XXX + 

How the Proverb⁠—“The Madder One Is, the More One Laughs”⁠—Is Not Always Quite True + 

The next he went into the courtyard of the establishment and the first person he set eyes on was the author of the manuscript on metempsychosis. The two enemies looked each other up and down and then drew close. A circle was formed round them and Dagobert cried: + 

“Here’s the man who wanted to steal my life’s work, who wanted to filch from me the glory of my discovery.” + 

A murmur passed through the crowd, and Heraclius answered: + 

“Here’s the man who pretends that animals are men and men animals.” + 

Then they both began to talk at once and became more and more excited. As on the first occasion, they soon came to blows, but the onlookers separated them. + 

From that day onwards each of them tried with amazing perseverance and tenacity to recruit followers and soon the whole community was divided into two rival parties. These parties were so enthusiastic, so violent and so irreconcilable that if a metempsychosist happened to run across an adversary a terrible battle ensued. To avoid these sanguinary encounters the Governor was obliged to arrange separate hours of exercise for each faction: for there had never been such relentless hatred between two rival sects since the quarrel between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Thanks to this prudent arrangement, however, the chiefs of the hostile clans lived happily⁠—beloved and listened to by their disciples, obeyed and venerated. + 

Sometimes during the night the sound of a dog howling and barking outside the walls would make Heraclius and Dagobert tremble in their beds. It was the faithful Pythagoras who, having escaped his master’s vengeance by a miracle, had tracked him to the threshold of his new home and was trying to gain an entrance to the house into which only men had the right to pass. + 