LITMIR.BIZ

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He is no doubt of noble birth.”

      “His father is a homely gardener,” said the highpriest, “who indeed tills the land apportioned to him with industry and prudence, but is of humble birth and rough exterior. He sent Pentaur to the school at an early age, and we have brought up the wonderfully gifted boy to be what he now is.”

      “What office does he fill here in the temple?”

      “He instructs the elder pupils of the high-school in grammar and eloquence; he is also an excellent observer of the starry heavens, and a most skilled interpreter of dreams,” replied Gagabu. “But here he is again. To whom is Paaker conducting our stammering physician and his assistant?”

      “To the daughter of the paraschites, who has been run over,” answered Pentaur. “But what a rough fellow this pioneer is. His voice hurts my ears, and he spoke to our leeches as if they had been his slaves.”

      “He was vexed with the commission the princess had devolved on him,” said the high-priest benevolently, “and his unamiable disposition is hardly mitigated by his real piety.”

      “And yet,” said an old priest, “his brother, who left us some years ago, and who had chosen me for his guide and teacher, was a particularly loveable and docile youth.”

      “And his father,” said Ameni, “was one of the most superior energetic, and withal subtle-minded of men.”

      “Then he has derived his bad peculiarities from his mother?”

      “By no means. She is a timid, amiable, soft-hearted woman.”

      “But must the child always resemble its parents?” asked Pentaur. “Among the sons of the sacred bull, sometimes not one bears the distinguishing mark of his father.”

      “And if Paaker’s father were indeed an Apis,” Gagabu laughing, “according to your view the pioneer himself belongs, alas! to the peasant’s stable.”

      Pentaur did not contradict him, but said with a smile:

      “Since he left the school bench, where his school-fellows called him the wild ass on account of his unruliness, he has remained always the same. He was stronger than most of them, and yet they knew no greater pleasure than putting him in a rage.”

      “Children are so cruel!” said Ameni. “They judge only by appearances, and never enquire into the causes of them. The deficient are as guilty in their eyes as the idle, and Paaker could put forward small claims to their indulgence. I encourage freedom and merriment,” he continued turning to the priests from Cheraw, “among our disciples, for in fettering the fresh enjoyment of youth we lame our best assistant. The excrescences on the natural growth of boys cannot be more surely or painlessly extirpated than in their wild games. The school-boy is the school-boy’s best tutor.”

      “But Paaker,” said the priest Meriapu, “was not improved by the provocations of his companions. Constant contests with them increased that roughness which now makes him the terror of his subordinates and alienates all affection.”

      “He is the most unhappy of all the many youths, who were intrusted to my care,” said Ameni, “and I believe I know why—he never had a childlike disposition, even when in years he was still a child, and the Gods had denied him the heavenly gift of good humor. Youth should be modest, and he was assertive from his childhood. He took the sport of his companions for earnest, and his father, who was unwise only as a tutor, encouraged him to resistance instead of to forbearance, in the idea that he thus would be steeled to the hard life of a Mohar.”26

      “I have often heard the deeds of the Mohar spoken of,” said the old priest from Chennu, “yet I do not exactly know what his office requires of him.”

      “He has to wander among the ignorant and insolent people of hostile provinces, and to inform himself of the kind and number of the population, to investigate the direction of the mountains, valleys, and rivers, to set forth his observations, and to deliver them to the house of war,27 so that the march of the troops may be guided by them.”

      “The Mohar then must be equally skilled as a warrior and as a Scribe.”

      “As thou sayest; and Paaker’s father was not a hero only, but at the same time a writer, whose close and clear information depicted the country through which he had travelled as plainly as if it were seen from a mountain height. He was the first who took the title of Mohar. The king held him in such high esteem, that he was inferior to no one but the king himself, and the minister of the house of war.”

      “Was he of noble race?”

      “Of one of the oldest and noblest in the country. His father was the noble warrior Assa,” answered the haruspex, “and he therefore, after he himself had attained the highest consideration and vast wealth, escorted home the niece of the King Hor-em-lieb, who would have had a claim to the throne, as well as the Regent, if the grandfather of the present Rameses had not seized it from the old family by violence.”

      “Be careful of your words,” said Ameni, interrupting the rash old man. “Rameses I. was and is the grandfather of our sovereign, and in the king’s veins, from his mother’s side, flows the blood of the legitimate descendants of the Sun-god.”

      “But fuller and purer in those of the Regent the haruspex ventured to retort.

      “But Rameses wears the crown,” cried Ameni, “and will continue to wear it so long as it pleases the Gods. Reflect—your hairs are grey, and seditious words are like sparks, which are borne by the wind, but which, if they fall, may set our home in a blaze. Continue your feasting, my lords; but I would request you to speak no more this evening of the king and his new decree. You, Pentaur, fulfil my orders to-morrow morning with energy and prudence.”

      The high-priest bowed and left the feast.

      As soon as the door was shut behind him, the old priest from Chennu spoke.

      “What we have learned concerning the pioneer of the king, a man who holds so high an office, surprises me. Does he distinguish himself by a special acuteness?”

      “He was a steady learner, but of moderate ability.”

      “Is the rank of Mohar then as high as that of a prince of the empire?”

      “By no means.”

      “How then is it—?”

      “It is, as it is,” interrupted Gagabu. “The son of the vine-dresser has his mouth full of grapes, and the child of the door-keeper opens the lock with words.”

      “Never mind,” said an old priest who had hitherto kept silence. “Paaker earned for himself the post of Mohar, and possesses many praiseworthy qualities. He is indefatigable and faithful, quails before no danger, and has always been earnestly devout from his boyhood. When the other scholars carried their pocket-money to the fruit-sellers and confectioners at the temple-gates, he would buy geese, and, when his mother sent him a handsome sum, young gazelles, to offer to the Gods on the altars. No noble in the land owns a greater treasure of charms and images of the Gods than he. To the present time he is the most pious of men, and the offerings for the dead, which he brings in the name of his late father, may be said to be positively kingly.”

      “We owe him gratitude for these gifts,” said the treasurer, “and the high honor he pays his father, even after his death, is exceptional and far-famed.”

      “He emulates him in every respect,” sneered Gagabu; “and though he does not resemble him in any feature, grows more and more like him. But unfortunately, it is as the goose resembles the swan, or the owl resembles the eagle. For his father’s noble pride he has overbearing haughtiness; for kindly severity, rude harshness; for dignity, conceit; for perseverance, obstinacy. Devout he is, and we profit by his gifts. The treasurer may rejoice over them, and the dates off a crooked tree taste as well as those off a straight one. But if I were the Divinity I should prize them no higher than a hoopoe’s crest; for He, who sees into the heart of the giver-alas! what does he see! Storms and darkness are of the dominion of Seth, and in there—in there—”

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