Ada Or Ardor Quotes

And yet I adore him. I think he's quite crazy, and with no place or occupation in life, and far from happy, and philosophically irresponsible – and there is absolutely nobody like him.

Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.

...for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.

I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.

I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly.

Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.

You lose your immortality when you lose your memory.

I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness…I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended […]

Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive.

The fire you rubbed left its brand on the most vulnerable, most vicious and tender point of my body. Now I have to pay for your rasping the red rash too strongly, too soon, as charred wood has to pay for burning. When I remain without your caresses, I lose all control of my nerves, nothing exists any more than the ecstasy of friction, the abiding effect of your sting, of your delicious poison.

When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor.

His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss.

Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.

Both were diverted by life's young fumblings, both saddened by the wisdom of time

He groped for his loafers and walked aimlessly for some time among the trees of the coppice where thrushes were singing so richly, with such sonorous force, such fluty fioriture that one could not endure the agony of consciousness, the filth of life, the loss, the loss, the loss.

Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.

It's exactly my sense of existing - a fragment, a wisp of color.

Her disintegration went down a shaft of phases, every one more racking than the last; for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.

Did he like elms? Did he know Joyce’s poem about the two washerwomen? He did, indeed. Did he like it? He did. In fact he was beginning to like very much arbors and ardors and Adas

V.V. sought to express something, which until expressed had only a twilight being (or even none at all--nothing but the illusion of the backward shadow of its imminent expression). It was Ada's castle of cards. It was the standing of a metaphor on its head not for the sake of the trick's difficulty, but in order to perceive an ascending waterful or a sunrise in reverse: a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time.

In the fatal course of the most painful ailments, sometimes […], sometimes there occur sweet mornings of perfect repose- and that not owning to some blessed pill or potion […] or at least without our knowing that the loving hand of despair slipped us the drug.

And now, said Ada, Van is going to stop being vulgar—I mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy.

Beaming and melting in smiles of benevolence and self-effacement, they sidled up and plumped down next to Lucette, who turned to them with her last, last, last free gift of staunch courtesy that was stronger than failure and death.

But they are practically brother and sister," ejaculated Marina, thinking as many stupid people do that "practically" works both ways - reducing the truth of a statement and making a truism sound like the truth.

A jövő azonban mit sem törődik érzéseinkkel és fantáziálásunkkal. A jövő minden pillanatban a szétágazó lehetőségek végtelenje.

Tenderness rounds out true triumph, gentleness lubricates genuine liberation: emotions that are not diagnostic of glory or passion in dreams.

For the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented.

One thing should be established once for all, indefeasibly. I loved, love, and shall love only you. I implore you and love you with everlasting pain and passion, my darling.

To her he would surrender the remnants of himself at the first trumpet blast of destiny.

The sky was so heartless and dark, and her body, her head, and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes -- telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression -- that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.

But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years - problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space - and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die.

I adore you. I shall never love any- body in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go. But! But, my love, my Van, I'm physical, horribly physical

- Might it console you to know that I expect nothing but torture from her return? That I regard you as a bird of paradise? She shook her head. - That my admiration for you is painfully strong? - I want Van – she cried – and not intangible admiration. - Intangible? You goose. You my gauge it, you may brush it once very lightly with the knuckles of you gloved hand. I said knuckles. I said once. That will do. I can't kiss you. Not even your burning face. Good-bye, pet. Tell Edmond to take a nap after he returns. I shall need him at two in the morning.

...making klv zdB AoyvBno wkh gwzxm dqg kzwAAqvo a gwttp vq wjfhm Ada in natural bower of aspens xliC mujzikml.

Actually, observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained,- Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.

Egyvalamit egyszer és mindenkorra, visszavonhatatlanul le kell szögeznem. Csak téged szerettelek, szeretlek és foglak szeretni.

Az életnek, a szerelemnek, a könyvtáraknak nincs jövőjük.

