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"Who can be so like Bartja? tell me quickly," interrupted the king, "I am very curious to know this." "He declared that he was the brother of your high-priest, that his name was Gaumata, and that this would be proved by the pass which we should find in the sleeve of his Magian's robe.
But, he added and he drew himself up proudly he should soon possess the Magian's art, for there was no kind of learning he could not master; even as a boy he had proved that to his teachers.
An eternity perhaps, like that which Mirza Shah experienced when, at the Persian Magian's command, he crept under a tub, and dreamed away a whole lifetime in a single moment. At least, Michal fancied that it must have been a very long time, for on coming to herself again she said, with a sigh: "What a pity that the morning is breaking! Look! there is the dawn already?"
A superior smile parted the Magian's lips; he stepped back into the room, followed by Annianus, and replied: "You know how many who call themselves Magians will crowd round Caesar, and the fame of Sosibius, Hananja, and Kaimis, is not much behind mine. Each plies his art by his own formulas, though he may call himself a Pythagorean or what not.
And then she remembered Korinna, whose fair, pale face had been strangely lighted up by the lamp she carried; and, again, the Magian's assurance that the souls of the departed were endowed with every faculty possessed by the living, and that "those who knew" could see them and converse with them.
I know that your father was a Magian and your mother a Magian's daughter; that they both died early and you were placed under the care of the Destur Ixabates, the father of Oropastes, and grew up with his children. Gaumata and Mandane, how well the two names sound together! Mandane and Gaumata! If I were a poet I should call my hero Gaumata and his lady-love Mandane."
Tiny and infinitely remote, yet perfect in every part, it pulsated in the enormous vault as if the three jewels in the Magian's breast had mingled and been transformed into a living heart of light. He bowed his head. He covered his brow with his hands. "It is the sign," he said. "The King is coming, and I will go to meet him."
And he obeyed this time also, though the person to whom a magic spell bound him was a fleeing woman. It is terrible. And yet, have I a right to execrate the thrall of the beaker? Scarcely! For without the Magian's glittering vessel a secret voice in my soul has whispered the warning a thousand times during the sleepless nights he would have taken another on the galley.
The bony fingers gripped the hem of the Magian's robe and held him fast. Artaban's heart leaped to his throat, not with fear, but with a dumb resentment at the importunity of this blind delay. How could he stay here in the darkness to minister to a dying stranger? What claim had this unknown fragment of human life upon his compassion or his service?
The painter was familiar with this postulate, and was curious to hear the Magian's reply; but he could not follow his argument till he ended by saying, rather more emphatically: "You, even, do not deny the physical connection of things; but I know the power that causes it.
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