had worn all day, handed it to Theos with a graceful obeisance--
"For who knows but the leaves may contain a certain witchery we
wot not of, that shall endow him with a touch of the divine
inspiration!"

At that moment, a curious figure came shuffling across the
splendid hall,--that of a little old man somewhat shabbily
attired, upon whose wrinkled countenance there seemed to be a
fixed, malign smile, like the smile of a mocking Greek mask. He
had small, bright, beady black eyes placed very near the bridge of
his large hooked nose,--his thin, wispy gray locks streamed
scantily over his bent shoulders, and he carried a tall staff to
support his awkward steps,--a staff with which he made a most
disagreeable tapping noise on the marble pavement as he came
along.

"Ah, Sir Gad-about!" he exclaimed in a harsh, squeaky voice as he
perceived Sah-luma--"Back again from your self-advertising in the
city! Is there any poor soul left in Al-Kyris whose ears have not
been deafened by the parrot-cry of the name of Sah-luma?--If there
is,--at him, at him, my dainty warbler of tiresome trills!--at
him, and storm his senses with a rhodomontade of rhymes without
reason!--at him, Immortal of the Immortals!--Bard of Bards!--stuff
him with quatrains and sextains!--beat him with blank verse, blank
of all meaning!--lash him with ballad and sonnet-scourges, till
the tortured wretch, howling for mercy, shall swear that no poet
save Sah-luma, ever lived before, or will ever live again, on the
face of the shuddering and astonished earth!"

And breathless with this extraordinary outburst, he struck his