Part 2

"Every night a priest of Bel watches the stars; with optic glasses he explores the vast abyss, through which the sun and its choir of planets journey toward their fate; and when his mind is troubled by that infinity, his eyes seek thy city, O King, and mankind to him is but a little heap of withered leaves, which a sudden wind whirls in a circling dance. From his tower, O King, he looks upon thy city, which to us, from here, is splendid with a multitude of lights, and murmurous with life. He knows that in the streets the young man is seeking pleasure, that women are bearing children, that the old are dying. All the wealth and misery of the world are at his feet; and he turns again to that star which is destined to burn up the world in a tumultuous kiss. What is the lust of the young to him; the pangs of child-birth; the bitterness; the regret; the anguish of approaching death? A little heap of withered leaves suddenly caught up in a windy dance; a little flame, flickering ere it goes out into darkness.

"From this spirit of detachment in the philosopher is bred a corresponding spirit of aloofness in the multitude. They see the towers of Bel, black against the evening sky, and the watcher to them is but a man enamoured of the silence, smitten with madness by the stars; a man whose life is in the future, whose wisdom is but a sure foreknowledge of death and fate, whose very presence among them is a prophecy of corruption and change; and they ask, well may they ask! what is his wisdom worth to us? The days are blue and gold, blue and silver are the nights; and the birds are clamorous among the dripping boughs; why should we pause to think of fate? What does his wisdom profit him when in a little time he dies, and is equal with us in the dust? The flowers bud, blossom, and seed, without thought for the departing year; the birds go delightfully upon the ways of the wind, though the arrows which shall bring them to earth are stored in the quiver. Shall we do otherwise?

"Truly the worshipper of wisdom is a lonely man. The results which he obtains are never the possession of the many. They may excite the curiosity of the few, they may become an affectation with the amateur, but they do not touch the multitude, for to this last that only is good which is good in its immediate effect. Miserable indeed, the race of man seemed to me, O King; content that their mortal ambition should be bounded by the limits of a day; seeking only fat pastures and pleasant waters; and careless of the lot of their progeny, whose fate it is to cover the whole earth with populous cities, and stream like a river of fire, impetuous and consuming, into hidden and desolate places, which only the eyes of the gods have seen as yet. The treasure of wisdom is a treasure which is continually being lost, rediscovered, and lost again. It is like the gold of the miser, hidden in the ground; his son does not inherit it, but after many years some labourer turns it up with his deep-driven ploughshare, and the coins ring against the stones, and lie with tarnished brightness on the loose earth of the furrow.

"A confused murmuring distracted my thought. I seemed to swim back to reality out of a world of dreams. At first I thought that I had approached a hive of wild bees; but the humming murmuring noise seemed sweeter, more bird-like, until I saw that it came indeed from a parliament of birds, which had congregated in the boughs of an apple-tree, warbling there, and rising every now and then into the air, with a great rushing of wings, to wheel above the tree and descend upon it again in a thick cloud. I had strayed into a pleasant valley, where the Euphrates flows between level meadows of wild wheat, enclosed, like an amphitheatre, by well-wooded hills, which had already taken on the tawny and golden tints of autumn.

"On the lower slopes grew mulberries and oranges; above them, threaded with opulent colouring, plane-trees and sycamores, yellowing oaks, and the beautiful level boughs of dusky cedars, while from all sides came the sound of falling water, chiming and tinkling into little hollows, or thundering in cataracts, with a more imperious music, down precipitous and rocky glens. The sunlit fields of ripe wheat swayed in the wind like an undulating sea; the river gleamed like silver, and many coloured lilies grew beside the brimming water, filling the air with a delicate perfume. I looked about me in delight. It seemed a place sacred from the profaning feet of man. At the same time, I had a curious sense of being watched; and presently a young man rose out of the wild wheat before me, and stood watching me, with an expression of curiosity qualified with distrust."

A languid interest was apparent in the faces of his audience.

