o do him reverence, he that had never had even the lowliest authority
in the familiar world became unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy ride
at inordinate speed, he forsook method, scarce was he king of a land
but he yearned to extend his borders; so he journeyed deeper and
deeper into the wholly unknown. The concentration that he gave to this
inordinate progress through countries of which history is ignorant and
cities so fantastic in their bulwarks that, though their inhabitants
were human, yet the foe that they feared seemed something less or
more; the amazement with which he beheld gates and towers unknown even
to art, and furtive people thronging intricate ways to acclaim him as
their sovereign--all these things began to affect his capacity for
Business. He knew as well as any that his fancy could not rule these
beautiful lands unless that other Shap, however unimportant, were well
sheltered and fed: and shelter and food meant money, and money,
Business. His was more like the mistake of some gambler with cunning
schemes who overlooks human greed. One day his fancy, riding in the
morning, came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise, in whose opalescent
wall were gates of gold, so huge that a river poured between the bars,
floating in, when the gates were opened, large galleons under sail.
Thence there came dancing out a company with instruments, and made a
melody all around the wall; that morning Mr. Shap, the bodily Shap in
London, forgot the train to town.

Until a year ago he had never imagined at all; it is not to be
wondered at that all these things now newly seen by his fancy should
play tricks at first with the memory of even so sane a man. He gave up
reading the papers altogether, he lost all interest in politics, he
cared less and less for things that were going on around him. This
unfortunate missing of the morning train even occurred again, and the
firm spoke to him severely about it. But he had his consolation. Were
not Arathrion and Argun Zeerith and all the level coasts of Oora his?
And even as the firm found fault with him his fancy watched the yaks
on weary journeys, slow specks against the snow-fields, bringing
tribute; and saw the green eyes of the mountain men who had looked at
him strangely in the city of Nith when he had entered it by the desert
door. Yet his logic did not forsake him; he knew well that his strange
subjects did not exist, but he was prouder of having created them with
his brain, than