When Firs was a short distance from the palace, he heard the noise of madness; the Macedonian officer had known that noise for a long time—he had heard it four years before, when the Tsar had first summoned him. Beside the palace itself, a platform had been cleared on a stony place and over a hundred people were torturing themselves in the enthusiasm of ecstasy. Firs kept his distance and began looking at these people with sorrow. One man was rolling about on the ground, struggling to rip away the hairy skin on his chest so he could take out the still living heart from in there and show how devoted it was to the Tsar, how brimming over it was with the blood of joy. Another was positioned with his legs up in the air and was continually spinning round on the top of his head, wanting to be blown apart by centrifugal force into insignificant dust. Five people were walking in an unchanging circle, without a stop, their heads bowed in possession of deep thoughtfulness; they were in mental search of the most glorious praise of the Tsar and, on finding it, they would cry out:

“O one and only fruit of gods whose blossoms are spent!”

“O sorrow of the world, assuaged forever!”

“Grandson of all times and father of eternity!”

“Messenger of a blessed creation!”

“Inspired charm!”

“Architect of dawn and cool rivers!”

“Ever brilliant and blinding!”

“In your presence all reason is foolishness!”

Amid this circle traced by those who were meditating and crying out, a number of people were fighting to death as they accused one another of insufficient joy with regard to the life of Tsar Ozny, and two of them were already lying dead. Four people were sitting apart, on a heap of construction rubbish, and gradually tearing out by hand their organs of procreation, in order that no future life should manage to happen, since Ozny had exhausted all eternity, all the meaning of existence and every pleasure; with the birth of Ozny every breath was doomed to vanity in its pursuit of the good.

On the edge of the stony platform, amid those moving about and celebrating, still others were spinning on the ground and smashing their heads against nearby stones in order to smash the last thought out of their consciousness, because every thought is a mystery and may become a rival of the great mind of Ozny; blood had long been flowing from these heads that were being smashed against stones, yet the thoughts being destroyed in these heads were not dying but were being transformed into madness and producing the long cry of frenzy that hung over this gathering which had been going on without interruption for many years. Two of the Tsar’s servants observed the people on the stony platform, and when a death occurred there, or some temporary lifelessness, the servants carried the people away. At night, however, new, unknown people came to the palace from the city of Sobz and from the depth of the country, and they joined those languishing on the stony platform in delight before the supremacy of Tsar Ozny.

With gloom in his heart, the man from Megara entered the palace. A blind Indian searched him and told him to wait until a mood arose in the Tsar to remember about him.

All day long, alone with the blind Indian, Firs sat on a carpet in a small room in the palace and listened to the noise of madness outside. In the evening a tender horn began to sing in the distant emptiness of the palace; the Indian went that way and, on his return, ordered Firs to go to the Tsar.

Beneath the dome of a large unfinished hall, on a throne of stone, sat a serious human being who did not respond in any way to the salutation of the guest from Megara and who expressed neither joy nor sorrow.

Firs prostrated himself on the carpet at the Tsar’s feet, then awaited his will.

Ozny was looking into the emptiness of the air with black and swollen eyes behind whose darkness nothing could be seen but indifference; his torso, tired from power and bliss, stayed upright only as a result of a certain effort, and he was ready every minute to collapse into long sleepy oblivion, leaving his kingdom without care or attention.

The man from Megara gazed at the Tsar with modest curiosity, since the latter was observing one and the same invisible point of space. Outwardly Ozny appeared to be over forty, although his bloated face, exhausted by the struggle with the poisons of victuals and passions, had so aged him that it was possible he was only thirty. The short black hair on the Tsar’s skull, untouched by grayness or baldness, stood up on end from the meaninglessness of life. It was as if life itself were not present in Ozny’s body but merely languishing at its extreme limit, ready for irritation rather than joy. And the Tsar’s head, judging by the temples, was covered by thick veins inside which moved only a fine trickle of blood, since these veins had been filled by a deathly accumulation of sclerotic lime and were squeezing the bloody stream of life; evidently the Tsar was constantly struggling to think with the power of a god, and he had so exhausted his veins of life that death, rather than wisdom, had appeared in his head. And Ozny could sense this thickening mineral power around his mind, because from time to time he squeezed his temples with his hands, trying to grind down the lime coffin in which his appalled consciousness was being slowly buried.