more to him than deciding the tint of the rose before the bud is formed.
O Emir, I congratulate you on the resignation with which you accept his
judgment. I congratulate you upon the age in which he has cast your
life. He who in a moment of uncertainty would inform himself of his
future should not heed his intentions and hopes; by studying his present
conditions, he will find himself an oracle unto himself. He should
address his best mind to the question, 'I am now in a road; if I keep
it, where will I arrive?' And wisdom will answer, 'What are thy desires?
For what art thou fitted? What are the opportunities of the time?' Most
fortunate, O Emir, if there be correspondence between the desire, the
fitness, and the opportunity!"

The Emir did not comprehend, and seeing it, the host added with a
directness approaching the abrupt:

"And now to make the reason of my congratulations clear, it is necessary
that thou consent to my putting a seal upon your lips. What sayest thou?"

"If I engage my silence, O Hadji, it is because I believe you are a good
man."

The dignity of the Emir's answer did not entirely hide the effect of the
Prince's manner.

"Know thou then," the latter continued, with a steady, penetrating
gaze--"know thou then, there is a Brahman of my acquaintance who is a
Magus. I use the word to distinguish him from the necromancers whom the
Koran has set in everlasting prohibition. He keeps school in a chapel
hid away in the heart of jungles overgrowing a bank of the Bermapootra,
not far from the mountain gates of the river. He has many scholars, and