SECOND QUESTIONER: In the Chamber of Rats.
KING: Begone!
[Exeunt QUESTIONERS.
So ... It was the gods.
[The acolytes are crouched upon the floor. He does not notice them since they ceased to moan.
The gods! With what dark and dreadful thing have they clouded the future?
Well, I will face it! But what is it? Is it one of those things a strong man can bear? Or is it--?
The future is more terrible than the grave, that has its one secret only.
No man, he said, could say that the gods had advised me ill when they bade me drink out of a poisoned cup.
What have the gods seen? What dreadful work have they overlooked where Destiny sits alone, making evil years? The gods, he said, who alone see future things.
Yes, I have known men who never were warned by the gods, and did not drink poison, and came upon evil days, suddenly like a ship upon rocks no mariner knows. Yes, poison to some of them would have been very precious.
The gods have warned me and I have not hearkened, and must go on alone: must enter that strange country of the future whose paths are so dark to man ... to meet a doom there that the gods have seen.
The gods have seen it! How shall I thwart the gods? How fight against the shapers of the hills?
Would that I had been warned. Would I had heeded when they bade me drink of the cup the Ambassador said was poisoned.
[Far off is heard that merry bar of music blown by the AMBASSADOR'S HERALD on his horn.]
Is it too late?
There it stands yet with its green emeralds winking.
[He clutches it and looks down into it.
How like to wine it is, which is full of dreams. It is silent and dreamy like the gods, whose dreams we are.
Only a moment in their deathless minds: then the dream passes.
[He lifts up his arm and drinks it seated upon his throne with his head back and the great cup before his face. The audience begin to wonder when he will put it down. Still he remains in the attitude of a drinker. The acolytes begin to peer eagerly. Still he remains upright with the great cup to his lips. The acolytes patter away and the KING is left alone.
[Enter the KING'S POLITICIAN hurriedly.He goes up to the KING and seizes his right arm and tries to drag the cup away from his lips, but the KING is rigid and his arm cannot be moved. He steps back lifting up his hands.
POLITICIAN: Oh-h!
[Exit. You hear him announcing solemnly
King Hamaran ... is dead!
[A murmur is heard of men, at first mournful. It grows louder and louder and then breaks into these clear words.
Zarabardes is King! Zarabardes is King! Rejoice! Rejoice! Zarabardes is King! Zarabardes! Zarabardes! Zarabardes!
CURTAIN.
THE FLIGHT OF THE QUEEN
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
THE PRINCE OF ZOON.
PRINCE MELIFLOR.
QUEEN ZOOMZOOMARMA.
LADY OOZIZI.
OOMUZ, a Common Soldier.
THE GLORY OF XIMENUNG.
THE OVERLORD OF MOOMOOMON.
PRINCE HUZ.
SCENE I
Time: June.
Scene: In the Palace of Zoorm; the Hall of the Hundred Princes.
The Princes sit at plain oaken tables with pewter mugs before them. They wear bright grass-green cloaks of silk; they might wear circlets of narrow silver with one large hyacinth petal rising from it at intervals of an inch.
OOMUZ, a Common Soldier, huge and squat, with brown skin and dense black beard, stands just inside the doorway, holding a pike, guarding the golden treasure.
The golden treasure lies in a heap three or four feet high near the right back corner.
SENTRIES, also brown-skinned and bearded, carrying pikes, pass and repass outside the great doorway.
THE GLORY OF XIMENUNG: Heigho, Moomoomon.
THE OVERLORD OF MOOMOOMON: Heigho, Glory of Ximenung.
XIMENUNG: Weary?
MOOMOOMON: Aye, weary.
ANOTHER: Heigho.
PRINCE MELIFLOR (sympathetically): What wearies you?
MOOMOOMON: The idle hours and the idle days. Heigho.
OTHERS: Heigho.
MELIFLOR: Speak not against the idle hours, Moomoomon.
MOOMOOMON: Why then, lord of the sweet lands?
MELIFLOR: Because in idleness are all things, all things good.
XIMENUNG: Heigho, I am weary of the idle hours.
MOOMOOMON: You would work then?
XIMENUNG: No-o. That is not our destiny.
MELIFLOR: Let us be well contented with our lot. The idle hours are our sacred treasure.
XIMENUNG: Yes, I am well contented, and yet ...
MOOMOOMON (contemplatively): And yet ...
XIMENUNG: I sometimes dream that were it not for our glorious state, and this tradition of exalted ease, it might, it might be pleasant ...
MOOMOOMON: To toil, to labour, to raid the golden hoards.
XIMENUNG: Yes, Moomoomon.
MELIFLOR: Never! Never!
OTHERS: No. No. No.
ANOTHER: And yet ...
MELIFLOR: No, never. We should lose our glorious ease, the heritage that none may question.
XIMENUNG: What heritage is that, Prince Meliflor?
MELIFLOR: It is all the earth. To labour is to lose it.
MOOMOOMON: If we could toil we should gain some spot of earth that our labour would seem to make our own. How happily the workers come home at evening.
MELIFLOR: It would be to lose all.
PRINCE OF ZOON: How lose it, Meliflor?
MELIFLOR: To us alone the idle hours are given. The sky, the fields, the woods, the summer winds are for us alone. All others put the earth to uses. This or that field has this or that use; here one may go and another may not. They have each their bit of earth and become slaves to its purpose. But for us, ah! for us, is all; the gift of the idle hours.
SOME: Hurrah! Hurrah for the idle hours.
ZOON: Heigho. The idle hours weary me.
MELIFLOR: They give us all the earth and sky to contemplate. Both are for us.
MOOMOOMON: True. Let us drink, and speak of the blue sky.
MELIFLOR (lifting mug): And all our glorious heritage.
XIMENUNG (putting hand to mug): Aye, it is glorious, and yet ...
[Enter the RAIDERS of the Golden Hoard with spears and, in the other hand, leather wallets the size of your fist; these they cast on the heap. Nuggets the size of big filberts escape from some so that the heap is partly leather and partly gold. These wallets should be filled with nuggets of lead, about the size described, not one lump of lead and not sawdust or rags. Nothing destroys illusion on the stage more than a cannon ball falling with a soft pat. They look scowlingly at the Princes.