“Once upon a time the Golden Bird sang to me, Now I shall sing a golden song to the gods.” He went from village to village, from city to city, playing with the generosity of an inspired poet, followed by man, woman, child and beast alike, whenever he put his flute to his lips. They offered him their homes, their riches, their dearest possessions, but he scorned all, accepting only a little rice with spices, partaking of shelter with the humblest when the tempest-beaten jungle forbade his sleeping out of doors. [Illustration] Quickly his fame had spread, and reached the ears of the Maharajah, who bade him appear at the palace, to vie with the court musicians, who were the most famous in the land. The court musicians, in their ignorance, eyed the half-naked poet with a defiant leer, as one by one they began playing, while nearby sat the Maharajah with his daughter, the fair Mahismati, and the courtiers around, all fairly laden with gems, appearing as enormous glistening scarabei. They sang and drummed, they scratched their fiddles and twanged their guitars, they played the harps and clanked the cymbals to the admiring assemblage of noblemen, who wondered how this miserable, half-starved vagabond dared to compete with his wretched little instrument. [Illustration] When the musicians had ended, Asneha got up, announcing the Song of Songs. It began imperceptibly, but as insinuatingly as the language of a couple of loving eyes whispers to another loved pair; so indistinct to the ear that it was as the incipient melody in the mind of the composer. Then it continued, soothing and muffled as the patter of small naked feet dancing the nautch on the marble flooring; rattled speedily as an incessant cascade of rubies, diamonds, sapphires, pearls and emeralds on a basin of gold. Steadily it flowed, like a Song of Desire and Voluptuousness, filling the hall with a scarlet inundation of light; heavy and numbing as the exhalation of soporific flowers. But now it ascended to healthier altitudes like a Song of Victory and Exultation, direct and concise, in a blast of crystal trumpets, higher, slowly, in the manner of the eagle. [Illustration] It rang forth agitated and sonorous as a gong, yet farther, solitary, inaccessible. Then as if it had grown in magnitude by the ascent, it roared like a planet as it shoots into space to restore the equilibrium of the Universe, and suddenly, unexpectedly, in the fashion of the shooting star, it stopped short, carrying in its wake the exhausted assemblage of listeners to the floor as a mass of inert flesh. One by one, as do the reeds after the violent gust of wind has blown over, they raised themselves, but not quite so erect as before. The musicians approached him humbly, and breaking their instruments, threw them at his feet, salaaming and promising never to play again from that day on.