egetables, and various cakes and sweetmeats were carried to the guests,
and their beakers well-filled with the choice wines of which there was
never any lack in the lofts of the House of Seti.

[Cellars maintain the mean temperature of the climate, and in Egypt
are hot Wine was best preserved in shady and airy lofts.]

In the spaces between the guests stood servants with metal bowls, in
which they might wash their hands, and towels of fine linen.

When their hunger was appeased, the wine flowed more freely, and each
guest was decked with sweetly-smelling flowers, whose odor was supposed
to add to the vivacity of the conversation.

Many of the sharers in this feast wore long, snowwhite garments, and
were of the class of the Initiated into the mysteries of the faith, as
well as chiefs of the different orders of priests of the House of Seti.

The second prophet, Gagabu, who was to-day charged with the conduct of
the feast by Ameni--who on such occasions only showed himself for a few
minutes--was a short, stout man with a bald and almost spherical head.
His features were those of a man of advancing years, but well-formed,
and his smoothly-shaven, plump cheeks were well-rounded. His grey eyes
looked out cheerfully and observantly, but had a vivid sparkle when he
was excited and began to twitch his thick, sensual mouth.

Close by him stood the vacant, highly-ornamented chair of the
high-priest, and next to him sat the priests arrived from Chennu, two
tall, dark-colored old men. The remainder of the company was arranged in
the order of precedency, which they held in the priests' colleges, and
which bore no relation to their respective ages.

But strictly as the guests were divided with reference to their rank,
they mixed without distinction in the conversation.

"We know how to value our call to Thebes," said the elder of the
strangers from Chennu, Tuauf, whose essays were frequently used in the
schools,--[Some of them are still in existence]--"for while, on one
hand, it brings us into the neighborhood of the Pharaoh, where life,
happiness, and safety flourish, on the other it procures us the honor
of counting ourselves among your number; for, though the university of
Chennu in former times was so happy as to bring up many great men, whom
she could call her own, she can no longer compare with the House of
Seti. Even Heliopolis and Memphis are behind you; and if I, my humble
self, nevertheless venture boldly among