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And they are malicious. What cannot happen in two centuries? Hyzlo reflected sadly upon Moslemism, upon Mormonism, upon the vagaries of a strange American sect at whose head was said to be a female pope. The similarity of circumstances in the lives of Buddha and Christ also annoyed him. Both were born of virgins, both renounced the world, both were saviours.
Hyzlo eagerly awaited a reply, though he could not account for this curiosity. "Yes," answered Philo, lightly, "there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation. Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter.
Hallali! Brother Hyzlo sat in his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell upon the large pages of a book in his hand, the window through which it streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the world.
Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun looking like a sulphur-coloured cymbal sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the same attitude when the blue of the heavens ah! but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue melted into peacock and cool saffron hues.
We are His handiwork. Are we then to blame for our imperfections? Is not Jesus, instead of a mediator, rather a votive offering to the wounded vanity of the great Jehovah? Was not Prometheus a light broke in upon Hyzlo. Prometheus, a myth, Buddha a myth. All myths. There were other virgin-born saviours. Krishna, Mithra, Buddha. Vishnu had not one but nine incarnations.
From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine and had once evoked for him visions of antique splendour. But Brother Hyzlo no longer cared for mundane delights.
"Alexandria?" he called out as he was jostled by a melon-seller, and startled by the fluted invitations of a young girl an antique statue come to life. "Of course it is Alexandria," replied a deep, harsh voice at his elbow. He turned. It was his friend Philo. "You have at last emerged from your day-dream, Hyzlo! I thought, as our bark clove the water, that you were enjoying visions."
And it seemed to Hyzlo that he had just awakened from a bizarre dream of a monastic cell, to more beautiful sights and shapes and sounds. The pair now traversed the quay, past the signal masts, the fortified towers, pushing through the throng of sailors, courtesans, philosophers, fruitsellers, soldiers, beggars, and idle rich toward the spacious city.
Alas! the Son of Man had indeed no spot to lay his head. And why had He made no sign when on earth! Brother Hyzlo wept bitter tears. But he wiped them away as he considered the similarity of the massacre of the Innocents in Judea and the massacre of the male children ordered by the wicked Indian Rajah of Madura, who feared the Krishna, just conceived by divine agency.
What a glorious play it will make! I have named it The Third Kingdom, Hyzlo. What a glorious idea it is, Hyzlo the greatest drama the world has ever witnessed!" "The greatest drama the world has ever witnessed" ... mumbled his disciple.... The sun still shone on the cold stone flagging, and upon the wall facing him hung the crucifix. But the motes no longer danced merrily in the light.
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