Its belly was red
hot. At command of your priests the foolish Phoenician mothers put
their most beautiful children at the feet of this cruel divinity."

"Only boys," interrupted Hiram.

"Only boys," continued Ramses. "The priests sprinkled each boy with
perfumes, decked him with flowers, and then the statue seized him with
bronze hands, opened its jaws, and devoured the child, whose screams
meanwhile were heaven piercing. Flames burst each time from the mouth
of the deity."

Hiram laughed in silence.

"And dost Thou believe this, worthiness?"

"I repeat what a man told me who has never lied."

"He told what he saw. But did it not surprise him that no mother whose
children they burned was weeping?"

"He was astonished, indeed, at such indifference in women, since they
are always ready to shed tears even over a dead hen. But it shows great
cruelty in your people."

The old Phoenician nodded.

"Was that long ago?" asked he.

"A few years."

"Well," said Hiram, deliberately, "shouldst Thou wish to visit Tyre
some day, I shall have the honor to show thee a solemnity like that
one."

"I have no wish to see it."

"After the ceremony we shall go to another court of the temple, where
the prince will see a very fine school, and in it, healthy and
gladsome, those very same boys who were burnt a few years ago."

"How is that?" exclaimed Ramses; "then did they not perish?"

"They are living, and growing up to be sturdy mariners. When Thou shalt
be pharaoh, mayst Thou live through eternity! perhaps more than one of
them will be sailing thy ships."

"Then ye deceive your people?" laughed the prince.

"We deceive no one," answered the Tyrian, with dignity. "Each man
deceives himself when he does not seek the explanation of a solemnity
which he does not understand."

"I am curious," said Ramses.

"In fact," continued Hiram, "we have a custom that indigent mothers
wishing to assure their sons a good career give them to the service of
the state. In reality, those children are taken across the statue of
Baal, in which there is a heated stove. This ceremony does not mean
that the children are really burnt, but that they have been given to
the temple, and so are as much lost to their mothers as if they had
fallen into fire.

"In truth, however, they do not go to the stove, but to nurses and
women who rear them for some years. When they have grown up
sufficiently, the school of priests of Baal receives and educate