e, and riches to the wise young king.

She must have been very beautiful, Antipas with melancholy retrospection
reflected; and he fancied her more luminous than the twelve signs of the
zodiac, lounging nonchalantly in a palanquin that a white elephant with
swaying tail balanced on his painted back. And even as she returned, with
a child perhaps, to the griffons of the fabulous Yemen whence she came,
Antipas noted a speck on the horizon that grew from minim into mountain,
and obscured the entire sky. He saw the empire split in twain, and in the
twin halves that formed the perfect whole, a concussion of armies,
brothers appealing against their kin, the flight of the Ideal.

Unsummoned before him paraded the regicides, convulsions, and anarchies
that deified Hatred until Vengeance incarnate talked Assyrian, and
Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the
perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he
swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pigmy for King of
Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them
until it occurred to Cyrus to change the Euphrates' course.

By the light of that legend Antipas saw an immense hall, illuminated by
the seven branches of countless candelabra, and filled with revellers
celebrating a monarch's feast. Beyond, through retreating columns, were
cyclopean arches and towers whose summits were lost in clouds that the
lightning rent. At the royal table sat Belsarazzur, laughing mightily at
the enterprise of the Persian king; about him were the grandees of his
court, the flower of his concubines; at his side were the sacred vases
filled with wine. He raised one to his lips, and there on the frieze
before him leapt out the flaming letters of his doom, while to the
trumpetings of heralds Cyrus and his army beat down the city's gates.

It passed, and Antipas saw Jerusalem repeopled, the Temple rebuilt, peace
after exile, the joy of bondage unloosed. For a moment it lasted--a century
or two at most; and after Alexander, in chasing kings hither and thither,
had passed with his huntsmen that way, Isis and Osiris beckoned, and the
descendants of the bedouin belonged to Goshen again, and so remained until
Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with
them utterly had not Juda Maccabaeus flaunted his banner, and the Roman
eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superb