"Theos, my friend,"--he said, still laughing--"Thou must know the admirable Zabastes,--a man of vast importance in his own opinion! Have done with thy wheezing,"--he continued, vehemently thumping the struggling old gentleman on the back--"Here is another one of the minstrel craft thou hatest,--hast aught of bitterness in thy barbed tongue wherewith to welcome him as guest to mine abode?"
Thus adjured, the old man peered up at Theos inquisitively, wiping away the tears that coughing had brought into his eyes, and after a minute or two began also to laugh in a smothered, chuckling way,--a laugh that resembled the croaking of frogs in a marshy pool.
"Another one of the minstrel-craft," he echoed derisively--"Aye, aye! ... Like meets like, and fools consorts with fool. The guest of Sah-luma, . . Hearken, young man,--" and he drew closer, the malign grin widening on his furrowed face,--"Thou shalt learn enough trash here to stock thee with idiot-songs for a century. Thou shalt gather up such fragments of stupidity, as shall provide thee with food for all the puling love-sick girls of a nation! Dost thou write follies also? ... thou shalt not write them here, thou shalt not even think them!--for here Sah-luma,--the great, the unrivalled Sah-luma,--is sole Lord of the land of Poesy. Poesy,--by all the gods!--I would the accursed art had never been invented ... so might the world have been spared many long-drawn nothings, enwoofed in obscure and distracting phraseology! ... THOU a would-be Poet?--go to!--make brick, mend sandals, dig entrenchments, fight for thy country,--and leave the idle stringing of words, and the tinkling of rhyme, to children like Sah-luma, who play with life instead of living it."
And with this, he hobbled off uneasily, grunting and grumbling as he went, and waving his staff magisterially right and left to warn the smiling maidens out of his way,--and once more Sah-luma's laughter, clear and joyous, pealed through the vaulted vestibule.
"Poor Zabastes!" he said in a tone of good-humored tolerance--"He has the most caustic wit of any man in Al-Kyris! He is a positive marvel of perverseness and ill-humor, well worth the four hundred golden pieces I pay him yearly for his task of being my scribe and critic. Like all of us he must live, eat and wear decent clothing,--and that his only literary skill lies in the abuse of better men than himself is his misfortune, rather than his fault. Yes! ... he is my paid Critic, paid to rail against me on all occasions public or private, for the merriment of those who care to listen to the mutterings of his discontent,--and, by the Sacred Veil! ... I cannot choose but laugh myself whenever I think of him. He deems his words carry weight with the people,--alas, poor soul! his scorn but adds to my glory,--his derision to my fame! Nay, of a truth I need him,--even as the King needs the court fool,--to make mirth for me in vacant moments,--for there is something grotesque in the contemplation of his cankered clownishness, that sees nought in life but the eating, the sleeping, the building, and the bargaining. Such men as he can never bear to know that there are others, gifted by heaven, for whom all common things take radiant shape and meaning,--for whom the flowers reveal their fragrant secrets,--for whom birds not only sing, but speak in most melodious utterance--for whose dreaming eyes, the very sunbeams spin bright fantasies in mid-air more lasting than the kingdoms of the world! Blind and unhappy Zabastes! ... he is ignorant as a stone, and for him the mysteries of Nature are forever veiled. The triumphal hero-march of the stars,--the brief, bright rhyme of the flashing comet,--the canticle of the rose as she bears her crimson heart to the smile of the sun,--the chorus of green leaves chanting orisons to the wind--the never completed epic of heaven's lofty solitudes where the white moon paces, wandering like a maiden in search of love,-- all these and other unnumbered joys he has lost--joys that Sah- luma, child of the high gods and favorite of Destiny drinks in with the light and the air."