"The reason was the reason of a great King, whose wisdom is as inscrutable as the wisdom of Bel," answered Bagoas. "It was a lapse of the mind that led me to Adam; one might say almost an act of Providence, or to be scientific, chance. This morning at daybreak I had a desire to ride abroad, for I had not slept during the night, and the sweetness of the air enticed me into the country. I took a falcon upon my wrist. Falconry was a delight of my youth. But I had barely proceeded a mile before I became preoccupied with my own thoughts. The hares passed me unobserved; the doves were free of the air. I was thinking how often man has crept up toward civilisation, and then receded from it again, as the tides creep up and recede from the beach; how the light of the world has passed from nation to nation, and none have brought it to the goal; how man forgets the evils which the last generation had abolished, and rushes back upon them to escape from present evils; and it seemed to me impossible that our race could attain to perfection in conditions of such mutability. We sow our wisdom with full hands. We think that it may increase fifty-fold. Alas! some of our seed falls in marshy places, some among stones, some is devoured by the birds of the air, some flourishes exceedingly, and is beaten down by storms of hail, or withered by the fierce heat; and that which survives and bears fruit is scarcely sufficient for the sowing of the field again. "Every night a priest of Bel watches the stars; with optic glasses he explores the vast abyss, through which the sun and its choir of planets journey toward their fate; and when his mind is troubled by that infinity, his eyes seek thy city, O King, and mankind to him is but a little heap of withered leaves, which a sudden wind whirls in a circling dance. From his tower, O King, he looks upon thy city, which to us, from here, is splendid with a multitude of lights, and murmurous with life. He knows that in the streets the young man is seeking pleasure, that women are bearing children, that the old are dying. All the wealth and misery of the world are at his feet; and he turns again to that star which is destined to burn up the world in a tumultuous kiss. What is the lust of the young to him; the pangs of child-birth; the bitterness; the regret; the anguish of approaching death? A little heap of withered leaves suddenly caught up in a windy dance; a little flame, flickering ere it goes out into darkness.