n the sun; but
he had been tasting all sorts of medicines, and he died at noon. My
observations are gone! Some of them certainly are still left; however,
I must begin again at the beginning. You see apes object as much to my
labors as sages; there lies the beast on the shelf."

Pentaur had laughed at his friend's story, and then lamented his loss;
but now he said anxiously:

"He is lying there on the shelf? But you forget that he ought to have
been kept in the little oratory of Toth near the library. He belongs to
the sacred dogfaced apes,

[The dog faced baboon, Kynokephalos, was sacred to Toth as the
Moongod. Mummies of these apes have been found at Thebes and
Hermopolis, and they are often represented as reading with much
gravity. Statues of them have been found to great quantities, and
there is a particularly life-like picture of a Kynokephalos in
relief on the left wall of the library of the temple of Isis at
Philoe.]

and all the sacred marks were found upon him. The librarian gave him
into your charge to have his bad eye cured."

"That was quite well," answered Nebsecht carelessly.

"But they will require the uninjured corpse of you, to embalm it," said
Pentaur.

"Will they?" muttered Nebsecht; and he looked at his friend like a boy
who is asked for an apple that has long been eaten.

"And you have already been doing something with it," said Pentaur, in a
tone of friendly vexation.

The leech nodded. "I have opened him, and examined his heart.'

"You are as much set on hearts as a coquette!" said Pentaur. "What is
become of the human heart that the old paraschites was to get for you?"

Nebsecht related without reserve what the old man had done for him, and
said that he had investigated the human heart, and had found nothing in
it different from what he had discovered in the heart of beasts.

"But I must see it in connection with the other organs of the human
body," cried he; "and my decision is made. I shall leave the House
of Seti, and ask the kolchytes to take me into their guild. If it is
necessary I will first perform the duties of the lowest paraschites."

Pentaur pointed out to the leech what a bad exchange he would be making,
and at last exclaimed, when Nebsecht eagerly contradicted him, "This
dissecting of the heart does not please me. You say yourself that you
learned nothing by it. Do you still think it a right thing, a fine
thing--or even useful?"

"I do not troub