Lives of Alcyone

vividness first one or two special scenes from that incarnation, and
then practically the whole of it, so that he spent many hours, day
after day, in living over again all its most striking events.
In all these scenes the figure of Mercury was the most
prominent, and Alcyone’ s strong attachment to him and deep
reverence for him made these pictures more of a reality to him than
the very life which he was really living. Until now his instinct had
always been to consult the spirit-guide, and to abide in all cases by
his advice when any question arose for decision; but in this
psychometric image of Mercury he found himself in the presence of
so much greater wisdom, and also of an altogether purer and higher
attitude towards everything, that he constantly yearned to consult
the uncle of his former life instead of the spirit-guide of this. But of
course the pictures of the Peruvian life, intensely vivid and realistic
as they were, were still only pictures, and the characters in them
could only repeat the parts, which they had really played some eight
hundred years before.
A problem of some difficulty arose as to the way in which the
temple influence should be used with regard to the succession to the
throne of the country. The chief priest of the temple was distinctly in
favour of one who was not the rightful heir, because he could obtain
his support in certain schemes which he had in hand. Alcyone
himself, on the other hand, felt that to use the power of the temple in
favour of one who was emphatically not a good man would be not
only a highly improper thing in itself but distinctly a failure in duty,
and so he was in considerable trouble with regard to this matter. The
advice of Narayan was to fall in with the wishes of the chief priest,
since greater power would probably accrue in that way to the temple
59