He felt half blinded with the brilliancy of the scene,—­the dazzling glow of color,—­the sheen of deep and delicate hues cunningly intermixed and contrasted,—­the gorgeous lavishness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea to the very windows,—­and though many thoughts flitted hazily through his brain, he could not shape them into utterance.  He stared vaguely at the floor,—­it was paved with variegated mosaic and strewn with the soft, dark, furry skins of wild animals,—­at a little distance from where he sat there was a huge bronze lectern supported by a sculptured griffin with horns,—­horns which curving over at the top, turned upward again in the form of candelabra,—­the harp-bearer had brought in the harp, and it now stood in a conspicuous position decked with myrtle, some of the garlands woven by the maidens being no doubt used for this purpose.

Yet there was something mirage-like and fantastic in the splendor that everywhere surrounded him,—­he felt as though he were one of the spectators in a vast auditorium where the curtain had just risen on the first scene of the play He was dubiously considering in his own perplexed mind, whether such princely living were the privilege, or right, or custom of poets in general, when Sah-luma spoke again, waving his hand toward one of the busts near him—­a massive, frowning head, magnificently sculptured.

“There is the glorious Orazel!” he said—­“The father, as we all must own, of the Art of Poesy, and indeed of all true literature!  Yet there be some who swear he never lived at all—­aye! though his poems have come down to us,—­and many are the arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification.  Everything he has written bears the impress of the same master-touch,—­nevertheless garrulous controversialists hold that his famous work the ‘Ruva-Kalama’ descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its ‘improved’ present condition.  ‘Improved!’” and Sah-luma laughed disdainfully,—­“As if the mumbling of an epic poem from grandsire to grandson could possibly improve it! ... it would rather be deteriorated, if not altogether changed into the merest doggerel!  Nay, nay!—­the ‘Ruva-Kalama,’ is the achievement of one great mind,—­not twenty Oruzels were born in succession to write it,—­there was, there could be only one, and he, by right supreme, is chief of the Bards Immortal!  As well might fools hereafter wrangle together and say there were many Sah-lumas! ... only I have taken good heed posterity shall know there was only one,—­ unmatched for love-impassioned singing throughout the length and breadth of the world!”

He sprang up from his recumbent posture and attracted Theos’s attention to another bust even finer than the last,—­it was placed on a pedestal wreathed at the summit and at the base with laurel.