It is pleasant to think of one’s puzzling the organised wisdom of so superior a planet as this Utopia, this moral monster State my Frankenstein of reasoning has made, and to that pitch we have come. When we are next in the presence of our Lucerne official, he has the bearing of a man who faces a mystification beyond his powers, an incredible disarrangement of the order of Nature. Here, for the first time in the records of Utopian science, are two cases — not simply one but two, and these in each other’s company! — of duplicated thumb-marks. This, coupled with a cock-and-bull story of an instantaneous transfer from some planet unknown to Utopian astronomy. That he and all his world exists only upon a hypothesis that would explain everyone of these difficulties absolutely, is scarcely likely to occur to his obviously unphilosophic mind.

The official eye is more eloquent¹ than the official lips and asks almost urgently, “What in this immeasurable universe have you managed to do to your thumbs? And why?” But he is only a very inferior sort of official indeed, a mere² clerk of the post, and he has all the guarded reserve of your thoroughly³ unoriginal man. “You are not the two persons I ascertained⁴ you were,” he says, with the note of one resigned to communion with unreason; “because you”— he indicates me —“are evidently at your residence in London.” I smile. “That gentleman”— he points a pen at the botanist⁵ in a manner that is intended to dismiss my smile once for all —“will be in London next week. He will be returning next Friday from a special mission to investigate the fungoid parasites⁶ that have been attacking the cinchona trees in Ceylon.”

The botanist blesses his heart.

“Consequently”— the official sighs at the burthen of such nonsense, “you will have to go and consult with — the people you ought to be.”

I betray a faint amusement.

“You will have to end by believing in our planet,” I say.

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