Short Fiction - Aleksandr Kuprin (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📗

that, from all ends of Palestine, there came to him a vast multitude of people, imploring judgment, advice, help, the settlement of some dispute, as well as the solving of incomprehensible portents and dreams. And men would marvel at the profundity and finesse of Solomon’s answers.

Three thousand proverbs did Solomon compose, and his songs were a thousand and five. He dictated them to two skilled and rapid scribes: Elihoreph and Ahiah, the sons of Shisha, and afterwards collated what both had written. Always did he clothe his thoughts in choice expressions, for a word fitly spoken is like an apple of gold in a bowl of translucent sardonyx;17 and also for that the words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one Shepherd. “A word is a spark in the motion of the heart,”⁠—thus saith the king. And Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of the Aegyptians. For he was above all men in wisdom; wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Dardra, the sons of Mahol. But he was already beginning to weary of the beauty of ordinary human wisdom, and no longer did it have its former value in his eyes. With a restless and searching mind did he thirst after that higher wisdom, which the Lord possessed in the beginning of His way, before His works of old, set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was; that wisdom which was His great artificer when He set a compass upon the face of the deep. And Solomon found it not.

The king mastered the teachings of the magi of Chaldaea and Nineveh; the science of the astrologers of Abydos, Sais, and Memphis; the secrets of the Assyrian sorcerers, mystagogues, and epopts, and of the fatidicae of Baktria and Persepolis; and he had become convinced that their knowledge was but the knowledge of mortals.

Also did he seek for wisdom in the occult rites of ancient pagan faiths, and for that reason visited idol-temples and offered up oblations to the mighty Baal-Lebanon, who was honoured under the name of Melkart⁠—the god of creation and destruction, the patron of navigation in Tyre and Sidon⁠—called Ammon in the Oasis of Sibakh, where his idol would nod his head to indicate the routes to festal processions; called Bel by the Chaldaeans, and Moloch by the Canaanites. He also bowed down before his spouse⁠—the dread and passionate Astarte, who bore in other temples the names of Ishtar, Isaar, Baaltis, Ashera, Istar-Belet, and Atargatis. He libated holy oil and burnt incense before Isis and Osiris of Aegypt⁠—sister and brother, joined in wedlock while still in the womb of their mother and there conceiving the god Horus; and before Derketo, the pisciform Tyrian goddess; and before Anubis of the dog’s head, the god of embalming; and before the Babylonian Cannes; and Dagon of the Philistines; and the Assyrian Abdenago; and Utsabu, the Ninevehian idol; and the sombre Kybele; and Bel Marduk, the patron of Babylon⁠—the god of the planet Jupiter; and the Chaldaean Or⁠—the god of eternal fire; and the mystic Omorca, the first mother of the gods, whom Bel had cloven in two parts, creating heaven and earth out of them, and out of her head, men; and the king bowed down also before the goddess Anaïtis, in whose honour the virgins of Phoenicia, Lydia, Armenia and Persia gave up their bodies to passersby, as a sacred offering, at the threshold of temples.

But the king found in the pagan rites nought save drunkenness, night orgies, lechery, incest, and lusts contrary to nature; and in their dogmas he perceived vain discourse and deception. But he forbade none of his subjects to offer up sacrifices to a favourite god, and he even built upon the Mount of Olives an idol-temple for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, at the supplication of the beautiful, pensive Ellaan, the Moabite, the then favorite wife of the king. One thing only could not Solomon abide and pursued with death⁠—the bringing of children in sacrifice.

And he saw in his seekings that that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them: as one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast. And the king understood, that in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. He also learned that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of mirth is heaviness. And so one morning he dictated to Elihoreph and Ahiah:

“ ‘All is vanity of vanities and vexation of spirits’⁠—thus saith Ecclesiastes.”

But at that time the king did not yet know that God would soon send him a love so tender and ardent, so devoted and beautiful⁠—more precious in itself than riches, fame, and wisdom; more precious than life itself, for it values not even life, nor hath fear of death.

IV

The king had a vineyard at Baal-hamon, upon the southern slope of Bath-El-Khav, to the south of the idol-temple of Moloch; thither did the king love to withdraw in the hours of his great meditations. Pomegranate-, olive-, and wild apple-trees, interspersed with cedars and cypresses, bordered it on three sides upon the mountain, while on the fourth it was fenced off from the road by a high stone wall. And other vineyards, lying about, also belonged to Solomon; he let them out unto keepers, each one for a thousand pieces of silver.

Only with the dawn came to an end in the palace the magnificent feast which the King of Israel was giving in honour of the emissaries of the King of Assyria, the good Tiglath-Pileser. Despite his fatigue, Solomon could not fall asleep this morn. Neither wine nor hippocras had befogged the stout heads of the Assyrians, nor loosened their canny tongues. But the penetrating