“But we—­the Initiated,” cried Pentaur, “turn our attention to them also.  Thoughts—­traditions—­as to their conditions and agency have existed among us for a thousand years; hundreds of generations of men have examined these traditions, have approved them, and have handed them down to us.  All our knowledge, it is true, is defective, and yet prophets have been favored with the gift of looking into the future, magic powers have been vouchsafed to mortals.  All this is contrary to the laws of the external world, which are all that you recognize, and yet it can easily be explained if we accept the idea of a higher order of things.  The spirit of the Divinity dwells in each of us, as in nature.  The natural man can only attain to such knowledge as is common to all; but it is the divine capacity for serene discernment—­which is omniscience—­that works in the seer; it is the divine and unlimited power—­which is omnipotence—­that from time to time enables the magician to produce supernatural effects!”

“Away with prophets and marvels!” cried Nebsecht.

“I should have thought,” said Pentaur, “that even the laws of nature which you recognize presented the greatest marvels daily to your eyes; nay the Supreme One does not disdain sometimes to break through the common order of things, in order to reveal to that portion of Himself which we call our soul, the sublime Whole of which we form part—­Himself.  Only today you have seen how the heart of the sacred ram—­”

“Man, man!” Nebsecht interrupted, “the sacred heart is the heart of a hapless sheep that a sot of a soldier sold for a trifle to a haggling grazier, and that was slaughtered in a common herd.  A proscribed paraschites put it into the body of Rui, and—­and—­” he opened the cupboard, threw the carcase of the ape and some clothes on to the floor, and took out an alabaster bowl which he held before the poet—­“the muscles you see here in brine, this machine, once beat in the breast of the prophet Rui.  My sheep’s heart wilt be carried to-morrow in the procession!  I would have told you all about it if I had not promised the old man to hold my tongue, and then—­But what ails you, man?” Pentaur had turned away from his friend, and covered his face with his hands, and he groaned as if he were suffering some frightful physical pain.  Nebsecht divined what was passing in the mind of his friend.  Like a child that has to ask forgiveness of its mother for some misdeed, he went close up to Pentaur, but stood trembling behind him not daring to speak to him.

Several minutes passed.  Suddenly Pentaur raised his head, lifted his hands to heaven, and cried: 

“O Thou! the One!—­though stars may fall from the heavens in summer nights, still Thy eternal and immutable laws guide the never-resting planets in their paths.  Thou pure and all-prevading Spirit, that dwellest in me, as I know by my horror of a lie, manifest Thyself in me—­as light when I think, as mercy when I act, and when I speak, as truth—­always as truth!”