II
TWO DREAMERS
He opened them ... the harbour with its army of galleys and pleasure craft lay in the burning sunshine, its surface a sapphire blue. Overhead the sky echoed this tone, which modulated into deeper notes of purple on the far-away hills whose tops were wreathed in mist. Under his sandalled feet was marble, back of him were the gleaming spires and towers of the great city, and at his left was a mountain of shining marble, the Pharos.
"Alexandria?" he called out as he was jostled by a melon-seller, and startled by the fluted invitations of a young girl—an antique statue come to life.
"Of course it is Alexandria," replied a deep, harsh voice at his elbow. He turned. It was his friend Philo.
"You have at last emerged from your day-dream, Hyzlo! I thought, as our bark clove the water, that you were enjoying visions." And it seemed to Hyzlo that he had just awakened from a bizarre dream of a monastic cell, to more beautiful sights and shapes and sounds. The pair now traversed the quay, past the signal masts, the fortified towers, pushing through the throng of sailors, courtesans, philosophers, fruitsellers, soldiers, beggars, and idle rich toward the spacious city. Past the palace to the wall of the Canal, along the banks of the Royal Port, they finally struck into a broad, deserted avenue. At its head was a garden wall. Philo introduced himself and his companion through a low door and presently they were both in an apartment full of parchments, glittering brass and gold instruments all reposing on a wide, long table.
"Hyzlo," said the Jewish philosopher, in his slightly accented Greek, "I have long promised you that I would reveal to you my secret, my life work. I am downcast by sadness. Rome is full of warring cults, Greek, African, Babylonian, Buddhistic; the writings of the great teachers, the masters, Heraclitus, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Seneca, are overlaid with heretical emendations. The religion of my fellow-countrymen is a fiery furnace, Jerusalem a den of warring thieves. The rulers of earth are weary and turn a deaf ear on their peoples. The time is ripe for revolt. Sick of the accursed luxury and debauchery, fearful of the threatening barbarians from Asia and the boreal regions, who are hemming the civilized world, waiting like vultures for the first sign of weakness to destroy everything, the slaves in revolt—all these impending terrors assure me that the end of the old order is at hand. But what will become of the new if there is no central belief to steady the ensanguined hands of furious mobs? For years I have bethought me of a drama, a gigantic world-drama which shall embody all the myths of mankind, all the noblest thoughts of the philosophers. I shall take the Buddha myth, surely the supreme myth, and transpose its characters to Jerusalem. A humble Jew shall be my Buddha. He shall be my revenge on our conquerors; for my people have been trampled upon by the insolent Romans, and who knows—a Jewish God, a crucified God, may be worshipped in the stead of Jupiter and his vile pantheon of gods and goddesses! One God, the son of Jahveh who comes upon earth to save mankind, is crucified and killed, is resurrected and like Elijah is caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot. But you know the usual style of these Asiatic legends! They are all alike; a virgin birth, a miraculous life, and transfiguration. That sums up myths from Adonis to Krishna, from Krishna to Buddha; though Monotheism comes from the Hebrews, the Trinity from the Indians, and the logos was developed by Plato. Where I am original is that I make my hero a Jew—the Jews are still half-cracked enough to believe in the coming of a Messiah. And to compass a fine dramatic moment I have introduced an incident I once witnessed in Alexandria at the landing of King Agrippa, when the populace dressed up a vagabond named Karabas as a mock king and stuck upon his head papyrus leaves for a crown, in his hand a reed for a sceptre, and then saluted him as king. I shall make my Jew-God seized by the Jews, his own blood and kin, given over to the Romans, mocked, reviled, and set aside for some thief who shall be called Karabas. Then, rejected, he shall be crucified, he a god born of a virgin, by the very people who are looking for their Messiah. He is their Messiah; yet they know it not. They shall never know it. That shall be their tragedy, the tragedy of my race, which, notwithstanding the prophecies, turned its back upon the Messiah because he came not clothed in the purple of royalty. Is that not a magnificent idea for a drama?"
"Excellent," answered Hyzlo, in a critical tone; "but continue!"
"You seem without enthusiasm, Hyzlo. I tell you that Æschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides never conceived a story more infinitely dramatic or pathetic, or—thanks to my Hebraic blood—so suffused with tragic irony. I shall make a very effective tableau at the death; on some forbidding stony hill near Jerusalem I shall plant my crucified hero, and near him a converted courtesan—ah! what a master of the theatre I am!—in company with a handful of faithful disciples. The others have run away to save their cowardly skins in the tumult. The mobs that hailed him as King of the Jews now taunt him, after the manner of all mobs. His early life I shall borrow outright from the Buddha legends. He shall be born of a virgin; he shall live in the desert; as a child he shall confute learned doctors in the temple; and later in the desert he shall be tempted by a demon. All this is at hand. My chief point is the philosophies in which I shall submerge my characters.
"My hero shall be the logos of Heraclitus with the superadded authority of the Hebrew high priest. You may recall the fact that I greatly admire the Essenes and their system. My deity is a pure essence; not Jehovah the protector or avenger. The logos, or mediator, I have borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosophers. This logos returns to the bosom of God after the sacrifice. Greek philosophy combined with Hebraic moral principles! Ah! it is grand synthesis; Seneca with his conception of a perfected humanity, Lucretius, Manlius—who called, rightfully too, Epicurus a god—and Heraclitus with the first idea of a logos: all these ancient ideas I have worked into my romantic play, including the old cult of the Trinities; the Buddhistic: Buddha, Dharma, and Saingha; the Chinese: Heaven, Earth, and Emperor; the Babylonian: Ea, the father, Marduk, the son, and the Fire God, Gibil, who is also the Paraclete. So my philosophy is merely a continuation and modification of that taught by Heraclitus and Plato, but with a Jewish background—for mine is the only moral nation. The wisdom of the Rabbis, their Monotheism and ethics, are all there." His eyes were ablaze.
"You are very erudite, Philo Judæus!" exclaimed his listener; "but, tell me, is there no actual foundation for your Jewish god?" Hyzlo eagerly awaited a reply, though he could not account for this curiosity.
"Yes," answered Philo, lightly, "there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation. Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter. This Joshua, or Ieshua, was driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor fishermen on Lake Gennesareth. There he joined a sect called the Baptists, because their founder, a socialist named Ioakanaan, poured water on the heads of the converted. Ieshua never married and was suspected of idolatrous practices, which he had absorbed from hermits of the Egyptian Thebaïd. Josephus, a wise friend and companion of my youth, wrote me these details. He said that Ieshua disappeared after his mad attempt to take Jerusalem by storm, riding—as is depicted the Bona Dea—on the back of a humble animal. Yet, if you wish to appeal to the common folk, make your hero a deposed king or divinity, who walks familiarly among the poor, as walked the gods at the dawn of time with the daughters of men. I depict my protagonist as a half-cracked Jew. I call him Iesus Christos—after Krishna; and this poor man's god proposes to redeem the world, to place the lowly in the seats of the mighty—he is an Anarchos, as they would say in Athens. He promises the Kingdom of God to those who follow him; but only a few do. He is the friend of outcasts, prostitutes, criminals. And though he does not triumph on earth, nevertheless he is the spiritual ruler of earth; he is the Son of the Trinity which comprises the Father and Holy Ghost. The contending forces to my hero will be incarnated by Pontius Pilatus, the Roman governor, and Judas of Kerioth, a very dangerous and powerful Hebrew politician—a man of very liberal ideas, one who believed in the supremacy of the West. What a glorious play it will make! I have named it The Third Kingdom, Hyzlo. What a glorious idea it is, Hyzlo—the greatest drama the world has ever witnessed!"