CHAPTER I.
In Persia there was once a king. On one occasion when he was out hunting he came to the narrow entrance of a valley. It was shut in on either side by vast hills, seemingly the spurs from the distant mountains. These great spurs spread out including a wide tract of land. Towards the entrance where he stood they approached one another, and ended in abrupt cliffs. Across the mouth of the valley stretched a deep ravine. The king, followed by courtiers, galloped along, searching a spot where the deep fissure might be shallower, so that descending into it he might reach the valley by ascending on the opposite side.
But at every point the ravine stretched downwards dark and deep, from cliff to cliff, shutting off all access to the valley.
At one point only was there a means of crossing. There were two masses of rocks, jutting out one from either side like the abutments of a natural bridge, and they seemed to meet in mid air.
The mass trembled and shook as the king spurred his horse over it, and the dislodged stones reverberated from side to side of the chasm till the noise of their falling was lost.
Before the first of his courtiers could follow him one of the great piers or abutments gave way—the whole mass fell crashing down. The king was alone in the valley.
“So ho,” he cried, “the kingdom of Persia is shrunk to this narrow spot!” and without troubling himself for the moment how he should return, he sped onward.
But when he had ridden far into the valley on his steed that could outnumber ten leagues in an hour, and had returned to the entrance of it, he saw no trace of a living soul on the opposite brink of the cleft. No sign was left, save a few reeds bent down by the passage of the mounted train, that any human being had stood on the opposite side for ages.
The evening came on apace. Yet no one returned. Again he rode far into the valley. For the most part it was covered with long grass, but here and there a thick and tangled mass of vegetation attested to a great luxuriance of soil, while the surface was intersected here and there with rivulets of clear water, which finally lost their way in the dark gorge over which he had just so rashly adventured. But on no side did the steep cliffs offer any promise of escape.
When the night came on he stretched himself beneath one of the few trees not far from the ravine, while his faithful horse stood tranquilly at his head.
He did not awake till the moon had risen. But then suddenly he started to his feet, and walking to the edge of the cleft, peered over to the land from whence he had come. For he thought he heard sounds of some kind that were not the natural ones of the rustling wind or the falling water. Looking out he saw clearly opposite to him an old man in ragged clothing, leaning against a rock, holding a long pipe in his hands, on which he now and again played a few wild notes.
“Oho, peasant!” cried the king. “Run and tell the head man of your village that the king bids him come directly, and will have him bring with him the longest ropes and the strongest throwers under him.”
But the old man did not seem to give heed. Then the king cried, “Hearken, old man, run quickly and tell your master that the king is confined here, and will reward him beyond his dreams if he deliver him quickly.”
Then the old man rose, and coming nearer to the edge of the ravine stood opposite, still playing at intervals some notes on his long pipe. And the king cried, “Canst thou hear? Dost thou dare to refuse to carry my commands? For I am the king of Persia. Who art thou?”
Then the old man made answer, putting his pipe aside: “I am he who appears only when a man has passed for ever beyond the ken of all that have known him. I am Demiourgos, the maker of men.”
Then the king cried, “Mock me not, but obey my commands.”
The old man made answer, “I do not mock thee; and oh, my Lord, thou hast moved the puppets I have made, and driven them so to dance on the surface of the earth that I would willingly obey thee. But it is not permitted me to pass between thee and the world of men thou hast known.”
Then the king was silent.
At length he said, “If thou art really what thou sayest, show me what thou canst do; build me a palace.”
The old man lifted his pipe in both his trembling hands, and began to blow.
It was a strange instrument, for it not only produced the shriller sounds of the lute, and the piercing notes of the trumpet, but resounded with the hollow booming of great organ pipes, and amongst all came ever and again a sharp and sonorous clang as of some metal instrument resounding when it was struck.
And then the king was as one who enjoys the delights of thought. For in thought, delicate shades, impalpable nuances are ever passing. It is as the blended strains of an invisible orchestra, but more subtle far, that come and go in unexpected metres, and overwhelm you with their beauty when all seemed silent. And lo, as the strains sound, outside—palpable, large as the firmament, or real as the smallest thing you can take up and know it is there—outside stands some existence revealed—to be known and returned to for ever.
So the king, listening to this music, felt that something was rising behind him. And turning, beheld course after course of a great building. Almost as soon as he had looked it had risen completed, finished to the last embossure on the windows, the tracery on the highest pinnacles. All had happened while the old man was blowing on his pipe, and when he ceased all was perfect.
And yet the appearance was very strange, for a finished and seemingly habitable building rose out of waste unreclaimed soil, strewn with rocks and barren. No dwellings were near the palace to wait on it, no roads led to it or away from it.
“There should be houses around it, and roadways,” said the king; “make them, and fields sown with corn, and all that is necessary for a state.”
Blowing on his pipe in regular recurrent cadences, the old man called up houses close together, than scattered singly along roads which stretched away into the distance, to be seen every here and there perfectly clearly where they ascended a rising ground. And near at hand could be distinguished fields of grain and pasture land.
Yet as the king turned to walk towards the new scene, the old man laughed. “All this is a dream,” he cried; “so much I can do, but not at once.” And breathing peals of music from his pipe, he said, “This can be, but is not yet.”
“What,” asked the king, “is all a delusion?” and as he asked everything sank down. There was no palace, no houses or fields, only the steep precipice-locked valley, whither the king had ridden; and his horse cowering behind him.
Then the king cried, “Thou art some moonstruck hermit, leading out a life of folly alone. Get thee to the village thou knowest, and bring me help.”
But the old man answered him saying, “Great king, I am bound to obey thee, and all the creative might of my being I lay at thy feet; and lo, in the midst of this valley I make for thee beings such as I can produce. And all that thou hast seen is as nothing to what I can do for thee. The depths of the starry heavens have no limit, nor what I do for thee. Hast thou ever in thy life looked into the deep still ocean, and lost thy sight in the unseen depths? Even so thou wilt find no end in what I will give thee. Hast thou ever in thy life sought the depths of thy love’s blue eyes, and found therein a world which stretched on endlessly? Even so I bring all to thy feet. Now that all the gladness of the world has departed from thee, behold, I am a more willing servant than ever thou hast had.”
And again he played, and a hut rose up with a patch of cleared soil around it, and a spring near by.
Then the king said, “Here will I dwell, and if I am to be cut off from the rest of the world, I will lead a peaceful life in this valley.”
The sun was rising, the sounds had ceased, and the old man had disappeared.