– Az ember úgy érzi… Úgy érzi… – mondta –, hogy csupán valami szerepet játszik, és elfelejtette a következő mondatait.

Elmenni annyi, mint kicsit meghalni, és meghalni annyi, mint kicsit túl messze menni.

[…] az ostobaság ugyanis mindig a zsúfoltság szinonimája, és semmi sincs jobban tele, mint egy üres fej.

Tropes are the dreams of speech.

There is nothing so banal in the world,' said Ada 'than pitching stones at a hawfinch.

A szemek. Ada sötétbarna szeme. Végső soron mi is a szem (kérdezi Ada)? Két lyuk az élet maszkján.

Nincs több pusztítás, Van. Csak szerelem.

[…] a halál nem több, csak a magány végtelen töredékeinek teljesebb kollekciója.

The determinate scheme by stripping the sunrise of it's surprise would erase all sunrays.

The only consciousness that persists in the hereafter is the consciousness of pain.

As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform... them... that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.

Amikor korábbi önmagunkra emlékezünk, mindig ott van az a hosszú árnyékot vető kis figura, amely mint egy bizonytalan, megkésett vendég áll meg a megvilágított küszöbön egy kifogástalanul szűkülő folyosó túlsó végén.

You lose your immortality when you lose your memory. And if you land then on Terra Caelestis, with your pillow and chamberpot, you are made to room not with Shakespeare or even Longfellow, but with guitarists and cretins.

Dear dad, in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer in Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please! Your loving son, Van He carefully reread his letter – and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer. Dad, I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry! Van

...Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection—a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an unequivocal, and indeed all-deciding sign, of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand.

As she began losing track of herself, she though it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes - telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression - that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.

...beyond observing that some law of logic should fix the number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new truth (“Tell me,” says Osberg’s little glitana to the Moors, El Motela and Ramera, “what is the precise minimum of hairs on a body that allows one to call it ‘hairy’?”)

Mindketten izgalmat kerestek a könyvekben, ahogyan a legjobb olvasók mindig is teszik; és mindketten kérkedést, unalmat és hitvány hazugságokat találtak oly sok híres műben.

Ami azt illeti, Vannak kezdtek nagyon tetszeni a fák is, a csodák is meg az Adák is.

A hóbortosság a legnagyobb bánat legjobb gyógyszere.

Mindkettejüket szórakoztatták az élet ifjonti ügyetlenkedései, mindkettejüket elszomorította a múló idővel megérkező bölcsesség.

A megfigyelés nem feltétlenül a következtetés anyja.

– Szeret mindent, amit a szép lányok szeretnek – mondta Van –, a bálokat, az orchideákat és a Cseresznyéskert-et.

The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first amorous scenes.

Mindannyiunknak meg van pecsételve a sorsa, de egyesekké jobban, mint másoké.

Their first free and frantic caresses had been preceded by a brief period of strange craftiness, of cringing stealth.

It had glistening eyes like sad black olives.

He never saw that dress again and when he mentioned it in retrospective evocation she invariably retorted that he must have dreamt it,

Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control.

Life, love, libraries, have no future.

[…] soha nem szabad elfelejtenünk, hogy az ember ereje, méltósága és öröme abban rejlik, hogy dacolva megveti azokat az árnyakat és csillagokat, amelyek elrejtik előlünk titkainkat.

Space' (it says here, rather suggestively) 'denotes the property, you are my property, in virtue of which, you are my virtue, rigid bodies can occupy different positions.' Nice? Nice.

Egy elegáns első osztályú fülkében, egyik kesztyűs kezünket bedugva a bársony ajtóhurokba, könnyű nagyon világlátott embernek érezni magunkat, miközben nézzük a szorgosan elsuhanó tájat.

