"Citizens of Marseilles, in thanking you I could employ, if I wished, compliments that are fatter than your world-renowned sardines. I could, if I wished, make a long speech. But words will never quite encompass the magnificence of the reception which you have accorded me. I know that there are maladies in your midst that I might heal not only with my knowledge but with that which scientists have accumulated for myriads of years. Bring forth the sick, and I shall heal them." A man whose cranium was as bald as that of an inhabitant of Mycona cried: "Tograth! god-like mortal, all puissant _savantissimo!_ Give me a luxuriant mane of hair." Tograth smiled and asked that the man approach him: then he touched the denuded head, saying: "Thy sterile pate shall be covered with an abundant vegetation, but remember always this favor by hating the laurel." At the same time as the bald man, a little girl approached. She implored Tograth: "Sweet man, sweet man, look at my mouth, my lover with a blow of his fist has broken several teeth. Return them to me." The scientist smiled and put his finger into her mouth, saying: "Now thou canst chew, thou hast excellent teeth. But in return, show us what thou hast in thy bag." The girl laughed, opening her mouth in which the new teeth gleamed; then she opened her bag, excusing herself: "What a funny idea, before everybody! Here are my keys, here an enamelled photograph of my lover; he really looks better than that." But the eyes of Tograth were greedy; he had perceived all folded up in her bag several Parisian songs, rhymed and set to Viennese airs. He took these papers and after having scrutinized them, asked: "These are nothing but songs, hast thou no poems?" "I have a very lovely one," said the girl. "It was the bell-boy of the Hotel Victoria wrote it for me before he left for Switzerland. But I never showed it to Sossi." And she proffered Tograth a little rose sheet of paper on which was written a pathetic acrostic. _My dear beloved, ere I go away, And thy love, Maria, I betray, MARIA Rail and sob, my sweet, once more--again, If you'd come with me to the woods, we twain,(!) All would be sweeter; our parting would not pain._ "It is not only poetry," exclaimed Tograth, "it is idiotic." And he tore up the paper and threw it into the ditch, while the girl knocked her teeth in fright and cried: "Sweet man, good man, I did not know that it was bad." Just then Croniamantal advanced close to Tograth and apostrophized the crowd: "Carrion, assassins!" They burst into laughter. They yelled: "Into the water with him, the rat." And Tograth, looking Croniamantal in the face, said: "My good brother, let not my affluence disturb you. As for me, I love the people, even though I stop at hotels which they do not frequent." The poet let Tograth talk, then he continued to address the crowd: