? Wait! Hear me, before you answer. You seek happiness
for the lower orders? There is no happiness for them without religion.
Already you have seen what they become, when it is taken from them. The
riots of yesterday cost your father his life. He suffered much, they
tell me. Is it true? I do not know the details. You saw him die, did you
not? Tell me how it happened.

SATNI. Ah! I was right. It was in truth torture that awaited me here.
You have guessed you would gain nothing racking my body--you keep your
torments for my heart.

HIGH PRIEST. Have I said other than what is true? The conversions that
your preaching made were followed by disorders--was it not then that
your father was wounded? I knew him. He was a man, simple and good. You
are the cause of his death, as you will be the cause of Yaouma's.

SATNI. Peace! You would have my sorrows crush my will!

HIGH PRIEST. I shall speak of them no more. But think of the people of
Egypt, what evils you would bring on them! If you take away their
religion, what will keep them virtuous?

SATNI. What you call their virtue, is only their submission.

HIGH PRIEST. You let loose their vilest instincts, if you remove the
fear of the gods.

SATNI. The fear of the gods has prevented fewer crimes than were needed
to create it.

HIGH PRIEST. Be it so. But it exists.

SATNI. It is your interest to spread the belief, that the fear of the
gods is a restraint. And you know that it is not. You do not leave the
punishment of crime to the gods. You have the lash, hard labor in the
mines; you have scaffolds, you have executioners. No one believes
sincerely in the happy life beyond the grave. If we believed, we should
kill ourselves, the sooner to reach the Island of the Souls, the fields
of Yalou.

HIGH PRIEST. By what then are the appetites restrained?

SATNI. By the laws, by the need of the esteem of others--

HIGH PRIEST. We have just seen that, in sooth. So then it was virtue
that the people showed yesterday, after you made them break their gods?
They seemed to care little for the esteem of others, for they stole,
they pillaged, they killed. Do you approve of that? Have they gained
your esteem, those who have done what they have done?

SATNI. Oh, I know! I know! That is your strongest argument. Creatures
degraded by centuries of slavery, drunk with the first hours of freedom,
commit crimes. You argue from this, that they were meant for slaves.
Yes, it is true that if you