“I have condescended to none of these frivolities, O king.  My study hath ever consisted in divine philosophy, whereby men are rendered equal to the gods.”

“And yet long most of all for purple!” retorted the monarch, “as I conclude from perceiving thou hast after all preferred the latter.  Thy head must indeed be worth the taking.”

“Thy taunt is merited, O king!  I will importune thee no longer.  Thou wilt indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury.  Woe to the sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts of a court!  Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be suffered to rule only so far as they obey the bidding of philosophers.  Peace, Knowledge, Liberty—­”

The King of Ayodhya possessed, beyond all princes of his age, the art of gracefully interrupting an unseasonable discourse.  He slightly signed to a courtier in attendance, a scimitar flashed for a moment from its scabbard, and the head of Sorianus rolled on the pavement; the lips murmuring as though still striving to dwell with inarticulate fondness upon the last word of hope for mankind.

It soon appeared that the principle of life was essential to the resplendence of the Purple Head.  Within a few minutes it had assumed so ghastly a hue that the Rajah himself was intimidated, and directed that it should be consumed with the body.

The same full-moon that watched the white-robed throng busied with the rites of incremation in a grove of palms, beheld also the seven dragons contending for the body of Marcobad.  But, for many a year, the maids and matrons of Rome were not weary of regarding, extolling, and coveting the priceless purple tissue that glowed in the fane of Jupiter Capitolinus.

THE FIREFLY

A certain Magician had retired for the sake of study to a cottage in a forest.  It was summer in a hot country.  In the trees near the cottage dwelt a most beautiful Firefly.  The light she bore with her was dazzling, yet soft and palpitating, as the evening star, and she seemed a single flash of fire as she shot in and out suddenly from under the screen of foliage, or like a lamp as she perched panting upon some leaf, or hung glowing from some bough; or like a wandering meteor as she eddied gleaming over the summits of the loftiest trees; as she often did, for she was an ambitious Firefly.  She learned to know the Magician, and would sometimes alight and sit shining in his hair, or trail her lustre across his book as she crept over the pages.  The Magician admired her above all things: 

“What eyes she would have if she were a woman!” thought he.

Once he said aloud, “How happy you must be, you rare, beautiful, brilliant creature!”