XXVI. Search into your own heart. Ponder—reflect—look deeper. Digest these few plain truths, examine their proportions, as you would measure the exactness of a pyramid.
XXVII. Do you not discover the source of all the creeds, which have divided mankind?
XXVIII. Do you not discover the Key to the great mystery of the Universe?
And beneath all this was written——
“The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me to preach good tidings to the poor, sight to the blind, peace to them that are bruised——and to all men the Acceptable year of the Lord.”
The last sentence, written not in Arabic but in Hebrew, and written by another hand then his own, filled Aldarin with inexplicable emotion.
“If these words spoken by the Nazarene are true, then is my whole life a lie,” he said, and retired into the shadows of the Red-Chamber.
When he came toward the declining light once more, his brow was strangely troubled.
“How strange has been the course of my life! Let me gaze backward over the dark path I have trodden. This night thrice seven long years ago—amid the gloom of the Syrian battle plain, a dark-eyed Arabian gave me in ransom for his life, the book of his race, which he dared not read. And there, in that lone hour, as midnight gathered over the corses of the dead, did he sware by the Eternal Flame of the Fire-worshipper, that in body or in soul, he would be with my heart, and by my side this very night. THE BOOK spoke in words of fire of the secret, and—and—by my soul I have heard no message from the Arab Prince for three long years. He can not, will not fail me now!”
The door of the Red-Chamber was flung suddenly open, and the Lord Guiseppo hastily advanced, with an expression of deep gloom stamped on his brow. He held a scroll of parchment in his extended hand.