Ay:  there were deities in Mardi far greater and taller than I:  right royal monarchs to boot, living in jolly round tabernacles of jolly brown clay; and feasting, and roystering, and lording it in yellow tabernacles of bamboo.  These demi-gods had wherewithal to sustain their lofty pretensions.  If need were, could crush out of him the infidelity of a non-conformist.  And by this immaculate union of church and state, god and king, in their own proper persons reigned supreme Caesars over the souls and bodies of their subjects.

Beside these mighty magnates, I and my divinity shrank into nothing.  In their woodland ante-chambers plebeian deities were kept lingering.  For be it known, that in due time we met with several decayed, broken down demi-gods:  magnificos of no mark in Mardi; having no temples wherein to feast personal admirers, or spiritual devotees.  They wandered about forlorn and friendless.  And oftentimes in their dinnerless despair hugely gluttonized, and would fain have grown fat, by reflecting upon the magnificence of their genealogies.  But poor fellows! like shabby Scotch lords in London in King James’s time, the very multitude of them confounded distinction.  And since they could show no rent-roll, they were permitted to fume unheeded.

Upon the whole, so numerous were living and breathing gods in Mardi, that I held my divinity but cheaply.  And seeing such a host of immortals, and hearing of multitudes more, purely spiritual in their nature, haunting woodlands and streams; my views of theology grew strangely confused; I began to bethink me of the Jew that rejected the Talmud, and his all-permeating principle, to which Goethe and others have subscribed.

Instead, then, of being struck with the audacity of endeavoring to palm myself off as a god—­the way in which the thing first impressed me—­I now perceived that I might be a god as much as I pleased, and yet not whisk a lion’s tail after all at least on that special account.

As for Media’s reception, its graciousness was not wholly owing to the divine character imputed to me.  His, he believed to be the same.  But to a whim, a freakishness in his soul, which led him to fancy me as one among many, not as one with no peer.

But the apparent unconcern of King Media with respect to my godship, by no means so much surprised me, as his unaffected indifference to my amazing voyage from the sun; his indifference to the sun itself; and all the wonderful circumstances that must have attended my departure.  Whether he had ever been there himself, that he regarded a solar trip with so much unconcern, almost became a question in my mind.  Certain it is, that as a mere traveler he must have deemed me no very great prodigy.

My surprise at these things was enhanced by reflecting, that to the people of the Archipelago the map of Mardi was the map of the world.  With the exception of certain islands out of sight and at an indefinite distance, they had no certain knowledge of any isles but their own.