’But all these sounds cease at the meridian hour, the jewellers in the market-place lie down in what shadow they can find, and the princes go back to the cool places in their palaces, and a great hush in the gleaming air hangs over Babbulkund.  But in the cool of the late afternoon, one of the King’s musicians will awake from dreaming of his home and will pass his fingers, perhaps, over the strings of his harp and, with the music, some memory may arise of the wind in the glens of the mountains that stand in the Isles of Song.  Then the musician will wrench great cries out of the soul of his harp for the sake of the old memory, and his fellows will awake and all make a song of home, woven of sayings told in the harbour when the ships came in, and of tales in the cottages about the people of old time.  One by one the other bands of musicians will take up the song, and Babbulkund, City of Marvel, will throb with this marvel anew.  Just now Nehemoth awakes, the slaves leap to their feet and bear the palanquin to the outer side of the great crescent palace between the south and the west, to behold the sun again.  The palanquin, with its ringing bells, goes round once more; the voices of the jewellers sing again in the market-place the song of the emerald, the song of the sapphire; men talk on the housetops, beggars wail in the streets, the musicians bend to their work, all the sounds blend together into one murmur, the voice of Babbulkund speaking at evening.  Lower and lower sinks the sun, till Nehemoth, following it, comes with his panting slaves to the great purple garden of which surely thine own country has its songs, from wherever thou art come.

’There he alights from his palanquin and goes up to a throne of ivory set in the garden’s midst, facing full westwards, and sits there alone, long regarding the sunlight until it is quite gone.  At this hour trouble comes into the face of Nehemoth.  Men have heard him muttering at the time of sunset:  ‘Even I too, even I too.’  Thus do King Nehemoth and the sun make their glorious ambits about Babbulkund.

’A little later, when the stars come out to envy the beauty of the City of Marvel, the King walks to another part of the garden and sits in an alcove of opal all alone by the marge of the sacred lake.  This is the lake whose shores and floors are of glass, which is lit from beneath by slaves with purple lights and with green lights intermingling, and is one of the seven wonders of Babbulkund.  Three of the wonders are in the city’s midst and four are at her gates.  There is the lake, of which I tell thee, and the purple garden of which I have told thee and which is a wonder even to the stars, and there is Ong Zwarba, of which I shall tell thee also.  And the wonders at the gates are these.  At the eastern gate Neb.  And at the northern gate the wonder of the river and the arches, for the River of Myth, which becomes one with the Waters of Fable in the desert outside the city, floats under a gate of