Chapter 10

‘He has been going about for ages, Voldi,’ said Mencius, slowly measuring his words. ‘Up and down, across the world, in every era, in every country—patiently searching for men with lamps in their hands, larger lamps than those of their neighbours or their fathers. And this light-giving god touches the wicks of these unusually capacious lamps with his divine torch.’

‘Go on, please!’ insisted Voldi, when Mencius, having seemed to have made an end of his strange discourse, was counting the sullen, nodding camels as they passed.

‘That’s about as far as I’ve gone into it,’ confessed Mencius vaguely. ‘My favourite god, the Torchbearer, wants the world to have more light, for men to see by—so he keeps on looking for lamps. It must be a very disappointing quest. I marvel at his perseverance. Only a few men—widely separated by leagues and centuries—have borne lamps worthy of the divine fire; and such light as they have kindled has brightened the way for a mere handful of adventurers. As for the multitudes, they still stumble along in the old darkness. Sometimes the Torchbearer lights a large lamp that attracts smaller lamps. Plato brings his lamp to Aristotle, and there is an unprecedented brightness on the path—for a few, for a while. For a little while.’

‘But—the mass of the people, they will keep on groping through the dark,’ mused Voldi. ‘Is that what you believe?’

‘I’d much rather not, of course,’ sighed Mencius. ‘It would please me to hope that the Torchbearer might some day come upon the one great man—with the one powerful lamp that would illumine the highway for us all! But history does not encourage that hope.’

The camel-train had passed now and the dust was clearing. They rode, in thoughtful silence, on to the highway. Mencius pointed to a graceful tower in the distance.

‘Askelon!’ His tone was almost reverential. ‘Now you will see what the Maccabee money made of a squalid, dilapidated little town.’

‘The Maccabees must be a great-hearted family,’ remarked Voldi.

‘That depends on one’s point of view,’ drawled Mencius. ‘According to general opinion the Maccabees are tyrants. Wealthy patrons of the arts,’ he added, ‘are not necessarily great-hearted. The finest architecture and sculpture in the world may be found in Rome, but plenty of people could testify that we Romans are not benevolent.’

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