the Satrap Oroondates.  The lovers are thus again separated, and Chariclea is in despair; but, on arriving at the house of Nausicles, she is of course immediately recognised and reclaimed by Calasiris.  Cnemon, who seems to have as extraordinary a genius for sudden friendships as the two heroines in the “Rovers,” marries the fair daughter of Nausicles after a few hours’ courtship, and at once sets sail with his father-in-law for Greece, having ascertained from him that the detection of his enemies had now made his return safe:—­And Calasiris and Chariclea, disguised as beggars, set out in search of the lost Theagenes.  That luckless hero had, meanwhile, been re-captured on his road to Memphis, by his, old friend Thyamis, who, having escaped (it does not exactly appear how) from the emissaries of his treacherous brother, with whom the attack on the island proves to have originated, is now at the head of another and more powerful body of the buccanier fraternity, in the district of Bessa.  He receives Theagenes with great cordiality, and, having beaten off an attack from the Persian troops, takes the bold resolution of leading his lawless followers against Memphis itself, in order to reclaim his right to the priesthood, while Oroondates is engaged on the southern frontier in withstanding an invasion of the Ethiopians.  Arsace, the wife of the satrap, who is acting as vice-regent for her husband, unprovided with troops to repel this sudden incursion, proposes that the two brothers shall settle the ecclesiastical succession by single combat; and a duel accordingly takes place under the walls of Memphis, in which Petosiris is getting considerably the worst of it, when the combat is interrupted by the arrival of Chariclea and Calasiris, who thus witnesses the spectacle foretold by the oracle—­(the dread of seeing which had driven him into voluntary exile)—­his two sons aiming at each other’s life.  The situation is a well-conceived one, and described with spirit.  Calasiris is recognised by his penitent sons, and himself resumes the priesthood, the contested vacancy in which had been occasioned only by his absence and supposed death.  The lovers are received as his guests in the temple of Isis, and all seems on the point of ending happily, when Calasiris, as if the object of his existence had been accomplished in the fulfilment of the oracle, is found the same night dead in his bed.

[Footnote 61:  He is called “A merchant of Naucratis,” though resident in Chemmis.  But Naucratis, as we find from Herodotus, (ii. 179,) “was of old the only free port of Egypt; and, if any trader came to one of the other mouths of the Nile, he was put upon oath that his coming was involuntary, and was then made to sail to the Canopic mouth.  But, if contrary winds prevented him from doing this, he was obliged to send his cargo in barges round the Delta to Naucratis, so strict was the regulation.”  Amasis was the first king who had permitted the trade of the Greeks at this port, [ib. 178,] and the restriction appears to have been continued under the Persian rule.]