"Talk not of death!" interrupted the King loudly and in haste,-- "'Tis a raven note that hath been croaked in mine ears too often and too harshly already! What! ... hast thou been met by the mad Khosrul who lately sprang on me, even as a famished wolf on prey, and grasping my bridle-rein bade me prepare to die! 'Twas an ill jest, and one not to be lightly forgiven! 'Prepare to die, O Zephoranim?' he cried--'For thy time of reckoning is come!' By my soul!" and the monarch broke into a boisterous laugh--"Had he bade me prepare live 'twould have been more to the purpose! But yon frantic graybeard prates of naught but death, ... 'twere well he should be silenced." And as he spoke, he frowned, his hand involuntarily playing with the jewelled hilt of his sword.
"Aye,--death is an unpleasing suggestion!" suddenly said Zabastes, who had gradually moved up nearer and nearer till he made one of the group immediately round Sah-luma--"'Tis a word that should never be mentioned in the presence of Kings! Yet, . . notwithstanding the incivility of the statement, . . it is most certain that His Most Potent Majesty as well as His Majesty's Most Potent Laureate, MUST..DIE.. !" And he accompanied the words "must..die..." with two decisive taps of his staff, smacking his withered lips meanwhile as though he tasted something peculiarly savory.
"And thou also, Zabastes!" retorted the King with a dark smile, jestingly drawing his sword and pointing it full at him,--then, as the old Critic shrank slightly at the gleam of the bare steel, replacing it dashingly in its sheath,--"Thou also! ... and thine ashes shall be cast to the four winds of heaven as suits thy vocation, while those of thy master and thy master's King lie honorably urned in porphyry and gold!"
Zabastes bowed with a sort of mock humility.
"It may be so, most mighty Zephoranim," he returned composedly-- "Nevertheless ashes are always ashes,--and the scattering of them is but a question of time! For urns of gold and porphyry do but excite the cupidity of the vulgar-minded, and the ashes therein sealed, whether of King or Poet, stand as little chance of reverent handling by future generations as those of many lesser men. And 'tis doubtful whether the winds will know any difference in the scent or quality of the various pinches of human dust tossed on their sweeping circles,--for the substance of a man reduced to earth-atoms is always the same,--and not a grain of him can prove whether he was once a Monarch crowned, a Minstrel pampered, or a Critic contemned!"