“Many, very many centuries ago, there lived on the soil where in subsequent ages stood Babylon and Nineveh the first, a mighty king, whose power was great and undisputed. He was wise, well-learned and eccentric. He had a daughter lovely beyond all description. She was as learned as she was beautiful. Kings and princes sought her hand in vain; for her father had sworn to give her to no man save him who should solve a riddle which the king himself would propound, and solve it at the first trial, under penalty of decapitation on failure. The riddle was this, ‘What are the three most desirable things beneath the sun, that are not the sun, yet which dwell within the sun?’ Thousands of the gay, the grave, the sage and ambitious who essayed the solution, and failed, left the presence to mount the horse of death.
“In the meantime, proclamation was made far and wide, declaring that robes of crimson, chains of gold, the first place in the kingdom and the princess should be the reward of the lucky man.
“One day there came to the court a very rich and royal embassy from the King of the South, seeking an alliance, and propounding new treaties; and among the suite was a young Basinge poet, who acted as interpreter to the embassy. This youth heard of the singular state of things, learned the conditions, and got the riddle by heart. For four long months did he ponder upon and study it, revolving in his mind all sorts of answers, but without finding any that fulfilled the three requisites.
“In order to study more at his ease, the youth was in the habit of retiring to a grotto behind the palace, and there repeating to himself the riddle and all sorts of possible responses thereto. The princess hearing of this, determined to watch him, and did so. Now, poets must sing, and this one was particularly addicted to that sort of exercise; and he made it a point to imagine all sorts of perfections as residing in the princess, and he sung his songs daily in the grotto—sung himself desperately in love with his ideal, and so inflamed the girl herself, who had managed to both see and hear him, herself unseen, that she loved him dearer than life. Here, then, were two people made wretched by a whim.
“Love and song are very good in their places, but, for a steady diet, are not comparable to many other things; and, as this couple fed on little else, they both pined sadly and rapidly away.
“At length, one day, the youth fell asleep in the grotto, and his head rested directly over a fissure in the rock through which there issued a very fine and subtle vapor, which had the effect of throwing the young man in a trance, during which he fancied he saw the princess herself, unveiled, and more lovely than the flowers that bloomed in the king’s garden. He also thought he saw an inscription, which bade him despair not, but TRY! and, at the same time, there flowed into his mind this sentence, which subsequently became the watchword of the mystic fraternity which, for some centuries, has been known as that of the Rosie Cross—‘There is no difficulty to him who truly wills.’ Along with this there came a solution of the king’s riddle, which he remembered when he awoke, and instantly proclaimed his readiness to attempt that which had cost so many adventurers their lives.
“Accordingly, the grandest preparations—including a man with a drawn blade ready to make the poet shorter by the head if he failed—were made, and, at an appointed hour, all the court, the princess included, convened in the largest hall of the palace. The poet advanced to the foot of the throne, and there knelt, saying, ‘O king, live for ever! What three things are more desirable than Life, Light and Love? What three are more inseparable? and what better cometh from the sun, yet is not the sun? O king! is thy riddle answered?’ ‘True!’ said the king; ‘you have solved it, and my word shall be kept!’ And he straightway gave commands to have the marriage celebrated in royal style, albeit, through the influence of a high court official, he hated poets in general, and this one particularly so, because he thought the young man had foiled him in one of the treaties just made. Now, it so happened that the grand vizier had hoped by some means to get a solution of the riddle, and secure the great prizes for a young son of his own; and, as soon as the divan was closed, that very day, he hastened to the closet of the king, and there still further poisoned the mind of his master against the victor, by charging him with having succeeded through the aid of sorcery, which so enraged the king that he readily agreed to remove the claimant by means of a speedy, secret, and cruel death that very night, to which end the poet was drugged in his wine at the evening banquet, conveyed to a couch openly, and almost immediately thereafter removed to the chamber allotted to the refractory servants of the court. This apartment was under ground, and the youth, being thrown violently on the floor, revived, and was astonished to find himself bound hand and foot in presence of the king, his vizier, a few soldiers, and—death; for he saw at a glance that his days were numbered. He defended himself from the charge of sorcery, but in vain. He was doomed to die, and the order given, when, just as the blow was about to fall, there appeared the semblance of a gigantic hand, moving as if to stay the uplifted blade; but too late. The sword fell, and, as it reached the neck of the victim, he uttered the awful words, ‘I curse ye all who—’ the rest of the sentence was spoken in eternity; but there came a clamor and a clangor as of a thousand protesting spectral voices, and one of them said, in tones of thunder, ‘This youth, by persistence of will, had unbarred the gates between this world and that of mystery. He was the first of his and thy race that ever achieved so great an honor. And ye have slain him, and he hath cursed thee, by reason of which thou, O king! and thou, O vizier! and the dead man, have all changed the human for another nature. The first shall go down the ages, transmigrating from form to form. Thou, O vizier! shall also exist till thou art forgiven;—DHOULA BEL shall be thy name; and thou shalt tempt the king through long ages, and be foiled whenever the youth—who shall be called the STRANGER—shall so will, for the sake of the love he bore thy daughter. This drama shall last and be until a son of Adam shall wed with a daughter of Ish, or thou, king, in one of the phases of thy being, shall love, and be truly, fully loved again, and for thyself alone. An eternity may elapse ere then!’ ”
“Ask me not,” said the young Beverly, “why, but believe me when I say that I know that ages ago I was that king; that the Stranger has been seen by my mother; that Dhoula Bel still haunts and tempts me for the sin of ages. I know the fate impending over me, and that in this my present form I am a neutral being, for whom there is no hope save through the union of myself, a son of Adam’s race, with a daughter of Ish, one not of Adam’s race.... This, then, is the dreadful fate to which I was left so pitilessly exposed on the morning that my mother died on Manhattan Island—left to pay the penalty of a crime committed thousands of years ago.”