For instance, he showed me one which, by help of my glasses, I recognised as Sirius, and remarked that two hundred and fifty thousand years ago it was further away and much smaller.  Now it was precisely in the place and of the size which he had predicted, and he pointed to it on his prophetic map.  Again he indicated a star that the night-glass told me was Capella, which, I suppose, is one of the most brilliant stars in the sky, and showed me that on the map he had made two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, it did not exist, as then it was too far north to appear thereon.  Still, he observed, the passage of this vast period of time had produced but little effect upon the face of the heavens.  To the human eye the majority of the stars had not moved so very far.

“And yet they travel fast, O Humphrey,” he said.  “Consider then how great is their journey between the time they gather and that day when, worn-out, once more they melt to vaporous gas.  You think me long-lived who compared to them exist but a tiny fraction of a second, nearly all of which I have been doomed to pass in sleep.  And, Humphrey, I desire to live—­I, who have great plans and would shake the world.  But my day draws in; a few brief centuries and I shall be gone, and—­whither, whither?”

“If you lived as long as those stars, the end would be the same, Oro.”

“Yes, but the life of the stars is very long, millions of millions of years; also, after death, they reform, as other stars.  But shall I reform as another Oro?  With all my wisdom, I do not know.  It is known to Fate only—­Fate-the master of worlds and men and the gods they worship—­Fate, whom it may please to spill my gathered knowledge, to be lost in the sands of Time.”

“It seems that you are great,” I said, “and have lived long and learned much.  Yet the end of it is that your lot is neither worse nor better than that of us creatures of an hour.”

“It is so, Humphrey.  Presently you will die, and within a few centuries I shall die also and be as you are.  You believe that you will live again eternally.  It may be so because you do believe, since Fate allows Faith to shape the future, if only for a little while.  But in me Wisdom has destroyed Faith and therefore I must die.  Even if I sleep again for tens of thousands of years, what will it help me, seeing that sleep is unconsciousness and that I shall only wake again to die, since sleep does not restore to us our youth?”

He ceased, and walked up and down the rock with a troubled mien.  Then he stood in front of me and said in a triumphant voice: 

“At least, while I live I will rule, and then let come what may come.  I know that you do not believe, and the first victory of this new day of mine shall be to make you believe.  I have great powers and you shall see them at work, and afterwards, if things go right, rule with me for a little while, perhaps, as the first of my subjects.  Hearken now; in one small matter my calculations, made so long ago, have gone wrong.  They showed me that at this time a day of earthquakes, such as those that again and again have rocked and split the world, would recur.  But now it seems that there is an error, a tiny error of eleven hundred years, which must go by before those earthquakes come.”