Salome offered me an apple. I bit into it. A sensation of nakedness overcame me. I looked at myself.

She smiled. “This is my Tree of Knowledge.”

“Does knowledge mean nakedness?” I asked.

“Life is overdressed. Knowledge is the tearing of veils.”

“Salome! I am as a man who has been swung about many times and is set upon the ground suddenly. Everything turns. The earth is no longer solid. The sun whirls about my eyes. The universe rocks under my feet.”

“Thus creation must have impressed Adam.”

“Be good enough to explain things to me, O marvelous Queen!”

“It is very simple. I am weary of the earth. The earth is magnificent and interesting only to those whose lives are numbered by a few years. I have seen her too often. She is the most monotonous of mothers. Always she bears the same children. Her patterns are unvarying, like the knitting of a senile woman. I am the new mother! I shall create newer and more beautiful things! I shall change the dull face of life…”

I knelt before her. “Goddess of Reason and Beauty! Creatrice Supreme!”

She bade me rise. “But greater and more resplendent than all things created shall be my new humanity.”

“New humanity?”

“My Homuncula is nearly completed.”

My thoughts reverted to Bluebeard.

“No, not the Homunculus of that strange man whom I inspired, but whose masculine lack of creativeness shaped a ridiculous monster.”

“Did you know Gilles de Retz?”

“Of course. I met him before you came to Paris. His genius was too great for him. It overflowed him as a stormy river overflows its banks.”

“Salome, whom have you not seen and understood?”

“Are you surprised, Cartaphilus, that I experimented with life?”

“Tell me your experiences, Salome.”

“Some day, I shall turn writer.”

“What a poetess you will make!”

“It is so easy to write poetry,—an art for the very young. I shall write prose, lucid and clear,—ideas that will illuminate the mind of the reader. When I am too weary of life, I shall write about it, Cartaphilus, and you will see whether woman is inferior to man.”

“And yet, Salome, how seldom did I discover a great mind in woman! What feminine Spinoza, what Bacon, what Apollonius have you encountered?”

“Woman considered herself the inspirer of man. She has preferred to remain behind the throne and whisper into his ear. She is forgotten. His name is carved in gold.”

“Is it merely that, O beautiful Princess?”

“That and her biological tragedy. That and the tyranny of the moon and the greater tyranny of childbirth.”

We walked silently between the rows of strange flowers and animals.

“Homuncula, however, overcomes both the moon and the horror of birth.”

I looked at her, expecting to see the crazy glint of Bluebeard’s eyes. But the eyes of Salome were as cool as the shadows of the roses.

“Is anyone interested in a new humanity in Europe or in America, Cartaphilus?”

“The last one who mentioned it was Goethe, the German poet. I visited him at the termination of the French Revolution, which broke out as you surmised, not long after your departure. Alas, he was as garrulous as an old woman and much more interested in the medal which Napoleon had pinned upon his chest and court intrigues than in Homunculus.”

“Homuncula, Cartaphilus. It would be futile to create a man…”

“Goethe shared your opinion, Salome:

“Goethe understood,” Salome remarked.

“He was blinded by his sexual nature. If he had been true to his own philosophy he would have concluded Faust:

Man is the creative principle!”

“Man is critical, not creative! Woman is the dark, the terrible Mother!” Salome exclaimed proudly.

“Goethe anticipates this, though he senses the horror of the Dark Mother… ‘Muetter—schreckliches Wort!’ ”

“ ‘Schrecklich’ in the sense of ‘tremendous.’ He is right,” Salome explained. “Over all mythologies hover the Norns, dark feminine creatures, mistresses of life and death. Goethe’s mind caught a glimpse of the truth!”

“The truth, perhaps, is the union of the Eternal Feminine and the Eternal Masculine—Salome and Cartaphilus!”

She smiled. “Perhaps. What more did Goethe tell you?”

“He was too elated over Napoleon’s colored ribbon which hung upon his chest to indulge in philosophy.”

“Who is this Napoleon, seducer of poets?”

“It is true,—you have been here for a century and a half…”

“During which time I refused to remember the rest of the world,” she interrupted.

“Napoleon became the emperor of France after the revolution proved a futile gesture.”

“As it was bound to prove.”

“We have seen so many revolutions, Salome, and so many emperors…”

I plucked a beetle which unfolded its hard wings, becoming a violet as blue as if a bit of Italian sky had been torn off and made more luminous by long polish.

“Napoleon, not taller than this shrub, galloped across Europe, his hand thrust into his uniform, his lips pouting, his brows knit, one curl—the last remnant of his hair—in disarray upon his forehead. Kings, princes, emperors, dismayed, dashed precipitously, leaving their thrones and their countries to the mercy of the Upstart. The vacant thrones he refilled with the members of his family; the treasures and museums he looted and transferred to Paris; the poets he corrupted by pinning medals on their chests. He passed through the world like a thunder-storm.”

Salome smiled.

I laughed heartily. “Il fait gémir le monde parce qu’il est incapable de faire gémir la paillasse. This is what a Polish Countess related to me. Napoleon had taken a great fancy to this lady who at first snubbed him, preferring me. His Majesty was infuriated. The countess was pretty, but not unusually so. ‘A splendid animal,’ Napoleon had called her. I pleaded with her. It was madness to refuse an Emperor and it might prove disastrous to her country. She consented to share the imperial couch.”

Salome smiled. “Cartaphilus must have felt thrilled to think of his own magnanimity, relinquishing his mistress to the emperor.”

“After all, he was only a mortal!… Well, Madame la Comtesse reappeared the next day, shaking with laughter. Mais, ma chère, qu’y a-t-il? When she managed to restrain her convulsions, she said: ‘Napoleon est un très grand empereur mais un très petit homme.’

“For two days and two nights, I had to quench the fires which His Majesty had kindled but was unable to quell.”

“What happened to this grand empereur?”

“He was finally defeated by all the monarchs combined who imprisoned him upon an island where he died, poor fellow, devoured by vermin and vanity.”

“Stupid mankind!” Salome exclaimed. “Is the New World different from Europe?”

“The New World, ma très chère, imitates the old. It has copied its vices perfectly and its virtues clumsily.”

“Ah, by the way, did you see Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Cartaphilus, as I suggested in my letter?”

“I saw Franklin.”

“What sort of man was he?”

“He looked like a debauched woman, was as practical as a Jewish peddler, had the imagination of a dray horse, uttered advices like a successful grocer—except once.” I laughed. “He told me not to get married but choose an elderly lady for a companion. It was cheaper, safer, her body was generally much younger than her face, and above all, she was grateful!”