Olympian Nights

Some Account of the Palace of Jupiter

So dazzled was I by all that went on about me, by the gorgeousness of my equipage and by the extraordinary richness of the costumes worn by my escort, that for the moment I forgot that I was not myself clad in suitable garments for so ultra-royal a function.  The streets, the houses, even the throngs that peopled the way, seemed to be of the most lustrous gold, and it became necessary for me from time to time as we progressed to close my eyes and shut out the too brilliant vision.  Fancy a bake-shop built of solid gold nuggets, its large plate windows composed each of one huge, flashing diamond; imagine an exquisitely wrought golden drug-store, whose colored jars in the windows are made of rubies, emeralds, and sapphires; conjure up in your mind’s eye a sequence of city blocks whose sides are lined by massive and exquisitely proportioned buildings, every inch of whose façade was fashioned, not by stone-cutters and sculptors, but by goldsmiths, whose genius a Cellini might envy; picture to yourself a street paved with golden asphalt, and a sidewalk built from huge slabs of rolled silver, the curb and gutters being of burnished copper, and you’ll gain some idea of the thoroughfare along which I passed.  And oh, the music that the band gave forth to which the populace timed their huzzas—­I nearly went mad with the seductiveness of it all.  If it hadn’t been for the ache the brilliance of it gave to my eyes, I really think I should have swooned.

And then we came to the palace grounds.  These, I must confess, I found far from pleasing, for even as the avenue along which I had passed was all gold and silver and gems, so too was the park, in the heart of which stood Jupiter’s own apartments made of similar stuff.  The trees were golden, and the leaves rustling in the breeze, catching and reflecting the light of the sun, were blinding.  The soft greenness of the earthly grass was superseded by the glistening yellow of golden spears, and here and there, where a drop of dew would have fallen, were diamonds of purest ray.  The paths were of silken rugs of richest texture, and the palace, as it burst upon my vision, fashioned out of undreamed-of blocks of onyx, resembled more a massive opal filled with flashing, living, fire, than the mere home of a splendid royalty.

I was glad when the procession stopped before the gorgeous entrance to the palace.  Another minute of such splendor would have blinded me.  A fanfare of trumpets sounded, and I descended, so dizzy with what I had seen that, as my feet touched the ground, I staggered like a drunken man, and then I heard my name sounded and passed from one flunky to another up the magnificent staircase into the blue haze of the hallway, and gradually sounding fainter and fainter until it was lost in the distance of the mysterious corridor.  I still staggered as I mounted the steps, and the Major Domo approached me.

“I trust you are not ill,” he whispered in my ear.

“No—­not ill,” I replied.  “Only somewhat flabbergasted by all this magnificence, and my eyes hurt like the very deuce.”

“It is perhaps too much for mortal eyes,” he said; and then, turning to a gilded Ethiopian who stood close at hand, he observed, quietly, “Rhadamus, run over to the Argus and ask him if he can spare this gentleman a pair of blue goggles for an hour or two.”

“Better get me a dozen pairs,” I put in.  “I don’t think one pair will be enough.  It may strain my nose to hold them, but I’d rather sacrifice my nose than my eyes any day.”

But the boy was off, and ere I reached the presence of Jupiter I was very kindly provided with the very essential article, and I must confess that I found great relief in them.  They were so densely blue that an ordinary bit of splendor could not have been discerned through their opaque depths, any more than Thisbe could have been seen by her doting lover, Pyramus, through the wall that separated them, but nothing known to man could have shut out the supreme gloriousness of the interior of Jupiter’s palace.  Even with the goggles of the Argus regulated to protect one thousand eyes upon my nose, it made my dazzled optics blink.

I do not know what the proportions of the palace were.  I regret to say that I forgot to ask, but I am quite confident that I walked at least eight miles along that corridor, and never was a mansion designed that was better equipped in the matter of luxuries.  I suspect I shall be charged with exaggerating, but it is none the less true that within that spacious building were appliances of every sort known to man.  One door opened upon an in-door golf-links, upon which the royal family played whenever they lacked the energy or the disposition to seek out that on Mars.  There were high bunkers, the copse of which was covered with richest silk plush, stuffed, I was told, with spun silk, while, in place of sand, tons of powdered sugar and grated nutmegs filled the bunkers themselves.  The eighteen holes were laid out so that no two of them crossed, and, inasmuch as the turf was constructed of rubber instead of grass and soil, neither a bad lie nor a dead ball was possible through the vast extent of the fair green.  The water hazards, four in number, were nothing more nor less than huge tanks of Burgundy, champagne, iced tea, and Scotch—­which I subsequently learned often resulted in a bad caddie service—­and an open brook along whose dashing descent a constant stream of shandygaff went merrily bubbling onward to an in-door sea upon which Jupiter exercised his yacht when sailing was the thing to suit his immediate whim.

