the duty of pruning himself as a garden, so that he run not to a waste wilderness?  Shall the physician, the accoucheur, of the time to come be expected, and commanded, to do on the ephod and breast-plate, anoint his head with the oil of gladness, and add to the function of healer the function of Sacrificial Priest?  These you say, are wild, dark questions.  Wild enough, dark enough.  We know how Sparta—­the “man-taming Sparta” Simonides calls her—­answered them.  Here was the complete subordination of all unit-life to the well-being of the Whole.  The child, immediately on his entry into the world, fell under the control of the State:  it was not left to the judgment of his parents, as elsewhere, whether he should be brought up or not, but a commission of the Phyle in which he was born decided the question.  If he was weakly, if he had any bodily unsightliness, he was exposed on a place called Taygetus, and so perished.  It was a consequence of this that never did the sun in his course light on man half so godly stalwart, on woman half so houri-lovely, as in stern and stout old Sparta.  Death, like all mortal, they must bear; disease, once and for all, they were resolved to have done with.  The word which they used to express the idea “ugly,” meant also “hateful,” “vile,” “disgraceful” —­and I need hardly point out to you the significance of that fact alone; for they considered—­and rightly—­that there is no sort of natural reason why every denizen of earth should not be perfectly hale, integral, sane, beautiful—­if only very moderate pains be taken to procure this divine result.  One fellow, indeed, called Nancleidas, grew a little too fat to please the sensitive eyes of the Spartans:  I believe he was periodically whipped.  Under a system so very barbarous, the super-sweet, egoistic voice of the club-footed poet Byron would, of course, never have been heard:  one brief egoistic “lament” on Taygetus, and so an end.  It is not, however, certain that the world could not have managed very well without Lord Byron.  The one thing that admits of no contradiction is that it cannot manage without the holy citizen, and that disease, to men and to nations, can have but one meaning, annihilation near or ultimate.  At any rate, from these remarks, you will now very likely be able to arrive at some understanding of the wording of the advertisements which I sent to the papers.’

Zaleski, having delivered himself of this singular tirade, paused:  replaced the sepulchral relief in its niche:  drew a drapery of silver cloth over his bare feet and the hem of his antique garment of Babylon:  and then continued: