e."

IN THE HIDDEN WAY OF SORROW

Then again there was a silence in the Hall of Dreams, deeper and more
mysterious than the first interval, and I understood that the years of
Artaban were flowing very swiftly under the stillness of that clinging
fog, and I caught only a glimpse, here and there, of the river of his
life shining through the shadows that concealed its course.

I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking
everywhere for traces of the household that had come down from
Bethlehem, and finding them under the spreading sycamore-trees of
Heliopolis, and beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of New Babylon
beside the Nile--traces so faint and dim that they vanished before him
continually, as footprints on the hard river-sand glisten for a
moment with moisture and then disappear.

I saw him again at the foot of the pyramids, which lifted their sharp
points into the intense saffron glow of the sunset sky, changeless
monuments of the perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He
looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly
tried to read the meaning of her calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it,
indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had
said--the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never
can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that
inscrutable smile--a promise that even the defeated should attain a
victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the ignorant
should be made wise, and the blind should see, and the wandering should
come into the haven at last?

I saw him again in an obscure house of Alexandria, taking counsel with a
Hebrew rabbi. The venerable man, bending over the rolls of parchment
on which the prophecies of Israel were written, read aloud the pathetic
words which foretold the sufferings of the promised Messiah--the
despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and the acquaintance of
grief.

"And remember, my son," said he, fixing his deep-set eyes upon the face
of Artaban, "the King whom you are seeking is not to be found in a
palace, nor among the rich and powerful. If the light of the world and
the glory of Israel had been appointed to come with the greatness of
earthly splendour, it must have appeared long ago. For no son of Abraham
will ever again rival the power which Joseph had in the palaces of
Egypt, or the magnificence of Solomon throne