ASNEHA THE Legend of the Opal ILLUSTRATIONS AND TEXT BY CARLO DE FORNARO PUBLISHED BY MARCUS & CO. JEWELERS 544 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK Copyright, 1902, by CARLO DE FORNARO _J’aspire, volupté divine!_ _Hymne profond, délicieux!_ _Tous les sanglots de ta poitrine,_ _Et crois que ton coeur s’illumine_ _Des perles que versent tes yeux!_ —_C. Baudelaire._ [Illustration] Utter a powerful song to Indra, which will be as sweet as butter and honey. —Rig Veda. Once upon a time, in the land of Kasi, there lived a poor musician, who was also a poet and a most imaginative storyteller. He had lost his flute in a village brawl, and being too poor to buy a new instrument had to content himself in relating wonderful legends concerning the gods, and stirring tales about the jungle people. One morning, feeling the necessity of communing with his spirit in quiet and solitude, he wandered into the jungle under a favorite cluster of bamboos. [Illustration] His soaring imagination was checked in its flight by a song of so extraordinary a tune, so novel and strange to his ears that he fancied he had been carried up by unknown favor to Indra’s heaven. The heavenly singer was only a small bird with feathers like old gold, two eyes green as emeralds, and the beak and legs of the same color. And the Golden Bird spoke to him: “Asneha! thou hast acquired great merit by thy devotion to matters spiritual, by thy kindness to animals and to human beings. Therefore, if thou wilt cut a reed within these woods they shall repeat my songs to thee. “But have a care, thou must remain pure and not suffer to be deluded by the love of woman, and thou shalt conquer the world.” He cut a flute in haste and pressed his lips to it to utter a song from it. And verily the music which flowed from its opening was divine and golden beyond description. Sometimes it sang softly as the moonbeam plays on a silent lake of emerald, dancing and trembling with so gentle a rhythm that only the soul of a poet could hear its melody; at other times it swelled its notes to the power of the roaring Maruts smiting against the unmovable Himalayas, as the wrath of Kali with the shiver of the cold snows from the eternal summits. Again, its melody dripped sweetly as the whitest of honey with the scent of a thousand flowers, of innumerable forms and shadings the most delicate. It wept, also, a song of despair and misery, so sadly, so pitifully, that it caused the tears to surge as readily as the Fountain of all the Sorrows. [Illustration] So he incised on his flute this motto: