d had once asked him what he
thought of democracy. This was during a great war being waged in its
behalf. Mallare replied: "Democracy is the honeymoon of stupidity."

There lived with him as a servant a little monster whom he called
Goliath and who was a dwarfed and paralytic negro. Goliath's age was
unknown. His deformities gave him the air of an old man and his hunched
back made him seem too massive for a boy. But in studying him Mallare
had concluded that he was a boy.

Goliath had been one of the first symptoms of Mallare's madness. He had
brought the little monster home from an amusement park one summer night.
Goliath had been standing doubled up, his pipe stem arms hanging like a
baboon's, his enlarged black head lifted and his furious eyes staring at
a Wheel of Fortune.

When they left the confetti-electrics of the park behind, Mallare spoke
to the dwarf whose wrinkled hand he was holding.

"If you come home with me I will make you a servant and give you a fine
red suit to wear. Also, I will call you Goliath for no reason at all,
since I am at war with reason."

Goliath said nothing but sat staring happily out of the window of an
automobile as they rode home.

The home of Fantazius Mallare was filled with evidences of his past.
There were clay and bronze figures and canvases covered with paintings.
These had been the work of his hands. It was to be seen that he had once
given himself with violence to the creation of images. And for this
reason he was still known among a few people as an artist.

In the days when he had worked to create images Mallare had been alive
with derisions. He desired to give them outline. But the desire went
from him. The brilliant fancies of his thought began slowly to bore him.
The astounding images that still bowed themselves into his mind became
like a procession of mendicants seeking alms of him. He folded his hands
and with an interested smile watched his genius die.

At the time of this curious tragedy Mallare was thirty. He kept a
Journal in which he wrote infrequently. There was in this Journal little
of interest. Apparently he had amused himself during his youth jotting
down items of preposterous unimportance.

"I saw a man with a red face," he would write one week. The next he
would add a line, "There are seven hundred and eighty-five normal
strides between the lamp-post and my front door." Turning a page a month
later he would meticulously set down the date, the hour