.

At this moment mingled feelings were struggling in his soul. He felt as
if he must withstand the speaker; and yet the powerful presence of the
other exercised so strong an influence over his mind, long trained to
submission, that he was silent, and a pious thrill passed through him
when Ameni's hands were laid on his shoulders.

"I blame you," said the high-priest, while he firmly held the young man,
"nay, to my sorrow I must chastise you; and yet," he said, stepping back
and taking his right hand, "I rejoice in the necessity, for I love you
and honor you, as one whom the Unnameable has blessed with high gifts
and destined to great things. Man leaves a weed to grow unheeded or
roots it up but you are a noble tree, and I am like the gardener who
has forgotten to provide it with a prop, and who is now thankful to
have detected a bend that reminds him of his neglect. You look at me
enquiringly, and I can see in your eyes that I seem to you a severe
judge. Of what are you accused? You have suffered an institution of
the past to be set aside. It does not matter--so the short-sighted and
heedless think; but I say to you, you have doubly transgressed, because
the wrong-doer was the king's daughter, whom all look up to, great and
small, and whose actions may serve as an example to the people. On whom
then must a breach of the ancient institutions lie with the darkest
stain if not on the highest in rank? In a few days it will be said the
paraschites are men even as we are, and the old law to avoid them as
unclean is folly. And will the reflections of the people, think you, end
there, when it is so easy for them to say that he who errs in one point
may as well fail in all? In questions of faith, my son, nothing is
insignificant. If we open one tower to the enemy he is master of the
whole fortress. In these unsettled times our sacred lore is like a
chariot on the declivity of a precipice, and under the wheels thereof a
stone. A child takes away the stone, and the chariot rolls down into the
abyss and is dashed to pieces. Imagine the princess to be that child,
and the stone a loaf that she would fain give to feed a beggar. Would
you then give it to her if your father and your mother and all that is
dear and precious to you were in the chariot? Answer not! the princess
will visit the paraschites again to-morrow. You must await her in the
man's hut, and there inform her that she has transgressed and must crave
to be purified by u