Behind him stood Ameni.

"You fascinated your hearers, my friend," said the high-priest, coldly; "it is a pity that only the Harp was wanting." Ameni's words fell on the agitated spirit of the poet like ice on the breast of a man in fever.

He knew this tone in his master's voice, for thus he was accustomed to reprove bad scholars and erring priests; but to him he had never yet so spoken.
"It certainly would seem," continued the high-priest, bitterly, "as if in your intoxication you had forgotten what it becomes the teacher to utter in the lecture-hall.

Only a few weeks since you swore on my hands to guard the mysteries, and this day you have offered the great secret of the Unnameable one, the most sacred possession of the initiated, like some cheap ware in the open market." "Thou cuttest with knives," said Pentaur.
"May they prove sharp, and extirpate the undeveloped canker, the rank weed from your soul," cried the high-priest.

"You are young, too young; not like the tender fruit-tree that lets itself be trained aright, and brought to perfection, but like the green fruit on the ground, which will turn to poison for the children who pick it up--yea even though it fall from a sacred tree.