[The acolytes are crouched upon the floor. He does not notice them since they ceased to moan.
The gods! With what dark and dreadful thing have they clouded the future?
Well, I will face it! But what is it? Is it one of those things a strong man can bear? Or is it——?
The future is more terrible than the grave, that has its one secret only.
No man, he said, could say that the gods had advised me ill when they bade me drink out of a poisoned cup.
What have the gods seen? What dreadful work have they overlooked where Destiny sits alone, making evil years? The gods, he said, who alone see future things.
Yes, I have known men who never were warned by the gods, and did not drink poison, and came upon evil days, suddenly like a ship upon rocks no mariner knows. Yes, poison to some of them would have been very precious.
The gods have warned me and I have not hearkened, and must go on alone: must enter that strange country of the future whose paths are so dark to man ... to meet a doom there that the gods have seen.
The gods have seen it! How shall I thwart the gods? How fight against the shapers of the hills?
Would that I had been warned. Would I had heeded when they bade me drink of the cup the Ambassador said was poisoned.