As he approached, all the gnomes became silent and waited in mute expectation for what he would have to say. He came up to me very close, and looked at me through his tube, which turned out to be a spiritoscope. The time during which he examined me seemed to me an eternity, but at last he finished, and spoke the ominous words--“_Umbra simiæ vulgaris._” I knew enough Latin to understand that he said I was the ghost of a common ape. A general laughter arose, which was followed by murmurs of dissatisfaction. Cravatu’s unkind remark wounded my feelings, and I therefore said-- “It is perhaps yourself who is a ghost and a monkey, Mr Smarty! I am a man, and never had any monkey in my family. My father was Thomas Mulligan, a member of as good standing in the Church as anybody, and my mother’s name was Bridget O’Flannigan, and they were married by Father Murphy, the parish priest.” And talking myself into a sort of excitement, I proceeded to pull off my coat, and continued: “Just come out of here, you brute, and I will show you whether or not I am a man. I will blacken your eyes and turn you into a kettle-drum. I will make you think that a thousand monkeys have come to scratch your head, you blackguard!” It was evident that among all present there was none who understood my speech, and Adalga seemed to listen to it with delight. Cravatu looked again and said, addressing the gnomes-- “He is from the land of dreams, and the product of an illusion. There is not a spark of spiritual energy discoverable in him. His language appears to belong to a certain tribe of monkeys inhabiting the dark and impenetrable continent that lies beyond the confines of our kingdom, where all sorts of hobgoblins, devils, and monsters exist, whose greatest pleasure it is to torture each other. Among them you will find different degrees of insanity: they wander about in the dark, without knowing from whence they came or what will be the end of their journey; turning around in a circular dance, sometimes whirling in one direction and then again in another, always returning to the place from which they started, without making any progress. Nevertheless, some of them are said to enjoy their condition, because they do not know anything better. They do not know their own selves, and they are not alive; they only dream that they live, and mistake their dreams for realities. Some of them may even dream to be men. They are dreams in a dream. They have their imaginary dream-knowledge, dream-pleasures, and dream-sorrows, and imagine them to be real. After a certain time they evaporate.” Something in Cravatu’s manner made me feel that there was a grain of truth in what he said, and kept me from getting angry; but I did not like to hear a gnome speaking so disrespectfully of the human race. I therefore said--