It was the bird which the traveler had received from the Princess.  He drew it forth, but did not say whose gift it was nor whence it came, because of the contempt with which his companion had spoken of the mystic country and its Rulers.  Already he began to waver in his loyalty towards the Princess, and to desire greatly the knowledges of which the stranger told him.  For this traveler, though he cared nothing for pleasure, or for the beauty of sensuous things, was greatly taken by the wish to be wise; only he did not rightly know in what wisdom consists.  He thought it lay in the acquirement of facts, whereas really it is the power by which facts are transcended.

“That is a foreign bird,” observed the scientific man, examining it carefully through his spectacles, “and quite a curiosity.  I do not remember having ever seen one like it.  The note, too, is peculiar.  In some of its tones it reminds me of the nightingale.  No doubt it is the descendant of a developed species of a nightingale, carefully selected and artificially bred from one generation to another.  Wonderful modifications of species may be obtained in this manner, as experiments with fancy breeds of pigeons has amply proved.  Permit me to examine the bill more closely.  Yes, yes—­a nightingale certainly—­and yet—­indeed, I ought not to decide in haste.  I should greatly like to have the opinion of Professor Effaress on the subject.  But what noise is that yonder?”

For just then a terrible hubbub arose among a crowd of people congregated under the portico of a large and magnificent building a little way from the place where the scientific man and the intellectual traveler stood conversing.  This building, the facade of which was adorned all over with bas-reliefs of Liberty and Progress, and modern elderly gentlemen in doctors’ gowns and laurel wreaths, with rolls of paper and microscopes, was, in fact, a great Scientific Institution, and into it the procession of learned personages whom the travelers had met on their way had entered, followed by a great multitude of admirers and enthusiasts.  In this edifice the solemn rites which the votary of Science had described were to be held, and a vast congregation filled its halls.  All at once, just as the sacrifices were about to begin, a solitary man arose in the midst of the hushed assembly, and protested, as once of old, by the banks of the far-away Ganges, Siddartha Buddha had protested against the bloody offerings of the priests of Indra.  And much after the same manner as Buddha had spoken this man spoke, of the high duty of manhood, of the splendour of justice, of the certainty of retribution, and of the true meaning of Progress and Freedom, the noblest reaches of which are spiritual, transcending all the baser and meaner utilities of the physical nature.  And when the high priests of Science, not like the priests of Indra in older tines, answered