d star brought the man from the banks of
the Indus. He consulted all the calendars of the East, but none could
tell him about the star. Balthasar, however, was not the man to let
the strange, incomprehensible star escape him. Nothing can be
concealed in God's bosom from an Eastern scholar, for not even God
Himself has a passport for the land of the all-wise. The world is
through them alone and for them alone; man must grow of himself towards
the light as the lotus grows out of the mud. So thought Balthasar, and
felt that life was a failure.

In such wisdom the faith of Orientals lives and moves and has its
being. If man honestly aspires to higher things and tortures his
flesh, it may go better with him in another life. For he must be born
again many times, and must torture his body until it shrivels up, is
freed from sin, and is without desires. Then the soul is released and
is not born again, for Nirvana, the last goal, is reached. Only bad
men continue to live. The nations of India had been demoralised by
that doctrine for centuries. But it did not satisfy wise men.
Balthasar thought: If a man starves through a few dozen lives, then
something good must come out of it. Or is evil good enough to
continue, and good evil enough to cease? Balthasar sought better
counsel. He sought throughout the universe for a peg on which to hang
a new, more beneficial philosophy of life. When, then, he saw the new
star in the sky, he never ceased looking at it. And, lo! it too took
the road from east to west which all men traversed. What was there
yonder in the sunset that all went towards it, on earth as in heaven?
Could not one particular star swim against the stream? True, this new
heavenly pilgrim took an unusual path; he leaned somewhat to the north
of the barbarous folk. So the wise man of the east left the fragrant
gardens of India and followed the star. On the road he was joined by
two Oriental princes and their suites, who were also seeking they knew
not what.

And one night the three wise men saw in the heavens an extraordinary
constellation, a group of stars hitherto unknown to any of them.

[Illustration: Diagram of constellation of stars, using asterisks for
the stars, spelling out "INRI".]

They looked at the constellation for a long while, and Balthasar
thought it was like writing. They brought all their wisdom to bear on
it, but could not explain it, for all it shone so brightly. Did the
gods me