The Company that assembled to listen to the Prophet of the Moon, on the next occasion of his delivering any formal address, was much more select than the comparatively mixed and middle-class society of the Simple Souls. Miss Browning and her sister, Mrs. Mackintosh, were indeed present; for Lord Ivywood had practically engaged them both as private secretaries, and kept them pretty busy, too. There was also Mr. Leveson, because Lord Ivywood believed in his organizing power; and also Mr. Hibbs, because Mr. Leveson believed in his political judgment¹, whenever he could discover what it was. Mr. Leveson had straight, dark hair, and looked nervous. Mr. Hibbs had straight, fair hair, and also looked nervous. But the rest of the company were more of Ivywood’s own world, or the world of high finance with which it mixes both here and on the continent. Lord Ivywood welcomed, with something approaching to warmth, a distinguished² foreign diplomatist, who was, indeed, none other than that silent German representative who had sat beside him in that last conference on the Island of the Olives. Dr. Gluck was no longer in his quiet, black suit, but wore an ornate, diplomatic uniform with a sword and Prussian, Austrian or Turkish Orders; for he was going on from Ivywood to a function at Court. But his curl of red lips, his screw of black mustache, and his unanswering almond eyes had no more changed than the face of a wax figure in a barber’s shop window.  
The Prophet had also effected an improvement in his dress. When he had orated on the sands his costume, except for the fez, was the shabby but respectable costume of any rather unsuccessful English clerk. But now that he had come among aristocrats³ who petted their souls as they did their senses, there must be no such incongruity⁴. He must be a proper, fresh-picked oriental tulip or lotus. So—he wore long, flowing robes of white, relieved here and there by flame-coloured threads of tracery, and round his head was a turban of a kind of pale golden green. He had to look as if he had come flying across Europe on the magic carpet, or fallen a moment before from his paradise in the moon.
 
The ladies of Lord Ivywood’s world were much as we have already found them. Lady Enid Wimpole still overwhelmed her earnest and timid face with a tremendous costume, that was more like a procession than a dress. It looked rather like the funeral procession of Aubrey Beardsley. Lady Joan Brett still looked like a very beautiful Spaniard with no illusions left about her castle in Spain. The large and resolute⁵ lady who had refused to ask any questions at Misysra’s earlier lecture, and who was known as Lady Crump, the distinguished Feminist⁶, still had the air of being so full and bursting with questions fatal to Man as to have passed the speaking and reached the speechless stage of hostility⁷. Throughout the proceedings⁸ she contributed nothing but bursting silence and a malevolent⁹ eye. And old Lady Ivywood, under the oldest and finest lace and the oldest and finest manners, had a look like death on her, which can often be seen in the parents of pure intellectuals. She had that face of a lost mother that is more pathetic than the face of a lost child.
 
“And what are you going to delight us with today?” Lady Enid was asking of the Prophet.
 
“My lecture,” answered Misysra, gravely, “is on the Pig.”
 
It was part of a simplicity¹⁰ really respectable in him that he never saw any incongruity in the arbitrary and isolated¹¹ texts or symbols out of which he spun¹² his thousand insane theories. Lady Enid endured the impact of this singular subject for debate without losing that expression of wistful sweetness which she wore on principle when talking to such people.
 
“The Pig, he is a large subject,” continued the Prophet, making curves in the air, as if embracing some particularly prize specimen¹³. “He includes many subjects. It is to me very strange that the Christians¹⁵ should so laugh and be surprised because we hold ourselves to be defiled¹⁶ by pork; we and also another of the Peoples of the Book. But, surely, you Christians yourselves consider the pig as a manner of pollution; since it is your most usual expression of your despising, of your very great dislike. You say ‘swine,’ my dear lady; you do not say animals far more unpopular, such as the alligator¹⁷.”
 
“I see,” said the lady, “how wonderful!”
 
“If you are annoyed,” went on the encouraged and excited gentleman, “if you are annoyed with anyone, with a—what you say?—a lady’s maid, you do not say to her ‘Horse.’ You do not say to her ‘Camel.’”
 
“Ah, no,” said Lady Enid, earnestly.
 
“‘Pig of a lady’s maid,’ you say in your colloquial¹⁸ English,” continued the Prophet, triumphantly¹⁹. “And yet this great and awful Pig, this monster whose very name, when whispered, you think will wither²⁰ all your enemies, you allow, my dear lady, to approach yet closer to you. You incorporate this great Pig in the substance of your own person.”
 
Lady Enid Wimpole was looking a little dazed at last, at this description of her habits, and Joan gave Lord Ivywood a hint that the lecturer had better be transferred to his legitimate²¹ sphere of lecturing. Ivywood led the way into a larger room that was full of ranked chairs, with a sort of lectern at the other end, and flanked on all four sides with tables laden²² with all kinds of refreshments²³. It was typical of the strange, half-fictitious enthusiasm and curiosity of that world, that one long table was set out entirely²⁵ with vegetarian²⁶ foods, especially of an eastern sort (like a table spread in the desert for a rather fastidious Indian hermit); but that tables covered with game patties, lobster²⁷ and champagne²⁸ were equally provided, and very much more frequented. Even Mr. Hibbs, who would honestly have thought entering a publichouse more disgraceful than entering a brothel, could not connect any conception of disgrace with Lord Ivywood’s champagne.
 