"It was Adam," said Merodach.

"At last," said Queen Parysatis.

"It was Adam," answered Bagoas, smiling. "I have attempted, O King, to give you some notion of the thoughts which preoccupied me at my meeting with him. My outlook upon things is historical, and therefore necessarily pessimistic. Adam broke in upon my thoughts as a prophecy, a promise. He was in his first manhood, almost still a boy, and represented, in consequence, an earlier stage of evolution. He seemed in fact half child, and half animal. He had the stature of a man; he was well built, muscular, giving one the impression of an immense but graceful strength, of easy movements. His features were handsome, but unlike those usual in our country; the nose was a little rapacious, the mouth cruel, but his eyes were full of dreams. It was the face of one who looks towards distant horizons, having the immense calm of the desert, and full of a sleeping energy. Youth softened it, and lent it a delicate charm; but in age it will be terrible. And suddenly I heard a sullen voice saying: 'This is my garden.'

"I have noticed in all nomadic peoples, and in small scattered communities, that however terse the language, and however limited the vocabulary, the words are capable of innumerable shades of meaning. Gesture and modulation lend force and precision to what is said. Perhaps this is why the art of the theatre is always, at its best, the art of a naïve and unsophisticated people. Life in town tends to the production of a type, and individuality is suppressed; but life in the country, where the conventions are few and simple, tends to the formation of character. The theatric art, among town-dwellers, loses its broad simplicity and that directness of purpose which show man in immediate collision with facts, and is frittered away in mean motives and intangible temperaments, substituting for the play of circumstances the play of ideas. It is for the same reason that great empires always perish at the heart first; because dwellers in towns become uniform, and being surrounded by artificial circumstances are seldom brought into direct conflict with facts, but learn to cheat themselves with fine phrases and immaterial ideas."

"The good Bagoas is really a little prolix," whispered Parysatis to Merodach.

Bagoas heard the interruption and continued tranquilly:

"'This is my garden,' said Adam; and his words implied not only that I was an intruder, and that he was a proprietor, but also that the garden was beautiful, and that he was proud of it. I explained that I had lost my way, that I was hungry, that I was tired; and even as I spoke a young woman rose up out of the wheat and looked at me curiously.

"'We have little,' said Adam.

"They led me to their cabin of boughs, and brought me food; and they were naked and were not ashamed. They were strangers to the use of fire, and my meal consisted of nuts and honey, goat's milk and dates, such food as, our poets say, nourished the people of the golden age. In front of their cabin was an apple-tree, similar to the one upon which the birds had congregated, only with golden instead of ruddy fruit. I asked Adam if he would give me an apple from it.

"'The tree is dedicated,' he said; 'and we may not eat of the fruit; it is forbidden to us.'

"'We may not even touch it with our hands,' said the woman, who was called Eve; and she looked at the fruit covetously.

"'To what god is it dedicated?' I enquired of them.

"'It is dedicated to God,' replied Adam simply.

"And I was surprised that this man, who had so many needs, should have only one god; but very soon I found that his monotheism was but a rude crystallisation of the spiritual forces of earth and air, a kind of shamanism, though with the many considered as one. His god was the god of fertility, who had caused the earth to put forth grass, and the trees to bear fruit, and all things to bring forth after their kind; a god whose voice was heard on the wind of the day, and who breathed into man the breath of life. In his loneliness Adam had told himself stories as children do, and, as with children, his imagination had laid hold with such intensity of vision upon these fanciful adventures of his mind that he seemed to live in a little world of his own creating, a land of enchantment and of dreams. The wind, the waters, the leaves of the never silent trees, the birds and the beasts of the field, all spoke in what was to him an intelligible voice; and his god was a being not far removed from himself, enjoying, even as Adam himself did, the cool of the day, the blithe air, and the breath of the sweet flowers.

"'How came it that this particular tree should be forbidden to you?' I enquired of them, for I was curious of the spiritual workings of their minds.

