"With Bent-Anat?"  replied the pioneer, and muttered, before the dwarf

could find time to answer, "Indeed, with Bent-Anat!"  and he recalled the
day before yesterday, when the princess had remained so long with the
priest in the hovel of the paraschites, while he had talked to Nefert and
visited the old witch.

"I should not care to be in the priest's skin," observed Nemu, "for
though Rameses is far away, the Regent Ani is near enough.  He is a
gentleman who seldom pounces, but even the dove won't allow itself to be
attacked in is own nest."

Paaker looked enquiringly at Nemu.

"I know," said the dwarf "Ani has asked Rameses' consent to marry his
daughter."

"He has already asked it," continued the dwarf as Paaker smiled
incredulously, "and the king is not disinclined to give it.  He likes
making marriages--as thou must know pretty well."

"I?"  said Paaker, surprised.

"He forced Katuti to give her daughter as wife to the charioteer.
That I know from herself.  She can prove it to thee."

Paaker shook his head in denial, but the dwarf continued eagerly, "Yes,
yes!  Katuti would have had thee for her son-in-law, and it was the king,
not she, who broke off the betrothal.  Thou must at the same time have
been inscribed in the black books of the  high gate, for Rameses used
many hard names for thee.  One of us is like a mouse behind the curtain,
which knows a good deal."

Paaker suddenly brought his horses to a stand-still, threw the reins to
the slave, sprang from the chariot, called the dwarf to his side, and
said:

"We will walk from here to the river, and you shall tell me all you know;
but if an untrue word passes your lips I will have you eaten by my dogs."

"I know thou canst keep thy word," gasped the little man.  "But go a
little slower if thou wilt, for I am quite out of breath.  Let Katuti
herself tell thee how it all came about.  Rameses compelled her to give
her daughter to the charioteer.  I do not know what he said of thee, but
it was not complimentary.  My poor mistress!  she let herself be caught
by the dandy, the ladies' man-and now she may weep and wail.  When I pass
the great gates of thy house with Katuti, she often sighs and complains
bitterly.  And with good reason, for it soon will be all over with our
noble estate, and we must seek an asylum far away among the Amu in the
low lands; for the nobles will soon avoid us as outcasts.  Thou mayst be
glad that thou hast not linked thy fate to ours; but I have a faithful
heart, and will share my mistress's trouble."

"You speak riddles," said Paaker, "what have they to fear?"

The dwarf now related how Nefert's brother had gambled away the mummy of
his father, how enormous was the sum he had lost, and that degradation
must overtake Katuti, and her daughter with her.

"Who can save them," he whimpered.  "Her shameless husband squanders his
inheritance and his prize-money.  Katuti is poor, and the little words
"Give me! scare away friends as the cry of a hawk scares the chickens.
My poor mistress!"

"It is a large sum," muttered Paaker to himself.  "It is enormous!"
sighed the dwarf, "and where is it to be found in these hard times?  It
would have been different with us, if--ah if--.  And it would be a form
of madness which I do not believe in, that Nefert should still care for
her braggart husband.  She thinks as much of thee as of him."

Paaker looked at the dwarf half incredulous and half threatening.

"Ay--of thee," repeated Nemu.  "Since our excursion to the Necropolis
the day before yesterday it was--she speaks only of thee, praising thy
ability, and thy strong manly spirit.  It is as if some charm obliged her
to think of thee."

The pioneer began to walk so fast that his small companion once more had
to ask him to moderate his steps.

They gained the shore in silence, where Paaker's boat was waiting, which
also conveyed his chariot.  He lay down in the little cabin, called the
dwarf to him, and said:

"I am Katuti's nearest relative; we are now reconciled; why does she not
turn to me in her difficulty?"

"Because she is proud, and thy blood flows in her veins.  Sooner would
she die with her child--she said so--than ask thee, against whom she
sinned, for an "alms."

"She did think of me then?"

