Dragons were a perfect nuisance. An otherwise decent fellow named Saint Germanus of Auxerre wanted to bring in a dragon with seven heads. I asked him to wait. But then along came that detestable Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with a very nasty dragon which she insisted was not a dragon at all. “Is a pet, a symbol of all that is evil in my nature, which I have utterly subdued,” she said. But the dragon did not look as subdued as I should have liked, and we had high words. She wanted to have the Round Room all to herself and she wanted a priest always with her; she had some extraordinary plans for examinations: but I insisted that she scramble up the tower, and accommodate herself in our Saint Catharine bell, with her great spiky wheel, and her gigantic Sword of Truth, and her disgusting dragon.

“But I am patroness of all scholars,” she protested.

“You’ll see them to great advantage from up there,” I replied, and refused to budge. She went off in a sulk.

It was with Saint George I had the worst trouble. Not only did he insist on bringing in his horse, but he also had a perfectly frightful dragon with him. I had to put my foot down.

“But it isn’t a dragon,” he shouted; “it’s a dog. Watch, now. Sit, Rover!” he cried. But the dragon did not sit. It leapt up at me and snuffled me intimately and licked me, and tore the leg of my pyjamas, and uttered the most horrifying howls. Mind you, this was not wholly surprising. I have known scores of Englishmen who owned nasty, rough, smelly dragons that they insisted were really dogs. But this was too much.

“That’s no dog,” said I, and gave the dragon a kick in the cloaca. “It’s blowing fire out of its nose. See—it’s scorched a great hole in my dressing-gown.”

“Of course.” he said, haughtily; “it’s a fire-dog.”

This was the last straw. “All dragons to the furnace-room immediately,” I shouted. “In the morning Professor Swinton will examine them, and if they are really prehistoric animals, he will take them to the Museum.” They saw I meant it, and the dragons slithered and puffed off down the stairs.

At last the whole tribe of refugee saints was disposed of about the College somehow, and I was able, in a very slight degree, to recover my composure. But then I saw that Cleodolinda had been left behind. Saint George, a real Englishman, had been so concerned about his dog he had forgotten his girl.

“Well, young woman, what are we going to do with you?” I said.

“Oh, I suppose it’s Limbo for me,” she replied in a resigned but not a complaining tone. “I’m only an attribute, you see, not a saint, and as you’ve put Georgie on to help the Porter he won’t have time for me. After all, I can’t hang about the lodge undressed like this.”

I looked at her. She repaid looking at, but I felt our Massey College men were not quite ready for so much feminine beauty, all at one gaze, so to speak.

“I don’t like to think of you in Limbo,” said I, “but the College is crammed with your friends and their luggage and pets. So—for a while, anyhow—you may use my guest-room.”

Never trust a woman. “Oh, you are kind,” she said, and hopped up and down with delight, producing a very agreeable effect. “And you won’t mind if I bring a friend, will you?”

“It depends,” said I, “a beheaded virgin or something of that kind would be all right, but no young men. I’m expected to set an example.”

“Well, it’s a man, but not a bit young,” said she. “It’s Saint Patrick, you see. The poor old sweet never thought he would be desanctified, and just when the Pope pronounced his sentence he was in one of the steam baths in Rome, and he hadn’t a minute to pick up a few things, so he hasn’t even an attribute to bless himself with, and—”

You know how it is. Women always overdo explanations. As Cleodolinda spoke a forlorn figure hobbled forward out of the darkness beyond our gate; a shrivelled little old fellow, covered only by his flowing beard and a very small towel on which was embroidered, in red, Sauna Grande di Roma. He was talking long before Cleodolinda had finished.

“Yez’ll have pity on me, I know,” he said, “seeing as how I’m a fella-Celt. Sure, amn’t I a Welshman meself? Isn’t it well-known I sailed from Wales to Ireland on a millstone, to convert them heathen? And wouldn’t I have brought the millstone itself if that dirthy ould double-crosser in Rome had give me a minute? But awww, no! It was ‘Out with Saint Path-rick’, and no two ways about it. You’ll notice that Saint Andrew is safe and snug, right where he was. Leave it to the Scotch to get it all their own way. And that roaring ould tough, Saint David is still in his place—aw but I forgot, he’s a Welshman like yourself—I mean like ourselves. Things haven’t been so bad with me since the last Englishman sat on the throne of Peter, and that’s damned near six centuries. You’ve got to let me in. I’m just a poor roont old fella like yourself—”

Here I noticed Cleodolinda kick him on the shin, and he hastily changed his tactics.

“I mean to say, a fine young lad, just in the flower of his splendour, like yourself, isn’t going to turn me away, and Limbo gaping before me. You wouldn’t have it on your soul. And you’ve a giant of a soul. I can tell by the kindly light in your eyes.”

And so on. Much, much more. And the upshot was that I sent him off with Cleodolinda to my guest-room, with strict orders not to manifest themselves in the flesh except when they were safely locked in the bathroom.

But you know how people are. Especially people who have been used to having their own way (not to speak of adoration and prayers addressed to them) for over a thousand years. It worked for a few days, and then those two were prancing around in there, quite naked, waving to Saint Catharine up in the tower, whistling at the stag, and stirring up the bear by shooting pins at it with an elastic. And the Fellows, as they sit at their breakfast, have been ogling.

If it is Patrick they see, I presume they take him for a rather more than ordinarily demented visiting professor. But from the light in my young friend’s eye, I have a feeling it is Cleodolinda.

And now they are in, how shall I ever get them out? Beware of compassion!

In this, the centenary of his death, I should like to speak well of Charles Dickens; the literary world has united to do him honour as one of the half-dozen foremost geniuses of our great heritage of poetry, drama and the novel. That I should have to stand before you tonight and direct at that Immortal Memory a charge of—the word sticks in my throat, but it must be given voice—a charge of Vampirism, repels and disgusts me, but when Dickens has cast this hateful shadow across the quadrangle of Massey College, I have no other course.

This is what happened.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity—in short, it was the beginning of the autumn term, and the year was 1969. I met the incoming group of Junior Fellows, and among the thirty-five or so new men were some who immediately attracted my attention—but the subject of my story was not one of these. No, Tubfast Weatherwax III had nothing about him to draw or hold one’s interest; he was a bland young man, quite unremarkable in appearance. Of course, I was familiar with his dossier, which had been thoroughly examined by the Selections Committee of the College. He came to us from Harvard, and he was a young American of distinguished background—as the dynastic number attached to his name at once made clear. His mother, I know, had been a Boston Winesap. But young Weatherwax bore what one politely assumed to be—in republican terms—a noble heritage lightly, and indeed unobtrusively.