“Something strange has happened,” King Amor answered.  “I have felt something I have not felt before.  I was riding my horse around the field on the plateau and he saw something which he refused to pass.  It was a young leopard watching us from a tree.  My horse reared and snorted.  He would not listen to me, but backed and wheeled around.  I tried in vain to persuade him, and suddenly, when I saw I could not make him obey me, this strange new feeling rushed through all my body.  I grew hot and knew my face was scarlet, my heart beat faster and my blood seemed to boil in my veins.  I shouted out harsh, ugly sounds—­I forgot that all things are brothers—­I lifted my hand and clenched it and struck my horse again and again.  I loved him no longer, I felt that he no longer loved me.  I am hot and wearied and heavy from it still.  I feel no more joy.  Was it pain I felt?  I have never felt pain and do not know.  Was it pain?”

“It was a worse thing,” answered the Ancient One.  “It was anger.  When a man is overcome by anger he has a poisoned fever.  He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others, he throws away time in which he might have gained the end he most desires.  There is no time for anger in the world.”

So King Amor learned the uselessness of anger, for they sat long upon the battlements while the Ancient One told him how its poison worked in the veins and weakened the strongest man until he was made a fool.  That night Amor lay under the sky looking at his myriad brothers, the stars, and drawing calm from them.

“If you lie through the night upon the battlements and think only of the stillness and the stars you will forget your anger and its poison will die away.  If you put into your mind a beautiful thought it will take the place of the evil one.  There is no room for darkness in the mind of him who thinks only of the stars.”  This had been said to him by the Ancient One.

Upon the plateau at the foot of the crag on which the castle stood there were marvelous walled gardens.  The sad young Queen of the first King Mordreth had planted them, and after her death they had been left to run wild.  Since the baby King Amor had been brought to the mountain top the Ancient One and his servitor had made them bloom again.  As soon as he was old enough to hold a small spade Amor had worked in the beds.  All things grew for him as if his touch were a spell; birds and bees and butterflies flocked round him as he labored.  He knew what the bees hummed and where they flew to load themselves with honey; butterflies lighted upon his hands and taught him strange things.  Birds told him of their travels, and brought him seeds from far countries which he planted in his gardens and which bloomed into marvelous flowers.  A swallow who loved him very much and who had seen many wonderful lands once brought him a seed from an emperor’s secret garden which none but four of his own slaves had ever seen.  These slaves had been born in the garden and would never leave it while they lived.