Manetho brooded over the dim magnificence of its folds, sitting amidst the cobwebbed rubbish, a narrow glint of sunshine creeping slope-downwards from the crevice above his head.  He smoothed the fabric abstractedly with his hand, recalling the thoughts and scenes of four-and-twenty years ago.

“I joined them in the holy bonds of matrimony,—­read over them that service, those sacred words heavy with solemn benediction.  Rich, smooth, softly modulated was my voice, missing not one just emphasis or melodious intonation.  Ah! had they seen my soul.  But my eyes were half closed like the crocodile’s, yet never losing sight of the two I was uniting in sight of God and man.  The Devil too was there.  He turned the blessings my lips uttered into blighting curses, that fell on the happy couple like pestilential rain!

“Laughable!  Covered head to foot with curses, and felt them not!  All was smiles, blushes, happiness, forward-looking to a long, joyful future.  They knelt before me; I uplifted my hands and invoked the last blessing,—­the final curse!  My heart burned, and the smoke of its fire enveloped bride and groom, fouling his yellow beard, and smirching her silvery veil; shutting out heaven from their prayers, and blackening their path before them.  They neither felt nor knew.  They kissed,—­I saw their lips meet,—­as Balder and Gnulemah to-day.  Then I covered my face and seemed to be in prayer!

“Gnulemah,—­I hate her!—­yes, but hatred sometimes touches the heart like love.  I love her!—­to marry her?  Woe to him who becomes her husband!  As a daughter?—­no daughter is she of mine!—­I hate her, then.

“Why am I childless?—­how would I have loved a child!  I would have left all else to love my child!  I would have been the one father in the world!  My life should have been full of love as it has been of hate.  Why did not God send me a wife and a daughter?”

Men’s ears have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles.  But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen.  One may object that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the question, “Whence your ignorance and deafness?” what shall be the answer?

In Manetho’s case it appears to have been the venerable robe that took on itself the task of remonstrance.

“You are unreasonable, friend,” it interposed with a gentle rustle.  “Gnulemah, if not your daughter, might, however, have stood you in place of one; and she would have done you just as much good, in the way of softening and elevating your nature, as though she had been the issue of your own loins.  You have turned the milk and honey of your life into gall and wormwood; and I wish I could feel sure that only you would get the benefit of it!”

The reproof had as well been spared; it is doubtful whether the culprit heard so much as a word of it.  His reverie rambled on.

“Keen,—­that Balder! he half suspects me.  Had I not so hurried him to a conclusion, he would have questioned me too closely.  He shall know all presently, even as I promised him!—­shall hear a sounder guess at Gnulemah’s genealogy than was made to-day.