w-white meal when they are
ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed. Lately you were praising
to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completed in the
Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.

[Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses II.
The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not
their equal in the world.]

How posterity will admire it! I saw that Hall arise. There lay masses of
freestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath, and
three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundred workmen
engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beaten to
death. Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similar
pictures, in which you would not find much beauty. In the meantime, we
have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, and
investigating the laws by which it is governed."

"I have never clearly understood your efforts, and have difficulty in
comprehending why you did not turn to the science of the haruspices,"
said Pentaur. "Do you then believe that the changing, and--owing to the
conditions by which they are surrounded--the dependent life of plants and
animals is governed by law, rule, and numbers like the movement of the
stars?"

"What a question! Is the strong and mighty hand, which compels yonder
heavenly bodies to roll onward in their carefully-appointed orbits, not
delicate enough to prescribe the conditions of the flight of the bird,
and the beating of the human heart?"

"There we are again with the heart," said the poet smiling, "are you any
nearer your aim?"

The physician became very grave. "Perhaps tomorrow even," he said, "I may
have what I need. You have your palette there with red and black color,
and a writing reed. May I use this sheet of papyrus?"

"Of course; but first tell me. . . . "

"Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only be
a fresh dispute."

"I think," said the poet, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder, "that
we have no reason to fear disputes. So far they have been the cement, the
refreshing dew of our friendship."

"So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds."

"You intend to get possession of a human heart!" cried the poet. "Think
of what you are doing! The heart is the vessel of that effluence of the
universal soul, which lives in us."

"Are you so sure of that?" cried the physician with some irrita