"'In the day that we came into this garden,' answered Adam, 'I had a desire to eat of the fruit, and I stretched my hand toward the tree when I heard a voice upon the wind, saying: "In the day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die."'

"'It is curious,' I murmured. 'The fruit is wholesome, one would think that to eat thereof would give life rather than death.'

"'If we ate of the fruit would we not die?' enquired Eve.

"'If ye ate of it you would know,' I answered, smiling at the simplicity of the question; and then I spoke to Adam of other things. I love the conversation of the young, O King. It brings back to me the time when I, too, had illusions, hopes, and ideals. The sole illusions remaining to mine old age are the illusion of life, and the hope that where we have failed our children may succeed. Adam believes that all men are naturally good, and that it is society which makes them evil; he does not see that society cannot be different from what it is since it is a purely natural development, and that its laws were not made by men, but are merely a recognition of certain instincts peculiar to mankind, and of the effects which the exercise of these instincts invariably produces. His point of view is that of the individual; and the egoism of the individual is always in conflict with the collective egoism of the state. He believes that men are born equal, and that society loads them with chains. He cannot grasp the seeming paradox that what he imagines to be the natural man is really artificial, and that what he imagines to be an artificial society is really the expression of natural laws. Adam himself is not natural, he is kindly and hospitable to strangers, he is gentle, and loves his wife, he is practically a monotheist.

"Every individual is like Adam in this. We are all idealists. All of us have excellent intentions; but the world is so constituted that we can never carry them out. Adam has never been in a great city, but he has seen from afar the huge towers of Uruk looming into the night, and they are to him in their proud invasion of the sky a symbol of man's rebellion against the decrees of God, who fashioned him to be a feeble creature, scratching about upon the surface of the earth, and to draw his whole being from that shallow deposit of productive soil which he cultivates laboriously. He considers our temples to be the work of some demonic agency, for he does not think it possible that beings similar to himself should uplift these gigantic masses into the air. Our works of pride are, therefore, evil to him, since they differ from the works of his native humility; to live like Adam is to live virtuously; and that which is different from his mode of life is evil."

Here Merodach and the Queen Parysatis laughed at the simplicity of Adam, and the Princess Candace also laughed because she did not understand why they were amused. Bagoas looked at his audience with a faint tolerant smile.

"You find Adam's standard of good and evil laughable," he said. "It is in fact a little comic, but human, quite human, and quite logical. He says in effect: 'I, Adam, am good; those who differ from me, differ from what is good, and are consequently evil.' This position, which we find so laughable in others, is really common to us all; only, unfortunately, a sense of humour is a sense which we never apply to ourselves. Who will deny that Adam is wise in limiting his desires to such things as lie easily within his reach, if happiness be the end of wisdom? The earth gives him of her fulness, the climate of his valley is mild and temperate, snow does not fall there nor is it vexed by winds; the misery of his fellows is hidden from him, he is without care for the morrow; in limiting his desires he has extended the possibilities of delight, and joy comes to him unexpectedly as if it were a miracle wrought by God."

"A charming life!" exclaimed the Queen. "Your barbarians are like children."

"Yes; they are like children," answered Bagoas. "In fact they still are children, and so I have treated them. I cast Adam's horoscope, and read therein the wonderful things which the stars ordain for him. In this horoscope I read that Adam is to be the father of a race which shall revolutionise the world; a little obstinate people inhabiting a country in the west toward the sea; a people of slaves, outraged and despised, yet leavening all the peoples among whom they dwell. It is this race of slaves that will pass on the light and wisdom of Chaldæa to nations as yet unborn. While thy monuments, O King, are sleeping beneath the drifted sands of the desert, the name of Adam will pass from tongue to tongue, and distant peoples will come to think of him as the father of the whole human race. The arts and sciences of Uruk will be forgotten, and the world will be duped by a record of events which never happened, myths and legends stolen from surrounding nations and woven into a curious asymmetrical whole, full of contradictions and puerilities.