For the purpose of the lecture was not wholly devoted²⁹ to the great and awful Pig, and the purpose of the meeting even less. Lord Ivywood, the white furnace of whose mind was always full of new fancies hardening into ambitions, wanted to have a debate on the diet of East and West, and felt that Misysra might very appropriately open with an account of the Moslem³⁰ veto on pork or other coarse forms of flesh food. He reserved it to himself to speak second.
 
The Prophet began, indeed, with some of his dizziest flights. He informed the Company that they, the English, had always gone in hidden terror and loathing³¹ of the Pig, as a sacred symbol of evil. He proved it by the common English custom of drawing a pig with one’s eyes shut. Lady Joan smiled, and yet she asked herself (in a doubt that had been darkening round her about many modern things lately) whether it was really much more fanciful than many things the scientists told her: as, the traces of Marriage by Capture which they found in that ornamental³² and even frivolous³³ being, the Best Man.
 
He said that the dawn of greater enlightenment is shown in the use of the word “gammon,” which still expresses disgust at “the porcine image,” but no longer fear of it, but rather a rational disdain³⁴ and disbelief. “Rowley,” said the Prophet, solemnly, and then after a long pause, “Powley, Gammon and Spinach³⁵.”
 
Lady Joan smiled again, but again asked herself if it was much more farfetched than a history book she had read, which proved the unpopularity of Catholicism in Tudor times from the word “hocus pocus.”
 
He got into a most amazing labyrinth³⁶ of philology³⁷ between the red primeval sins of the first pages of Genesis and the Common English word “ham.” But, again, Joan wondered whether it was much wilder than the other things she had heard said about Primitive³⁸ Man by people who had never seen him.
 
He suggested that the Irish were set to keep pigs because they were a low and defiled caste, and the serfs of the pig-scorning Saxon; and Joan thought it was about as sensible as what the dear old Archdeacon had said about Ireland years ago; which had caused an Irishman of her acquaintance to play “the Shan Van Voght” and then smash the piano.
 
Joan Brett had been thoughtful for the last few days. It was partly due to the scene in the turret³⁹, where she had struck a sensitive and artistic⁴⁰ side of Phillip Ivywood she had never seen before, and partly to disturbing news of her mother’s health, which, though not menacing, made her feel hypothetically how isolated she was in the world. On all previous occasions she had merely enjoyed the mad lecturer now at the reading-desk. Today she felt a strange desire to analyse him, and imagine how a man could be so connected and so convinced and yet so wildly wide of the mark. As she listened carefully, looking at the hands in her lap, she began to think she understood.
 
The lecturer did really try to prove that the “porcine image” had never been used in English history or literature, except in contempt. And the lecturer really did know a very great deal about English history and literature: much more than she did; much more than the aristocrats round her did. But she noted⁴³ that in every case what he knew was a fragmentary fact. In every case what he did not know was the truth behind the fact. What he did not know was the atmosphere. What he did not know was the tradition. She found herself ticking off the cases like counts in an indictment⁴⁴.
 
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that Richard III was called a “boar” by an eighteenth century poet and a “hog” by a fifteenth century poet. What he did not know was the habit of sport and of heraldry. He did not know (what Joan knew instantly, though she had never thought of it before in her life) that beasts courageous⁴⁵ and hard to kill are noble beasts, by the law of chivalry⁴⁶. Therefore, the boar was a noble beast, and a common crest⁴⁷ for great captains. Misysra tried to show that Richard had only been called a pig after he was cold pork at Bosworth.
 
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that there never was such a person as Lord Bacon. The phrase is a falsification of what should be Lord Verulam or Lord St. Albans. What he did not know was exactly what Joan did know (though it had never crossed her mind till that moment) that when all is said and done, a title is a sort of joke, while a surname is a serious thing. Bacon was a gentleman, and his name was Bacon; whatever titles he took. But Misysra seriously tried to prove that “Bacon” was a term of abuse applied⁴⁸ to him during his unpopularity or after his fall.
 
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that the poet Shelley had a friend called Hogg, who treated him on one occasion with grave treachery. He instantly tried to prove that the man was only called “Hogg” because he had treated Shelley with grave treachery. And he actually adduced the fact that another poet, practically contemporary, was called “Hogg” as completing the connection with Shelley. What he did not know was just what Joan had always known without knowing it: the kind of people concerned, the traditions of aristocrats like the Shelleys or of Borderers like the Ettrick Shepherd.
 
The lecturer concluded with a passage of inpenetrable darkness about pig-iron and pigs of lead, which Joan did not even venture to understand. She could only say that if it did not mean that some day our diet might become so refined that we ate lead and iron, she could form no fancy of what it did mean.
 
“Can Phillip Ivywood believe this kind of thing?” she asked herself; and even as she did so, Phillip Ivywood rose.
 
He had, as Pitt and Gladstone had, an impromptu⁴⁹ classicism of diction, his words wheeling and deploying⁵⁰ into their proper places like a well-disciplined army in its swiftest advance. And it was not long before Joan perceived that the last phase of the picture, obscure and monstrous⁵¹ as it seemed, gave Ivywood exactly the opening he wanted. Indeed, she felt, no doubt, that he had arranged for it beforehand.
 
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