"At once; nor did she doubt thy generosity.  She esteems thee highly--I
repeat it; and if an arrow from a Cheta's bow or a visitation of the Gods
attained Mena, she would joyfully place her child in thine arms, and
Nefert believe me has not forgotten her playfellow.  The day before
yesterday, when she came home from the Necropolis, and before the letter
had come from the camp, she was full of thee--

["To be full (meh) of any one" is used in the Egyptian language for
"to be in love with any one."]

nay called to thee in her dreams; I know it from Kandake, her black
maid."  The pioneer looked down and said:

"How extraordinary! and the same night I had a vision in which your
mistress appeared to me; the insolent priest in the temple of Hathor
should have interpreted it to me."

"And he refused? the fool! but other folks understand dreams, and I am
not the worst of them--Ask thy servant.  Ninety-nine times out of a
hundred my interpretations come true.  How was the vision?"

"I stood by the Nile," said Paaker, casting down his eyes and drawing
lines with his whip through the wool of the cabin rug.  "The water was
still, and I saw Nefert standing on the farther bank, and beckoning to
me.  I called to her, and she stepped on the water, which bore her up as
if it were this carpet.  She went over the water dry-foot as if it were
the stony wilderness.  A wonderful sight!  She came nearer to me, and
nearer, and already I had tried to take her hand, when she ducked under
like a swan.  I went into the water to seize her, and when she came up
again I clasped her in my arms; but then the strangest thing happened--
she flowed away, she dissolved like the snow on the Syrian hills, when
you take it in your hand, and yet it was not the same, for her hair
turned to water-lilies, and her eyes to blue fishes that swam away
merrily, and her lips to twigs of coral that sank at once, and from her
body grew a crocodile, with a head like Mena, that laughed and gnashed
its teeth at me.  Then I was seized with blind fury; I threw myself upon
him with a drawn sword, he fastened his teeth in my flesh, I pierced his
throat with my weapon; the Nile was dark with our streaming blood, and so
we fought and fought--it lasted an eternity--till I awoke."

Paaker drew a deep breath as he ceased speaking; as if his wild dream
tormented him again.

The dwarf had listened with eager attention, but several minutes passed
before he spoke.

"A strange dream," he said, "but the interpretation as to the future is
not hard to find.  Nefert is striving to reach thee, she longs to be
thine, but if thou dost fancy that she is already in thy grasp she will
elude thee; thy hopes will melt like ice, slip away like sand, if thou
dost not know how to put the crocodile out of the way."

At this moment the boat struck the landing-place.  The pioneer started
up, and cried, "We have reached the end!"

"We have reached the end," echoed the little man with meaning.  "There is
only a narrow bridge to step over."

When they both stood on the shore, the dwarf said,

"I  have  to  thank  thee  for  thy  hospitality,  and when I can serve
thee command me."

"Come here," cried the pioneer, and drew Nemu away with him under the
shade of a sycamore veiled in the half light of the departing sun.

"What do you mean by a bridge which we must step over?  I do not
understand the flowers of speech, and desire plain language."

The dwarf reflected for a moment; and then asked, "Shall I say nakedly
and openly what I mean, and will you not be angry?"

"Speak!"

"Mena is the crocodile.  Put him out of the world, and you will have
passed the bridge; then Nefert will be thine--if thou wilt listen to me."

"What shall I do?"

"Put the charioteer out of the world."

Paaker's gesture seemed to convey that that was a thing that had long
been decided on, and he turned his face, for a good omen, so that the
rising moon should be on his right hand.

The dwarf went on.

"Secure Nefert, so that she may not vanish like her image in the dream,
before you reach the goal; that is to say, ransom the honor of your
future mother and wife, for how could you take an outcast into your
house?"

Paaker looked thoughtfully at the ground.

"May I inform my mistress that thou wilt save her?"  asked Nemu.
"I may?--Then all will be well, for he who will devote a fortune to love
will not hesitate to devote a reed lance with a brass point to it to his
love and his hatred together."




CHAPTER XVI.

The sun had set, and darkness covered the City of the Dead, but the moon
shone above the valley of the kings' tombs, and the projecting masses of
the rocky walls of the chasm threw sharply-defined shadows.  A weird
silence lay upon the desert, where yet far more life was stirring than in
the noonday hour, for now bats darted like black silken threads through
the night air, owls hovered aloft on wide-spread wings, small troops of
jackals slipped by, one following the other up the mountain slopes.  From
time to time their hideous yell, or the whining laugh of the hyena, broke
the stillness of the night.

