“All hail, Lysia!  Where hast thou wandered so long, thou Goddess of Morn?  We have been lost in the blackness of night, sunk in the depths of a hell-like gloom—­but lo! now the clouds have broken in the east, and our hearts rejoice at the birth of day!  Vanish, dull moon, and be ashamed! ... for a fairer planet rules the sky!  Hence, ye stars! ... puny glow-worms lazily crawling in the fields of ether!  Lysia invests the heaven and earth, and in her smile we live!  Ha! art thou there, Sah-luma?  Come, praise me for my improvised love-lines; they are as good as thine, I warrant thee!  Canst compose when thou art drunk, my dainty Laureate?  Drain a cup then, and string me a stanza!  Where is thy fool Zebastes?  I would fain tickle his long ears with ribald rhyme, and hearken to the barbarous braying forth of his asinine reflections!  Lysia! what, Lysia! ... dost thou frown at me?  Frown not, sweet queen, but rather laugh! ... thy laughter kills, ’tis true, but thy frown doth torture spirits after death!  Unbend thy brows!  Night looms between them like a chaos! ... we will have no more night, I say, but only noon! ... a long, languorous, lovely noon, flower-girdled and sunbeam-clad!

“’With roses, roses, roses crown my head, For my days are few!  And remember, sweet, when I am dead, That my heart was true!’”

Singing unsteadily, with the empty goblet upside-down in his hand, he looked up laughing,—­his bright eyes flashing with a wild feverish fire, his fair hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves,—­his rich garments disordered, his whole demeanor that of one possessed by a semi-delirium of sensuous pleasure...when all at once, meeting Lysia’s keen glance, he started as though he had been suddenly stabbed,—­the goblet fell from his clasp, and a visible shudder ran through his strong, supple frame.  The low, cold, merciless laughter of the beautiful Priestess cut through the air hissingly like the sweep of a scimetar.

“Thou art wondrous merry, Nir-jalis,” she said, in languid, lazily enunciated accents.  “Knowest thou not that too much mirth engenders weeping, and that excessive rejoicing hath its fitting end in grievous lamentation?  Nay, even now already thou lookest more sadly!  What sombre cloud has crossed thy wine-hued heaven?  Be happy while thou mayest, good fool! ...  I blame thee not!  Sooner or later all things must end! ... in the mean time, make thou the most of life while life remains; ’tis at its best an uncertain heritage, that once rashly squandered can never be restored,—­ either here or hereafter.”

The words were gently, almost tenderly, spoken; but Nir-jalis hearing them, grew white as death—­his smile faded, leaving his lips set and stern as the lips of a marble mask.  Stooping, he raised his fallen goblet and held it out almost mechanically to a passing slave, who re-filled it with wine, which he drank off thirstily at a draught, though the generous liquid brought no color back to his drawn and ashy features.