poken of as a devout and gifted maiden.
Her incautious breach of the sacred institutions had seemed to him to
offer a welcome opportunity for humiliating--a member of the royal
family.

Now he told himself that he had undervalued this young creature that he
had behaved clumsily, perhaps foolishly, to her; for he did not for a
moment conceal from himself that her sudden change of demeanor resulted
much more from the warm flow of her sympathy, or perhaps of her,
affection, than from any recognition of her guilt, and he could not
utilize her transgression with safety to himself, unless she felt herself
guilty.

Nor was he of so great a nature as to be wholly free from vanity, and his
vanity had been deeply wounded by the haughty resistance of the princess.

When he commanded Pentaur to meet the princess with words of reproof, he
had hoped to awaken his ambition through the proud sense of power over
the mighty ones of the earth.

And now?

How had his gifted admirer, the most hopeful of all his disciples, stood
the test.

The one ideal of his life, the unlimited dominion of the priestly idea
over the minds of men, and of the priesthood over the king himself, had
hitherto remained unintelligible to this singular young man.

He must learn to understand it.

"Here, as the least among a hundred who are his superiors, all the powers
of resistance of his soaring soul have been roused," said Ameni to
himself. "In the temple of Hatasu he will have to rule over the inferior
orders of slaughterers of victims and incense-burners; and, by requiring
obedience, will learn to estimate the necessity of it. The rebel, to whom
a throne devolves, becomes a tyrant!"

"Pentuar's poet soul," so he continued to reflect "has quickly yielded
itself a prisoner to the charm of Bent-Anat; and what woman could resist
this highly favored being, who is radiant in beauty as Ra-Harmachis, and
from whose lips flows speech as sweet as Techuti's. They ought never to
meet again, for no tie must bind him to the house of Rameses."

Again he paced to and fro, and murmured:

"How is this? Two of my disciples have towered above their fellows, in
genius and gifts, like palm trees above their undergrowth. I brought them
up to succeed me, to inherit my labors and my hopes.

"Mesu fell away;

[Mesu is the Egyptian name of Moses, whom we may consider as a
contemporary of Rameses, under whose successor the exodus of the
Jews from Egypt took plac