“Up, lazy rascals!” cried Sah-luma imperiously, as with the extreme point of his sandaled foot he touched the dimpled, shiny back of the nearest boy—­“Up, and away! ...  Fetch rose-water and sweet perfumes hither!  By the gods! ye have let the incense in yonder burner smoulder!”—­and he pointed to a massive brazen vessel, gorgeously ornamented, from whence rose but the very faintest blue whiff of fragrant smoke—­“Off with ye both, ye basking blackamoors! bring fresh frankincense,—­and palm-leaves wherewith to stir this heated air—­hence and back again like a lightning-flash! ... or out of my sight forever!”

While he spoke, the little fellows stood trembling and ducking their woolly heads, as though they half expected to be seized by their irate master and flung, like black balls, out into the wilderness of flowers, but glancing timidly up and perceiving that even in the midst of his petulance he smiled, they took courage, and as soon as he had ceased they darted off with the swiftness of flying arrows, each striving to outstrip the other in a race across the terrace and garden.  Sah-luma laughed as he watched them disappear,—­and then stepping back into the interior of the apartment he turned to Theos and bade him be seated.  Theos sank unresistingly into a low, velvet-cushioned chair richly carved and inlaid with ivory, and stretching his limbs indolently therein, surveyed with new and ever-growing admiration the supple, elegant figure of his host, who, throwing himself full length on a couch covered with leopard-skins, folded his arms behind his head, and eyed his guest with a complacent smile of vanity and self-approval.

“’Tis not an altogether unfitting retreat for a poet’s musings”—­ he said, assuming an air of indifference, as he glanced round his luxurious, almost royally appointed room—­“I have heard of worse!  —­But truly it needs the highest art of all known nations to worthily deck a habitation wherein the divine Muse may daily dwell, ... nevertheless, air, light, and flowers are not lacking, and on these methinks I could subsist, were I deprived of all other things!”

Theos sat silent, looking about him wistfully.  Was ever poet, king, or even emperor, housed more sumptuously than this, he thought? ... as his eyes wandered to the domed ceiling, wreathed with carved clusters of grapes and pomegranates,—­the walls, frescoed with glowing scenes of love and song-tournament,—­the groups of superb statuary that gleamed whitely out of dusky, velvet-draped corners,—­the quaintly shaped book-cases, overflowing with books, and made so as to revolve round and round at a touch, or move to and fro on noiseless wheels,—­the grand busts, both in bronze and marble, that stood on tall pedestals or projecting bracket; and,—­while he dimly noted all these splendid evidences of unlimited wealth and luxury,—­the perfume and lustre of the place, the glitter of gold and azure, silver and scarlet, the oriental languor pervading the very air, and above all the rich amber and azure-tinted light that bathed every object in a dream-like and fairy radiance, plunged his senses into a delicious confusion,—­a throbbing fever of delight to which he could give no name, but which permeated every fibre of his being.