The case of a very sinful man, he will have to begin once
more with the animal forms which he had already traversed unconsciously.
Both Darwin and Haeckel lose sight of this, so to speak, second volume
of their incomplete theory, but still neither of them advances any
argument to prove it false. Is it not so?"
"Neither of them does anything of the sort, most assuredly."
"Why, in this case," exclaimed he, suddenly changing his colloquial
tone for an aggressive one, "why am I, I who have studied the most
modern ideas of Western science, I who believe in its representatives -
why am I suspected, pray, by Miss X - - of belonging to the tribe
of the ignorant and superstitious Hindus? Why does she think that
our perfected scientific theories are superstitions, and we
ourselves a fallen inferior race?"
Sham Rao stood before us with tears in his eyes. We were at a
loss what to answer him, being confused to the last degree by
this outburst.
"Mind you, I do not proclaim our popular beliefs to be infallible
dogmas. I consider them as mere theories, and try to the best of
my ability to reconcile the ancient and the modern science. I
formulate hypotheses just like Darwin and Haeckel. Besides, if I
understood rightly, Miss X - - is a spiritualist, so she believes
in bhutas. And, believing that a bhuta is capable of penetrating
the body of a medium, how can she deny that a bhuta, and more so
a less sinful soul, may enter the body of a vampire-bat?"
I own, this logic was a little too condensed for us, and so, avoiding
a direct answer to a metaphysical question of such delicacy, we tried
to apologize and excuse Miss X - -'s rudeness as well as we could.
"She did not mean to offend you," we said, "she only repeated a
calumny, familiar to every European. Besides, if she had taken
the trouble to think it over, she probably would not have said it...."
Little by little we succeeded in pacifying our host. He recovered
his usual cheerfulness, but could not resist the temptation of adding
a few words to his long argumentation. He had just begun to reveal
to us certain peculiarities of his late brother's character, which
induced him to be prepared, judging by the laws of atavism, to see
their repetition in the propensities of a vampire bat, when Mr. Y - -
suddenly dashed in on our small group and spoiled all the results
of our conciliatory words by screaming at the top of his voice:
"The old woman has gone demented! She keeps on cursing us and
says that the murder of this wretched bat is only the forerunner
of a whole series of misfortunes brought on her house by you,
Sham Rao," said he, hastily addressing the bewildered follower
of Haackel.
