Very old snatch of historical novel, 'Ctesiphon'

China. Imagine it. An obese idea that we have caught in ridiculous fragments, silken drapery in hideous colours, stock stories of a timid jaundiced people without number. A commonplace in Roman poetry. Flatterers have conquered China a thousand times in inexorable odes to please their patrons; satirists have sent unlikely lovers there; historians say nothing, because nothing can be said with integrity of a place so hulking and inconvenient and shapeless and powerful. The Emperor of China is the most powerful of men, to whom gods send tremulous emissaries; there, an enterprising bishop; at the other side, a talkative mystic. Gods learn lessons in majesty from that man. But men can learn nothing of him or from him; oceans of silk and steel, a dais higher than the Jacob’s Ladder of the Jews, hide him from our sight.

I am riding a brownish mule, one among many. The mules are our Emperors at present, even though one of the riders is an emperor himself. We are dazed men (we made the women stay behind). We no longer have a city, we scarcely have a path, but we are going to China, towards it anyway.

None of us know very much about the Chinamen. But of this we are sure: they do not adore one God. And we Persians, we Zoroastrians, have had quite enough of the No God But God, though we are said to have invented Him. The Jewish people whom we delivered from Babylon long, long ago have written ghastly legends of monarchs with monotonous names and persistent woes. More melancholy than Israel ever knew came to us in a shorter space than the life of a fine horse.

I want gods like those dancing Greek creatures, gods of a shining, animal court filled with light and temper. But the more morose, the more without pity, the bloodier God is, the more I know that there is only one of Him and He cannot stomach even lieutenants, even angels.