"One other matter however I wish your Majesty to understand. Is it not the case that you dispatched a manuscript to Earth some three years ago?" (I nodded assent.) "That scroll was duly delivered on Earth, was found, read, discussed and printed, with the only possible result that could arise therefrom. The person who gave your narrative to the world was one Edward Cayley, a learned recluse, and he was naturally only accounted a credulous fool for his pains. The book was certainly published, and though the absurd venture scarcely deserved their serious attention, our envoys here have contrived to destroy nearly all copies of the volume. Perhaps also Cayley himself might have succumbed later to some of our peculiar methods of removal, had he not suddenly expired of the heart disease from which he had long suffered. The whole matter of your communication from Meleager has however been entrusted unconditionally to myself, and as I apprehend no danger whatsoever from anything you may publish, it is open to you to act freely in this connection. Here is Mr Cayley's book--keep it for any purpose you may require. I assure your Majesty I fear no ill result will accrue either from the late Mr Cayley's romance or from the manuscript which you yourself" (here I gave a start of genuine astonishment) "have been inditing almost daily in your chamber at Glanymôr. I cannot conceive either the contemporary pleasure or the ultimate object of your Majesty's constant occupation with the pen; it may be the old literary bacillus of Earth that is not yet eradicated from your semi-divine system; it may be some fanciful desire to benefit the planet of your birth by showing its leaders that human happiness is not necessarily involved in human progress, which is the fundamental error of these modern Herthians; it may be that a sheer sense of humorous amusement prompts you to this action. But whatsoever your goal, it is clear that you intend to charge your excellent friend Dr Wayne with the editing of your manuscript." (Again I gave an involuntary start.) "Be it so. I have not the wish or the intention to thwart your Majesty in this innocuous pastime; nor shall I seek to disappoint Dr Wayne in his hungry expectation of the unveiling of the complicated enigma whose nature he dimly realises. Indeed, I am anxious to do a service to that interesting man, for whose hospitality to our errant King on Earth I am grateful, and whose rare spiritual qualities I admire and respect. Let him publish what you have written here in Glanymôr; what benefit can happen to you or what injury to us from proclaiming such a farrago of the impossible and the improbable? Very few will read the book, and none will give credence to its contents. Yours is not so much a mad world, as it has been arraigned by your leading poet, as an unbelieving world, which rejects with fury of derision all evidence of whatsoever is not obvious to its recognised scholars and astronomers."