“I want to be happy. And that is impossible, because there is no happiness anywhere in the world. I, a great king, say this—I, who am known in unmapped lands, and before whom nations tremble. For there are but three desirable things in life—love and power and wisdom: and I, the king, have sounded the depths of these, and in none is happiness.” Despairing words came to him now, and welled to his lips, in a sort of chaunt: “I am sad to-night, for I remember that I once loved a woman. She was white as the moon; her hair was a gold cloud; she had untroubled eyes. She was so fair that I longed for her until my heart was as the heart of a God. But she sickened and died: worms had their will of her, not I. So I took other women, and my bed was never lonely. Bright poisonous women were brought to me, from beyond the sunset, from the Fortunate Islands, from Invallis and Planasia even; and these showed me nameless endearments and many curious perverse pleasures. But I was not able to forget that woman who was denied me because death had taken her: and I grew a-weary of love, for I perceived that all which has known life must suffer death. “There was no people anywhere who could withstand my armies. We traveled far in search of such a people. My armies rode into a country of great heat and endless sands, and contended with the Presbyter’s brown horsemen, who fought with arrows and brightly painted bows; and we slew them. My armies entered into a land where men make their homes in the shells of huge snails, and feed upon white worms which have black heads; and we slew them. My armies passed into a land where a people that have no language dwell in dark caves under the earth, and worship a stone that has sixty colors; and we slew them, teaching ruthlessly that all which has known life must suffer death. “Many stiff-necked kings, still clad in purple and scarlet and wearing gold crowns—monarchs whose proud faces, for all that these men were my slaves, kept their old fashion and stayed changeless as the faces of statues—such were my lackeys: and I burned walled cities. Empires were my playthings, but I had no son to inherit after me. I had no son—only that dead horrible mangled worm, born dead, that I remember seeing very long ago where the woman I loved lay dead. That would have been my son had the thing lived—a greater and a nobler king than I. But death willed otherwise: the life that moved in me was not to be perpetuated: and so, the heart in my body grew dried and little and shriveled, like a parched pea: for I perceived that all which has known life must suffer death.