an ignoramus like some I have met; nor if I read you right are
you like others who not knowing that True Religion is True Wonder up
with hands and cry, 'Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earth
and water make an orb. Place ant on apple and see that orbs may be
gone around! Travel far enough and east and west change names! Straight
through, beneath us, are other men."

"Feet against feet. Antipodes," I said. "All the life of man is taking
Wonder in and making Her at home!"

"So!" he answered. "Now look! The largeness of our globe is at the
equator. The great Ptolemy worked out our reckoning. Twenty-four hours,
fifteen degrees to each, in all three hundred and sixty degrees. It is
held that the Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours. They
stretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling them Pillars
of Hercules, to mid-India. Now in our time we have the Canaries and the
King of Portugal's new islands--another hour, mark you! Sixteen from
twenty-four leaves eight hours empty. How much of that is water and how
much is earth? Where ends Ocean-Sea and where begins India and Cathay,
of which the ancients knew only a part? The Arabian Alfraganus thinks
that Ptolemy's degrees should be less in size. If that be right, then
the earth is smaller than is thought, and India nearer! I myself incline
to hold with Alfraganus. It may be that less than two months' sailing,
calm and wind, would bring us to Cipango. Give me the ships and I will
do it!"

"You might have had them yesterday."

To a marked extent he could bring out and make visible his inner
exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an
older world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I would
have fitness. Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without flaw
in the crown.--We will talk no more about abating just demand!"

I agreed with a nod, and indeed there was never any shaking him here.
Beneath his wide and lofty vision of a world filled out to the eternal
benefit of all rested always this picture which I knew he savored like
wine and warmth. His family, his sons, his brothers and kindred, the
aged father in Genoa, all friends and backers--and he a warm sun in the
midst of them, all their doubts of him dispelled, shining out upon them,
making every field rich, repaying a thousand, thousandfold every trust
shown him.

The day sang cool and high and bright, the mountains of Elvira had light
snow atop