Mik az álmok? Jelenetek, triviális vagy tragikus, mozgó vagy statikus, fantasztikus vagy közönséges jelenetek véletlenszerű sorozatai, melyekben többé vagy kevésbé valószerű eseményeket habarcsolnak össze holmi groteszk részletek és holtak jelennek meg bennük új díszletek között.

before picking up the spilled diamonds, she locked the door and embraced him, weeping — the touch of her skin and silk was all the magic of life, but why does everybody greet me with tears?

Nothing happened--or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind.

No animal will touch a person's tongue. When a lion has finished a traveler, bones and all, he always leaves the man's tongue lying like that in the desert" (making a negligent gesture). "I doubt it." "It's a well known mystery.

De ha gyorsan végezzük a műveletet, ha a kitörölhetetlen bűnöket két gyors szellemesség között említjük, akkor van rá esély, hogy magának az életnek érzéstelenítője csillapíthatja a felejthetetlen kínt, ajtajának egy gyors lendítésével.

Szellemi lábjegyzetként, amely valamikor még jól jöhet, Vanban fölvillant a gondolat: a napszemüveg vagy bármely egyéb vizuális segédeszköz, amely kétségkívül eltorzítja a „tér”-érzékelésünket, vajon nincs-e hatással a beszédstílusunkra is.

What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word "deified"? What, indeed, would a pair of beautiful (human, lemurian, owlish) eyes mean to anybody if found lying on the seat of a taxi?

There can be no emblem or parable in a village idiot's hallucinations or in last night's dream of any of us in this hall. In those random visions nothing – underline nothing (grating sound of horizontal stroke can be construed as allowing itself to be deciphered y a witch doctor that can then cure a madman or give confort to a killer by laying the blame on a too fond, too fiendish or too indifferent parent – secret festerings that the foster quack feigns to heal by expensive confession feasts (laughter and applause).

Szétesése fokozatosan történt, és mindegyik fokozata gyötrelmesebb volt az előzőnél; az emberi agy ugyanis a legjobb kínzókamra bír lenni mindazok közül, melyeket kieszelt, létrehozott és használt évek millióin át, földek millióiban, üvöltő teremtmények millióin.

Kilencvennégy évesen is szerette újra átélni azt az első szerelmes nyarat, s nem úgy, mint egy épp az imént látott álmot, hanem mint a múltbéli tudat felidézését, amelynek révén leküzdötte a szürke hajnali órákat a felületes alvás és az aznapi első tabletta között.

While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave. Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet—from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome her. That perfect end was spoiled by her instinctively surfacing in an immediate sweep — instead of surrendering under water to her drugged lassitude as she had planned to do on her last night ashore if it ever did come to this. The silly girl had not rehearsed the technique of suicide as, say, free-fall parachutists do every day in the element of another chapter. Owing to the tumultuous swell and her not being sure which way to peer through the spray and the darkness and her own tentaclinging hair—t,a,c,l—she could not make out the lights of the liner, an easily imagined many-eyed bulk mightily receding in heartless triumph. Now I’ve lost my next note. Got it. The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head,and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an un-analyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vairfurred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath. A brilliantly illumined motorboat was launched from the not-too-distant ship with Van and the swimming coach and the oilskin-hooded Toby among the would-be saviors; but by that time a lot of sea had rolled by and Lucette was too tired to wait. Then the night was filled with the rattle of an old but still strong helicopter. Its diligent beam could spot only the dark head of Van, who, having been propelled out of the boat when it shied from its own sudden shadow, kept bobbing and bawling the drowned girl’s name in the black, foam-veined, complicated waters.

This is reality, this is pure fact - this forest, this moss, your hand, the ladybird on my leg, this cannot be taken away, can it? (it will, it was). This has all come together here, no matter how the paths twisted, and fooled each other, and got fouled up, they inevitably met here!

Her hair was well brushed that day and sheened darkly in contrast with the lusterless pallor of her neck and arms. She wore the striped tee shirt which in his lone fantasies he especially liked to peel off her twisting torso. The oilcloth was divided into blue and white squares. A smear of honey stained what remained of the butter in its cool crock. 'All right. And the third Real Thing?' She considered him. A fiery droplet in the wick of her mouth considered him. A three-colored velvet violet, of which she had done an aquarelle on the eve, considered him from its fluted crystal. She said nothing. She licked her spread fingers, still looking at him. Van, getting no answer, left the balcony. Softly her tower crumbled in the sweet silent sun.

