“If so, minstrel,” said Media, “jet it forth, my fountain, forthwith.”

“Just now, my lord,” replied Yoomy, “I was singing to myself, as I often do, and by your leave, I will continue aloud.”

“Better begin at the beginning, I should think,” said the chronicler, both hands to his chin, beginning at the top to new braid his beard.

“No:  like the roots of your beard, old Mohi, all beginnings are stiff,” cried Babbalanja.  “We are lucky in living midway in eternity.  So sing away, Yoomy, where you left off,” and thus saying he unloosed his girdle for the song, as Apicius would for a banquet.

“Shall I continue aloud, then, my lord?”

My lord nodded, and Yoomy sang:—­

    “Full round, full soft, her dewy arms,—­
     Sweet shelter from all Mardi’s harms!”

“Whose arms?” cried Mohi.

Sang Yoomy:—­

    Diving deep in the sea,
      She takes sunshine along: 
    Down flames in the sea,
      As of dolphins a throng.

“What mermaid is this?” cried Mohi.

Sang Yoomy:—­

    Her foot, a falling sound,
    That all day long might bound. 
      Over the beach,
      The soft sand beach,
      And none would find
      A trace behind.

“And why not?” demanded Media, “why could no trace be found?”

Said Braid-Beard, “Perhaps owing, my lord, to the flatness of the mermaid’s foot.  But no; that can not be; for mermaids are all vertebrae below the waist.”

“Your fragment is pretty good, I dare say, Yoomy,” observed Media, “but as Braid-Beard hints, rather flat.”

“Flat as the foot of a man with his mind made up,” cried Braid-Beard.  “Yoomy, did you sup on flounders last night?”

But Yoomy vouchsafed no reply, he was ten thousand leagues off in a reverie:  somewhere in the Hyades perhaps.

Conversation proceeding, Braid-Beard happened to make allusion to one Rotato, a portly personage, who, though a sagacious philosopher, and very ambitious to be celebrated as such, was only famous in Mardi as the fattest man of his tribe.

Said Media, “Then, Mohi, Rotato could not pick a quarrel with Fame, since she did not belie him.  Fat he was, and fat she published him.”

“Right, my lord,” said Babbalanja, “for Fame is not always so honest.  Not seldom to be famous, is to be widely known for what you are not, says Alla-Malolla.  Whence it comes, as old Bardianna has it, that for years a man may move unnoticed among his fellows; but all at once, by some chance attitude, foreign to his habit, become a trumpet-full for fools; though, in himself, the same as ever.  Nor has he shown himself yet; for the entire merit of a man can never be made known; nor the sum of his demerits, if he have them.  We are only known by our names; as letters sealed up, we but read each other’s superscriptions.