People came from the town; and a wiry shepherd, placing himself before the entrance to the grotto, and using his staff as a spear, said:  “Men of Bethlehem, ye cannot enter; the babe sleeps.”

Near by stood an old man, who said dreamily:  “The town cast him out.  I always said there was no salvation yonder.  That’s to be found with the poor under the open sky.  Miracles are happening here, men are pitiful.  What does it mean?”

Down below in a cleft of the rock cowered a poor sinner, and burrowed in the earth with his lean fingers as if he would dig himself a grave in its depths.  He gazed at the cave where the child was with glassy, staring eyes.  A prayer for mercy surged up in his heart like a stream of blood.  Those who saw him turned from him shuddering.  They took him for Cain, his brother’s murderer.

CHAPTER III

A stranger was riding a lazy camel across the lonely Arabian desert.  All men are Moors in the dark, but this man was a Moor in the starlight.  A newly discovered star brought the man from the banks of the Indus.  He consulted all the calendars of the East, but none could tell him about the star.  Balthasar, however, was not the man to let the strange, incomprehensible star escape him.  Nothing can be concealed in God’s bosom from an Eastern scholar, for not even God Himself has a passport for the land of the all-wise.  The world is through them alone and for them alone; man must grow of himself towards the light as the lotus grows out of the mud.  So thought Balthasar, and felt that life was a failure.

In such wisdom the faith of Orientals lives and moves and has its being.  If man honestly aspires to higher things and tortures his flesh, it may go better with him in another life.  For he must be born again many times, and must torture his body until it shrivels up, is freed from sin, and is without desires.  Then the soul is released and is not born again, for Nirvana, the last goal, is reached.  Only bad men continue to live.  The nations of India had been demoralised by that doctrine for centuries.  But it did not satisfy wise men.  Balthasar thought:  If a man starves through a few dozen lives, then something good must come out of it.  Or is evil good enough to continue, and good evil enough to cease?  Balthasar sought better counsel.  He sought throughout the universe for a peg on which to hang a new, more beneficial philosophy of life.  When, then, he saw the new star in the sky, he never ceased looking at it.  And, lo! it too took the road from east to west which all men traversed.  What was there yonder in the sunset that all went towards it, on earth as in heaven?  Could not one particular star swim against the stream?  True, this new heavenly pilgrim took an unusual path; he leaned somewhat to the north of the barbarous folk.  So the wise man of the east left the fragrant gardens of India and followed the star.  On the road he was joined by two Oriental princes and their suites, who were also seeking they knew not what.