e preparation of a cheerful repast was one day well advanced, when,
lifting up their eyes, the pair beheld a haggard and emaciated couple
tottering along the road that led from the Palace of Illusion.

"Heavens!" exclaimed they simultaneously, "no! yes! 'tis surely they!" O
friends! whence this forlorn semblance? whence this osseous condition?"

"Of them anon," replied the attenuated youth, "but, before all things,
dinner!"

The restorative was speedily administered, and the pilgrim commenced his
narration.

"Guarded," he said, "though the Palace of Illusion was by every species of
hippogriffic chimaera, my bride and I experienced no difficulty in
penetrating inside its precincts. The giants lifted us in their arms, the
dragons carried us on their backs, fairy bridges spanned the moats, golden
ladders inclined against the ramparts, we scaled the towers and trod the
courts securely, though constructed to all seeming of dissolving cloud.
Delicate fare loaded every dish; smiling companions invited to every
festivity; perfumes caressed our nostrils; music enwrapped our ears.

"But while all else charmed and allured, one fact intruded of which we
could not pretend unconsciousness, the intensity of our aversion for each
other. Never could I behold my Imogene without marvelling whatever could
have induced me to wed her, and she has acknowledged that she laboured
under the like perplexity. On the other hand, our good opinion of ourselves
had grown prodigiously. The other's dislike appeared to each an insane
delusion, and we seriously questioned whether it could be right to mate
longer with a being so destitute of true aesthetic feeling. We confided
these scruples to each other, with the result of a most tempestuous
altercation.

"As this was attaining its climax, one of the inmates of the Palace, a pert
forward boy, resembling a page out of livery, passed by, and ironically, as
I thought, congratulated us on the strength of our mutual attachment.
'Never,' exclaimed he, 'have I beheld the like here before, and I am the
oldest inhabitant.'

"As this felicitation was proffered at the precise moment when I was
engaged in staunching a rent in my cheek with a handful of my wife's hair,
I was constrained to regard it as unseasonable, and expressed myself to
that effect.

"'What!' exclaimed he, with equal surprise, 'know ye not that this is the
Palace of Illusion, where everything is inverted and appears the reverse of
itself