“But in a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of pleasure, and there are entirely too many laws,” said Gerald, shaking his red head above his golden goblet rather despondently. “There is common, statutory, international, maritime, ecclesiastical, and martial law. There is the law of averages, the Salic law, and Grimm’s law of the permutations of consonants. There is Jewish sacred law; there is prize law; there is the law of gravity; there is John Law, who first developed the natural wealth of the Mississippi, and William Law, who was a great mystic. There are, in logic, the laws of thought, just as in astronomy and physics and political economy there are, severally, the well-known laws of Kepler and Prevost and Gresham. In fine, there are laws everywhere, and they are very often a nuisance. He that goes to law loses time and money and rest and friends. Law is a lottery, law is a bottomless pit, law is an ass which slaps his tail in every man’s face. So it very well may be, my dear fellow, that in a world so legally overstocked this law of yours is superfluous, and therefore wrong.” But Tenjo was not convinced by Gerald’s relentless logic. Tenjo said only: “I do not any more know what you are talking about than you do. But I do know that”—here Tenjo hiccoughed, with judicial graveness,—“that it does not alter the principle of the thing. So this mirror will continue to transform into two stones all men who look into it, although I cannot see how it matters the worth of one box of matches in hell, because so long as the law is such, no man will ever look into this mirror.” “Yet, do you but answer me this very simple question! What if some intelligent, unsuperstitious person were to look into this mirror,—and were to come back not changed into stone, and not hurt in any way,—would that not prove to you the insanity of this law?” “Of course it would not! That would only prove the man was a liar. The plain fact of his not being changed into two stones would be legal proof in any of our courts or in any law-respecting place anywhere that he had not ever looked into the Mirror of the Two Truths.” “Oh, very well!” said Gerald. “No, thank you, my dear fellow, not another drop! Let us go to the temple! And let us each lean upon the other’s arm, for your most excellent wine does not seem to have clarified anything exactly.” 16. The Holy Nose of Lytreia NOW, when the grave, white-bearded King and the red-headed god had come to the Temple of the Holy Nose, they entered it arm in arm, followed by the King’s court. And when they approached the adytum, the head priestess came toward them exhibiting a cteis, or large copper comb, which she offered to Tenjo. The King accepted it, he parted her hair in the middle, and he spoke the Word of Entry. Said Tenjo: “I enter, proud and erect. I take my fill of delight imperiously, irrationally, and none punishes.”