"Truly in Adam's horoscope everything is a contradiction. From being the happiest man, he will become the most miserable; after a life spent in obscurity he will achieve almost an eternity of fame, and his children, a race of slaves, will impose their law upon the world for nearly two thousand years. It is incredible. Surely my meditation as I rode toward him was not without cause. Our wisdom, the science of Chaldæa, is the miser's gold which shall be lost in the earth, and whatever of us survives in the memory of man will survive through the children of Adam. I told him nothing of this, but prophesied that he would be a wanderer until his death, at which he smiled.

"'That may not be,' he said; 'because God has put me into this garden to dress it and keep it.'

"Then the woman filled a bowl with milk and took it over toward the tree, and a great bronze serpent came out from the roots of the tree and drank the milk which she offered him; wherefore, in spite of their monotheism, I think that they are of the people who worship snakes and trees, and that the tree was taboo because of the serpent which dwelt in its roots."

* * * * *

"It may well be as you say," said Merodach, after a silence. "Still it is curious that a monotheist should worship snakes and trees. Perhaps his god is the local djinn; as with the nomadic tribes, the action of the gods is limited to certain territories, and the wandering herds, in changing their pastures, change their gods also. In effect the King is the god. He rules by divine right, he represents the aspirations of his people, and is the visible symbol without which all religions are but inarticulate yearnings. You would naturally be interested, as a priest, in the religion of Adam; but I am more interested in the fact that a nomad should inhabit a garden. It interests me, as a statesman, because it represents the beginnings of society. A nomad wanders for two reasons; to change his hunting grounds, and to seek fresh pastures. Some nomads, especially in countries where the fertility of the soil is easily exhausted, plough, sow, reap the harvest, and then depart into a new place; but when fruit-trees are planted the owner remains beside them. Their roots have bound him to the soil. All existing civilisations have arisen through the fact that man gathers the fruit of a tree, and not the tree itself."

Bagoas smiled, and discreetly said nothing.

"To-morrow I shall visit Adam," said Merodach; "from the unsophisticated there is always much to learn."

"You may be disappointed," said Bagoas gently. "I like the lowly and humble people, and I may have prejudiced you, unwittingly, in Adam's favour. His sincerity may seem to you rude."

"Simplicity of manner is charming," answered Merodach. "I believe that all our courtly graces, everything which is implied by the word good breeding, have their roots in the natural instincts of man. Of course, the simple people move more awkwardly in the conventional restraints; and good manners, which we wear like jewellery, are with them heavy fetters; but I place implicit trust in Adam's natural good taste."

"I should love to see Adam," said the Queen Parysatis.

"But he is naked," objected the Princess Candace.

"We shall bring him some leopard-skins, such as my guards wear," said Merodach. "Come to supper."

They moved through a grove of orange-trees towards a great pavilion where supper was being served. Bagoas left them; and, leaning on a balustrade, he looked over Uruk.

"Certainly Adam is unfortunate," he said.

II

Merodach went forth unto Eden, and with him there went his wives and his concubines, his poets and his pastry-cooks, his falconers, his flute-players, and his players upon the viol, his bow-men and his spearmen; and the number of those who followed him were ten thousand and ten, without counting the mule-drivers, and the camel-drivers, and the drivers of elephants. And the noise of their going filled the whole land, and a great cloud of dust went up from their feet. Bagoas rode with Merodach upon the King's elephant, whose tusks were studded with precious stones, and who had jewels in his ears, and Bagoas spoke wisely unto the King.

"Man is naturally vain," said Bagoas. "He believes always that he has finally explained the universe, and that nothing remains for him but a life of virtue, and the approbation of a God, who shall exalt him above his fellows. But it seems to me, O King, that all human systems of religion and philosophy have the same nature as the system of a fakir whom I once met in the desert. He told me that the world was supported by a pillar of adamant, which was borne by an elephant, who stood upon the back of a tortoise."

