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For fifteen days Balthasar lay in the agonies of delirium. He raved without ceasing of the steaming cauldron and the moss in the ravine, and he incessantly cried aloud for Balkis. At last, on the sixteenth day, he opened his eyes and saw at his bedside Sembobitis and Menkera, but he did not see the queen.

“Where is she? What is she doing?”

“My lord,” replied Menkera, “she is closeted with the King of Comagena.”

“They are doubtless agreeing to an exchange of merchandise,” added the sage Sembobitis.

“But be not so disturbed, my lord, or you will redouble your fever.”

“I must see her,” cried Balthasar. And he flew towards the apartments of the queen, and neither the sage nor the eunuch could restrain him. On nearing the bedchamber he beheld the King of Comagena come forth covered with gold and glittering like the sun. Balkis, smiling and with eyes closed, lay on a purple couch. “My Balkis, my Balkis!” cried Balthasar. She did not even turn her head but seemed to prolong a dream.

Balthasar approached and took her hand which she rudely snatched away.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Do you ask?” the black king answered, and burst into tears.

She turned on him her hard, calm eyes.

Then he realised that she had forgotten everything, and he reminded her of the night of the stream.

“In truth, my lord,” said she, “I do not know to what you refer. The wine of the palm does not agree with you. You must have dreamed.”

“What,” cried the unhappy king, wringing his hands, “your kisses, and the knife which has left its mark on me, are these dreams?”

She rose; the jewels on her robe made a sound as of hail and flashed forth lightnings.

“My lord,” she said, “it is the hour my council assembles. I have not the leisure to interpret the dreams of your suffering brain. Take some repose. Farewell.”

Balthasar felt himself sinking, but with a supreme effort not to betray his weakness to this wicked woman, he ran to his room where he fell in a swoon and his wound re-opened.

IV

For three weeks he remained unconscious and as one dead, but having on the twenty-second day recovered his senses, he seized the hand of Sembobitis, who, with Menkera, watched over him, and cried, weeping:

“O, my friends, how happy you are, one to be old and the other the same as old. But no! there is no happiness on earth, everything is bad, for love is an evil and Balkis is wicked.”

“Wisdom confers happiness,” replied Sembobitis. “I will try it,” said Balthasar. “But let us depart at once for Ethiopia.” And as he had lost all he loved he resolved to consecrate himself to wisdom and to become a mage. If this decision gave him no especial pleasure it at least restored to him something of tranquillity. Every evening, seated on the terrace of his palace in company with the sage Sembobitis and Menkera the eunuch, he gazed at the palm-trees standing motionless against the horizon, or watched the crocodiles by the light of the moon float down the Nile like trunks of trees.

“One never wearies of admiring the beauties of Nature,” said Sembobitis.

“Doubtless,” said Balthasar, “but there are other things in Nature more beautiful even than palm-trees and crocodiles.”

This he said thinking of Balkis. But Sembobitis, who was old, said:

“There is of course the phenomenon of the rising of the Nile which I have explained. Man is created to understand.”

“He is created to love,” replied Balthasar sighing. “There are things which cannot be explained.”

“And what may those be?” asked Sembobitis.

“A woman’s treason,” the king replied.

Balthasar, however, having decided to become a mage, had a tower built from the summit of which might be discerned many kingdoms and the infinite spaces of Heaven. The tower was constructed of brick and rose high above all other towers. It took no less than two years to build, and Balthasar expended in its construction the entire treasure of the king, his father. Every night he climbed to the top of this tower and there he studied the heavens under the guidance of the sage Sembobitis.