Nor was human life yet at rest in the valley of tombs.  A faint light
glimmered in the cave of the sorceress Hekt, and in front of the
paraschites' but a fire was burning, which the grandmother of the sick
Uarda now and then fed with pieces of dry manure.  Two men were seated in
front of the hut, and gazed in silence on the thin flame, whose impure
light was almost quenched by the clearer glow of the moon; whilst the
third, Uarda's father, disembowelled a large ram, whose head he had
already cut off.

"How the jackals howl!"  said the old paraschites, drawing as he spoke
the torn brown cotton cloth, which he had put on as a protection against
the night air and the dew, closer round his bare shoulders.

"They scent the fresh meat," answered the physician, Nebsecht.  "Throw
them the entrails, when you have done; the legs and back you can roast.
Be careful how you cut out the heart--the heart, soldier.  There it is!
What a great beast."

Nebsecht took the ram's heart in his hand, and gazed at it with the
deepest attention, whilst the old paraschites watched him anxiously.  At
length:

"I promised," he said, "to do for you what you wish, if you restore the
little one to health; but you ask for what is impossible."

"Impossible?"  said the physician, "why, impossible?  You open the
corpses, you go in and out of the house of the embalmer.  Get possession
of one of the canopi,

[Vases of clay, limestone, or alabaster, which were used for the
preservation of the intestines of the embalmed Egyptians, and
represented the four genii of death, Amset, Hapi, Tuamutef, and
Khebsennuf.  Instead of the cover, the head of the genius to which
it was dedicated, was placed on each kanopus.  Amset (tinder the
protection of Isis) has a human head, Hapi (protected by Nephthys)
an ape's head, Tuamutef (protected by Neith) a jackal's head, and
Khebsennuf (protected by Selk) a sparrow-hawk's head.  In one of the
Christian Coptic Manuscripts, the four archangels are invoked in the
place of these genii.]

lay this heart in it, and take out in its stead the heart of a human
being.  No one--no one will notice it.  Nor need you do it to-morrow, or
the day after tomorrow even.  Your son can buy a ram to kill every day
with my money till the right moment comes.  Your granddaughter will soon
grow strong on a good meat-diet.  Take courage!"

"I am not afraid of the danger," said the old man, "but how can I venture
to steal from a dead man his life in the other world?  And then--in shame
and misery have I lived, and for many a year--no man has numbered them
for me--have I obeyed the commandments, that I may be found righteous in
that world to come, and in the fields of Aalu, and in the Sun-bark find
compensation for all that I have suffered here.  You are good and
friendly.  Why, for the sake of a whim, should you sacrifice the future
bliss of a man, who in all his long life has never known happiness, and
who has never done you any harm?"

"What I want with the heart," replied the physician, "you cannot
understand, but in procuring it for me, you will be furthering a great
and useful purpose.  I have no whims, for I am no idler.  And as to what
concerns your salvation, have no anxiety.  I am a priest, and take your
deed and its consequences upon myself; upon myself, do you understand?
I tell you, as a priest, that what I demand of you is right, and if the
judge of the dead shall enquire, 'Why didst thou take the heart of a
human being out of the Kanopus?' then reply--reply to him thus, 'Because
Nebsecht, the priest, commanded me, and promised himself to answer for
the deed.'"

The old man gazed thoughtfully on the ground, and the physician continued
still more urgently:

"If you fulfil my wish, then--then I swear to you that, when you die, I
will take care that your mummy is provided with all the amulets, and I
myself will write you a book of the Entrance into Day, and have it wound
within your mummy-cloth, as is done with the great.

[The Books of the Dead are often found amongst the cloths, (by the
leg or under the arm), or else in the coffin trader, or near, the
mummy.]

That will give you power over all demons, and you will be admitted to the
hall of the twofold justice, which punishes and rewards, and your award
will be bliss."

"But the theft of a heart will make the weight of my sins heavy, when my
own heart is weighed," sighed the old man.