This sea was a marvel.  Since all the water hazards above described emptied into it, it was little more than a huge expanse of punch, one swallow of which, thanks to these ingredients and the sugar and nutmeg from the bunkers, would make a man forget an eternity of troubles until he woke up again, if he ever did.  Here Jupiter sported every variety of pleasure craft, and, by an ingenious system of funnels arranged about its sixty-square-mile area, could at a moment’s notice produce any variety of breeze he chanced to wish; and its submarine bottom was so designed that if a heavy sea were wanted to make the yacht pitch and toss, a simple mechanical device would cause it to hump itself into such corrugations, large or small, as were needed to bring about the desired conditions.

“Do they allow bathing in that?” I asked, as the Major Domo explained the peculiar feature of this in-door sea to me.

My companion laughed.  “Only one person ever tried it with any degree of success, and it nearly cost him his reputation.  Old Bacchus undertook to swim on a wager from Chambertin Inlet to Glenlivet Bay, but he had to give up before he got as far as Pommery Point.  It took him a year to get rid of his headache, and it actually required three-quarters of the Treasury Reserve to provide gold enough to cure him.”

“It must be a terrible place to fall overboard in,” I suggested.

“It is, if you fall head first,” said the Major Domo, “and my observation is that most people do.”

“I should admire to sail upon it,” I said, gazing back through the door that opened upon Jupiter’s yachting parlors, and realizing on a sudden a powerful sense of thirst.

“I have no doubt you can do so,” said the Major Domo.  “Indeed, I understand that his Majesty contemplates taking you for a sail to the lost island of Atlantis before you return to earth.”

“What?” I cried.  “The lost island of Atlantis here?”

“Of course,” said my guide.  “Why not?  It was too beautiful for earth, so Jupiter had it transported to his own private yachting pond, and it has been here ever since.  It is marvellously beautiful.”

Hardly had I recovered from my amazement over the Major Domo’s announcement when he pointed to another open door.

“The Royal Arena,” he said, simply.  “That is where we have our Olympian Games.  There was a football game there yesterday.  Too bad you were not there.  It was the liveliest game of the season.  All Hades played the Olympian eleven for the championship of the universe.  We licked ’em four hundred to nothing; but of course we had an exceptional team.  When Hercules is in shape there isn’t a man-jack in all Hades that can withstand him.  He’s rush-line, centre, full-back, half-back, and flying wedge, all rolled into one.  Then the Hades chaps made the bad mistake of sending a star team.  When you have an eleven made up of Hannibal and Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and Achilles and other fellows like that you can’t expect any team-play.  Each man is thinking about himself all the time.  Hercules could walk right through ’em, and, when they begin to pose, it’s mere child’s play for him.  The only chap that put up any game against us at all was Samson, and I tell you, now that his hair’s grown again, he’s a demon on the gridiron.  But we divided up our force to meet that difficulty.  Hercules put the rest of our eleven on to Samson, while he took care, personally, of all the other Hadesians.  And you should have seen how he handled them!  It was beautiful, all through.  He nearly got himself ruled off in the second half.  He became so excited at one time towards the end that he mistook Pompey for the ball and kicked him through the goal-posts from the forty-yard line.  Of course, it didn’t count, and Hercules apologized so gracefully to the rest of the visitors that they withdrew their protest and let him play on.”

“I should think he would have apologized to Pompey,” said I.

[Illustration:  “‘THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE UNIVERSE’”]

“He will when Pompey recovers consciousness,” said my guide, simply.

So interested was I in the Royal Arena and its recent game that I forgot all about Jupiter.

“I never thought of Hercules as a football player before,” I said, “but it is easy to see how he might become the champion of Olympus.”

“Oh, is it!” laughed the Major Domo.  “Well, you’d better not tell Jupiter that.  Jupiter’d be pleased, he would.  Why, my dear friend, he’d pack you back to earth quicker than a wink.  He brooks only one champion of anything here, and that’s himself.  Hercules threw him in a wrestling-match once, and the next day Jupiter turned him into a weeping-willow, and didn’t let up on him for five hundred years afterwards.”

