THE SECRET OF ATAVISM. 195 



Mirabeaii senior was wealthy enougli to roam earth in a coach 

 and four, but preferred his rural retreat; Marcus Aurelius, the 

 philosopher on the throne of the civilized universe, could have found 

 diversion from the cares of empire in the hunting groimds of three 

 different continents, but the proconsuls of Pontus and Numidia in- 

 vited him in vain; he stuck to his task like a slave to his treadmill, 

 and shunned even music: 



" Enjoyment from one entrance quite shut out; " 



ignored panegyrics in honor of his virtues, and tolerated circus games 

 only as a concession to the natural depravity of his subjects, who 

 might riot in the atrocities of the amphitheater, while their ruler wore 

 out his life with the elaboration of reform plans and sought recrea- 

 tion only in prose elegies and communion with the spirit of Zeno. 



Now, the theory of exhaustion would have been strikingly con- 

 firmed if the offspring of the great altruist had been a rickety 

 whimpy-owl, one of those listless youngsters supposed to be too good 

 for the present world, but withal too indolent to aspire to the rewards 

 of the next. 



But the matrimonial venture of the sad-eyed philosopher resulted 

 •in a birth of a chuckleheaded pupus who grew up into a bull-necked 

 and vindictive blackguard, a reckless egotist who passed his time 

 with riots and the arrangement of festivals in honor of his own 

 merits. When one of his sycophants remarked that his moral and 

 physical perfections had never before been united in a human being, 

 he did not hesitate to enroll himself among the Olympian gods. He 

 wasted the revenue of a province on a single circus pageant, and not 

 only bade grumblers go to hades, but sent them there by scores and 

 hecatombs. " The Praetorian Guards have been pacified by an enor- 

 mous bribe," said the prefect Perennis, " but had we not better do 

 something to allay the resentment of the people, something to per- 

 petuate our names in the memory of posterity? " "Well, you can 

 change the name of Rome to Colonia Commodiana," said this son of 

 a modest father. 



A son of the Inquisitor Hsemmerlin was indicted for heresy, and 

 there is a tradition about a Syrian wood devil (" satyr ") who was 

 converted by a sermon of St. Eusebius and reared a family of saints. 



But from Syria comes also an anecdote that suggests a solution 

 of the inversion puzzle. " That's Lot's wife," said Professor Bertho- 

 let's guide, pointing to a rock-salt pillar forty feet high and about 

 four yards in diameter. "Is that so?" said the witty Frenchman. 

 " Then I'll bet gold to copper that Mr. Lot wasn't more than five 

 feet high." 



Again, a multitude of analogies confirms the aptness of the con- 



