ruit 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
him as his guide, tear the law to shreds, and let the fragments fly to
the desert on the east wind."

"I am one of the elect whom thou thyself hast taught to seek and to
find the One. The light which I gaze on and am blest, would strike the
crowd--I do not deny it--with blindness--"

"And nevertheless you blind our disciples with the dangerous glare-"

"I am educating them for future sages."

"And that with the hot overflow of a heart intoxicated with love!"

"Ameni!"

"I stand before you, uninvited, as your teacher, who reproves you out of
the law, which always and everywhere is wiser than the individual, whose
defender the king--among his highest titles--boasts of being, and to
which the sage bows as much as the common man whom we bring up to blind
belief--I stand before you as your father, who has loved you from a
child, and expected from none of his disciples more than from you; and
who will therefore neither lose you nor abandon the hope he has set upon
you--

"Make ready to leave our quiet house early tomorrow morning. You have
forfeited your office of teacher. You shall now go into the school of
life,