By this time we had reached one of the most superbly vaulted chambers it has ever been my pleasure to look upon.  Above me the ceiling seemed to reach into infinity, and on either side were huge recesses and alcoves of almost unfathomable depth, lit by great balls of fire that diffused their light softly and yet brilliantly through all parts and corners of the apartment.

“The library,” said the Major Domo, pointing to tier upon tier of teeming shelves, upon which stood a wonderful array of exquisitely bound volumes to a number past all counting.

I was speechless with the grandeur of it all.

“It is sublime,” said I.  “How many volumes?”

“Unnumbered, and unnumberable by mortals, but in round, immortal figures just one jovillion.”

“One jovillion, eh?” said I.  “How many is that in mortal figures?”

“A jovillion is the supreme number,” explained the guide.  “It is the infinity of millions, and therefore cannot be expressed in mortal terms.”

“Then,” said I, “you can have no more books.”

“No,” said he.  “But what of that?  We have all there are and all that are to be.  You see, the library is divided into three parts.  On the right-hand side are all the books that ever have been written; here to the left you see all the books that are being written; and farther along, beginning where that staircase rises, are all the books that ever will be written.”

I gasped.  If this were true, this wonderful collection must contain my own complete works, some of which I have doubtless not even thought of as yet.  How easy it would be for me, I thought, to write my future books if Jupiter would only let me loose here with a competent stenographer to copy off the pages of manuscript as yet undreamed of!  I suggested this to the Major Domo.

“He wouldn’t let you,” he said.  “It would throw the whole scheme out of gear.”

“I don’t see why,” I ventured.

“It is simple,” rejoined the Major Domo.  “If you were permitted to read the books that some day will be identified with your name, as a sensible man, observing beforehand how futile and trivial they are to be, some of them, you wouldn’t write them, and so you would be able to avoid a part, at least, of your destiny.  If mortals were able to do that—­well, they’d become immortals, a good many of them.”

I realized the justice of this precaution, and we passed on in silence.

“Now,” said the Major Domo, after we had traversed the length of the library, “we are almost there.  That gorgeous door directly ahead of you is the entrance to Jupiter’s reception-room.  Before we enter, however, we must step into the office of Midas, on the left.”

“Midas?” I said.  “And what, pray, is his function?  Is he the registrar?”

“No, indeed,” laughed the Major Domo.  “I presume down where you live he would be called the Court Tailor.  The sartorial requirements of Jupiter are so regal that none of his guests, invited or otherwise, could afford, even with the riches of Cr[oe]sus, to purchase the apparel which he demands.  Hence he keeps Midas here to supply, at his expense, the garments in which his visitors may appear before him.  You didn’t think you were going into Jupiter’s presence in those golf duds, did you?”

“I never thought anything about it,” said I.  “But how long will it take Midas to fit me out?”

“He touches your garments, that’s all,” said my guide, “and in that instant they are changed to robes of richest gold.  We then place a necklace of gems about your neck, composed of rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and sapphires, alternating with pearls, none smaller than a hen’s egg; next we place a jewelled staff of ebony in your hand; a golden helmet, having at either side the burnished wings of the imperial eagles of Jove, and bearing upon its crest an opal that glistens like the sun through the slight haze of a translucent cloud, will be placed upon your head; richly decorated sandals of cloth of gold will adorn your feet, and about your waist a girdle of linked diamonds—­beside which the far-famed Orloff diamond of the Russian treasury is an insignificant bit of glass—­will be clasped.”

“And—­wha—­wha—­what becomes of all this when I get back home?” I gasped, a vision of future ease rising before my tired eyes.

“You take it with you, if you can,” laughed the Major Domo, with a sly wink at one of the Amazons who accompanied him as a sort of aide.

It was all as he said.  In two minutes I had entered the room of Midas; in three minutes, my golf-coat having been removed, a flowing gown of silk, touched by his magic hand and turned to glittering gold, rested upon my shoulders.  It was pretty heavy, but I bore up under it; the helmet and the necklace, the shoes and the girdle were adjusted; the staff was placed in my hand, and with beating heart I emerged once more into the corridor and stood before the door leading into the audience-chamber.

“Remove the goggles,” whispered the Major Domo.

“Never!” I cried.  “I shall be blinded.”

“Nonsense!” said he, quickly.  “Off with them,” and he flicked them from my nose himself.

A great blare of trumpets sounded, the door was thrown wide, and with a cry of amazement I stepped backward, awed and afraid; but one glance was reassuring, for truly a wonderful sight confronted me, and one that will prove as surprising to him who reads as it was to me upon that marvellous day.