He sighed despondingly, ... a curious, vague contrition stirred
within him, ... he felt as though HE were in some mysterious way
to blame for all his poet-friend's short-comings!

In a few minutes he found himself on the broad marble embankment,
close to the very spot from whence he had first beheld the
beautiful High Priestess sailing slowly by in all her golden pomp
and splendor, and as he thought of her now, a shudder, half of
aversion, half of desire, quivered through him, flushing his brows
with the warm uprising blood that yet burned rebelliously at the
remembrance of her witching, perfect loveliness!

Here too he had met Sah-luma, . . ah Heaven!--how many things had
happened since then! ... how much he had seen and heard! ...
Enough, at any rate, to convince him, that the men and women of
Al-Kyris were more or less the same as those of other great cities
he seemed to have known in far-off, half-forgotten days,--that
they plotted against each other, deceived each other, accused each
other falsely, murdered each other, and were fools, traitors, and
egotists generally, after the customary fashion of human pigmies,
--that they set up a Sham to serve as Religion, Gold being their
only god,--that the rich wantoned in splendid luxury, and wilfully
neglected the poor,--that the King was a showy profligate, ruled
by a treacherous courtesan, just like many other famous Kings and
Princes, who, because of their stalwart, martial bearing, and a
certain surface good-nature, manage to conceal their vices from
the too lenient eyes of the subjects they mislead,--and that
finally all things were evidently tending toward some great
convulsion and upheaval possibly arising from discontent and
dissension among the citizens themselves,--or, likelier still,