One night I asked him if he did not miss all such pomp and power.
Then suddenly he broke out, and for the first time I really learned what ambition can be when it utterly possesses the soul of man.
"Are you mad," he asked, "that you suppose that I, Oro, the King of kings, can be content to dwell solitary in a great cave with none but the shadows of the dead to serve me?
Nay, I must rule again and be even greater than before, or else I too will die.

Better to face the future, even if it means oblivion, than to remain thus a relic of a glorious past, still living and yet dead, like that statue of the great god Fate which you saw in the temple of my worship." "Bastin does not think that the future means oblivion," I remarked.
"I know it.

I have studied his faith and find it too humble for my taste, also too new.

Shall I, Oro, creep a suppliant before any Power, and confess what Bastin is pleased to call my sins?
Nay, I who am great will be the equal of all greatness, or nothing." He paused a while, then went on: "Bastin speaks of 'eternity.' Where and what then is this eternity which if it has no end can have had no beginning?
I know the secret of the suns and their attendant worlds, and they are no more eternal than the insect which glitters for an hour.

Out of shapeless, rushing gases they gathered to live their day, and into gases at last they dissolve again with all they bore." "Yes," I answered, "but they reform into new worlds." "That have no part with the old.