Nebsecht considered for a moment, and then said: "I will give you a
written paper, in which I will certify that it was I who commanded the
theft.  You will sew it up in a little bag, carry it on your breast, and
have it laid with you in the grave.  Then when Techuti, the agent of the
soul, receives your justification before Osiris and the judges of the
dead, give him the writing.  He will read it aloud, and you will be
accounted just."

[The vignettes of Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead represent the
Last Judgment of the Egyptians.  Under a canopy Osiris sits
enthroned as Chief Judge, 42 assessors assist him.  In the hall
stand the scales;  the dog headed ape, the animal sacred to Toth,
guides the balance.  In one scale lies the heart of the dead man, in
the other the image of the goddess of Truth, who introduces the soul
into the hall of justice  Toth writs the record.  The soul affirms
that it has not committed 42 deadly sins, and if it obtains credit,
it is named "maa cheru," i.e. "the truth-speaker," and is therewith
declared blessed.  It now receives its heart back, and grows into a
new and divine life.]

"I am not learned in writing," muttered the paraschites with a slight
mistrust that made itself felt in his voice.

"But I swear to you by the nine great Gods, that I will write nothing on
the paper but what I have promised you.  I will confess that I, the
priest Nebsecht, commanded you to take the heart, and that your guilt is
mine."

"Let me have the writing then," murmured the old man.

The physician wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and gave the
paraschites his hand.  "To-morrow you shall have it," he said, "and I
will not leave your granddaughter till she is well again."

The soldier engaged in cutting up the ram, had heard nothing of this
conversation.  Now he ran a wooden spit through the legs, and held them
over the fire to roast them.  The jackals howled louder as the smell of
the melting fat filled the air, and the old man, as he looked on, forgot
the terrible task he had undertaken.  For a year past, no meat had been
tasted in his house.

The physician Nebsecht, himself eating nothing but a piece of bread,
looked on at the feasters.  They tore the meat from the bones, and the
soldier, especially, devoured the costly and unwonted meal like some
ravenous animal.  He could be heard chewing like a horse in the manger,
and a feeling of disgust filled the physician's soul.

"Sensual beings," he murmured to himself, "animals with consciousness!
And yet human beings.  Strange!  They languish bound in the fetters of
the world of sense, and yet how much more ardently they desire that which
transcends sense than we--how much more real it is to them than to us!"

"Will you have some meat?"  cried the soldier, who had remarked that
Nebsecht's lips moved, and tearing a piece of meat from the bone of the
joint he was devouring, he held it out to the physician.  Nebsecht shrank
back; the greedy look, the glistening teeth, the dark, rough features of
the man terrified him.  And he thought of the white and fragile form of
the sick girl lying within on the mat, and a question escaped his lips.

"Is the maiden, is Uarda, your own child?"  he said.

The soldier struck himself on the breast.  "So sure as the king Rameses
is the son of Seti," he answered.  The men had finished their meal, and
the flat cakes of bread which the wife of the paraschites gave them, and
on which they had wiped their hands from the fat, were consumed, when the
soldier, in whose slow brain the physician's question still lingered,
said, sighing deeply:

"Her mother was a stranger; she laid the white dove in the raven's nest."

"Of what country was your wife a native?"  asked the physician.

"That I do not know," replied the soldier.

"Did you never enquire about the family of your own wife?"

"Certainly I did: but how could she have answered me?  But it is a long
and strange story."

"Relate it to me," said Nebsecht, "the night is long, and I like
listening better than talking.  But first I will see after our patient."

When the physician had satisfied himself that Uarda was sleeping quietly
and breathing regularly, he seated himself again by the paraschites and
his son, and the soldier began:

"It all happened long ago.  King Seti still lived, but Rameses already
reigned in his stead, when I came home from the north.  They had sent me
to the workmen, who were building the fortifications in Zoan, the town of
Rameses.--[The Rameses of the Bible.  Exodus i.  ii.]--I was set over six
men, Amus,--[Semites]--of the Hebrew race, over whom Rameses kept such a
tight hand.

