Sleep fell swiftly upon my eyes, and in my sleep the goddess visited me.  She rose up, a vision of light, from the waters.  On her head was a crown of radiant flowers, shaped like the moon, and serpents coiled about her temples, and her divine body was arrayed in a robe of shining darkness embroidered with innumerable stars.

“See, Lucius,” she said, with a voice that breathed a great sweetness over me, “Isis appears in answer to your prayer.  Cease now to weep and mourn, for I am come in pity of your lot to show favour to you.  To-morrow my priest will descend to the seashore to celebrate my festival, and in his left hand he will carry a crown of roses.  Go forth without fear, and take the crown of roses, and then put off the shape of a beast, and put on the form of a man.  Serve me well all the days of your life, and when you go down to the grave you shall see me as a light amid the darkness—­as a queen in the palace of hell.  By my favour you shall be lifted up into the fields of Paradise, and there you shall worship and adore me for all eternity.”

The saviour goddess then vanished, and I awoke, and the dawn was in the sky, and the waves of the sea were dancing in the golden light.  A long procession was winding down from the city to the shore to the sound of flutes and pipes.

First came a great multitude of people carrying lamps and torches and tapers in honour of the constellations of heaven; then a choir of sweet-voiced boys and girls in snowy garments; and next a train of men and women luminous in robes of pure white linen; these were the initiates; and they were followed by the prelates of the sacred mysteries; and behind them all walked the high priest, bearing in his right hand the mystic rattle of Isis, and in his left hand the crown of roses.  By divine intervention, the crowd parted and made a way for me; and when I came to the priest he held out the roses, and I ate them, and was changed into a man.  The people raised their hands to heaven, wonder-stricken by the miracle, and the fame of it went out over all the world.  The priest initiated me into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, and I shaved my head, and entered the College of Pastors, and became a servant of the high gods.

* * * * *

The Arabian Nights

Or, The Thousand and One Nights

There is as much doubt about the history of “The Thousand and One Nights” as that which veils the origin of the Homeric poems.  It is said that a certain Caliph Shahryar, having been deceived by his wife, slew her, and afterwards married a wife only for one day, slaying her on the morning after.  When this slaughter of women had continued some time he became wedded to one Shahrazad, daughter of his Vizir, who, by telling the Commander of the Faithful exciting stories and leaving them unfinished every dawn, so provoked the Caliph’s curiosity that he