As a lost soul might gaze on Paradise I beheld the pillared court of the great temple displayed before me, with its sunlit space filled with the usual throng of worshippers upon a holy day. There was the medley of colours, like some huge bed of gorgeous tulips, the white of the hierarchy, the crimson of the nobles, the green of the merchants, and the many varied tints of the garments of the populace; what past memories of my reign did not such a vision evoke in me! I fretted to be gone, so as to regain that rich and varied crowd beneath that glowing sky, to reassume my accustomed place of honour and adoration in their midst. And then, even as I yearned, chafing at the ties which still bound me to Earth, my companion was able to inflame yet further my longing to return. With his disengaged right hand he searched the pocket of his coat and a moment later I beheld in his fingers a strange-looking instrument bearing some resemblance to the mystical sistrum of ancient Egypt. Bidding me continue to fix my eyes on the crystal before me, Fajal waved aloft this curved and stringed spherule, whereupon a soft murmuring seemed to fill the languid heavy autumnal air, and this muttering again developed into advancing waves of harmony that concentrated in an ultimate crashing note of triumph in my very face. The sounds now appeared to shrink and retreat, now to advance and expand in volume, but after some moments of vague, desultory, erratic come-and-go the music at length seemed to collect and pour as through some invisible funnel into the actual crystal lying in Fajal's palm. The ambient air was now completely free of its reverberations, and the music subsided into moderate compass, convenable with the scale and setting of the variegated scene that still lay exposed on the crystal tablet. Finally, the compressed sound blended with the multitude of figures in this miniature reproduction of the temple of Tamarida, so that I could distinguish the articulation of the many worshippers as well as the canticles of the choristers wafted from afar to my ears. So might the Olympian Zeus in heroic days have heard the daily orisons of his earth-born suppliants, and have sought for the sparse note of sincerity amidst that vast uproar of human prayer ascending from a thousand altars to his ivory throne set amidst the unattainable clouds of highest heaven. But here from Meleager the issuing petition rang out unanimous, solemn and unfeigned....