[For an account of the traces of the Jews in Egypt, see Chabas,
Melanges, and Ebers, AEgypten und die Bucher Moses]

Amongst the workmen there were sons of rich cattle-holders, for in
levying the people it was never: 'What have you?' but 'Of what race are
you?'  The fortifications and the canal which was to join the Nile and
the Red Sea had to be completed, and the king, to whom be long life,
health, and prosperity, took the youth of Egypt with him to the wars, and
left the work to the Amus, who are connected by race with his enemies in
the east.  One lives well in Goshen, for it is a fine country, with more
than enough of corn and grass and vegetables and fish and fowls, and I
always had of the best, for amongst my six people were two mother's
darlings, whose parents sent me many a piece of silver.  Every one loves
his children, but the Hebrews love them more tenderly than other people.
We had daily our appointed tale of bricks to deliver, and when the sun
burnt hot, I used to help the lads, and I did more in an hour than they
did in three, for I am strong and was still stronger then than I am now.

"Then came the time when I was relieved.  I was ordered to return to
Thebes, to the prisoners of war who were building the great temple of
Amon over yonder, and as I had brought home some money, and it would take
a good while to finish the great dwelling of the king of the Gods, I
thought of taking a wife; but no Egyptian.  Of daughters of paraschites
there were plenty; but I wanted to get away out of my father's accursed
caste, and the other girls here, as I knew, were afraid of our
uncleanness.  In the low country I had done better, and many an Amu and
Schasu woman had gladly come to my tent.  From the beginning I had set my
mind on an Asiatic.

"Many a time maidens taken prisoners in war were brought to be sold, but
either they did not please me, or they were too dear.  Meantime my money
melted away, for we enjoyed life in the time of rest which followed the
working hours.  There were dancers too in plenty, in the foreign quarter.

"Well, it was just at the time of the holy feast of Amon-Chem, that a new
transport of prisoners of war arrived, and amongst them many women, who
were sold publicly to the highest bidder.  The young and beautiful ones
were paid for high, but even the older ones were too dear for me.

"Quite at the last a blind woman was led forward, and a withered-looking
woman who was dumb, as the auctioneer, who generally praised up the
merits of the prisoners, informed the buyers.  The blind woman had strong
hands, and was bought by a tavern-keeper, for whom she turns the handmill
to this day; the dumb woman held a child in her arms, and no one could
tell whether she was young or old.  She looked as though she already lay
in her coffin, and the little one as though he would go under the grass
before her.  And her hair was red, burning red, the very color of Typhon.
Her white pale face looked neither bad nor good, only weary, weary to
death.  On her withered white arms blue veins ran like dark cords, her
hands hung feebly down, and in them hung the child.  If a wind were to
rise, I thought to myself, it would blow her away, and the little one
with her.

"The auctioneer asked for a bid.  All were silent, for the dumb shadow
was of no use for work; she was half-dead, and a burial costs money.

"So passed several minutes.  Then the auctioneer stepped up to her, and
gave her a blow with his whip, that she might rouse herself up, and
appear less miserable to the buyers.  She shivered like a person in a
fever, pressed the child closer to her, and looked round at every one as
though seeking for help--and me full in the face.  What happened now was
a real wonder, for her eyes were bigger than any that I ever saw, and a
demon dwelt in them that had power over me and ruled me to the end, and
that day it bewitched me for the first time.

"It was not hot and I had drunk nothing, and yet I acted against my own
will and better judgment when, as her eyes fell upon me, I bid all that I
possessed in order to buy her.  I might have had her cheaper!  My
companions laughed at me, the auctioneer shrugged his shoulders as he
took my money, but I took the child on my arm, helped the woman up,
carried her in a boat over the Nile, loaded a stone-cart with my
miserable property, and drove her like a block of lime home to the old
people.

"My mother shook her head, and my father looked as if he thought me mad;
but neither of them said a word.  They made up a bed for her, and on my
spare nights I built that ruined thing hard by--it was a tidy hut once.
Soon my mother grew fond of the child.  It was quite small, and we called
it Pennu--[Pennu is the name for the mouse in old Egyptian]--because it
was so pretty, like a little mouse.  I kept away from the foreign
quarter, and saved my wages, and bought a goat, which lived in front of
our door when I took the woman to her own hut.

