“More than usually strange! Ach, Gott!” and, with many interpolations of despair and expressions of horror, he related in broken accents the whole of the appalling circumstances attending his master’s end. In spite of himself a faint shudder ran through El-Râmi’s warm blood as he heard—he could almost see before him the horrible spectacle of the old man’s mangled form lying crushed under the ponderous Disc his daring skill had designed; and under his breath he murmured, “Oh Lilith, oh my too happy Lilith! and yet you tell me there is no death!” Féraz, however, the young and sensitive Féraz, listened to the sad recital with quiet interest, unhorrified, apparently unmoved,—his eyes were bright, his expression placid.
“He could not have suffered;”—he observed at last, when Karl had finished speaking—“The flash of lightning must have severed body and spirit instantly and without pain. I think it was a good end.”
Karl looked at the beautiful smiling youth in vague horror. What!—to be flattened out like a board beneath a ponderous weight of fallen stone—to be so disfigured as to be unrecognisable—to be only a mangled mass of flesh difficult of decent burial,—and call that “a good end”! Karl shuddered and groaned;—he was not versed in the strange philosophies of young Féraz—he had never been out of his body on an ethereal journey to the star-kingdoms.
“It was the judgment of God,”—he repeated dully—“Neither more nor less. My poor master studied too hard, and tried to find out too much, and I think he made God angry——”
“My good fellow,” interrupted El-Râmi rather irritably—“do not talk of what you do not understand. You have been faithful, hard-working and all the rest of it,—but as for your master trying to find out too much, or God getting angry with him, that is all nonsense. We were placed on this earth to find out as much as we can, about it and about ourselves, and do the best that is possible with our learning,—and the bare idea of a great God condescending to be ‘angry’ with one out of millions upon millions of units is absurd——”
“But even if an unit rebels against the Law the Law crushes him”—interrupted Féraz softly—“A gnat flies into flame—the flame consumes it—the Law is fulfilled,—and the Law is God’s Will.”
El-Râmi bit his lip vexedly.
“Well, be that as it may, one must needs find out what the Law is first, before it can either be accepted or opposed,” he said.
Féraz made no answer. He was thinking of the simplicity of certain Laws of Spirit and Matter which were accepted and agreed to by the community of men of whom the monk from Cyprus was the chief master.
Karl meanwhile stared bewilderedly from Féraz to El-Râmi and from El-Râmi back to Féraz again. Their remarks were totally beyond his comprehension; he never could understand, and never wanted to understand, these subtle philosophies.