it; it was done instinctively.  My most virtuous thoughts are not born of my musings, but spring up in me, like bright fancies to the poet; unsought, spontaneous.  Whence they come I know not.  I am a blind man pushed from behind; in vain, I turn about to see what propels me.  As vanity, I regard the praises of my friends; for what they commend pertains not to me, Babbalanja; but to this unknown something that forces me to it.  But why am I, a middle aged Mardian, less prone to excesses than when a youth?  The same inducements and allurements are around me.  But no; my more ardent passions are burned out; those which are strongest when we are least able to resist them.  Thus, then, my lord, it is not so much outer temptations that prevail over us mortals; but inward instincts.”

“A very curious speculation,” said Media.  But Babbalanja, have you mortals no moral sense, as they call it?”

“We have.  But the thing you speak of is but an after-birth; we eat and drink many months before we are conscious of thoughts.  And though some adults would seem to refer all their actions to this moral sense, yet, in reality, it is not so; for, dominant in them, their moral sense bridles their instinctive passions; wherefore, they do not govern themselves, but are governed by their very natures.  Thus, some men in youth are constitutionally as staid as I am now.  But shall we pronounce them pious and worthy youths for this?  Does he abstain, who is not incited?  And on the other hand, if the instinctive passions through life naturally have the supremacy over the moral sense, as in extreme cases we see it developed in irreclaimable malefactors,—­shall we pronounce such, criminal and detestable wretches?  My lord, it is easier for some men to be saints, than for others not to be sinners.”

“That will do, Babbalanja; you are on the verge, take not the leap!  Go back whence you set out, and tell us of that other, and still more mysterious Azzageddi; him whom you hinted to have palmed himself off on you for you yourself.”

“Well, then, my lord,—­Azzageddi still set aside,—­upon that self-same inscrutable stranger, I charge all those past actions of mine, which in the retrospect appear to me such eminent folly, that I am confident, it was not I, Babbalanja, now speaking, that committed them.  Nevertheless, my lord, this very day I may do some act, which at a future period may seem equally senseless; for in one lifetime we live a hundred lives.  By the incomprehensible stranger in me, I say, this body of mine has been rented out scores of times, though always one dark chamber in me is retained by the old mystery.”

“Will you never come to the mark, Babbalanja?  Tell me something direct of the stranger.  Who, what is he?  Introduce him.”

“My lord, I can not.  He is locked up in me.  In a mask, he dodges me.  He prowls about in me, hither and thither; he peers, and I stare.  This is he who talks in my sleep, revealing my secrets; and takes me to unheard of realms, beyond the skies of Mardi.  So present is he always, that I seem not so much to live of myself, as to be a mere apprehension of the unaccountable being that is in me.  Yet all the time, this being is I, myself.”