And speaking of evolution, can we imagine the origin and stepping stones and rejected mutations of Time? Has there ever been a “primitive” form of Time in which, say, the Past was not yet clearly differentiated from the Present, so that past shadows and shapes showed through the still soft, long, larval “now”?

Next morning, his nose still in the dreambag of a deep pillow contributed to his otherwise austere bed by sweet Blanche (with whom, by the parlour-game rules of sleep, he had been holding hands in a heart-breaking nightmare– or perhaps it was just her cheap perfume), the boy was at once aware of the happiness knocking to be let in. He deliberately endeavored to prolong the glow of its incognito by dwelling on the last vestiges of jasmine and tears in a silly dream...

Ez a „most” az egyetlen realitás, amit ismerünk; a már-nem színes semmijét követi, és a jövő abszolút semmijét előzi meg. Így egészen szó szerinti értelemben mondhatjuk, hogy a tudatos emberi élet mindig csak egy pillanatig tart, mert a saját tudatáramunkra irányuló szándékos figyelem egyetlen pillanatában sem tudhatjuk, hogy követi-e újabb pillanat.

. . .the mad conjurer at the ward whose pet obsession was that gravity had something to do with the blood circulation of a Supreme Being.

Van tussled with his slightly overweight conscience (both grinning like old pals in their old gymnasium) — and accepted Dick’s offer.

He could swear he did not look back, could not—by any optical chance, or in any prism—have seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite picture of her standing where he left her. The picture—which penetrated him, through an eye in the back of his head, through his vitreous spinal canal, and could never be lived down, never—consisted of a selection and blend of such random images and expressions of hers that had affected him with a pang of intolerable remorse at various moments in the past.

Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on.

It did not matter, it did not matter. Destroy and forget! But a butterfly in the Park, an orchid in a shop window, would revive everything with a dazzling inward shock of despair... When he could not sleep, as now often happened... he would walk up and down the open terrace, under a haze of stars, in severely restricted meditation, till the first tramcar jangled and screeched in the dawning abyss of the city.

Egyszer majd, tűnődött Marina, az embernek rendbe kell szednie a múltját. Retusálni, újraforgatni. Ezt-azt kivágni a filmből, ezt-azt beilleszteni; az emulzió néhány árulkodó karcolást ki kell javítani, „átúsztatásokkal” összekötni a jeleneteket, és a fölösleges, bosszantó felvételeket akkurátusan kivágni, biztosítva a megfelelő garanciákat; igen, majd egyszer – még mielőtt a halál a csapójával véget vet a jelenetnek.

He traveled, he studied, he taught ... He learned to appreciate the singular little thrill of following dark byways in strange towns, knowing well that he would discover nothing, save filth and ennui and discarded merry cans with labels and the jungle jingles of exported jazz. He often felt that the famed cities, the museums, the ancient torture house and the suspended garden were but places on the map of his own madness.

Poor L. We are sorry that you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid into a naughty prank. That sort of game will never again be played with you, firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers ans membranes of beauty make artists and morons loose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous air ships and coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP [Bird of Paradise]. We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget. Tenderly yours, A & V (in alphabetic order).

