They must long since have missed me at the House of Seti, perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me in my room! For two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn away from my work, for the sake of this child.

Were I one of the laity, whom you would approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.

But it is not that,"-- and with these words the physician's eyes flamed up--"it is not that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which the heart is the organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they have mastered the pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and in the very moment when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call the Prince of knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in me is stronger than that which I call my God." The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to him wondering and full of sympathy.

For a time both were silent; then Pentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially: "My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may use your own words, have known a like emotion.

But I know that what we feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier and more precious than these, not lower.