13. Colophon of a God NOW before him the mirror still glowed goldenly, and now a hunchback held out both his hands toward Gerald, whom he was trying to allure into the form and mind of this sardonic, cracker-jawed, sly knave who had such melancholy eyes. Gerald was much tempted to become this Punch, and to relive for a little the rascal’s defiant and ever-restless life. And then too, behind Punch waited tall Merlin, crowned with mistletoe, he that created all chivalry, and that, being himself the great fiend’s son, first taught men how to live as became the children of God. It would be quite entertaining to enter into Merlin’s dark heart. Moreover, to the other hand of Punch, stood a glittering suave gentleman with a blue beard, in whose uxoricides it might be vastly interesting to share.... Yet Gerald, facing these three rather beautiful ideas, was of two minds. “For I am a god, with a throne awaiting me in Antan, where all the other gods will be my lackeys,—and, for that matter, with no doubt a whole cosmos of my own twirling and burning to unheeded clinkers somewhere in space, which I ought at this moment to be looking after and embellishing. And in this particular small world which I am quitting, the powers of Heaven do quite honestly seem—when you look at them from a perhaps biassed standpoint, that is,—and only to a certain extent, of course,—and if you are so ill-advised as to consider matters in a pessimistic, morbid, wholly un-American way—” Gerald paused. He smilingly shook his red head. “No. It is far better for us gods not to criticize the handiwork of one another. So I shall without one word of reproof permit my fellows to play as they like with this planet called Earth. I shall of course, very probably, make new planets a bit more conformable to my personal fancy. But I shall say nothing about the planet I am now quitting at all likely to hurt anybody’s feelings. No: I shall, rather, rely upon the appealing eloquence of a dignified silence reinforced by a decisive departure.” And Gerald said also: “As for this mirror which is worshipped in the land of Dersam, it pleases me as a toy. But I who am a Savior and a sun god with nine such very fine exploits behind me, in the way of swimming and of decimating devils, and of restoring warmth and making moons, and of really remarkable broad-mindedness as to what particular animal I may happen to look like,—I, the Helper and the Preserver, who am called to reign over the goal of all the gods of men,—why, I must necessarily lose by exchanging such a tremendous destiny for anything to be found in this mirror.”