and laid upon his shoulder.

He looked round. Behind him stood Ameni. "You fascinated your hearers, my
friend," said the high-priest, coldly; "it is a pity that only the Harp
was wanting."

Ameni's words fell on the agitated spirit of the poet like ice on the
breast of a man in fever. He knew this tone in his master's voice, for
thus he was accustomed to reprove bad scholars and erring priests; but to
him he had never yet so spoken.

"It certainly would seem," continued the high-priest, bitterly, "as if in
your intoxication you had forgotten what it becomes the teacher to utter
in the lecture-hall. Only a few weeks since you swore on my hands to
guard the mysteries, and this day you have offered the great secret of
the Unnameable one, the most sacred possession of the initiated, like
some cheap ware in the open market."

"Thou cuttest with knives," said Pentaur.

"May they prove sharp, and extirpate the undeveloped canker, the rank
weed from your soul," cried the high-priest. "You are young, too young;
not like the tender fruit-tree that lets itself be trained aright, and
brought to perfection, but like the green fruit on the ground, which will
turn to poison for the children who pick it up--yea even though it fall
from a sacred tree. Gagabu and I received you among us, against the
opinion of the majority of the initiated. We gainsaid all those who
doubted your ripeness because of your youth; and you swore to me,
gratefully and enthusiastically, to guard the mysteries and the law.
To-day for the first time I set you on the battle-field of life beyond
the peaceful shelter of the schools. And how have you defended the
standard that it was incumbent on you to uphold and maintain?"

"I did that which seemed to me to be right and true," answered Pentaur
deeply moved.

"Right is the same for you as for us--what the law prescribes; and what
is truth?"

"None has lifted her veil," said Pentaur, "but my soul is the offspring
of the soul-filled body of the All; a portion of the infallible spirit of
the Divinity stirs in my breast, and if it shows itself potent in me--"

"How easily we may mistake the flattering voice of self-love for that of
the Divinity!"

"Cannot the Divinity which works and speaks in me--as in thee--as in each
of us--recognize himself and his own voice?"

"If the crowd were to hear you," Ameni interrupted him, "each would set
himself on his little throne, would proclaim the voice of the god within