“At length, one day, the youth fell asleep in the grotto, and his head rested directly over a fissure in the rock through which there issued a very fine and subtle vapor, which had the effect of throwing the young man in a trance, during which he fancied he saw the princess herself, unveiled, and more lovely than the flowers that bloomed in the king’s garden. He also thought he saw an inscription, which bade him despair not, but TRY! and, at the same time, there flowed into his mind this sentence, which subsequently became the watchword of the mystic fraternity which, for some centuries, has been known as that of the Rosie Cross--‘There is no difficulty to him who truly wills.’ Along with this there came a solution of the king’s riddle, which he remembered when he awoke, and instantly proclaimed his readiness to attempt that which had cost so many adventurers their lives. “Accordingly, the grandest preparations--including a man with a drawn blade ready to make the poet shorter by the head if he failed--were made, and, at an appointed hour, all the court, the princess included, convened in the largest hall of the palace. The poet advanced to the foot of the throne, and there knelt, saying, ‘O king, live for ever! What three things are more desirable than Life, Light and Love? What three are more inseparable? and what better cometh from the sun, yet is not the sun? O king! is thy riddle answered?’ ‘True!’ said the king; ‘you have solved it, and my word shall be kept!’ And he straightway gave commands to have the marriage celebrated in royal style, albeit, through the influence of a high court official, he hated poets in general, and this one particularly so, because he thought the young man had foiled him in one of the treaties just made. Now, it so happened that the grand vizier had hoped by some means to get a solution of the riddle, and secure the great prizes for a young son of his own; and, as soon as the divan was closed, that very day, he hastened to the closet of the king, and there still further poisoned the mind of his master against the victor, by charging him with having succeeded through the aid of sorcery, which so enraged the king that he readily agreed to remove the claimant by means of a speedy, secret, and cruel death that very night, to which end the poet was drugged in his wine at the evening banquet, conveyed to a couch openly, and almost immediately thereafter removed to the chamber allotted to the refractory servants of the court. This apartment was under ground, and the youth, being thrown violently on the floor, revived, and was astonished to find himself bound hand and foot in presence of the king, his vizier, a few soldiers, and--death; for he saw at a glance that his days were numbered. He defended himself from the charge of sorcery, but in vain. He was doomed to die, and the order given, when, just as the blow was about to fall, there appeared the