o the
end of the farce.... The thing that has been, it is that which shall be;
and there is no new thing under the sun....

'And as for your palaces, and cities, and temples.... look at this
Campagna, and judge. Flea-bites go down after a while--and so do they.
What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the old earth's
skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause flea-bites....
What are all the works of man, but a sort of cutaneous disorder in this
unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of larger fleas, running about among
its fur, which we call trees? Why should not the earth be an animal? How
do I know it is not? Because it is too big? Bah! What is big, and
what is little? Because it has not the shape of one?.... Look into
a fisherman's net, and see what forms are there! Because it does not
speak?.... Perhaps it has nothing to say, being too busy. Perhaps it
can talk no more sense than we.... In both cases it shows its wisdom by
holding its tongue. Because it moves in one necessary direction? ....
How do I know that it does? How can I tell that it is not flirting with
all the seven spheres at once, at this moment? But if it does--so much
the wiser of it, if that be the best direction for it. Oh, what a base
satire on ourselves and our notions of the fair and fitting, to say that
a thing cannot be alive and rational, just because it goes steadily on
upon its own road, instead of skipping and scrambling fantastically up
and down without method or order, like us and the fleas, from the cradle
to the grave! Besides, if you grant, with the rest of the world, that
fleas are less noble than we, because they are our parasites, then you
are bound to grant that we are less noble than the earth, because we are
its parasites. .... Positively, it looks more probable than anything
I have seen for many a day.... And, by the bye, why should not
earthquakes, and floods, and pestilences, be only just so many ways
which the cunning old brute earth has of scratching herself when the
human fleas and their palace and city bites get too troublesome?'

At a turn of the road he was aroused from this profitable meditation
by a shriek, the shrillness of which told him that it was a woman's.
He looked up, and saw close to him, among the smouldering ruins of a
farmhouse, two ruffians driving before them a young girl, with her hands
tied behind her, while the poor creature was looking back piteously
after something among the ru