For his heart is always with his own people—its past glories, its persistent ubiquitous potency, despite ubiquitous persecution. He sees himself the appointed scion of a Chosen Race, the only race to which God has ever spoken, and perhaps the charm of acquired Cyprus is its propinquity to Palestine, the only soil on which God has ever deigned to reveal Himself.
And, like his race, he has links with all the human panorama.
He is in touch with the humors and graces of European courts and cities, has rapport with the rich-dyed, unchanging, double-dealing East, enjoys the picaresque life of the Spanish mountains: he feels the tragedy of vanished Rome, the marble appeal of ancient Athens, the mystery of the Pyramids, the futility of life; his books palpitate with world-problems.
And, as I think these things, his face is transfigured and he becomes—beneath all his dazzle of deed—a Dreamer of the Ghetto.
VI
So think I. But what—as the country parson's sermon drones on—thinks the Sphinx?
Who shall tell?