vely face--anon he saw Hosea
standing before him in his glittering armor, as he had beheld him a short
time ago, only his garb was still more gorgeous and, instead of the dim
light in the tent, a ruddy glow like that of fire surrounded him. Then
the finest oxen and rams in his herds passed before him and sentences
from the messages he had learned darted through his mind; nay he
sometimes imagined that they were being shouted to him aloud. But ere he
could grasp their import, some new dazzling vision or loud rushing noise
seemed to fill his mental eye and ear.

He pressed onward, staggering like a drunken man, with drops of sweat
standing on his brow and with parched mouth. Sometimes he unconsciously
raised his hand to wipe the dust from his burning eyes, but he cared
little that he saw very indistinctly what was passing around him, for
there could be nothing more beautiful than what he beheld with his inward
vision.

True, he was often aware that he was suffering intensely, and he longed
to throw himself exhausted on the ground, but a strange sense of
happiness sustained him. At last he was seized with the delusion that his
head was swelling and growing till it attained the size of the head of
the colossus he had seen the day before in front of a temple gate, then
it rose to the height of the palm-trees by the road-side, and finally it
reached the mist shrouding the firmament, then far above it. Then it
suddenly seemed as though this head of his was as large as the whole
world, and he pressed his hands on his temples to clasp his brow; for his
neck and shoulders were too weak to support the weight of so enormous a
head and, mastered by this strange delusion, he shrieked aloud, his
shaking knees gave way, and he fell unconscious in the dust.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Hate, though never sated, can yet be gratified
Omnipotent God, who had preferred his race above all others
When hate and revenge speak, gratitude shrinks timidly
Who can prop another's house when his own is falling

JOSHUA

By Georg Ebers

Volume 2.

CHAPTER IX.

At the same hour a chamberlain was ushering Hosea into the audience
chamber.

Usually subjects summoned to the presence of the king were kept waiting
for hours, but the Hebrew's patience was not tried long. During this
period of the deepest mourning the spacious rooms of the palace, commonly
tenanted by a gay and noisy multitude, were hushed t