m when he gave
it--he entirely owed to the Regent.

His mother had tied up his hand, which Rameri had severely hurt; it was
extremely painful, but he would not have missed the banquet at any cost,
although he felt some alarm of the solemn ceremony. His family was as old
as any in Egypt, his blood purer than the king's, and nevertheless he
never felt thoroughly at home in the company of superior people. He was
no priest, although a scribe; he was a warrior, and yet he did not rank
with royal heroes.

He had been brought up to a strict fulfilment of his duty, and he devoted
himself zealously to his calling; but his habits of life were widely
different from those of the society in which he had been brought up--a
society of which his handsome, brave, and magnanimous father had been a
chief ornament. He did not cling covetously to his inherited wealth, and
the noble attribute of liberality was not strange to him, but the
coarseness of his nature showed itself most when he was most lavish, for
he was never tired of exacting gratitude from those whom he had attached
to him by his gifts, and he thought he had earned the right by his
liberality to meet the recipient with roughness or arrogance, according
to his humor. Thus it happened that his best actions procured him not
friends but enemies.

Paaker's was, in fact, an ignoble, that is to say, a selfish nature; to
shorten his road he trod down flowers as readily as he marched over the
sand of the desert. This characteristic marked him in all things, even in
his outward demeanor; in the sound of his voice, in his broad features,
in the swaggering gait of his stumpy figure.

In camp he could conduct himself as he pleased; but this was not
permissible in the society of his equals in rank; for this reason, and
because those faculties of quick remark and repartee, which distinguished
them, had been denied to him, he felt uneasy and out of his element when
he mixed with them, and he would hardly have accepted Ameni's invitation,
if it had not so greatly flattered his vanity.

It was already late; but the banquet did not begin till midnight, for the
guests, before it began, assisted at the play which was performed by lamp
and torch-light on the sacred lake in the south of the Necropolis, and
which represented the history of Isis and Osiris.

When he entered the decorated hall in which the tables were prepared, he
found all the guests assembled. The Regent Ani was present, and sa