Lives of Alcyone

FORTY-SEVENTH LIFE 235
offered fruit, flowers, oil or butter, and curious cakes. Here in Persia
the Indra conception was distinctly the more materialistic, and the
Varuna the more Spiritual. The Asura worshippers said that the
Daeva men were degrading the idea of deity, while the Daeva men
on their side said that the others were refining it to a mere
abstraction, and so were atheistic. Thus a bitter theological struggle
was raging, to intensify the opposition created by the wide
divergence of interests.
Loharsp’ s hold over his country does not seem to have been
very definite, and Aurora was practically independent. Lohrasp’ s
son Vishtaspa (Ulysses) was of about the same age as Alcyone,
and as he often lived upon a big estate which Lohrasp had at
Drepsa, he was an intimate friend of the two cousins, over whom he
rather domineered. A lovely little girl, a small orphan cousin,
Thraetaina (Mizar), came to live with Alcyone, and of course all
three boys at once fell in love with her. Ulysses was imperious and
thought nobody could resist him because he was the son of the
overlord; Zarathushtra was impulsive, eager, poetical, flaming with
ardour, yet often, by reaction, in the depths of despondency; while
Alcyone was shy and retiring, loving perhaps more unselfishly than
either of the others, but far less able to express it. they all felt great
respect and affection for the tutor, Uranus, and Alcyone idolised
Zarathushtra with all the devotion which a small boy can feel for one
who is a little older.
Zarathushtra was handsome, forceful, striking in every way—
full of vitality, yet also a boy of trances and dreams . From earliest
childhood he saw constantly in these dreams a man of commanding
presence and of more than mortal power, surrounded always by