"She was dumb, but not deaf, only she did not understand our language;
but the demon in her eyes spoke for her and understood what I said.  She
comprehended everything, and could say everything with her eyes; but best
of all she knew how to thank one.  No high-priest who at the great hill
festival praises the Gods in long hymns for their gifts can return thanks
so earnestly with his lips as she with her dumb eyes.  And when she
wished to pray, then it seemed as though the demon in her look was
mightier than ever.

"At first I used to be impatient enough when she leaned so feebly against
the wall, or when the child cried and disturbed my sleep; but she had
only to look up, and the demon pressed my heart together and persuaded me
that the crying was really a song.  Pennu cried more sweetly too than
other children, and he had such soft, white, pretty little fingers.

"One day he had been crying for a long time,  At last I bent down over
him, and was going to scold him, but he seized me by the beard.  It was
pretty to see!  Afterwards he was for ever wanting to pull me about, and
his mother noticed that that pleased me, for when I brought home anything
good, an egg or a flower or a cake, she used to hold him up and place his
little hands on my beard.

"Yes, in a few months the woman had learnt to hold him up high in her
arms, for with care and quiet she had grown stronger.  White she always
remained and delicate, but she grew younger and more beautiful from day
to day; she can hardly have numbered twenty years when I bought her.
What she was called I never heard; nor did we give her any name.  She was
'the woman,' and so we called her.

"Eight moons passed by, and then the little Mouse died.  I wept as she
did, and as I bent over the little corpse and let my tears have free
course, and thought--now he can never lift up his pretty little finger to
you again; then I felt for the first time the woman's soft hand on my
cheek.  She stroked my rough beard as a child might, and with that looked
at me so gratefully that I felt as though king Pharaoh had all at once
made me a present of both Upper and Lower Egypt.

"When the Mouse was buried she got weaker again, but my mother took good
care of her.  I lived with her, like a father with his child.  She was
always friendly, but if I approached her, and tried to show her any
fondness, she would look at me, and the demon in her eyes drove me back,
and I let her alone.

"She grew healthier and stronger and more and more beautiful, so
beautiful that I kept her hidden, and was consumed by the longing to make
her my wife.  A good housewife she never became, to be sure; her hands
were so tender, and she did not even know how to milk the goat.  My
mother did that and everything else for her.

"In the daytime she stayed in her hut and worked, for she was very
skillful at woman's work, and wove lace as fine as cobwebs, which my
mother sold that she might bring home perfumes with the proceeds.  She
was very fond of them, and of flowers too; and Uarda in there takes after
her.

"In the evening, when the folk from the other side had left the City of
the Dead, she would often walk down the valley here, thoughtful and often
looking up at the moon, which she was especially fond of.

"One evening in the winter-time I came home.  It was already dark, and I
expected to find her in front of the door.  All at once, about a hundred
steps behind old Hekt's cave, I heard a troop of jackals barking so
furiously that I said to myself directly they had attacked a human being,
and I knew too who it was, though no one had told me, and the woman could
not call or cry out.  Frantic with terror, I tore a firebrand from the
hearth and the stake to which the goat was fastened out of the ground,
rushed to her help, drove away the beasts, and carried her back senseless
to the hut.  My mother helped me, and we called her back to life.  When
we were alone, I wept like a child for joy at her escape, and she let me
kiss her, and then she became my wife, three years after I had bought
her.

"She bore me a little maid, that she herself named Uarda; for she showed
us a rose, and then pointed to the child, and we understood her without
words.

"Soon afterwards she died.

"You are a priest, but I tell you that when I am summoned before Osiris,
if I am admitted amongst the blessed, I will ask whether I shall meet my
wife, and if the doorkeeper says no, he may thrust me back, and I will go
down cheerfully to the damned, if I find her again there."

"And did no sign ever betray her origin?" asked the physician.

The soldier had hidden his face in his hand; he was weeping aloud, and
did not hear the question.  But, the paraschites answered:

"She was the child of some great personage, for in her clothes we found a
golden jewel with a precious stone inscribed with strange characters.  It
is very costly, and my wife is keeping it for the little one."




CHAPTER XVII.