"And what supported the tortoise?" enquired Merodach curiously.

"When I asked him that question, O King, he answered that it was a holy mystery, that the question was blasphemous in itself, and that all answers were equally heretical."

The Queen Parysatis rode with the court poet upon another elephant, and the poet, whose name was Mekerah, made delicate songs for her.

"The old look upon the stars," sang the poet, "they seek wisdom in the heavens; but I look into the eyes of my beloved. What stars are like her eyes? What wisdom can compare with the wisdom of love?"

"You have said the same thing a hundred times," complained the Queen.

But the Princess Candace rode upon a white elephant caparisoned with cloth of silver embroidered with pearls. No one rode with her but the driver of the elephant, and she sat under a canopy of silk which was shot with the colours that are in the shell of the pearl, and before her elephant on a white mule rode her juggler. He rode with his face to the tail, and juggled with oranges and a sword; the sword meeting the oranges in the air divided them neatly into halves, and then again into quarters. He was a dwarf, incredibly ugly, hunch-backed, with long spidery arms; but the little Princess loved him.

"Look at me!" he shrilled in a falsetto voice. "Look at me, little Princess! Who will say that jugglery is not the supreme art? Verily, it is the art of arts! The poet does but juggle with words, yet he does not preserve so perfect a rhythm. Mekerah's verses are lame, but mine oranges do not halt; they dance in the air with the grace of a little Princess who dances in silver slippers before the throne of her father. The High-priest Bagoas juggles with theories; the Great King juggles with the fears and passions of his subjects; the gods juggle with our poor world, but I juggle with mine oranges. It is the same thing. Look at me, little Princess, look at me!"

He swallowed the fragments of oranges as they descended, and then the sword.

"Uzal, you will make yourself sick," said Candace, "and my maids will have to tend you."

The juggler stood on his head and juggled with his feet.

"Truly, my lord," said Bagoas, "the juggler of the Princess has good reason for what he says: in a sense we are all jugglers."

But the King was thinking of other things, and after a moment lifted his head.

"Have you considered the Princess Candace, how she grows?" he enquired of the High-priest.

"She is like a flower," answered Bagoas. "She is like a silver lily opening its petals to the sun. She grows like a flower that the dew falls upon, and her dreams are like dew."

"A few days ago she was a child, a few days more and she will be a woman. It is time that she were married; but that man whom she marries will be King after that I am dead, and I do not wish to hasten my death."

"She is young to go down into the cave of Ishtar," said Bagoas; "she would tremble when the last torch was extinguished; she would cry aloud when her husband came to her out of that darkness. Have you considered one worthy to be her husband, O King?"

"There is no one," answered Merodach. "The children of my wives are all girls, and the sons of my slaves are brawlers; men whose words are wind."

"Have you considered the son of thy cousin, Na'amah? He is sixteen years old, and has the heart of a lion. He is like a young lion in his first strength. I have been the governor of his childhood, and in his heart there is no guile."

"We shall consider him," said Merodach. "Beyond are the hills of Eden."

"If we follow the course of the river we shall come to Adam's garden."

* * * * *

It was mid-day in Eden. The great snake hung in the branches of the apple-tree, watching Adam and Eve, with dull, malignant eyes half-closed. He had shed his skin which hung from one of the branches, swaying idly in the wind, like a piece of grey ravelled lace; and the great snake coiled about the trunk shone with renewed splendour, like a bronze in which the colours of olive and red are graduated so as to mix and flow into each other through imperceptible shades of difference. The shadow of some domestic quarrel hung over Adam and Eve; he was moved by an ungracious solicitude for her comfort, and she received his attentions in offended humility. The snake watched the comedy with narrow eyes; subtilty of enjoyment increasing the malign persistence of his stare.

"I am unhappy," said Eve.

"It is because we have done wrong," said Adam.