This is the second book of a pair. In Bread of Wisdom , a guest from outside time visits thirteen people who spent their lives asking one question. The last of them was an old man who had called everything under the sun a breath — and who received bread from the guest's hands, and then found him gone. This is his account of what happened next. He set out to find the guest again, and on that road he met thirteen more people: men and women who changed the world and were forgotten by it. I will post these meetings here, one at a time, as I translate them. Prologue No one knows my name. Many suppose I was a king. It is only a guess. I see no reason to tell them otherwise. My life was a breath, and a breath is not worth counting. I was only a man who gathered scattered things into one place. I had everything a man can have. A great house. Gardens. Silver. And wisdom no one could match. At the end I learned what all of it was: a handful of breath that vanishes the moment you cl...