Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/87



David lay upon a royal couch of cypress wood. From the ceiling swung huge receptacles carved of bronze, from which the smoke of burning perfumes rose, and whose dim, wavering light, showed carven cedarn walls and a ceiling starred with plaques of gold.

The night was warm and windless. From the city from time to time one could hear the measured tread of watchmen, and the clang of swords; from the vineyards that swept about Jerusalem like a girdle of green, came the voices of men who guarded the wine. The moon, resembling a warrior’s shield of gold, reflected itself in the mirror of the flat roofs and flung fleeting, ghostly shadows about the twelve great gates of the city. The light fell upon the city wall, the purification pool, gardens filled with bee hives, long alleys of sycamore trees, of palm and fig trees. It fell upon tethered camels becoming restless at approach of day. It saw its golden surface in deep cisterns. It shone upon graves in which the bones of ancestors rested under the curse or the blessing of the sons of Israel. Night swept across the world of space like a prodigious face across the mind of the dreaming prophet.

The king lay like one dead upon his bed. Motion-