Shortly before that time Jesus had discovered an aged scholar who dwelt outside the gate of Thebes, in a vaulted cave at the foot of the Pyramid.  He would have nothing to do with any living thing except a goat of the desert which furnished him with milk.  And as he kept always within the darkness of the vault, bending over endless hieroglyphics on half-decomposed slabs of stone, on excavated household vessels, and papyrus rolls, the goat likewise never saw the sun.  Both were contented with the food brought them daily by an old fellah.  The hermit was one who had surely reversed things—­shadow without and light within.  When Pharaoh dismissed Jesus, he sought the learned cave-dweller in order to find wisdom.  At first the old man would not let him come in.  What had young blood to do with wisdom?

“My son, first grow old, and then come and seek wisdom in the old writings.”

The boy answered:  “Do you give wisdom only for dying?  I want it for living.”

Then the old man let him in.

Jesus now visited the wise man every day and listened to his teachings about the world and life, and also about eternal life.  The hermit spoke of the transmigration of souls, how in the course of ages souls must pass through all beings, live through all the circles of existence, according as their conduct led them upwards to the gods, or downwards to the worms in the mud.  Therefore we should love the animals which the souls of men may inhabit.  He spoke with deep awe of the serpent Kebados, and of the sublime Apis in the Temple of Memphis.  He lost himself in all the depths and shoals of thought, verified everything by the hieroglyphics, and declared it to be scientific truth.  So that the man who lived in the dark discoursed to the boy on light.  He spoke of the all-holy sun-god Osiris who created everything and destroyed everything—­the great, the adorable Osiris by whose eye every creature was absorbed.  Then he would again solemnly and mysteriously murmur incomprehensible formulae, and the eager boy grew weary.  Here, too, something evidently had to be reversed.  So thinking, he went quietly forth and left the little gate open.  When the old man looked up at him, there he was in the open air pasturing the goat, who, delighted at her liberty, was capering round on the grass.

“Why do you not show your reverence for truth?” he said, reprovingly.

And Jesus:  “Don’t you see that I am proving my reverence for your teaching.  You say:  We must love animals.  Therefore I led the goat out into the open air, that she may feed on the fragrant grass.  You say that we should kindle our eye at that of the sun-god, therefore I went out with the goat from the dark vault into the bright sunlight.”

“You must learn to understand the writings.”

“I want to know living creatures.”

The old man looked at the boy with an air of vexation.  “Tell me, you bold son of man, under what sign of the zodiac were you born?”