“I cannot say that I feel particularly disposed that way. Do you think that people have ever got any real good from oracles and soothsaying and auguries and such things? It seems to me that when they do get any knowledge of the future, it is a sort of half-knowledge, that is much more likely to lead them astray than to guide. However, if you are very curious about these magicians, I don’t mind coming with you.”
“Who will tell us the best man to go to? Do you think that Eleazar would be likely to know?”
“He may know, as he seems to know everything. But I don’t think that we had better ask him. I feel sure that he hates the whole race. Don’t you remember when he was reading out of that book his explaining that the ‘wise men’ of Babylon were the magicians, and saying that whatever in their art was not imposture was wickedness?”
“Yes; and he wondered why Daniel, when he came to have the king’s ear, did not have the whole race exterminated. As you say, Eleazar is not likely to help us.”
The two friends, however, easily found the information that they wanted. There could be no doubt who was the man they should consult. All agreed that the prince of the magicians was Arioch. “If you want to know what the stars can tell you,” explained a seller of sword blades with whom they had had some dealings, and whom they consulted, “you must go to Zaidu. He is the most learned of the star-gazers, of the astrologers. Or, if you want to learn what can be found out from the entrails of beasts, and the flight or notes of birds, you must go to Zirbulla. The best interpreter of dreams, again, is Lagamar. But if you want a magician, then Arioch is your man. And if you want my advice, young gentlemen,” went on the sword-dealer, who seemed indeed to have thought a good deal about the subject, “I should say, Go to a magician. You see the stars are very much above us; they may have something to say in great matters—wars, and such like—but I don’t see how they can concern themselves with you and me. Then the birds and beasts are below us. And as for dreams, what are they but our own thoughts? Don’t understand me, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “to say that I don’t believe in stars and dreams and the other things; but, after all, magic, I take it, is the best way of looking into the future.”
“Why?” asked the two friends, to whom much of this distinguishing between different kinds of divination was new.
“Because the magicians have to do with spirits, with demons,” said their informant, his voice sinking to an awe-stricken whisper; “and the demons are not above us like the stars, nor below us like the beasts. They are with us, they are like us. Some of them have been men, and now that they are free from the body they see what we cannot see. But Arioch will tell you more about these things than I can. I am only in the outside court; he is in the shrine.”
Arioch’s house was in the best quarter of the city, and was so sumptuous a dwelling, both within and without, as to show clearly enough that magic was a lucrative art. The magician himself was not the sort of man whom the friends had expected to see. He was no venerable sage, pale with fasting and exhausted with midnight vigils, but a man of middle-age, whose handsome face was ruddy with health and brown with exercise, and who, with his carefully curled hair and beard and fashionable clothing, seemed more like a courtier than a sorcerer.
Arioch received his guests with elaborate politeness. He clapped his hands, and a slave appeared, carrying three jewelled cups, full of Libyan wine, a rare vintage, commonly reserved, as the young men happened to know, for royal tables. He clapped his hands again, but this time twice, and a little girl, with yellow hair and a complexion of exquisite fairness, came in with a tray of sweetmeats. She had been bought, he explained, from a Celtic tribe in the far West, and he hinted that the cost of her purchase had been enormous. A conversation followed on general topics, brought round gradually and without effort, as it seemed, to the object of the visit.
“So you want to have a look into the future?” he asked.