secht quietly.

"But we--the Initiated," cried Pentaur, "turn our attention to them also.
Thoughts--traditions--as to their conditions and agency have existed
among us for a thousand years; hundreds of generations of men have
examined these traditions, have approved them, and have handed them down
to us. All our knowledge, it is true, is defective, and yet prophets have
been favored with the gift of looking into the future, magic powers have
been vouchsafed to mortals. All this is contrary to the laws of the
external world, which are all that you recognize, and yet it can easily
be explained if we accept the idea of a higher order of things. The
spirit of the Divinity dwells in each of us, as in nature. The natural
man can only attain to such knowledge as is common to all; but it is the
divine capacity for serene discernment--which is omniscience--that works
in the seer; it is the divine and unlimited power--which is
omnipotence--that from time to time enables the magician to produce
supernatural effects!"

"Away with prophets and marvels!" cried Nebsecht.

"I should have thought," said Pentaur, "that even the laws of nature
which you recognize presented the greatest marvels daily to your eyes;
nay the Supreme One does not disdain sometimes to break through the
common order of things, in order to reveal to that portion of Himself
which we call our soul, the sublime Whole of which we form part--Himself.
Only today you have seen how the heart of the sacred ram--"

"Man, man!" Nebsecht interrupted, "the sacred heart is the heart of a
hapless sheep that a sot of a soldier sold for a trifle to a haggling
grazier, and that was slaughtered in a common herd. A proscribed
paraschites put it into the body of Rui, and--and--" he opened the
cupboard, threw the carcase of the ape and some clothes on to the floor,
and took out an alabaster bowl which he held before the poet--"the
muscles you see here in brine, this machine, once beat in the breast of
the prophet Rui. My sheep's heart wilt be carried to-morrow in the
procession! I would have told you all about it if I had not promised the
old man to hold my tongue, and then--But what ails you, man?" Pentaur had
turned away from his friend, and covered his face with his hands, and he
groaned as if he were suffering some frightful physical pain. Nebsecht
divined what was passing in the mind of his friend. Like a child that has
to ask forgiveness of its mother for some misdeed, he wen