[Illustration: "'I HAD BEEN A BROKER IN POMPEII.'"]

[Illustration: "'I LENT LARGE SUMS TO THE NOBLE KNIGHTS.'"]

"Was much of it repaid?" I asked.

"Most of it. The loans were almost always secured by good property. As
I look back upon the vast panorama of my life," my host continued, after
a pause, "I most pleasantly recall my various intimacies with learned
men, and my own studies and researches; but in the great company of men
of knowledge whom I have known, there was not one in whom I was so much
interested as in King Solomon. I visited his court because I greatly
wished to know a man who knew so much. It was not difficult to obtain
access to him, for I came as a stranger from Ethiopia, to the east of
Ethiopia, to the east of the Red Sea, and the king was always anxious
to see intelligent people from foreign parts. I was able to tell him a
good deal which he did not know, and he became fond of my society.

"I found Solomon a very well-informed man. He had not read and studied
books as much as I had, and he had not had my advantages of direct
intercourse with learned men; but he was a most earnest and indefatigable
student of nature. I believe he knew more about natural history than any
human being then living, or who had preceded him. Whenever it was
possible for him to do so, he studied animal nature from the living
model, and all the beasts, birds, and fishes which it was possible for
him to obtain alive were quartered in the grounds of his palace. In a
certain way he was an animal-tamer. You may well imagine that this great
king's wonderful possessions, as well as the man himself, were the source
of continual delight to me.