ipient 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 sat
on Ameni's right at the top of the centre high-table at which several
places were unoccupied; for the prophets and the initiated of the temple
of Amon had excused themselves from being present. They were faithful to
Rameses and his house; their grey-haired Superior disapproved of Ameni's
severity towards the prince and princess, and they regarded the miracle
of the sacred heart as a malicious trick of the chiefs of the Necropolis
against the great temple of the capital for which Rameses had always
shown a preference.

The pioneer went up to the table, where sat the general of the troops
that had just returned victorious from Ethiopia, and several other
officers of high rank, There was a place vacant next to the general.
Paaker fixed his eyes upon this, but when he observed that the officer
signed to the one next to him to come a little nearer, the pioneer
imagined that each would endeavor to avoid having him for his neighbor,
and with an angry glance he turned his back on the table where the
warriors sat.

The Mohar was not, in fact, a welcome boon-companion. "The wine turns
sour when that churl looks at it," said the general.

The eyes of all the