m they arrested a
poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to
have been an indigent and aged carpenter. This Joshua, or Ieshua, was
driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor
fishermen on Lake Gennesareth. There he joined a sect called the
Baptists, because their founder, a socialist named Ioakanaan, poured
water on the heads of the converted. Ieshua never married and was
suspected of idolatrous practices, which he had absorbed from hermits of
the Egyptian Thebaid. Josephus, a wise friend and companion of my youth,
wrote me these details. He said that Ieshua disappeared after his mad
attempt to take Jerusalem by storm, riding--as is depicted the Bona
Dea--on the back of a humble animal. Yet, if you wish to appeal to the
common folk, make your hero a deposed king or divinity, who walks
familiarly among the poor, as walked the gods at the dawn of time with
the daughters of men. I depict my protagonist as a half-cracked Jew. I
call him Iesus Christos--after Krishna; and this poor man's god proposes
to redeem the world, to place the lowly in the seats of the mighty--he
is an Anarchos, as they would say in Athens. He promises the Kingdom of
God to those who follow him; but only a few do. He is the friend of
outcasts, prostitutes, criminals. And though he does not triumph on
earth, nevertheless he is the spiritual ruler of earth; he is the Son of
the Trinity which comprises the Father and Holy Ghost. The contending
forces to my hero will be incarnated by Pontius Pilatus, the Roman
governor, and Judas of Kerioth, a very dangerous and powerful Hebrew
politician--a man of very liberal ideas, one who believed in the
supremacy of the West. What a glorious play it will make! I have named
it The Third Kingdom, Hyzlo. What a glorious idea it is, Hyzlo--the
greatest drama the world has ever witnessed!"

III

THE DOVE

"The greatest drama the world has ever witnessed" ... mumbled his
disciple.... The sun still shone on the cold stone flagging, and upon
the wall facing him hung the crucifix. But the motes no longer danced
merrily in the light. Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting
one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure
and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun--looking like a
sulphur-coloured cymbal--sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the
same attitude when the blue of the heavens--ah! but not that gorgeous,
hard Alexandrian blue