and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.
In the excellent tale of 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' in all the other
tales of Grimm, it is assumed that the young man setting out on his
travels will have all substantial truths in him; that he will be brave,
full of faith, reasonable, that he will respect his parents,
keep his word, rescue one kind of people, defy another kind,
'parcere subjectis et debellare,' etc. Then, having assumed
this centre of sanity, the writer entertains himself by fancying
what would happen if the whole world went mad all round it,
if the sun turned green and the moon blue, if horses had six legs
and giants had two heads. But your modern literature takes insanity
as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of insanity.
A lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite serious;
that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is
a piece of glass is to himself as dull as a piece of glass.
A man who thinks he is a chicken is to himself as common as a chicken.
It is only sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity.
Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary and
the tale extraordinary. But you have made the hero extraordinary
and the tale ordinary--so ordinary--oh, so very ordinary."

I saw him still gazing at me fixedly. Some nerve snapped in me
under the hypnotic stare. I leapt to my feet and cried, "In the name
of God and Democracy and the Dragon's grandmother--in the name of all
good things--I charge you to avaunt and haunt this house no more."
Whether or no it was the result of the exorcism, there is no doubt
that he definitely went away.


XVII