He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding-place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.
“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”
To Be Continued.
Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.
If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of the shah's pleasure-house, and hearken to what the humming-birds tell thee in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley's lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah; and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were covered with woods and flowers, and watered with [pg 421] streams and fountains, shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows, or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold-broidered silks of all colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.
Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace, or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion of mortals. “I went to seek the rose-king,” said or sang a poet of the court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen, except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself to his dreams as others do to their books.
At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard like almond-blossoms, and the milky color of his throne-bearer, they who visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning on the cushions of his vine-encircled pavilion, his silken beard and silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under their gorgeous sails or to the time-beat of their oars those songs which, with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one of those fine day-dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower-fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an illusion of humor and beauty?
Ah! the deep-eyed, far-gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green ages in the youth of the world, of far-off golden centuries to come, of ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of nights with the great moon-shah! They were not to be told or counted; the number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah's visions persuaded him to become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant feast-days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more [pg 422] than wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new temples set up here and there, the shah's dreams were praised. When he had completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many-colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment, peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not his slumbers.
Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white-haired sire,” cried the affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,” rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have this dream.”