“Ah, Sir Gad-about!” he exclaimed in a harsh, squeaky voice as he perceived Sah-luma—­“Back again from your self-advertising in the city!  Is there any poor soul left in Al-Kyris whose ears have not been deafened by the parrot-cry of the name of Sah-luma?—­If there is,—­at him, at him, my dainty warbler of tiresome trills!—­at him, and storm his senses with a rhodomontade of rhymes without reason!—­at him, Immortal of the Immortals!—­Bard of Bards!—­stuff him with quatrains and sextains!—­beat him with blank verse, blank of all meaning!—­lash him with ballad and sonnet-scourges, till the tortured wretch, howling for mercy, shall swear that no poet save Sah-luma, ever lived before, or will ever live again, on the face of the shuddering and astonished earth!”

And breathless with this extraordinary outburst, he struck his staff loudly on the floor, and straightway fell into such a violent fit of coughing that his whole lean body shook with the paroxysm.

Sah-luma laughed heartily,—­laughter in which he was joined by all the assembled maidens, including the gentle, pensive-eyed Niphrata.  Standing erect in his glistening princely attire, with one hand resting familiarly on Theos’s arm, and the sparkle of mirth lighting up his handsome features, he formed the greatest contrast imaginable to the little shrunken old personage, who, clinging convulsively to his staff, was entirely absorbed in his efforts to control and overcome his sudden and unpleasant attack of threatened suffocation.

“Theos, my friend,”—­he said, still laughing—­“Thou must know the admirable Zabastes,—­a man of vast importance in his own opinion!  Have done with thy wheezing,”—­he continued, vehemently thumping the struggling old gentleman on the back—­“Here is another one of the minstrel craft thou hatest,—­hast aught of bitterness in thy barbed tongue wherewith to welcome him as guest to mine abode?”

Thus adjured, the old man peered up at Theos inquisitively, wiping away the tears that coughing had brought into his eyes, and after a minute or two began also to laugh in a smothered, chuckling way,—­a laugh that resembled the croaking of frogs in a marshy pool.

“Another one of the minstrel-craft,” he echoed derisively—­“Aye, aye! ...  Like meets like, and fools consorts with fool.  The guest of Sah-luma, . .  Hearken, young man,—­” and he drew closer, the malign grin widening on his furrowed face,—­“Thou shalt learn enough trash here to stock thee with idiot-songs for a century.  Thou shalt gather up such fragments of stupidity, as shall provide thee with food for all the puling love-sick girls of a nation!  Dost thou write follies also? ... thou shalt not write them here, thou shalt not even think them!—­for here Sah-luma,—­the great, the unrivalled Sah-luma,—­is sole Lord of the land of Poesy.  Poesy,—­by all the gods!—­I would the accursed art had never been invented ... so might the world have been spared many long-drawn nothings, enwoofed in obscure and distracting phraseology! ...  Thou a would-be Poet?—­go to!—­make brick, mend sandals, dig entrenchments, fight for thy country,—­and leave the idle stringing of words, and the tinkling of rhyme, to children like Sah-luma, who play with life instead of living it.”