While he thus lifted his soul in devotion, matters were getting warm outside the dissecting room.  He thought he heard his name spoken, and scarcely had he raised his head to listen when a taricheut came in and desired him to follow him.

In front of the rooms, filled with resinous odors and incense, in which the actual process of embalming was carried on, a number of taricheutes were standing and looking at an object in an alabaster bowl.  The knees of the old man knocked together as he recognized the heart of the beast which he had substituted for that of the Prophet.

The chief of the taricheutes asked him whether he had opened the body of the dead priest.

Pinem stammered out “Yes.”  Whether this was his heart?  The old man nodded affirmatively.

The taricheutes looked at each other, whispered together; then one of them went away, and returned soon with the inspector of victims from the temple of Anion, whom he had found in the house of the weaver, and the chief of the kolchytes.

“Show me the heart,” said the superintendent of the sacrifices as he approached the vase.  “I can decide in the dark if you have seen rightly.  I examine a hundred animals every day.  Give it here!—­By all the Gods of Heaven and Hell that is the heart of a ram!”

“It was found in the breast of Rui,” said one of the taricheutes decisively.  “It was opened yesterday in the presence of us all by this old paraschites.”

“It is extraordinary,” said the priest of Anion.  “And incredible.  But perhaps an exchange was effected.—­Did you slaughter any victims here yesterday or—?”

“We are purifying ourselves,” the chief of the kolchytes interrupted, for the great festival of the valley, and for ten days no beast can have been killed here for food; besides, the stables and slaughterhouses are a long way from this, on the other side of the linen-factories.”

“It is strange!” replied the priest.  “Preserve this heart carefully, kolchytes:  or, better still, let it be enclosed in a case.  We will take it over to the chief prophet of Anion.  It would seem that some miracle has happened.”

“The heart belongs to the Necropolis,” answered the chief kolchytes, “and it would therefore be more fitting if we took it to the chief priest of the temple of Seti, Ameni.”

“You command here!” said the other.  “Let us go.”  In a few minutes the priest of Anion and the chief of the kolchytes were being carried towards the valley in their litters.  A taricheut followed them, who sat on a seat between two asses, and carefully carried a casket of ivory, in which reposed the ram’s heart.

The old paraschites watched the priests disappear behind the tamarisk bushes.  He longed to run after them, and tell them everything.