They looked delicious but he didn't really want to eat them. He remembered some stirring of an idea when he'd first seen them, though now it was forgotten. He was sure there was something he could do with them other than eat them, so he propped them against a tombstone. They brought on an almost irresistible desire to soliloquize. Demons at this time thought nothing of traveling hundreds of miles to find a really good object to soliloquize over. It was an especially pleasant exercise on a desolate Italian upland "with a thrusting wind and the distant bark of jackals.

"O legs," Azzie said, "I warrant you trooped nicely to your lady's favor, and bowed well, too, since you are a pair of mus­cular and nimble legs, of the sort the ladies look upon with favor. O legs, I imagine you now, widespread in antic mirth, and then coiled tight together in that final paroxysm of love. When you were young, O legs, you climbed many a stately oak, and ran near running streams, and across the green friendly fields of your homeland. I daresay you dove over thicket and hedge as you careened your way. No path was too long for you, and you were never tired."

"Think you so?" a voice said from above and behind him. Azzie turned and beheld the mournful cloaked figure of Hermes Trismegistus. He was not surprised that the mage had followed him here. Hermes and the other old gods seemed to follow a different destiny from demons or ghosts, a destiny unaffected by questions of good and evil.

"Good to see you again, Hermes," Azzie said. "I was just philosophizing over this pair of legs."

"I'm not going to stop you," Hermes said.

He had been floating in the air about five feet above Azzie's head. Now he drifted gracefully to the ground, bent, and ex­amined the legs.

"What sort of man do you suppose these belonged to?" Hermes asked.