"That is a different creed to that of Harikar in Atvatabar," said the goddess, "which is worship of body, mind, and soul. We believe with your Greeks in perfection of body and also with your Hindoos in perfection of soul. We re-enforce the powers of body and mind by science and invention, and the soul powers by art and spiritual love.
We believe in magic and sorcery. Our religion is a state of ecstatic joy, chiefly found in the cultured friendship of counterpart souls, who form complete circles with each other. Enduring youth is the consummate flower of civilization. With us it lasts one hundred years, beginning with our twentieth birthday. There is no long and crucial stage of bodily abstinence from the good things of life; there is only abstinence from evil, from vice, selfishness, and unholy desire. Our religion is the trinity of body, mind, and spirit, in their utmost development. Such is the faith of Atvatabar."
"And such a faith," I replied, "with such a deity as your holiness, must profoundly sway the hearts of your people."
The goddess was a woman of intuition. Almost before I was aware of it myself she evidently discovered a sentiment underlying my words. She paused a moment, and before I could question her further regarding the peculiar creed of Atvatabar, said: "We will discuss these things more fully hereafter."
At a signal from the goddess the trumpets rang a blast announcing the audience at an end. With the summons music uttered a divine throbbing throughout the chamber, while the singers marched and sang gloriously in the cloisters.
As I sat, my soul swimming in a sea of ecstasy born of the blessed environment, I felt possessed of splendors and powers hitherto unknown and unfelt. A thrill of joy made hearts tremble beneath the crystal dome. It was a new lesson in art's mysterious peace.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GARDEN OF TANJE.
A series of banquets and other entertainments followed each other during our stay at the palace of Tanje. The goddess had held frequent interviews with the professors and myself regarding the external sphere, and had examined our maps and charts with the greatest curiosity.
His majesty did not take nearly so much interest in our revelations as the goddess, being inert and prosaic in character.
[Illustration: The Lilasure.]
On the morning of the fourth day of our stay at the palace of Tanje I received a visit from the grand chamberlain Cleperelyum, with a command from the goddess to meet her in her boudoir. Cleperelyum led me to the sacred apartment, which, when I entered, was vacant. The walls were models of decorative architecture, the panels being filled with silk tapestry of a pale yellow-green hue, the mouldings being ivory-white. The panelled frieze was filled with figures in violet and gold, and sea-green upholstery covered couch and divan, while the draperies were silks of cream and blue. It was a luxurious retreat.
The carpet was a silk rug, soft as a bed of rose leaves, with a broad border in tones of green, violet and white.
Presently the goddess entered with a winning smile on her features.
She was arrayed in a dress of soft violet silk, that, apparently, had no other garment beneath, so perfect was the revelation of her figure.
Beneath the figure it fell to the ground in a thousand folds, like a wave of smooth water bursting into foaming rapids. Round her neck was a garland of lustrous yellow pearls. On her head she wore a tiara of much smaller dimensions than that worn on public occasions. Her pose was upright as an arrow.
[Illustration: The Laburnul.]
I rose and bowed profoundly, and the goddess also bowing, requested me to be seated.
"I have sent for you," said she, "to learn more about your country and to talk with you about ours. I am consumed with curiosity regarding the external world." "Your holiness," I replied, "permit me to say that your graceful condescension exceeds, if possible, your splendor.
I am truly bewildered at the vastness of my good fortune in discovering a country ruled by so glorious a goddess."
"And I also," said the goddess, "have learned that Bilbimtesirol is not the universe, but a very small portion thereof indeed. I am intensely interested in your accounts of the outer world. I am overpowered with the thought that the exterior surface of the planet is peopled with beings like ourselves, and that civilization, government, religion, art, manufacture, and social life are so greatly developed beneath a still more glorious sun than ours."
"Did it never occur to your astronomers," I inquired, "that human activity might also pervade the outer sphere?"
[Illustration: The Green Gazzle of Glockett Gozzle.]
"Our astronomers," said the goddess, "have long since decided that the conditions of climate on the exterior planet were too severe to allow human life to exist. They are aware that a great luminary gave the outer earth light by day, for our most daring aerial voyagers have frequently caught a glimpse of its light seen through the polar gulf.
They argued that the equatorial regions were too hot, and the polar regions too cold, to support life, consequently the outer earth was a barren waste as desolate and uninhabited as your own satellite."
"Would your holiness like to visit the exterior earth?" I boldly inquired.
"If duty did not prevent me," she replied, "I would love to visit those far-off strange lands and peoples and see your sun and moon and all the stars!"
From the goddess I first learned the precise location of Atvatabar.
Lying exactly underneath the Atlantic Ocean it stretched east and west some two thousand miles, surrounded by the interior sea. There were other continents in Bilbimtesirol which we had already dimly seen spread upon the concave walls of the world around us.
