Rembrandt Biblical Scene

¡¡¡¡In his random reading he had never chanced upon the 'Rubaiyat,' and it was to him like a great find of treasure. Much I remembered, possibly two thirds of the quatrains, and I managed to piece out the remainder without difficulty. We talked for hours over single stanzas, and I found him reading into them a wail of regret and a rebellion which for the life of me I could not discover myself. Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own, for- his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own- he recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate revolt that were well-nigh convincing. ¡¡¡¡I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and was not surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant's irritability and quite at variance with the Persian's complacent philosophy and genial code of life: