Later, in the still night, however--still, though air vibrated
everywhere, as though the desert breathed an ether which was to fill
men's veins with that which quieted the fret and fever of life's
disillusions and forgeries and failures--David's speech with Ebn Ezra Bey
was of a different sort. If, as it seems ever in the desert, an invisible
host of beings, once mortal, now immortal, but suspensive and
understanding, listened to the tale he unfolded, some glow of pity must
have possessed them; for it was an Iliad of herculean struggle against
absolute disaster, ending with the bitter news of his grandfather's
death. It was the story of AEdipus overcome by events too strong for soul
to bear. In return, as the stars wheeled on, and the moon stole to the
zenith, majestic and slow, Ebn Ezra offered to his troubled friend only
the philosophy of the predestinarian, mingled with the calm of the stoic.
But something antagonistic to his own dejection, to the Muslim's
fatalism, emerged from David's own altruism, to nerve him to hope and
effort still.
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