“I will render it with my own lips,” resolutely exclaimed Ananda.  “It is meet that I should bear the humiliation of acknowledging my folly.”

“Thou hast said well, my son,” replied Buddha, “and in return I will permit thee to discard the attire, if such it may be termed, of a Jogi, and to appear in our assembly wearing the yellow robe as beseems my disciple.  Nay, I will even infringe my own rule on thy behalf, and perform a not inconsiderable miracle by immediately transporting thee to the summit of Vindhya, where the faithful are already beginning to assemble.  Thou wouldst otherwise incur much risk of being torn to pieces by the multitude, who, as the shouts now approaching may instruct thee, are beginning to extirpate my religion at the instigation of the new king, thy hopeful pupil.  The old king is dead, poisoned by the Brahmins.”

“O master! master!” exclaimed Ananda, weeping bitterly, “and is all the work undone, and all by my fault and folly?”

“That which is built on fraud and imposture can by no means endure,” returned Buddha, “be it the very truth of Heaven.  Be comforted; thou shalt proclaim my doctrine to better purpose in other lands.  Thou hast this time but a sorry account to render of thy stewardship; yet thou mayest truly declare that thou hast obeyed my precept in the letter, if not in the spirit, since none can assert that thou hast ever wrought any miracle.”

THE CITY OF PHILOSOPHERS

I

Nature is manifold, not infinite, though the extent of the resources of which she can dispose almost enables her to pass for such.  Her cards are so multitudinous that the pairs are easily shuffled into ages so far asunder that their resemblance escapes remark.  But sometimes her mischievous daughter Fortune manages to thrust these duplicates into such conspicuous places that their similarity cannot pass unobserved, and Nature is caught plagiarising from herself.  She is thus detected dealing a king—­or knave—­a second time in the person of a king who has already fallen from her pack as an emperor.  Brilliant, careless, selfish, yet good-natured vauriens, the Roman Emperor Gallienus and our Charles the Second excelled in every art save the art of reigning, and might have excelled in that also if they would have taken the trouble.  The circumstances of their reigns were in many respects as similar as their characters.  Both were the sons of grave and strict fathers, each of whom had met with terrible misfortunes:  one deprived of his liberty by his enemies, the other of his head by his own subjects.  Each of the sons had been grievously vexed by rebels, but Charles’s troubles from this quarter had mostly ended where those of Gallienus began.  Each saw his dominions ravaged by pestilence in a manner beyond all former experience.  The Goths destroyed the temple of the Ephesian Diana,