Lives of Alcyone

FORTY-SEVENTH LIFE 245
new race and to lead his people to paradise. It helped to keep him
brave during the dark periods of despondency which came not
infrequently to the soul of Zarathushtra, when the prophet bewailed
the lukewarmness of his followers, admitted doubts as to the
success of his mission, or even the truth of his visions, and talked of
flying the country because of the opposition of Prince Bendva, or the
Grehma Clan, or other adherents to the older teaching; and it
sustained him even under the news of the murder of his lifelong hero
Zarathushtra, while officiating at the altar of the great temple at
Balkh, when the city was stormed by the Tartars in 1449.
Some two years before this, Alcyone had given up constant
journeyings and public preachings, finding himself scarcely equal to
the strain of them. During the last ten years of his life he was well
cared for by two of the children whom he had so loved—Phrem and
Thrity (Regel and Betel), the widowed daughters of Zarathushtra
and Mizar—the sisters of Ajax and Demeter. Demeter had died soon
after her husband Mira had been killed in battle fighting against the
Tartars; but one of her daughters, Haoshyagha (Fomal), also
wonderfully like the long-dead Mizar, the love of his youth, came
constantly to see and to cheer him. She was at his bedside when he
passed away in 1441, and at the moment of his death Mercury once
more stood visibly materialised before him in that same radiant form,
smiling on him in tender love. He joined his hands in reverent
greeting, and the last words upon his lips were the concluding words
of the prophesy: Until we stand in the presence of the King.”
And in the present life has that prophesy been fulfilled.