In the earliest glimmer of dawn the following clay, the physician
Nebsecht having satisfied himself as to the state of the sick girl, left
the paraschites' hut and made his way in deepest thought to the 'Terrace
Temple of Hatasu, to find his friend Pentaur and compose the writing
which he had promised to the old man.

As the sun arose in radiance he reached the sanctuary.  He expected to
hear the morning song of the priests, but all was silent.  He knocked and
the porter, still half-asleep, opened the door.

Nebsecht enquired for the chief of the Temple.  "He died in the night,"
said the man yawning.

"What do you say?" cried the physician in sudden terror, "who is dead?"

"Our good old chief, Rui."

Nebsecht breathed again, and asked for Pentaur.

"You belong to the House of Seti," said the doorkeeper, "and you do not
know that he is deposed from his office?  The holy fathers have refused
to celebrate the birth of Ra with him.  He sings for himself now, alone
up on the watch-tower.  There you will find him."

Nebsecht strode quickly up the stairs.  Several of the priests placed
themselves together in groups as soon as they saw him, and began singing.
He paid no heed to them, however, but hastened on to the uppermost
terrace, where he found his friend occupied in writing.

Soon he learnt all that had happened, and wrathfully he cried: "You are
too honest for those wise gentlemen in the House of Seti, and too pure
and zealous for the rabble here.  I knew it, I knew what would come of it
if they introduced you to the mysteries.  For us initiated there remains
only the choice between lying and silence."

"The old error!"  said Pentaur, "we know that the Godhead is One, we name
it, 'The All,' 'The Veil of the All,' or simply 'Ra.'  But under the name
Ra we understand something different than is known to the common herd;
for to us, the Universe is God, and in each of its parts we recognize a
manifestation of that highest being without whom nothing is, in the
heights above or in the depths below."

"To me you can say everything, for I also am initiated," interrupted
Nebsecht.

"But neither from the laity do I withhold it," cried Pentaur, "only to
those who are incapable of understanding the whole, do I show the
different parts.  Am I a liar if I do not say, 'I speak,' but 'my mouth
speaks,' if I affirm, 'Your eye sees,' when it is you yourself who are
the seer.  When the light of the only One manifests itself, then I
fervently render thanks to him in hymns, and the most luminous of his
forms I name Ra.  When I look upon yonder green fields, I call upon the
faithful to give thanks to Rennut, that is, that active manifestation of
the One, through which the corn attains to its ripe maturity.  Am I
filled with wonder at the bounteous gifts with which that divine stream
whose origin is hidden, blesses our land, then I adore the One as the God
Hapi, the secret one.  Whether we view the sun, the harvest, or the Nile,
whether we contemplate with admiration the unity and harmony of the
visible or invisible world, still it is always with the Only, the All-
embracing One we have to do, to whom we also ourselves belong as those of
his manifestations in which lie places his self-consciousness.  The
imagination of the multitude is limited .  .  .  .  ."

"And so we lions,

["The priests," says Clement of Alexandria, "allow none to be
participators in their mysteries, except kings or such amongst
themselves as are distinguished for virtue or wisdom."  The same
thing is shown by the monuments in many places]

give them the morsel that we can devour at one gulp, finely chopped up,
and diluted with broth as if for the weak stomach of a sick man."

"Not so; we only feel it our duty to temper and sweeten the sharp potion,
which for men even is almost too strong, before we offer it to the
children, the babes in spirit.  The sages of old veiled indeed the
highest truths in allegorical forms, in symbols, and finally in a
beautiful and richly-colored mythos, but they brought them near to the
multitude shrouded it is true but still discernible."

"Discernible?"  said the  physician, "discernible?  Why then the veil?"

"And do you imagine that the multitude could look the naked truth in the
face,

[In Sais the statue of Athene (Neith) has the following,
inscription: "I am the All, the Past, the Present, and the Future,
my veil has no mortal yet lifted."  Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 9, a
similar quotation by Proclus, in Plato's Timaeus.]

and not despair?"

"Can I, can any one who looks straight forward, and strives to see the
truth and nothing but the truth?"  cried the physician.  "We both of us
know that things only are, to us, such as they picture themselves in the
prepared mirror of our souls.  I see grey, grey, and white, white, and
have accustomed myself in my yearning after knowledge, not to attribute