Go on from here, Ada, please. (She). Billions of boys. Take one fairly decent decade. A billion of Bills, good, gifted, tender and passionate, not only spiritually but physically well-meaning Billions, have bared the jillions of their no less tender and brilliant Jills during that decade, at stations and under conditions that have to be controlled and specified by the worker, lest the entire report be choked up by the weeds of statistics and waist-high generalizations. No point would there be, if we left out, for example, the little matter of prodigious individual awareness and young genius, which makes, in some cases, of this or that particular gasp an unprecedented and unrepeatable event in the continuum of life or at least a thematic anthemia of such events in a work of art, or a denouncer’s article. The details that shine through or shade through: the local leaf through the hyaline skin, the green sun in the brown humid eye, tout ceci, vsyo eto, in tit and toto, must be taken into account, now prepare to take over (no, Ada, go on, ya zaslushalsya: I’m all enchantment and ears), if we wish to convey the fact, the fact, the fact—that among those billions of brilliant couples in one cross section of what you will allow me to call spacetime (for the convenience of reasoning), one couple is a unique super-imperial couple, sverhimperator-skaya cheta, in consequence of which (to be inquired into, to be painted, to be denounced, to be put to music, or to the question and death, if the decade has a scorpion tail after all), the particularities of their love-making influence in a special unique way two long lives and a few readers, those pensive reeds, and their pens and mental paintbrushes. Natural history indeed! Unnatural history—because that precision of senses and sense must seem unpleasantly peculiar to peasants, and because the detail is all: The song of a Tuscan Firecrest or a Sitka Kinglet in a cemetery cypress; a minty whiff of Summer Savory or Yerba Buena on a coastal slope; the dancing flitter of a Holly Blue or an Echo Azure—combined with other birds, flowers and butterflies: that has to be heard, smelled and seen through the transparency of death and ardent beauty. And the most difficult: beauty itself as perceived through the there and then. The males of the firefly (now it’s really your turn, Van).

Actually the question of mortal precedence has now hardly any importance. I mean, the hero and heroine should get so close to each other by the time the horror begins, so organically close, that they overlap, intergrade, interache, and even if Vaniada’s end is described in the epilogue we, writers and readers, should be unable to make out (myopic, myopic) who exactly survives, Dava or Vada, Anda or Vanda.

The first person whom she introduced him to, at that island of fauteuils and androids, now getting up from around a low table with a copper ashbowl for hub, was the promised belle-sœur, a short plumpish lady in governess gray, very oval-faced, with bobbed auburn hair, a sallowish complexion, smoke-blue unsmiling eyes, and a fleshy little excrescence, resembling a ripe maize kernel, at the side of one nostril, added to its hypercritical curve by an afterthought of nature as not seldom happens when a Russian’s face is mass-produced.

Moreover, although reference works existed on library shelves in available, and redundant, profusion, no direct access could be obtained to the banned, or burned, books of the three cosmologists, Xertigny, Yates and Zotov (pen names), who had recklessly started the whole business half a century earlier, causing, and endorsing, panic, demency and execrable romanchiks. All three scientists had vanished now: X had committed suicide; Y had been kidnapped by a laundryman and transported to Tartary; and Z, a ruddy, white-whiskered old sport, was driving his Yakima jailers crazy by means of incomprehensible crepitations, ceaseless invention of invisible inks, chameleonizations, nerve signals, spirals of out-going lights and feats of ventriloquism that imitated pistol shots and sirens.

This Theresa maddened with her messages a scientist on our easily maddened planet; his anagram looking name, Sig Lemanski, had been partly derived by Van from that of Aqua's last doctor. When Leymanski's obsession turned into love, and one's sympathy got focused on his enchanting, melancholy, betrayed wife (nee Antilia Glems), our author found himself confronted with the distressful task of now stamping out in Antilia, a born brunette, all traces of Ada, thus reducing yet another character to a dummy with bleached hair. After beaming Sig a dozen communications from her planet, Theresa flies over to him, and he, in his laboratory, has to place her on a slide under a powerful microscope in order to make out the tiny, though otherwise perfect, shape of his minikin sweetheart, a graceful microorganism extending transparent appendages toward his huge humid eye. Alas, the testibulus (test tube - never to be confused with testiculus, orchid), with Theresa swimming inside like a micromermaid, is "accidentally" thrown away by Professor Leyman's (he had trimmed his name by that time) assistant, Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun.