CHAPTER VIII.
"Some force, that is resistless, doth command me to on this night, take pen and papyrus page, and write upon it, much that fills my mind. I seem impelled to speak words concerning the lives of those among whom destiny has placed me. Keen as my memory is to-day, time will dull it, and thereby cause me to lose my hold upon some of the threads, that are useful to me, in solving the enigma of men, and the motives that govern them.
"I am possessed of a series of hieroglyphics, whose meaning is known but to a few wise men in the civilized world; so I may safely speak upon this page, and first I choose to describe myself.
"I was born--a posthumous child--in the house of my paternal grandsire, he was one of the most learned of Syria's priesthood; a man who had lived so much, and so long in an atmosphere of spiritual conditions, that he scarcely seemed of earth.
"His food consisted of a few herbs, and roots, he drank naught save water, which he bent down to receive with his lips from the spring itself.
"Of my father I know little; my mother was a gentle inoffensive soul; one of those negative creations, that pass through a state of being, making it neither better nor worse for the impress.
"I was born in the spring time, and at the evening hour--when twilight goes to meet the night.
"A strange phenomenon was taking place! Upon our land of mildest and balmiest clime had come a bitter cold, and a white frozen rain poured from the sky and covered the ground.
"Scarce had I uttered my first wail, than the midwife heard close beside me, the warbling of an unseen bird, and all about me (while it continued to sing) there was a nimbus of light, bright and star like.
"This condition, or occurrence, was repeated for several days at the same hour, and for the same space of time, and my grandsire who was present, after the first demonstration, prophesied that I should be able to control to my will, the destinies of all with whom I came in contact, so long as mind, governed my decisions, and not sentiment; he said that my danger would lay in the power that two women should possess over me.
"When I had arrived at an age to permit of instruction, my grandsire carried me away from the city and we abode many days in the desert.
"So keen was my sense of the occult, that it took but little space of time, for me to grasp, all that he had to teach, and when I questioned why it was, that what had taken him seventy years to acquire, came to me in as many days, he made answer in these words:
"'Know oh Alric--beloved of my soul--that thy form alone is mortal, all thy senses are quickened by the spirit. Love and hate, joy, and sorrow, shall not touch thee. All this, did I knew before I saw thy face, while still thy mother cherished thee beneath her heart.'
"Then my grandsire told me he had been warned in a dream, that he was soon to be called to lay aside the garment of the flesh, for a robe of light--that he was to proceed to a higher circle of doing, and being, and, it had been given him to prophesy to me, that Tothmes the First the great King of Egypt, would shortly arrive in Syria, that he should be drawn to me by chords of love, and fatherly affection, that he should ask me, of the King, and of my grandsire, promising I should be reared as his own son, and even taking his kingly oath, that upon my arrival at manhood's time, I should, under the order of the great high Priest Zelas, be invested with power as an officer in the King of Egypt's army.
"And even so it came to be. _I_ Alric lived beside the good King, and sat at the feet of Zelas, the high Priest, and learned of him. He,--Zelas--taught me priestly law, and I in return taught him to love me as a son.
"The two princes, the Idiot (who is King to-day) and the scholar (who shall be King in some to-morrow) I hold in my thrall! and Hatsu what shall I say of the Princess? Is she one of the women, of whom my grandsire spoke? and what of Miriam?
"Only time shall tell."
_End of Part First._