"When my mother kissed me and gave me dates, when I could work and observe in peace, when you opened my eyes to the beautiful world of poetry--that was good!" And you have soothed the sufferings of many men, added Pentaur, "and never caused pain to any one." Nebsecht shook his head.
"I drove the old paraschites," he muttered, "to madness and to death." He was silent for a long time, then he looked up eagerly and said: "But not intentionally--and not in vain! In Syria, at Megiddo I could work undisturbed; now I know what the organ is that thinks.

The heart! What is the heart?
A ram's heart or a man's heart, they serve the same end; they turn the wheel of animal life, they both beat quicker in terror or in joy, for we feel fear or pleasure just as animals do.

But Thought, the divine power that flies to the infinite, and enables us to form and prove our opinions, has its seat here--Here in the brain, behind the brow." He paused exhausted and overcome with pain.

Pentaur thought he was wandering in his fever, and offered him a cooling drink while two physicians walked round his bed singing litanies; then, as Nebsecht raised himself in bed with renewed energy, the poet said to him: "The fairest memory of your life must surely be that of the sweet child whose face, as you once confessed to me, first opened your soul to the sense of beauty, and whom with your own hands you snatched from death at the cost of your own life.

You know Uarda has found her own relatives and is happy, and she is very grateful to her preserver, and would like to see him once more before she goes far away with her grandfather." The sick man hesitated before he answered softly: "Let her come--but I will look at her from a distance." Pentaur went out and soon returned with Uarda, who remained standing with glowing cheeks and tears in her eyes at the door of the tent.