Now when the king saw the inhabitants becoming more like the human
beings he had known, he felt that he was solitary, and he desired to
have some intercourse with them. But when he appeared amongst them they
recognized him at once as some one more powerful than themselves, and
were afraid of him. In their alarm they tried to lay hands on him. When
he, to prevent their attacks, withdrew his continued bearing the
difference of pain in their actions, those who were attacking him sank
into apathy and became as the children whom he had first found.
And a horrible report sprang up amongst the inhabitants of a terrible
being who came amongst them, and who struck all who looked on him with
torpor and death. So the king ceased to walk amongst them. Still it was
long since he had heard the sound of a voice speaking to him, and he
wished for a companion. He sought again the old man, and standing at the
edge of the chasm he called upon him.
And the old man appeared. “Art thou weary, O king, of thy task?”
“Nay,” replied the king; “but I wish to make myself known to the
inhabitants that I may speak with them and they with me.”
And the old man counselled him to give some of his rays to one amongst
the beings, for then this being having these rays and the power of
bearing pain for another other than himself, would be like the king, and
being like him would understand him.
Now the king sought over the whole of the valley, and of all the
inhabitants he found one most perfect in form and in mind. He was the
son of a king, and destined to reign in his turn over a numerous people.
And the king gave him some of his rays, straight rays going forth from
the prince to others.
And immediately the prince awoke as it were from a dream. And he
comprehended existence, and saw that in reality the pain and the
pleasure were equal. And when he had seen this, and knew the power of
the rays, and how by bearing pain he could make others pass through
pleasure and pain, and call those sleeping into activity; when the
prince knew this, he cried out:
“One thing succeeds another in the valley; pain follows pleasure, and
pleasure follows pain. But the cause of all being is in bearing pain.
Wherefore,” he cried, “let us seek an end to this show. Let us pray to
be delivered, that at last, pain ceasing, we may pass into nothingness.”
Thus the prince, apprehending the cause of existence, felt that it was
pain, and dimly comprehending how the king was bearing pain, and himself
feeling the strenuousness of the effort of using the rays for which the
frame of the inhabitants was unstrung, longed that existence itself
might cease.
Yet all his life his deeds were noble, and he passed from tribe to
tribe, bearing the burdens and calling forth the sleeping to activity.