f the glowing sunset
painted the eastern hills with soft and rosy hues.

The far-sounding clang of a brass gong roused the poet from his ecstasy.
It was the tomtom calling him to duty, to the lecture on rhetoric which
at this hour he had to deliver to the young priests. He laid his left
hand to his heart, and pressed his right hand to his forehead, as if to
collect in its grasp his wandering thoughts; then silently and
mechanically he went towards the open court in which his disciples
awaited him. But instead of, as usual, considering on the way the subject
he was to treat, his spirit and heart were occupied with the occurrences
of the last few hours. One image reigned supreme in his imagination,
filling it with delight--it was that of the fairest woman, who, radiant
in her royal dignity and trembling with pride, had thrown herself in the
dust for his sake. He felt as if her action had invested her whole being
with a new and princely worth, as if her glance had brought light to his
inmost soul, he seemed to breathe a freer air, to be borne onward on
winged feet.

In such a mood he appeared before his hearers. When he found himself
confronting all the the well-known faces, he remembered what it was he
was called upon to do. He supported himself against the wall of the
court, and opened the papyrus-roll handed to him by his favorite pupil,
the young Anana. It was the book which twenty-four hours ago he had
promised to begin upon. He looked now upon the characters that covered
it, and felt that he was unable to read a word.

With a powerful effort he collected himself, and looking upwards tried to
find the thread he had cut at the end of yesterday's lecture, and
intended to resume to-day; but between yesterday and to-day, as it seemed
to him, lay a vast sea whose roaring surges stunned his memory and powers
of thought.

His scholars, squatting cross-legged on reed mats before him, gazed in
astonishment on their silent master who was usually so ready of speech,
and looked enquiringly at each other. A young priest whispered to his
neighbor, "He is praying--" and Anana noticed with silent anxiety the
strong hand of his teacher clutching the manuscript so tightly that the
slight material of which it consisted threatened to split.

At last Pentaur looked down; he had found a subject. While he was looking
upwards his gaze fell on the opposite wall, and the painted name of the
king with the accompanying title "the good God"