I saw him again in an obscure house of Alexandria, taking counsel with a Hebrew rabbi.  The venerable man, bending over the rolls of parchment on which the prophecies of Israel were written, read aloud the pathetic words which foretold the sufferings of the promised Messiah—­the despised and rejected of men, the man of sorrows and the acquaintance of grief.

“And remember, my son,” said he, fixing his deep-set eyes upon the face of Artaban, “the King whom you are seeking is not to be found in a palace, nor among the rich and powerful.  If the light of the world and the glory of Israel had been appointed to come with the greatness of earthly splendor, it must have appeared long ago.  For no son of Abraham will ever again rival the power which Joseph had in the palaces of Egypt, or the magnificence of Solomon throned between the lions in Jerusalem.  But the light for which the world is waiting is a new light, the glory that shall rise out of patient and triumphant suffering.  And the kingdom which is to be established forever is a new kingdom, the royalty of perfect and unconquerable love.

“I do not know how this shall come to pass, nor how the turbulent kings and peoples of earth shall be brought to acknowledge the Messiah and pay homage to Him.  But this I know.  Those who seek Him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed.”

So I saw the other wise man again and again, travelling from place to place, and searching among the people of the dispersion, with whom the little family from Bethlehem might, perhaps, have found a refuge.  He passed through countries where famine lay heavy upon the land, and the poor were crying for bread.  He made his dwelling in plague-stricken cities where the sick were languishing in the bitter companionship of helpless misery.  He visited the oppressed and the afflicted in the gloom of subterranean prisons, and the crowded wretchedness of slave-markets, and the weary toil of galley-ships.  In all this populous and intricate world of anguish, though he found none to worship, he found many to help.  He fed the hungry, and clothed the naked, and healed the sick, and comforted the captive; and his years went by more swiftly than the weaver’s shuttle that flashes back and forth through the loom while the web grows and the invisible pattern is completed.

It seemed almost as if he had forgotten his quest.  But once I saw him for a moment as he stood alone at sunrise, waiting at the gate of a Roman prison.  He had taken from a secret resting-place in his bosom the pearl, the last of his jewels.  As he looked at it, a mellower lustre, a soft and iridescent light, full of shifting gleams of azure and rose, trembled upon its surface.  It seemed to have absorbed some reflection of the colors of the lost sapphire and ruby.  So the profound, secret purpose of a noble life draws into itself the memories of past joy and past sorrow.  All that has helped it, all that has hindered it, is transfused by a subtle magic into its very essence.  It becomes more luminous and precious the longer it is carried close to the warmth of the beating heart.