Duke of Wellington and Achilles and other fellows like that you can’t expect any team-play.  Each man is thinking about himself all the time.  Hercules could walk right through ’em, and, when they begin to pose, it’s mere child’s play for him.  The only chap that put up any game against us at all was Samson, and I tell you, now that his hair’s grown again, he’s a demon on the gridiron.  But we divided up our force to meet that difficulty.  Hercules put the rest of our eleven on to Samson, while he took care, personally, of all the other Hadesians.  And you should have seen how he handled them!  It was beautiful, all through.  He nearly got himself ruled off in the second half.  He became so excited at one time towards the end that he mistook Pompey for the ball and kicked him through the goal-posts from the forty-yard line.  Of course, it didn’t count, and Hercules apologized so gracefully to the rest of the visitors that they withdrew their protest and let him play on.”

“I should think he would have apologized to Pompey,” said I.

[Illustration:  “‘THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE UNIVERSE’”]

“He will when Pompey recovers consciousness,” said my guide, simply.

So interested was I in the Royal Arena and its recent game that I forgot all about Jupiter.

“I never thought of Hercules as a football player before,” I said, “but it is easy to see how he might become the champion of Olympus.”

“Oh, is it!” laughed the Major Domo.  “Well, you’d better not tell Jupiter that.  Jupiter’d be pleased, he would.  Why, my dear friend, he’d pack you back to earth quicker than a wink.  He brooks only one champion of anything here, and that’s himself.  Hercules threw him in a wrestling-match once, and the next day Jupiter turned him into a weeping-willow, and didn’t let up on him for five hundred years afterwards.”

By this time we had reached one of the most superbly vaulted chambers it has ever been my pleasure to look upon.  Above me the ceiling seemed to reach into infinity, and on either side were huge recesses and alcoves of almost unfathomable depth, lit by great balls of fire that diffused their light softly and yet brilliantly through all parts and corners of the apartment.

“The library,” said the Major Domo, pointing to tier upon tier of teeming shelves, upon which stood a wonderful array of exquisitely bound volumes to a number past all counting.

I was speechless with the grandeur of it all.

“It is sublime,” said I.  “How many volumes?”

“Unnumbered, and unnumberable by mortals, but in round, immortal figures just one jovillion.”

“One jovillion, eh?” said I.  “How many is that in mortal figures?”

“A jovillion is the supreme number,” explained the guide.  “It is the infinity of millions, and therefore cannot be expressed in mortal terms.”

“Then,” said I, “you can have no more books.”

“No,” said he.  “But what of that?  We have all there are and all that are to be.  You see, the library is divided into three parts.  On the right-hand side are all the books that ever have been written; here to the left you see all the books that are being written; and farther along, beginning where that staircase rises, are all the books that ever will be written.”