"You must come to see both Egyplosis and Arjeels," said her holiness, "but before you leave Tanje you must see my garden."
"It must be a little paradise!" I exclaimed.
"Let us go and see it now," she said, and, so saying, arose with a gracious gesture and led me out of the apartment.
I accompanied her holiness down the terrace leading to the lovely retreat. Curving walks led between banks of flowers of all hues.
There were avenues of tall shrubs not unlike rhododendrons, with the same magnificent bloom. Other plants, such as the firesweet, displayed a blinding wealth of yellow flowers.
[Illustration: Jeerloons.]
The goddess led the way to the conservatory in the garden wherein were treasured strange and beautiful flowers and zoophytes illustrative of the gradual evolution of animals from plants, a scientific faith that held sway in Atvatabar. The goddess showed me a beautiful plant with large fan-shaped leaves from whose edges hung a fringe of heavy roses; long trailing garlands of clustering star-shaped flowers sprang from the same roots. The plant was a perfect bower of bliss, and while called the laburnul, might with greater propriety be styled the rose of paradise.
[Illustration: A Jeerloon.]
Another fern-like plant was in reality a bird flower, called the lilasure. It had the head and breast of a bird, from whose back grew roots and four small feathers resembling those of the peacock. Its tail resembled two large fronds of a fern, which served the animal for wings, for by their aid it flew through the air.
There was also a flock of strange green-feathered creatures, resembling buzzards, called green gazzles, on whose heads grew sun-flowers. On either side, beneath their wings, were the plant roots by means of which they still sucked nourishment from the soil, as their bills were not yet perfectly developed. They belonged to a locality on the south coast of Atvatabar known as Glockett Gozzle.
The lillipoutum was another wonderful creature, half-plant half-bird.
It represented the animal almost entirely evolved from the plant stage. A wreath of rootlets adorned the neck, but the most conspicuous features were the stork-like legs that terminated in roots with radiations like encrinital stems. The bird fed itself like a plant by simply thrusting its root-legs into the soft ooze of lake bottoms and slimy banks of rivers. Its tail was also a root possessing great absorptive powers. In shape the bird resembled a flamingo, and its feathers were of an old-rose color, mottled with lichen-green. A beard-like radiation of roots decorated its head, and its bill was extremely delicate.
[Illustration: The Lillipoutum.]
Such wonders as these intensified the glamor of the interior world. I was fast becoming bewildered with the intoxication of an environment of strange, abnormal creatures--unlike anything I had ever seen before.
The goddess regarded her pets with the greatest interest, and was pleased at being the first to acquaint me with such living wonders of Atvatabar.
"Your holiness," I said, "these creatures are so wonderful that unless I had actually seen them it would be impossible for me to believe in their existence." As I spoke, two strange bat-like forms flew toward us; they were flying orchids, known as jeerloons, with heart-shaped faces and arms terminating in wire-like claws. Their wing projections were bristling with suckers like the rays of a starfish. Altogether they were weird, uncanny creatures. The goddess caught one of them in her hands, and laughed at my excitement. "They will haunt you in your dreams," she exclaimed, "poor, pretty things!"
"But now," she added, "let me show you a plant that is fast becoming a brood of animals, both root and flower. It is the jugdul. Still rooted in the soil, strange faces are swelling in the mould, while the flower is a leaf surmounted by a weird, small head, the nasal organ of which is a ponderous proboscis. We do not know as yet what kind of animal life will evolve from the plant, but the botanists and physiologists of Atvatabar are agreed that at least two new species of animals will be developed when the evolution of the zoophyte is complete."
[Illustration: The Jugdul.]
I assured her holiness that I considered myself the most favored of men to be permitted to visit the sanctuary wherein the occult transmigration of life was being manifested. It was a rare experience!
Just then the goddess directed my attention to a flying root resembling a humming-bird. It was the far-famed jalloast, the semi-evolved humming-bird of Atvatabar. Other similar beings, half-root, half-bird, were seen perched in a bower of tree-ferns, whose waxy green fronds fell like an emerald cascade about the jalloasts.
From porcelain boxes suspended along the roof of the conservatory a perfect forest of strange plants depended, a species of zoophyte known as the yarp-happy, which seemed to be a combination of ape and flower. Its peculiarly weird, ape-like face was covered with a hood, and from the open mouth of each animal the tongue protruded. From the neck of the animal three long leaves radiated, the two lower leaves in each case terminating in claw-like extremities, which gave a weird expression to the zoophyte.
[Illustration: The Yarphappy.]
Right underneath these strange beings, there grew an immense quantity of spotted pouch-shaped plants, each having the head of a cat growing above the pouch. This peculiar zoophyte was known as the gasternowl.
From either side of the junction of the cat-like head with the pouch radiated two speckled leaves. The tips of the ears terminated in frond-like plumes, and a peculiar plume like a crest surmounted the head.