ed before them in their most captivating forms, and
the heart of Alroy responded to their magnificence. 'A glorious vision!'
said the Prince of the Captivity.

'Very different from Hamadan,' said the physician of the Caliph.

'To-day I have seen wonders,' said Alroy.

'The world is opening to you,' said Honain.

Alroy did not reply; but after some minutes he said, in a hesitating
voice, 'Who was that lady?'

'The Princess Schirene,' replied Honain, 'the favourite daughter of the
Caliph. Her mother was a Georgian and a Giaour.'

The moonlight fell upon the figure of Alroy lying on a couch; his face
was hidden by his arm. He was motionless, but did not sleep.

He rose and paced the chamber with agitated steps; sometimes he stopped,
and gazed on the pavement, fixed in abstraction. He advanced to the
window, and cooled his feverish brow in the midnight air.

An hour passed away, and the young Prince of the Captivity remained
fixed in the same position. Suddenly he turned to a tripod of porphyry,
and, seizing a rosary of jewels, pressed it to his lips.

'The Spirit of my dreams, she comes at last; the form for which I have
sighed and wept; the form which rose upon my radiant vision when I shut
my eyes against the jarring shadows of this gloomy world.

'Schirene! Schirene! here in this solitude I pour to thee the passion
long stored up: the passion of my life, no common life, a life full of
deep feeling and creative thought. O beautiful! O more than beautiful!
for thou to me art as a dream unbroken: why art thou not mine? why lose
a moment in our glorious lives, and balk our destiny of half its bliss?

'Fool, fool, hast thou forgotten? The rapture of a prisoner in his cell,
whose wild fancy for a moment belies his fetters! The daughter of the
Caliph and a Jew!

'Give me my fathers' sceptre.

'A plague on talismans! Oh! I need no inspiration but her memory,
no magic but her name. By heavens! I will enter this glorious city a
conqueror, or die.

'Why, what is Life? for meditation mingles ever with my passion: why,
what is Life? Throw accidents to the dogs, and tear off the painted
mask of false society! Here am I a hero; with a mind that can devise all
things, and a heart of superhuman daring, with youth, with vigour, with
a glorious lineage, with a form that has made full many a lovely
maiden of our tribe droop her fair head by Hamadan's sweet fount, and I
am--nothing!

'Out on Society! 'twas not made for me.