said, “though the Palace of Illusion was by every species of hippogriffic chimaera, my bride and I experienced no difficulty in penetrating inside its precincts.  The giants lifted us in their arms, the dragons carried us on their backs, fairy bridges spanned the moats, golden ladders inclined against the ramparts, we scaled the towers and trod the courts securely, though constructed to all seeming of dissolving cloud.  Delicate fare loaded every dish; smiling companions invited to every festivity; perfumes caressed our nostrils; music enwrapped our ears.

“But while all else charmed and allured, one fact intruded of which we could not pretend unconsciousness, the intensity of our aversion for each other.  Never could I behold my Imogene without marvelling whatever could have induced me to wed her, and she has acknowledged that she laboured under the like perplexity.  On the other hand, our good opinion of ourselves had grown prodigiously.  The other’s dislike appeared to each an insane delusion, and we seriously questioned whether it could be right to mate longer with a being so destitute of true aesthetic feeling.  We confided these scruples to each other, with the result of a most tempestuous altercation.

“As this was attaining its climax, one of the inmates of the Palace, a pert forward boy, resembling a page out of livery, passed by, and ironically, as I thought, congratulated us on the strength of our mutual attachment.  ‘Never,’ exclaimed he, ’have I beheld the like here before, and I am the oldest inhabitant.’

“As this felicitation was proffered at the precise moment when I was engaged in staunching a rent in my cheek with a handful of my wife’s hair, I was constrained to regard it as unseasonable, and expressed myself to that effect.

“‘What!’ exclaimed he, with equal surprise, ’know ye not that this is the Palace of Illusion, where everything is inverted and appears the reverse of itself?  Intense indeed must be the affection which can thus drive you to fisticuffs!  Had I beheld you billing and cooing, truly I had counselled a judicial separation!’

“My wife and I looked at each other, and by a common impulse made at our utmost speed for the gate of the Palace of Illusion.