oppositions and contradictions, and have reproached me
bitterly for the same. It is very true I have many such. But they fail
to see that, if I had them all, I should then be like the Other."

The holy man asked him:

"What other is it you speak of?"

And the Adversary answered:

"If you knew of whom I speak, you would know who I am. And my wisest
words you would be loath to listen to, for much ill has been said of
me. But, if you remain ignorant who I am, I can be of much use to you. I
will teach you how intensely sensitive men are to the sounds that the
lips utter, and how they let themselves be killed for the sake of words
that are devoid of meaning. This we see with the Martyrs,--and in your
own case, Giovanni, who look forward with joy to be strangled and then
burned to the singing of the Seven Psalms, in the Great Square of
Viterbo, for this word _Truth_, for which you could not by any
possibility discover a reasonable interpretation.

"Verily you might ransack every hole and corner of your dim brain, and
pick over all the spiders' webs and old iron that cumber your head,
without ever lighting on a picklock to open this word and extract the
meaning. But for me, my poor friend, you would get yourself hanged and
your body burned for a word of one syllable which neither you nor your
judges know the sense of, so that none could ever have discovered which
to despise the most, hangmen or hanged.

"Know then that Truth, your well-beloved mistress, is made up of
elements compacted of wet and dry, hard and soft, cold and hot, and that
it is with this lady as with women of common humanity, in whom soft
flesh and warm blood are not diffused equally in all the body."

Fra Giovanni doubted in his simplicity whether this discourse was
altogether becoming. The Adversary read the holy man's thought, and
reassured him, saying:

"Such is the learning we are taught at School. I am a Theologian, I!"

Then he got up, and added:

"I regret to leave you, friend; but I cannot tarry longer with you. For
I have many contradictions to pose to many men. I can taste no rest day
nor night; but I must be going ceaselessly from place to place, setting
down my lantern now on the scholar's desk, now at the bed's head of the
sick man who cannot sleep."

So saying, he went away as he had come. And the holy man Giovanni asked
himself: "Why did this Doctor say, Truth was white, I wonder?" And lying
in the straw he kept revolving this ques