He was told—by the big-bellied, yellow-haired man, whose skin was so curiously spotted,—that they were two poets upon their way to Antan, the goal of all the gods, and the friendly haven of true poets, where poets might hope to find at last that loveliness which they desired and could nowhere discover in their everyday life upon earth. To Gerald this was excellent news, since it increased the number of his future subjects very gratifyingly. But he said nothing, while the big-bellied, spotted, thin-legged gentleman in the purple robe adorned with golden stars, went on in his answer to Gerald’s first question, by explaining that the speaker was Nero Claudius Cæsar, the king of all poets, and that his scrawny companion, in a brown doublet of which both elbows needed patching, was an artist of considerable talent from out of the Gallic provinces, who was called François Villon. Gerald found this also of some interest, in view of what he remembered about the Mirror of Caer Omn. Not often did you thus come face to face with two discarded personalities. But Gerald said nothing about this either. Instead, he questioned Nero yet further, and he thus learned that these two poets were on their way to the court of Freydis, because there alone in the universe was art properly regarded: for there, indeed, true artists were manufactured out of common clay, and were informed with the fire of Audela. It was one or another old hero from out of Poictesme, Nero had heard, who had first modeled these earthen images; and Freydis, as occasion served, gave life to these images and set them to live upon earth, as changelings. But, above all, said Nero, in Antan the true poets of this world fared happily among the myths and the gods who once had afforded to these poets such fine themes, so that to-day of course these poets wrote even more splendid poems now that they composed with the eye upon the object.