The poet and his father passed that night together, as they had passed
so many others, in the little room. The blind man, seated by the fire,
alternately dreamed and mused, while his father conned the book which
was spread open on the table. For the last time he conned it with the
blood like water in his veins. Yet in him now was the mute acceptance
of those who have passed through the whole gamut of their suffering,
upon whom experience has nothing more to confer.
In the dead of the night, while the dying poet was murmuring strange
words in his sleep, the old man took for the last time from their
receptacle the chalice, the bistoury and the stylus. A hundred times
had his flesh been pierced in vain by that inexorable point, yet again
this night he made trial of it, and for the last time.
And now his trial was not without reward. No sooner had he dipped the
stylus in the red blood of his veins than it began to traverse the
page. For the first time since those fingers had grasped the pen, the
fruit of eighty years of vicissitude upon the wonderful earth flowed
to the parchment. Line by line grew the writing. That which he had
laboured these long years to express, that for which he had prayed,
fasted and kept vigil, was now born without a pang in this brief but
magic hour.
Faint with joy, yet also filled with a nameless fear, the old man
addressed the poet as soon as he awoke.
“Achilles,” he said, “wilt thou write thy page in the Book of the Ages,
in order that our dynasty may continue itself?”
“Nay, my father,” said the poet, with a noble conviction; “it is not
for me to inscribe my page in the Book. For are not the conditions
fulfilled by which our dynasty shall cease? A thousand years, my
father, has it striven to affirm itself; and it is written that in the
magic hour it shall achieve its apotheosis, it shall be effaced, in
obedience to Universal Law. Yet be of good courage, O my father, for it
perishes only to achieve re-embodiment in an ampler notation. In the
hour this little treatise upon human life is wrought, the archives of
our dynasty are as seed scattered broadcast upon the four winds for
the service of all the peoples in the world.”
Such words of high authority proceeding from those revered lips filled
the old man with a courage and a resolute acceptance of that which was
about to befall, which he had never hoped to achieve.
“Is it seemly, O Achilles,” said the old man, having derived a vital
strength from the poet’s wisdom, “to efface the means by which a new
lustre is given to the heavens?”
“It is as seemly, O my father,” the poet answered, “as it is to pluck
the ripe fruit from the stalk.”
It was therefore in no mood of passion, of wild soul-searching, that
the old man yielded those magic parchments which for a thousand years
had been as the archives of his race. He bowed to the decree of fate
with that calm acceptancy which, in the end, had ever been the crown
that awaited each individual destiny.
Yet, when this volume, which was a thousand years old, had passed for
ever from the precincts of the little room, he did not reveal the
marvellous circumstance to him who was blind.
However, in the evening of that day, the poet said, as if armed by a
prophetic vision, “My father, why dost thou turn no more to the Book of
the Ages?”
The old man took the poet’s fragile hand to his lips with a humble
gesture of obeisance.
“Because, O Achilles,” he said, “is it not seemly, since thou thyself
wouldst have it so, that when the ripe fruit is plucked the stalk shall
be discarded?”
“Verily, my father, thy wisdom is commendable,” said the poet, speaking
in the perfect simplicity of the blood royal.