“In the morning, an officer of the police knocked at the door. I was accused of abduction. All explanation was futile. My offense consisted, not in seducing the girl, but in crossing the state line. If I had remained with her in New York, no minion of the law could have interfered with my pleasure. I had crossed into another state and the law allowed of no ignorance. Besides, it seemed that morality was becoming too lax of late. I had desecrated the sacredness of the American hearth. Americans utter their platitudes more eloquently than any other people of the globe. I was given the choice between marrying Jackie or going to prison for many years. Neither appealed to me. However, I knew of a positive antidote to morality, an antidote which, by the way, is far more efficient in America than anywhere else.

“ ‘How much?’ I asked, with the characteristic brevity of the new land. The gentleman of the police mentioned a sum which he snatched out of my hand. Without even thanking me, he left, warning me that the next time I committed this dastardly crime, I should have to go to prison for years under the Federal statute or—’Double my money,’ I said ironically.

“Jackie glared at me. ‘What about me?’ she demanded.

“ ‘How much?’

“Her price was exactly ten times his for she clamored that she was a decent girl misled by me. The swiftness with which she grasped the situation—for I am quite certain it was not a preconceived trap—was typical of her race. A child of ten in that country speaks in terms of capital and interest, and at seventy, he still retains this terminology. I gave her what she asked. She threw her arms about me. ‘You are a brick, old man!’ she shouted, which means in that country of eternal slang that I was generous and a man of principle.

“ ‘Why don’t you marry me, Pete dear?’ she asked, her feminine sentimentality reasserting itself.

“ ‘I shall return in a few centuries, Jackie, my love. Perhaps by that time, you will have developed a mentality compatible with your magnificent physique…’

“She did not wait for me to finish my sentence, gave me a violent blow on the chest and left me, shouting: ‘You’re a nut!’—which I learnt later was a man who had different views from the others, thought differently, or whose appearance suggested culture. ‘You’re a nut!’ is as terrible an indictment in modern America as ‘You are a witch’ was during the time of the Puritans. Indeed, so fearful are the Americans of being ‘nuts’ that even the cultured and the learned vociferate: ‘We are just like the rest; we are lowbrows; we are not “nuts”!’

“In a world of geese, can you conceive the hatred they would bear a swan who suddenly raised his graceful neck like the one who seeks your lovely hands, ma chère?”

Salome smiled.

“A week later, I left the New World. I shall return, as I promised, in a few centuries…”

“And the American man, Cartaphilus?”

“The American man,” I laughed. “His history is divided into three chapters—he is successively the slave of his mother, of his wife, and of his daughter. The American man? Salome, even the most zealous feminist would be inspired with pity. The African Tribe over which you ruled, ma chère, has been transplanted to the New World…”

“I am right, Cartaphilus,—the earth must be populated with a new race. The descendants of Adam are intolerable in whatever continent we place them.”

“There are still a few men here and there, Salome, whose existence compensates for the ugliness and stupidity and cruelty of the rest.”

“You are the eternal optimist, Cartaphilus.”

“In England, there is George Bernard Shaw, a white-headed Lucifer,—witty and wise. He believes that if man willed intensely to live, he could prolong his life indefinitely.”

“Truly, I must hurry with my Homuncula before the children of Jahveh discover the secret of longevity,” Salome interposed.

“In England, also, I met a man by the name of Havelock Ellis,—the purest intellect since Apollonius whom he resembles, physically even, save that the beautiful dark eyes of the Greek have become a magnificent blue. He lives as simply as Spinoza. He has written as no man before him of the delights of sex. If such a man lived for a thousand years– —”

“We cannot populate the earth with a handful of men.”

“Then there are a few Jews who have revolutionized the torpid mind of man. Einstein has rediscovered and amplified my law of relativity, Freud has reinterpreted the meaning of immortality…”

“How?”

“Within our subconscious minds, we carry our own history and maybe the history of the race.”

“That is not a new conception. In Greece, and in India, I knew several philosophers who held similar ideas.”

“Freud has given life a new face. He teaches man to know himself without being ashamed of himself.”

Salome shook off the particles of bread that clung to her fingertips and taking my arm, we walked slowly between the rows of palm trees.

“In Switzerland, I met a man by the name of Lenin,—a strange being, a Russian nobleman. He was a veritable volcano. If this man ever seizes the reins, the world will certainly accelerate its rotation.”

“In what way?”

“There will be neither slaves nor masters, neither rich nor poor, neither– —”

Salome laughed. “It is inconceivable, Cartaphilus, how a man who has lived for nearly two thousand years can still harbor such youthful illusions. How many messiahs have we not seen and heard! Truly your glands must function with the accuracy of a clock.”

We laughed.

“No, caro mio, only a new superhumanity deserves our consideration.”

“I remember once some years ago, I met a scholar and a poet whose name was—let me see—Nietzsche, of course. A great poet and a great scholar. He lived alone upon the top of a hill—a thin, sickly individual with an enormous head. He spoke in ditherambs, like an Athenian god. ‘Superman! Superman!—A new humanity!’ I asked him: ‘But master, if at last the superman appears in truth, what joy will it be to us men? The superman will lock us in cages and exhibit us to the youthful superman as we exhibit the monkeys. What delight is there in being an inferior animal?’

“He rubbed his forehead and covered his eyes, which could not withstand the light of the sun. ‘Perpetually create new values, new vistas, new heights! Let your purpose be a sword! Overcome yourself! Go beyond good and evil! Beyond life! Beyond death!’ he exclaimed.

“He grasped my arm. He was overcome with vertigo. I led him back to his room and left shortly after.”

“Nietzsche understood, Cartaphilus. He understood the meaning of creation!” Salome exclaimed. “I should have met him. I shall accomplish what he hoped. I shall mother the Superman and the Superwoman.”

“Salome, you are the Eternal Mother. This enables you to visualize your dream. You love the child before it is born. You create him mentally before he is created in truth. But I am the Eternal Father. I must learn to love my progeny. The child must exist before it can gain my affection.”

“Perhaps that is true, Cartaphilus,” Salome said, thoughtfully.

“It is for this reason, no doubt, that I prefer the great men who are already alive to the supermen who dwell in the poet’s brain, or the homunculae in the womb of creation…”

Kotikokura, arm in arm with the majordomo, passed us, followed by the tortoise whose efforts at speed were a pity to behold, and two monkeys who jumped like drunken grasshoppers. The procession made us laugh. I related Kotikokura’s adventure in the salon of Madame du Deffand.

“He is becoming more and more human,” Salome remarked.

“Perhaps he is the superman of the future. Who knows to what mental stature he will grow within the next ten thousand years?”

“It is not such a wild notion as it may seem, Cartaphilus. He grows slowly. That is a good sign. We grew too rapidly. What difference is there really between Cartaphilus and Salome in the time of Pilate and now? At most, a mellowing, a ripening, a tolerant outlook.”