Go forth again,
Riding to Victory.”
And when he heard and had understood this music, the Prince rose from sleep and looked about him in the faint light of the lamps, with thoughts new and awful stirring in his breast—thoughts beyond words, unutterable.
And the women slept in disorder about him, heavily lolling as though drunk with wine, their faces wried and twisted, mouths awry, running over with saliva, limbs flung into coarse attitudes, sprawling, couchant like animals, with pendant lips and breasts, laughing foolishly at worthless dreams, hidden blemishes visible, abandoned to the disclosures of careless sleep, ungainly, revolting, as though the truth had suddenly touched them with clear ray disclosing them as they were.
And the Prince said slowly:
“It is a graveyard, and these are the corpses.”
And shrinking in his very soul, he rose, looking down upon them with horror, and drawing his feet and garments from the contact went forth treading quietly and ascended to the roof of the House of the Garden to look out into the night.
Dead silent was it as he turned to the eastern horizon, the air breathless as though the Universe waited in suspense to know what he would do.
But he, standing alone in the night, joined the ten fingers of his hands, and rendered homage to all the Enlightened who had preceded him, exalting and uniting his purpose to theirs who had opened the way which the eternities shall not close.
And even as he joined his hands he perceived that the bright star Pushya which had shone upon his birth was rising in the sky, and he knew that his hour was upon him.