nd broke them on the table.

"My spectacles are blackguardly," he said, "but I'm not. Look at my
face."

"I dare say it's the sort of face that grows on one," said the
President, "in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the
wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some
day."

"We have no time for tomfoolery," said the Secretary, breaking in
savagely. "We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What
are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are?
Are you a half-witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever
man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you."

"Candidates," murmured Sunday, "are only required to answer eight out of
the seventeen questions on the paper. As far as I can make out, you want
me to tell you what I am, and what you are, and what this table is, and
what this Council is, and what this world is for all I know. Well, I
will go so far as to rend the veil of one mystery. If you want to know
what you are, you are a set of highly well-intentioned young jackasses."

"And you," said Syme, leaning forward, "what are you?"

"I? What am I?" roared the President, and he rose slowly to an
incredible height, like some enormous wave about to arch above them
and break. "You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of
science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about
them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell
you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and
the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the
sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are,
and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have
hunted me like a wolf--kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the
churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet,
and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a
good run for their money, and I will now."

Before one of them could move, the monstrous man had swung himself like
some huge ourang-outang over the balustrade of the balcony. Yet before
he dropped he pulled himself up again as on a horizontal bar, and
thrusting his great chin over the edge of the balcony, said solemnly--

"There's one thing I'll tell you though about who I am. I am the man in
the dark room, who made you all policemen."

With that he fell from the balcony, bouncin