Veil! ... I cannot choose but laugh myself whenever I think of
him. He deems his words carry weight with the people,--alas, poor
soul! his scorn but adds to my glory,--his derision to my fame!
Nay, of a truth I need him,--even as the King needs the court
fool,--to make mirth for me in vacant moments,--for there is
something grotesque in the contemplation of his cankered
clownishness, that sees nought in life but the eating, the
sleeping, the building, and the bargaining. Such men as he can
never bear to know that there are others, gifted by heaven, for
whom all common things take radiant shape and meaning,--for whom
the flowers reveal their fragrant secrets,--for whom birds not
only sing, but speak in most melodious utterance--for whose
dreaming eyes, the very sunbeams spin bright fantasies in mid-air
more lasting than the kingdoms of the world! Blind and unhappy
Zabastes! ... he is ignorant as a stone, and for him the mysteries
of Nature are forever veiled. The triumphal hero-march of the
stars,--the brief, bright rhyme of the flashing comet,--the
canticle of the rose as she bears her crimson heart to the smile
of the sun,--the chorus of green leaves chanting orisons to the
wind--the never completed epic of heaven's lofty solitudes where
the white moon paces, wandering like a maiden in search of love,--
all these and other unnumbered joys he has lost--joys that Sah-
luma, child of the high gods and favorite of Destiny drinks in
with the light and the air."

His eyes softened with a dreamy, intense lustre that gave them a
new and almost pathetic beauty, while Theos, listening to each
word he uttered, wondered whether there were ever any sounds
sweeter than the rise and fall of his exquisite voice,--a voice as
deliciously clear and mellow as a golden flute tenderly played.