see itself; or is it blind?  Or do we delude ourselves with being gods, and end in grubs?  Genius, genius?—­a thousand years hence, to be a household-word?—­I?—­ Lombardo? but yesterday cut in the market-place by a spangled fool!—­ Lombardo immortal?—­Ha, ha, Lombardo! but thou art an ass, with vast ears brushing the tops of palms!  Ha, ha, ha!  Methinks I see thee immortal!  ’Thus great Lombardo saith; and thus; and thus; and thus:—­ thus saith he—­illustrious Lombardo!—­Lombardo, our great countryman!  Lombardo, prince of poets—­Lombardo! great Lombardo!’—­Ha, ha, ha!—­ go, go! dig thy grave, and bury thyself!”

ABRAZZA—­He was very funny, then, at times.

BABBALANJA—­Very funny, your Highness:—­amazing jolly!  And from my nethermost soul, would to Oro, thou could’st but feel one touch of that jolly woe!  It would appall thee, my Right Worshipful lord Abrazza!

ABRAZZA (to Media)—­My dear lord, his teeth are marvelously white and sharp:  some she-shark must have been his dam:—­does he often grin thus?  It was infernal!

MEDIA—­Ah! that’s Azzageddi.  But, prithee, Babbalanja, proceed.

BABBALANJA—­Your Highness, even in his calmer critic moods, Lombardo was far from fancying his work.  He confesses, that it ever seemed to him but a poor scrawled copy of something within, which, do what he would, he could not completely transfer.  “My canvas was small,” said he; “crowded out were hosts of things that came last.  But Fate is in it.”  And Fate it was, too, your Highness, which forced Lombardo, ere his work was well done, to take it off his easel, and send it to be multiplied.  “Oh, that I was not thus spurred!” cried he; “but like many another, in its very childhood, this poor child of mine must go out into Mardi, and get bread for its sire.”

ABRAZZA (with a sigh)—­Alas, the poor devil!  But methinks ’twas wondrous arrogant in him to talk to all Mardi at that lofty rate.—­Did he think himself a god?

BABBALANJA—­He himself best knew what he thought; but, like all others, he was created by Oro to some special end; doubtless, partly answered in his Koztanza.

MEDIA—­And now that Lombardo is long dead and gone—­and his work, hooted during life, lives after him—­what think the present company of it?  Speak, my lord Abrazza!  Babbalanja!  Mohi!  Yoomy!

ABRAZZA (tapping his sandal with his scepter_)—­I never read it.

BABBALANJA (looking upward)—­It was written with a divine intent.

Mohi (stroking his beard)—­I never hugged it in a corner, and ignored it before Mardi.

Yoomy (musing)—­It has bettered my heart.

MEDIA (rising)—­And I have read it through nine times.

BABBALANJA (starting up)—­Ah, Lombardo! this must make thy ghost glad!

CHAPTER LXXVII They Sup

There seemed something sinister, hollow, heartless, about Abrazza, and that green-and-yellow, evil-starred crown that he wore.