While he spoke, the little fellows stood trembling and ducking their woolly heads, as though they half expected to be seized by their irate master and flung, like black balls, out into the wilderness of flowers, but glancing timidly up and perceiving that even in the midst of his petulance he smiled, they took courage, and as soon as he had ceased they darted off with the swiftness of flying arrows, each striving to outstrip the other in a race across the terrace and garden. Sah-luma laughed as he watched them disappear,—and then stepping back into the interior of the apartment he turned to Theos and bade him be seated. Theos sank unresistingly into a low, velvet-cushioned chair richly carved and inlaid with ivory, and stretching his limbs indolently therein, surveyed with new and ever-growing admiration the supple, elegant figure of his host, who, throwing himself full length on a couch covered with leopard-skins, folded his arms behind his head, and eyed his guest with a complacent smile of vanity and self-approval.
"'Tis not an altogether unfitting retreat for a poet's musings"—he said, assuming an air of indifference, as he glanced round his luxurious, almost royally appointed room—"I have heard of worse!—But truly it needs the highest art of all known nations to worthily deck a habitation wherein the divine Muse may daily dwell, … nevertheless, air, light, and flowers are not lacking, and on these methinks I could subsist, were I deprived of all other things!"
Theos sat silent, looking about him wistfully. Was ever poet, king, or even emperor, housed more sumptuously than this, he thought? … as his eyes wandered to the domed ceiling, wreathed with carved clusters of grapes and pomegranates,—the walls, frescoed with glowing scenes of love and song-tournament,—the groups of superb statuary that gleamed whitely out of dusky, velvet-draped corners,—the quaintly shaped book-cases, overflowing with books, and made so as to revolve round and round at a touch, or move to and fro on noiseless wheels,—the grand busts, both in bronze and marble, that stood on tall pedestals or projecting bracket; and,—while he dimly noted all these splendid evidences of unlimited wealth and luxury,—the perfume and lustre of the place, the glitter of gold and azure, silver and scarlet, the oriental languor pervading the very air, and above all the rich amber and azure-tinted light that bathed every object in a dream-like and fairy radiance, plunged his senses into a delicious confusion,—a throbbing fever of delight to which he could give no name, but which permeated every fibre of his being.
He felt half blinded with the brilliancy of the scene,—the dazzling glow of color,—the sheen of deep and delicate hues cunningly intermixed and contrasted,—the gorgeous lavishness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea to the very windows,—and though many thoughts flitted hazily through his brain, he could not shape them into utterance. He stared vaguely at the floor,—it was paved with variegated mosaic and strewn with the soft, dark, furry skins of wild animals,—at a little distance from where he sat there was a huge bronze lectern supported by a sculptured griffin with horns,—horns which curving over at the top, turned upward again in the form of candelabra,—the harp-bearer had brought in the harp, and it now stood in a conspicuous position decked with myrtle, some of the garlands woven by the maidens being no doubt used for this purpose.
Yet there was something mirage-like and fantastic in the splendor that everywhere surrounded him,—he felt as though he were one of the spectators in a vast auditorium where the curtain had just risen on the first scene of the play He was dubiously considering in his own perplexed mind, whether such princely living were the privilege, or right, or custom of poets in general, when Sah-luma spoke again, waving his hand toward one of the busts near him—a massive, frowning head, magnificently sculptured.
"There is the glorious Orazel!" he said—"The father, as we all must own, of the Art of Poesy, and indeed of all true literature! Yet there be some who swear he never lived at all—aye! though his poems have come down to us,—and many are the arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification. Everything he has written bears the impress of the same master-touch,—nevertheless garrulous controversialists hold that his famous work the 'Ruva-Kalama' descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its 'improved' present condition. 'Improved!'" and Sah-luma laughed disdainfully,—"As if the mumbling of an epic poem from grandsire to grandson could possibly improve it! … it would rather be deteriorated, if not altogether changed into the merest doggerel! Nay, nay!—the 'Ruva-Kalama,' is the achievement of one great mind,—not twenty Oruzels were born in succession to write it,—there was, there could be only one, and he, by right supreme, is chief of the Bards Immortal! As well might fools hereafter wrangle together and say there were many Sah-lumas! … only I have taken good heed posterity shall know there was only ONE,—unmatched for love-impassioned singing throughout the length and breadth of the world!"
He sprang up from his recumbent posture and attracted Theos's attention to another bust even finer than the last,—it was placed on a pedestal wreathed at the summit and at the base with laurel.
"The divine Hyspiros!" he exclaimed pointing to it in a sort of ecstasy—"The Master from whom it may be I have caught the perfect entrancement of my own verse-melody! His fame, as thou knowest, is unrivalled and universal—yet—canst thou believe it! … there has been of late an ass found in Al-Kyris who hath chosen him as a subject for his braying—and other asses join in the uneuphonius chorus. The marvellous Plays of Hyspiros! … the grandest tragedies, the airiest comedies, the tenderest fantasies, ever created by human brain, have been called in question by these thistle-eating animals!—and one most untractable mule-head hath made pretence to discover therein a passage of secret writing which shall, so the fool thinks, prove that Hyspiros was not the author of his own works, but only a literary cheat, and forger of another and lesser man's inspiration! By the gods!—one's sides would split with laughter at the silly brute, were he not altogether too contemptible to provoke even derision! Hyspiros a traitor to the art he served and glorified? … Hyspiros a literary juggler and trickster? … By the Serpent's Head! they may as well seek to prove the fiery Sun in Heaven a common oil-lamp, as strive to lessen by one iota the transcendent glory of the noblest poet the centuries have ever seen!"
Warmed by enthusiasm, with his eyes flashing and the impetuous words coursing from his lips, his head thrown back, his hand uplifted, Sah-luma looked magnificent,—and Theos, to whose misty brain the names of Oruzel and Hyspiros carried no positively distinct meaning, was nevertheless struck by a certain suggestiveness in his remarks that seemed to bear on some discussion in the literary world that had taken place quite recently. He was puzzled and tried to fix the precise point round which his thoughts strayed so hesitatingly, but he could arrive at no definite conclusion. The brilliant, meteor-like Sah-luma meantime flashed hither and thither about the room, selecting certain volumes from his loaded book-stands, and bringing them in a pile, he set them on a small table by his visitor's side.
"These are some of the earliest editions of the plays of Hyspiros"—he went on, talking in that rapid, fluent way of his that was as musical as a bird's song—"They are rare and curious. See you!—the names of the scribes and the dates of issue are all distinct. Ah!—the treasures of poetry enshrined within these pages! … was ever papyrus so gemmed with pearls of thought and wisdom?—If there were a next world, my friend,"—and here he placed his hand familiarly on his guest's shoulder, while the bright, steel-gray under-gleam sparkled in his splendid eyes—"'twould be worth dwelling in for the sake of Hyspiros,—as grand a god as any of the Thunderers in the empyrean!"