Here, as you hastily observed, were madame’s pistols, cannons, culverins, grenades, musketoons, harquebusses, bombs, petronels, siege-guns, falconets, carbines, and jingals, and swivels. Yes, it was most interesting. Freydis looked at you somewhat queerly: and it was, again, as outmoded lumber that she appraised this arsenal. Then Freydis almost proudly showed the weapons she had in store for men’s needs when men should go to war to-morrow, and such assistants would further every patriot’s desire to do harm and work great mischief. And you felt rather uncomfortable to see the sleek efficiency of these gleaming things in this ambiguous place. Yes, they were very interesting, and beside them, Flamberge certainly seemed inadequate. Still, you admitted, you had never been grasping: and Flamberge would serve your turn. It was really maddening how the woman kept turning to irrelevant matters. These engines of destruction, although ingenious and devastating toys within their limits, should not be regarded overseriously. A million or so of persons, or at most a few nations, could be removed with these things, but that was all. So speaking, she passed into a room wherein were books,—but not many books,—and four figures modelled in clay, as she told you, by old Dom Manuel very long ago. It was more important, her thin talking went on, that as occasion served she was sending into the world these figures, to follow their six predecessors, to all whom she had given a life empoisoned with dreams, with dreams that were immortal and contagious; and so would infect others and yet others eternally, and would make living as unhappy and detestable a business as dying. What were these dreams? she was asked: and she in turn asked, Why should I tell you? Your dream is different, nor may you escape it. This must suffice: that these dreams are the most subtle and destructive of poisons, and do harm and work great mischief, in that they enable men to see that life and all which life can afford is inadequate to men’s desires. This seemed rather morbid talk. To evade it tactfully, the four changelings as yet unborn were examined, with civil comments: and indeed there was about one little hook-nosed figure a something which quite took the fancy. He reminds me of a parrot, was your smilingly tendered verdict: and Freydis, with her habitual tired shrugging, replied that others, later, would detect, without much reticence, a resemblance to that piratical and repetitious bird.